SOURCE: Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. “The Wife of Bath and the Mark of Adam.” Women's Studies 15, no. 4 (1988): 399-416.

In the following essay, Hansen argues against viewing The Wife of Bath's Tale and Prologue as early feminist writing, but proposes that the texts permit scholars to study the role of women in the fourteenth century and their attempts to claim a type of self-definition within the limitations of language and society.

The wyf of Bathe take I for auctrice þat womman han no ioie ne deyntee þat men sholde vp-on hem putte any vice. 

(Hoccleve, Dialogus cum Amico, c. 1422)¹

From the early fifteenth century to the late twentieth, at least one fact about the elusive Wife of Bath has never been disputed: where they agree on nothing else, her numerous commentators, like Hoccleve, take the Wife “for auctrice,” as “a woman whose opinion is accepted as authoritative.”² Controversy over the...