The Wife of Bath And the Problem of Mastery

Author / Editor
Magee, Patricia A.

Title
The Wife of Bath And the Problem of Mastery

Published
Massachusetts Studies in English 3 (1971): 40-45.

Description
Argues that the Wife of Bath is a "psychologically complex character" and that WBPT reveal that she desires, not mastery per se, but "'that thing which she does not have'" (italics in original), signaling a discrepancy between what she "thinks she wants and what she 'really' wants."

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale