The Position of Widows in the Later Fourteenth-Century English Community and the Wife of Bath's Prologue

Author / Editor
McCarthy, Conor.

Title
The Position of Widows in the Later Fourteenth-Century English Community and the Wife of Bath's Prologue

Published
Donald Mowbray, Rhiannon Purdie, and Ian P. Wei, eds. Authority & Community in the Middle Ages (Phoenix Mill, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1999), pp. 101-15.

Description
Because they were not subject to fathers or husbands, widows posed a challenge to dominant views of women in late fourteenth-century England. Chaucer's Wife of Bath is portrayed as lecherous, yet she may also embody broader concerns about widowhood.

Contributor
Mowbray, Donald, ed.
Purdie, Rhiannon, ed.
Wei, Ian P., ed.

Alternative Title
Authority & Community in the Middle Ages.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale.