Dame Alice as Deceptive Narrator.

Author / Editor
Shapiro, Gloria K.

Title
Dame Alice as Deceptive Narrator.

Published
Chaucer Review 6 (1971): 130-41.

Description
Explores "important tensions" in the characterization of the Wife of Bath, interpreting the "larger subject" of WBT as the "grace of God," even though it concludes with the Wife's "irreligious" final curse. In WBP, her "masking is predictable behavior" and ultimately reveals her sufferings (especially in her fourth marriage), her awareness of her religious imperfections, and near-pathological desire to conceal her own virtues.

Chaucer Subjects
Wife of Bath and Her Tale