The topic here is �The Wife of Bath, where does she get off?� 300 well-chosen words. I think it will work best if you BOTH send me a copy of the paper as a file attachment (name it by your last name) AND print out a copy and bring it to class. THANKS!

While that seems pretty self-explanatory, I suppose there are a couple of things to say about the topic. First, it�s ambiguous; there are a number of ways to take, �get off.� So it is your choice of how to interpret that. For example, you might think �Where does she get off saying that stuff in her Prologue about men and women? What does she use for evidence? How does she use evidence? What justifies her position?� It�s like authority and who has the right to speak and why.

Or maybe it means, where does she get off, as in you are on a train and someone asks you, �Where do you get off?� How far does her literary journey take her? Where does she leave us (readers) at the end? Have we reached a point that offers us a stable reconciliation of the issues she has raised? Or has she left us in the dark, in the rain, at some isolated spot where we do not recognize the name of the station, as it were?

Or maybe that �get off� has another meeting entirely, as in �getting off� on something, someone, some act. Enjoying it for pleasure, I mean. Is her purpose to affront? Persuade? Please? Please who, herself? And what pleasure is found where for that naughty, gap-toothed lady? Five husbands, please! (My wife has a sign in our bathroom: (I want two men, one to cook and one to clean.�)

Or maybe you have another meaning. I am all ears.

Marriage, love, trust, authority, and sexuality are all very interesting topics in the Prologue and the Tale of the Wife of Bath. This assignment poses the question �The Wife of Bath, where does she get off?� and to answer in two parts, I think the Wife of Bath (1) derives pleasure from men in a number of ways but (2) advises that the most pleasure can come from only the ideal marriage, which she describes in the tale. Because the Wife of Bath has a voracious sexual appetite, she is in a position to please men but is sensible and aggressive enough to please herself as well, sexually and financially. She does this by getting married, trying and succeeding in most ways to control her husbands, and basically, getting what she wants from them.

Even though this approach seems very cold-hearted and manipulative, especially in her first three marriages where her husbands were old and rich, she maintains throughout her prologue that she always tried and succeeded in making her husbands happy. However, her fourth husband cheated on her and this probably offended her pride as a wife as well as an accomplished, self-pronounced lover. Even though The Wife offers to other �wise wives� advice on how to manage a husband, I think she only does this because she realizes from her own experiences that no husband is perfect and needs to be coaxed, manipulated, chastised, and in some cases attacked, for their own attacks on or neglect of a woman�s needs.

However, I think that the Wife of Bath knows marriage inside and out and understands that �perfect marriage� or �true love� can be obtained. She criticizes her husbands when they are unable to give her sexual fulfillment, when they mistrust her unjustly, and when they criticize or abuse her; if it were not for all of these things, the marriage would have been closer to ideal. It could be for this reason that the Wife of Bath is anxious to get married or try again with another man. Maybe it is only the pursuit of true love that she really voyages for, rather than a pilgrimage for religious understanding. In a way, love is the aspect of religious understanding in which the Wife of Bath is most interested. This self-centered, yet disciplined and devoted attitude is admirable.

Her depiction of an ideal marriage in The Wife of Bath�s Tale is short and surprising but significant. The fairy tale setting is unexpected because The Wife seems so much in love with the everyday world. But summarizing the story gives good insight into the key or secrets of marriage, as there are most likely many: A noble man needs a woman to survive. She has knowledge that will save him. He must choose between inner beauty and outer beauty, but ultimately trusts her judgment and gives her the authority to choose. The key elements could be seen as desire, faith, trust and respect. As long as each person in the relationship has these for the other person, the marriage would be marital bliss. So definitely, I think that the Wife of Bath �gets off� very well sexually, financially, socially, independently and otherwise, but she is still longing for the ultimate satisfaction, true love.