The Prioress and The Wife of Bath: Two Distinguished Women
...let fall,”(Prologue 131-132) “And she would wipe her upper lip so clean/ That not a trace of grease was to be seen/ Upon the cup when she had drunk; to eat, / She reached a hand sedately for the meat.” (Prologue 137-140), “And she spoke daintily in French” (Prologue 128), “For courtliness she had a special zest,” (Prologue 136). The Prioress wears on her arm a set of prayer beads, from which hangs a gold brooch that features the Latin words for “Love Conquers All”. Above all her devotion to Christ, and her dainty mannerisms echo an advice about how women could make themselves attractive to men. The Wife of Bath is a vain, domineering, and lustful women that establish herself as an authority on marriage. Through her marriages, she shows that she can provide for herself in a world where women had little independence or power, which is because she had gained control over her husbands by limiting their use of her body. She is also fearless and argumentative. When criticized for her numerous marriages, she says that God bade us to wax fruitful and multiply. When somebody proclaims the importance of virginity, she reasons that someone must be procreating so that virgins can be created. The Wife of Bath says: “…I am free/ To wed, o’ God’s name, where it pleases me. / Wedding’s no sin, so far as I can learn. / Better it is to marry than to burn….” ( The Wife of Bath’s Prologue 15-18). The Prioress is seen as a fine and sensitive lady. As a nun, she was supposed to pray, study, do service for God, live in poverty and confined, free of temptation. However the Prioress seems to violate own this vows, her brooch (“Love Conquers All”) and her obsession in etiquette in a time where women used great etiquette to attract and keep lovers, leads us to believe that she is not entirely devoted to the church and principally to her vow of chastity. Likewise, throughout her description the narrator never mentions how she serves God or nothing of that sort, but he doesn’t mention if she violates her vows. From the standpoint that the Prioress is a nun and the Wife of Bath is a woman who has been married five times, it is reasonable that we conclude that they have nothing in common. Even though when we learn mor...