The Wife of Bath is one of the most iconic characters in English literature. Since her appearance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in 1387, she has been adapted and rewritten by authors from French philosopher Voltaire in the 18th century to contemporary author Zadie Smith in 2021.
It’s clear why this five-times-married medieval woman has captivated so many writers’ imaginations. Before her, women in literature were either princesses, damsels-in-distress, nuns, queens, whores, witches or evil old crones. The Wife of Bath was a middle-aged, mercantile, sexually active woman who gave us her point of view – an extraordinary figure for her time, yet also an ordinary woman.
Throughout history, readers have been both fascinated and threatened by her. From scribes who argued against her in 15th-century manuscripts to censors who burnt ballads about her in the 17th century, there are countless examples of her provoking anxiety.
Modern writers have also been drawn to her, but often with a desire to punish, ridicule, reduce or tame her in their own adaptations. This is evident in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1972 film of the Canterbury Tales, where he focuses on sex and the body, and portrays the Wife of Bath as an abomination. In his version, sex with her literally causes her fourth husband’s death, and her fifth husband is sexually uninterested in her – ending with her biting his nose as a symbol of castration.
British author Vera Chapman also created a new version of the Wife of Bath in the same decade – a notably sympathetic one. In Chapman’s novel, Alison is kind and considerate, even refusing advantageous marriage offers if she thinks the man might regret it. However, to make the Wife of Bath sympathetic, Chapman also makes her far more conventional – twice saved from rape by chivalrous men, and a loving mother with several children.
These adaptations show that the kind of woman Chaucer wrote was not seen as a viable heroine in the 1970s – she had to be tamed and made to fit into disturbingly narrow stereotypes.
In Ted Hughes’ poem Chaucer, he celebrates and reduces the Wife of Bath. He tells us that Sylvia Plath recites the Wife of Bath’s Prologue out of pure enjoyment and love of Chaucer. Both women embody certain positive characteristics – they are articulate, desirable and confident – but they also talk endlessly and need to be rescued by a strong man (Hughes himself).
James Joyce’s Molly Bloom in Ulysses is another reincarnation of Alison of Bath. However, Joyce’s focus on women as ‘the flesh that always affirms’ runs counter to the Wife of Bath’s interrogation of the misogynist idea that women are unintellectual. The Wife of Bath’s knowledge of the Bible and skill at argument are not paralleled in Joyce’s version as he creates a simpler and more stereotyped version of womanhood.
In the 21st century, many female writers have taken on the Wife of Bath and embraced her complexities. Zadie Smith’s Wife of Willesden transports her to contemporary north-west London, where she becomes Alvita. Although the text is ostentatiously of the present moment, with its references to #MeToo, Jordan Peterson and Beyoncé, it closely follows Chaucer’s text. Alvita is complex, neither monstrous nor blameless – Smith emphasises the ongoing relevance of Alison’s searing indictments of rape culture and the silencing of women in her world.
It’s only in very recent years that new adaptations are no longer less progressive than the original. Despite all the attempts to silence and humiliate her, the Wife of Bath persisted and her voice is now louder than ever before.
