The Wife of Bath has been described and depicted as an independent proto-feminist who long ago led the charge for sexual equality. Chaucer’s visionary protagonist was a refreshing and modern look at women’s rights in the fifteenth century. She spends much of her prologue breaking down stereotypical barriers that have confined women of her time to passive and subservient roles in her society. As a result, her prologue, if standing alone, can be noted as one of the great calls for female independence in historical literature. But upon viewing her works as a whole, her section of the General Prologue, her prologue and her tale, it is well noted that she strikingly contradicts her own call for equality with her story of the knight and the hag. She builds her case so strongly and defiantly in her prologue, yet subsequently demolishes her argument in her following tale. By allowing the hag to compromise her position, rewarding the knight for his chauvinist deeds and countering her own stance with several questionable details, the Wife of Bath contradicts her position for sexual equality and retards the momentum she had built in her prece

Although major aspects of the tale may be disputed back and forth, either way the finer details and minor aspects also contradict the Wife of Bath’s previous position. For instance, the story about Midas’s wife who cannot keep a secret. The Wife introduces her vignette by stating, “And nat biwreye thyng that men us telle / But that tale is nat worth a rake-stele. / Pardee, we wommen konne no thyng hele; / Witnesse on Mida, -- wol ye heere the tale?” (954-6). The Wife is unabashedly asserting that women cannot even keep a secret, something that men thought women could be trusted with. She then divulges into her story about Midas’s wife being so incapable of keeping her husband’s deformity between them that she has to bellow the secret into a mire. Earlier than this is the materialistic list that women give to the night of what they want most. “Somme seyde wommen loven best richesse, / Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse, / Somme riche array, somme seyden lust abedde,” (931-3) yet another example that women care for little more than shallow pleasures. Although this may coincide a bit with the Wife’s monetary ambitions described in her prologue, she does not discuss the methods of procuring such objectives and makes more of the point that a woman should depend on a man to provide their wants rather then attaining them themselves.

The Wife of Bath’s previous message was so strong and unique at a time when such an idea was unpopular and largely opposed. Yet, Chaucer decides to squelch this new standard by telling the tale of the knight and the hag through the Wife of Bath as narrator. The idea has been proposed that this story is simply told to presents new ideals of sovereignty as the great equalizer in relationships and that poverty can bring one closer to God. This may be the case, but why didn’t Chaucer tell it through someone else’s voice to avoid such immanent contradictions that the story provokes? Was Chaucer not confident in creating such a self-empowered female protagonist? It may have been too much of a responsibility for such a widely read author or too early a time for such forward thinking. Whatever the explanation may be, the Wife of Bath clearly contradicts herself on many occasions within her tale and c

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