The Wife of Bath's Tale

The Wife of Bath's Tale tells a story from a distant time, when King Arthur ruled the nation and fairy queens and elves were common. However, now friars are common where elves once were. King Arthur had a knight who, when riding home one day from hawking, found a maiden walking alone and raped her. This crime usually held the penalty of death, but the queen intervened and begged her husband to spare the knight. She told the knight that she would grant his life if he could answer the question "what do women most desire?" She gave him one year to find the answer. The knight went on his journey and could find no satisfactory answer. Some said wealth, others jollity, some status, others a good lover in bed. The knight was despondent that he could not find an answer. When he reached the end of the twelve months before he must return to meet his fate, he found an old woman and asked her the question. She agreed to give the answer and assured him that it was the right one, but would only tell him the answer if he would marry her. She told him that women desire to have the sovereignty and to rule over their husbands. When the knight faced the queen and gave the correct answer, the old woman announced the knight's pledge, which constrained him to wed. The knight, although pardoned, was miserable that he had to marry such an old crone. She realized his unhappiness, and confronted him about it. He criticized her for not only being old and ugly, but low-born. She scoffs at his snobbery as a definition of a 'gentleman' and defends her poverty as irrelevant to God. She gives him a choice: he can have her as a wife old and ugly, but humble and devoted, or young and fair, but independent. He chooses to give her independence. When he kisses her, she transforms into a young and beautiful woman. They lived happily together; he was devoted to her, while she tended to his pleasure. The Wife of Bath ends the Tale with its moral: let Christ grant all women submissive husbands who sexually satisfy their wives.