The Wife of Bath's Tale

"Wife of Bath" redirects here. For other uses, see Wife of Bath (disambiguation).

"The Wife of Bath's Tale" (Middle English: The Tale of the Wyf of Bathe) is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages. The wife of Bath is one of Chaucer's most developed characters, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue, but these are also the names of her "gossip", a close friend whom she mentions several times, as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer wrote the "Prologue of the Wife of Bath's Tale" during the fourteenth century, during the reign of Richard II. The tale is often regarded as the first of the "marriage group" of tales, which includes the Clerk's, the Merchant's, and Franklin's tales.

The tale contains an example of the "loathly lady" motif.

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