What happens in Chapter 7 of The Canterbury Tales?
The Wife of Bath begins with a lengthy and confrontational Prologue that overshadows her Tale in both size and boldness. Alison of Bath uses scripture, classical references, and her own hard-earned experiences to advocate for women's authority in marriage and the acceptability of multiple marriages. She openly discusses her five husbands: three older, wealthy men whom she controlled through sexual power and clever nagging; a fourth whom she kept in a state of jealousy; and the fifth, a young clerk named Jankyn, whom she loved the most and who hit her so hard she lost hearing in one ear after she ripped pages from his misogynistic book. She burns the book, they reach an understanding, and he hands over "governance" to her. The Tale shifts to an Arthurian romance: a knight commits rape and faces execution unless he can find out what women truly desire. A hideous hag provides the answer—sovereignty—in exchange for marriage. At court, this knowledge saves him. On their wedding night, the hag gives a speech about true nobility before asking whether he wants her to be old and loyal or young and untrustworthy. He leaves the choice to her; she transforms into a beautiful, faithful wife, and they enjoy a blissful life together.
Analysis
Chaucer takes a bold step here, giving Alison a voice so expansive that it almost overtakes the entire frame narrative. The Prologue's impressive length—nearly 830 lines—serves as a rhetorical power play, reflecting Alison's belief that occupying space means asserting one’s presence. Her approach is a parodic twist: she uses the same religious and classical texts that have been used to oppress women, quoting Jerome and Ptolemy to challenge rather than conform. This creates a sustained irony where the style of scholarly argument turns back on its own history.
The transition from Prologue to Tale embodies the very change Alison advocates. The opening rape in the Tale is strikingly unsentimental—Chaucer doesn’t soften the blow—which grounds the later fantasy of female authority in real grievance instead of mere fancifulness. The loathly hag's lecture on gentillesse includes a Boethian digression that intentionally slows down the romantic narrative; she argues that true nobility comes from virtue, not lineage—a claim that resonates with Alison's own concerns about class.
The motif of the torn book appears again structurally: Alison destroys Jankyn's collection of wicked wives and replaces it with her own spoken narrative, the Prologue. Thus, sovereignty becomes not just domestic but also narratological—she claims the right to tell her own story. Across these 1,200-plus lines, Chaucer shifts tone from bawdy comedy to poignant emotion (her confession of missing her youth) to philosophical debate, never settling into one mood, always in motion.
Key quotes from Chapter 7
“Experience, though noon auctoritee / Were in this world, is right ynogh for me / To speke of wo that is in mariage.”
The Wife of Bath's famous opening gambit, immediately positioning lived experience against textual authority as the ground of her argument.
“In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument / As frely as my Makere hath it sent.”
Alison defends sexual appetite as divinely sanctioned, reframing the body as a God-given tool rather than a site of shame.
“'My lady and my love, and wyf so deere, / I put me in youre wise governance.'”
The knight's surrender of choice to the loathly hag on their wedding night, the Tale's pivotal moment in which male authority is voluntarily relinquished.