Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, Chaucer plays the role of a Goliard, a century late to the party. Goliards were, to quote a music history professor I once had, “misbehaving clergymen”. They wrote poems, songs and held performances that satirized the church, which at the time had come under increasing scrutiny for it’s abuse of power. We see Chaucer poking fun at the church through Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, as well as through the other characters related to the church, such as the Prioress and Pardonner. Looking specifically at the wife, we see her poke holes through many of the church’s teachings using her own logic. To the present reader, her logic is perfectly sound, especially because of how much social values have changed. To the contemporary reader, it might sound outrageous, but at the same time, it provided an alternative outlet of thought.

In a patriarchal society like it was (and largely still is), the character of the Wife represented everything men did not want in a woman. Chaucer writes Jankin to represent the collective idea of the church’s teachings on women: that they are inferior and wicked. The wife argues against these ideas through her stories about her marriages.Through the wife, Chaucer mocks the church by using bibical references, and then poking holes in their logic. She cites teachings such as the importance of purity and virginity of women, and the logical flaw in the teaching. Where would the “pure” women come from if all women remained virgins? Also, she notes that it is men who perpetuate the myths of women, and that had women been writing, it would be men who would be in the state of being discriminated. Which is kind of ironic, if you think about it, as it is a man who is writing her character.