The Wife of Bath, Alisoun—one of only three female tellers on the pilgrimage—is perhaps one of the most debated of the pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. She appears primarily in her own Tale and Prologue (Fragment III) as well as in the General Prologue, lines 445-76, where some of the more noteworthy aspects of her married life and physical appearance are detailed, but she is also alluded to in other tales, such as the Clerk’s Tale and the Parson’s Tale. She has been married five times, is a well-traveled pilgrim as well as a cloth-maker, is gap-toothed, and an extravagant dresser. These attributes are further detailed in her own Prologue and Tale, the former of which is over 800 lines, the latter over 300 lines, a balance atypical of the tales and prologues in...
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Citation: Obermeier, Anita. "The Wife of Bath's Tale". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 November 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=19955, accessed 09 June 2026.]
