The Wife of Bath

Wife of Bath's Tale And Modern Stream-of-consciousness Writing

Dear Chaucer:

The Wife of Bath is one of the most memorable of all of your characters in the Canterbury Tales. The Wife is likeable not only because of her boisterous, honest, and sexually frank persona but also because of the way in which she tells her tale. The Wife's storytelling anticipates modern stream-of-consciousness style. The Wife's style underlines the fact that it is not only how a story is told but who tells it that is important.

The Wife begins her tale by relating her experience of marriage before setting up the plot of her story: "I have had five husbands at the church-door (for I have been wedded so often); and all were worthy men in their ranks." She defends her ability to hold forth on the subject of marriage because of her obvious experience and also makes a humorous aside about how she considers her much-married history to be godly because did not King Solomon have many wives? Her attitude makes her story all the more entertaining, as she jumps from subject to subject. This reveals her free and easy attitude to religion that is in stark contrast to some of the other pilgrims.

The Wife admits she is fallible -- she is not cut out for chastity. She argues that Paul did say it was better to marry than to burn, even though chastity was considered a more perfect state. In her religious musings, the Wife lets us know that she is one of us, with many of the same excuses that people make for their own foibles.

The Wife's speech is conveyed in long, run-on sentences that frequently shift from past to present. This style enables the reader to understand her clever but wandering mind and how she rationalizes her colorful although somewhat improvident life. Of course, some people might protest that the Wife is actually speaking aloud, in contrast to the fact that a stream-of-consciousness is usually viewed as an interior monologue. But the subject matter she covers is so broad, the Wife occasionally seems to lose consciousness of the fact that she is speaking to an audience. And certainly, many of the things she says would likely shock the more pious members of the Canterbury pilgrimage. "Let virgins be called bread of purified wheat-seed, and let us wives be called barley-bread; and yet, as Mark can tell, our Lord Jesus refreshed many people with barley-bread."

Before she tells her actual tale, the Wife talks about how she met her fifth husband. She could not help but be attracted to him, even though he was much younger than herself she notes. "Yet I have the mark of Mars upon my face and in another private place as well. May God be my salvation indeed, I never loved discreetly, but always followed my appetite." As with so many of the pilgrims, there is a great deal of irony in the story about herself she unfolds: although the fictional tale she tells is very feminist, stressing the need of women to have autonomy in their marriages, the Wife admits that the husband she loved the most (a law clerk named Jankin) married her for her money and physically abused her. In her own actions and thoughts, there is a divergence between the Wife's tale and the Wife's stated actions.