The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer

99 ‘(Freletee clepe I but...)’ – the Wife’s parenthesis may indicate a difference with St Paul. She only regards marriage as an act of ‘frailty’ if the partners actively desire to be celibate but are unable to fulfil this higher vocation. This is a very different argument from Paul’s. Alternatively, ‘but’ can mean ‘unless’ and the Wife is simply repeating what she has just said and agreeing with St Paul. The latter is the easier reading, but is of less interest.

107 ‘Some been of tree’ – the Wife’s argument draws its point from the humility of accepting that one is imperfect. The image, not the application, is drawn from 2Tim. 2:20-1, but the wife is not consciously alluding to the Apostle here.

108-9 ‘God clepeth folk...yifte’ – Cf. n line 87.

114-5 ‘Bad every wight...poore’ – Matt. 19:21.

119-20 ‘I wol bistowe the flour of al myn age/In th’actes and in fruit of mariage’ – a rather lyrical and impressive statement of the guiding principle of her life. The expression ‘Wife of Bath’ simply means a matron of that locality, but being a wife constitutes both her profession and identity.

127 ‘thinges smale’ – the Wife enjoys such obvious euphemisms for the sexual organs.

136 ‘man shal yeelde to his wif hir dette’ – 1Cor. 7:3: ‘The husband should fulfil his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.’ The Wife is determined to get her due!

152 ‘Oure Lord Jesu refresshed many a man’ – The Wife has already referred to the pleasant ‘refreshment’ offered by sex to man and woman in speaking of Solomon’s wives. Taking this refreshment is as wholesome, she implies, as the refreshment of bread offered by Jesus when he fed the five thousand.

155-6 ‘In wifhood wol I use myn instrument/As freely as my Makere hath it sent’ – Here, and in the lines which follow, the Wife speaks of her sexual generosity (‘both eve and morwe’) which is presumably analogous to her sexual appetite.

161 ‘my detour and my thral’ – The Wife speaks plainly. Her husband is not only one who owes her the ‘debt’ of sexual gratification, but one who must perform her bidding – in fact, her slave.

162 ‘tribulacion’ – The word, in the context of ‘tribulations of the flesh,’ refers to the bodily trials and sufferings of mankind before we are set free by death as spiritual beings. Here the Wife is jocularly referring to the sufferings to be endured by her husband’s ‘flessh’ – his penis.

164-7 ‘I have the power...love me weel’ – 1Cor. 7:4: ‘The wife has no rights over her own body; it is the husband who has them. In the same way, the husband has no rights over his body; the wife has them.’ Eph. 5:25a: ‘Husbands should love their wives.’