The Wife of Bath's Tale

The wife's life with her first three husbands (lines 193-451)

The wife of bath begins this section by giving an account of her first three marriages. She treats her first three marriages as one marriage; talking about how she used the same techniques to control her husbands and does not refer to individual people but a combination of all her first three husbands which she refers to as her husband.

The wife begins, with a shockingly cynical statement, by informing her audience that her first three husbands were good, because they were rich and old and easily controlled. "The thre were goode men, and riche, and olde." This is very degrading to her husbands; she did not care about them at all and is more then willing to stand up in front of a crowd and degrade them. "How...