The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Tale (Modern Verse Translation) recap

The Wife of Bath defends her five marriages and argues that experience gives her authority to discuss marriage, sexuality, property, and power. She describes how she controlled her first three husbands, answered her fourth husband's infidelity, and fought with her beloved fifth husband Jankyn until he surrendered mastery of their household. Her tale concerns a knight who assaults a woman and can escape execution only by learning what women most desire. After many conflicting answers, an old woman tells him the answer: sovereignty over their own choices and relationships. She claims marriage as her reward, then asks him to choose between an old faithful wife and a young beautiful one whose fidelity is uncertain. He leaves the decision to her. Because he has at last granted a woman control, she becomes young, beautiful, and faithful, and they live in accord.

Before telling her story, the Wife of Bath argues that personal experience gives her standing to speak about marriage. She has had five husbands and rejects attempts to make lifelong virginity the only virtuous path. She describes her first three husbands as old and wealthy men whom she managed through accusations, bargaining, and control of sex and property. Her fourth husband was unfaithful, and she made him jealous in return. Her fifth, Jankyn, was young and loved to read a collection of stories condemning women. When she tore pages from the book, their fight left her deaf in one ear. She then persuaded him to give her authority over their home and property, after which their marriage became peaceful. Her prologue establishes sovereignty within marriage as her central concern.

In Arthur's time, a knight assaults a young woman and is sentenced to death. The queen obtains the right to judge him and grants him a year and a day to discover what women most desire. He gathers many incompatible answers until an old woman offers to save him in return for whatever favor she later requests. At court he gives her answer: women most desire sovereignty over their own lives and over relations with husbands and lovers. The queen accepts it and pardons him. The old woman then demands that he marry her. When he objects to her age, poverty, and low birth, she argues that virtue creates true nobility and offers a choice: she can remain old and faithful or become young and beautiful but potentially unfaithful. The knight leaves the choice to her. Because he has granted her authority, she becomes young and beautiful while remaining faithful, and their marriage becomes happy.

The knight gives the old woman authority to decide what form she should take and what kind of wife she should be. By yielding the power of choice that he once denied women, he finally learns the answer that saved his life. She responds by becoming both young and beautiful while promising fidelity. Their marriage changes from a coerced bargain into a harmonious partnership. The Wife of Bath closes by wishing for husbands who are young, compliant, and vigorous, and for stubborn or miserly husbands to be corrected. The tale therefore completes the argument of her prologue: mutual happiness becomes possible when a woman possesses sovereignty within marriage rather than being treated as property or subjected to imposed authority.