The Wife of Bath, Dame Alice, portrays and exhibits numerous qualities of a strong and confident woman and an unknown feminist. Furthermore, these characteristics are what women nowadays point to as Chaucer’s bravery to point out and criticize the unfair treatment of women over the centuries and eras. Unfortunately for them, Chaucer was not quite as brilliant and innovative as contemporary women would like to think. As evident with the hypocrisy showed by the Wife of Bath. In conclusion, The Wife of Bath definitely has some strong positive messages for contemporary women, but her hypocrisy makes her one of the most complex and well-developed women characters in English literature at the time.

Chaucer’s main target of his satire and criticism throughout his Canterbury Tales is the Anglo-Saxon church. Even though in this tale he focuses more on the gender debate, his contempt of the corrupt church and its disciples is embodied in the Wife’s prologue. In the first three lines he says: “Experience, though no authority, Were in this world, were good enough for me, To speak of woe that is in all marriage.” Here Chaucer, through the eyes of a women, points out that there is far too much reliance on authority, meaning the opinions of older and perhaps ancient writers. This sort of authority was responsible for the horrible distortion of woman’s character and place in society and thus Chaucer felt his satirical and sarcastic attack about love in marriage was necessary. Chaucer does it through the Wife of Bath as a medium to reach the hopelessly ignorant women of the time should they hear of the tale.

Her fifth husband is a great example of showing how she no longer is able to control men. She no longer can have them wait on her and do as she desires. She no longer possesses command over her husband that makes them think she is the greatest: “And every night and day 'twas his custom, When he had leisure and took some vacation, From all his other worldly occupation, To read, within this book, of wicked wives.” His reading of “wicked wives” and clearly anti-feminist literature is a perfect example of she no longer having control over her men.

All of the above quotations and examples appear to show the Wife of Bath as a great and leading woman with ideas and ideals that came well after her time. Howev

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