The way that the Wife of Bath dresses and behaves suggests the directness of her character. The Wife is not beautiful, but forceful and vivacious. Her bright clothes and elaborate headdress are ostentatious rather than elegant: her hat is as broad as a "bokeler" (a buckler or small shield). Her clothes are of good quality "fyn scarlet reed" and her shoes are "moiste and newe". The effect is perhaps to advertise herself and her wealth.

Of her life we are told that (apart from "oother compaignye in youthe") she has had five husbands. This means, of course, that she has been five times widowed (no divorce for women in 14th century England). This is rather surprising, but seems less so when we later learn that three of the husbands were old men. Her habit of going on pilgrimages suggests a devout woman, but her real reasons for such travel are a love of adventure and the social opportuni

Opposed to Eglentine's passiveness and subtlety are the Wife of Bath's outspokenness, aggressive demonstration of her instincts, appetites and will power. The Wife of Bath makes the institutions of church, pilgrimage and marriage serve to her temperament. Her radix trait is an uninhibited appetite for physical love and travel. Chaucer developed two basic traits of her. The first one is experience; it is the first word in her prologue. The second basic trait is her desire for mastery: her doctrine of marriage is based on female supremacy. Such an outlook is a reaction to the traditional view of marriage which is imposed by the church fathers and common law.

The Wife of Bath is well acquainted with Holy Scripture, and she deconstructs it in the greatest part of her prologue. She picks and chooses the quotations and episodes which support her way of thinking. Her skillful handling of Scripture in the comic debate on marriage shows that she is a knowledgeable woman. Religious issues bring up another interesting contrast between the Wife of Bath and the Prioress: while the Wife of Bath embodies empirical knowledge of facts, the Prioress embodies blind religious faith. The latter is a person of limited mentality, credulous enough to accept naively a legend of a horrible murder of a child committed by Jews, and to recount it. No matter how cruel her story might seem, it is mostly an act of worship. This devoutness and piety is something the worldly Wife of Bath is incapable of.

The Prioress is one of the most fully described pilgrims, and it is with her that we first notice the narrator's refusal to judge the value of what he sees. The description is overtly flattering yet masquerades a sharp criticism of her foolish sentimentality and oppressive attention to manners. Although she strives to be polite and refined, she spoke French "after the school of Stratford-at-Bow," the vulgar rural pronunciation compared to elite Parisian French. Furthermore, she weeps at the mere sight of a dead mouse, a gross overreaction to a small tragedy. Her portrait is more concerned with how she eats than how she prays. She is rather too kind to animals, while there is no mention of her kindness to people.

one gets the feelingthat the Prioress could have made a good medieval wife. Perhaps, then, our final view ofthe Prioress should be that she was probably sent on a path to which she was ill-suited.

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