The Wife of Bath begins her Prologue by stating that she will rely on experience rather than authority to describe the "woes" of marriage:
Experience, though noon auctoritee,
Were in this world, is right ynough for me
To speke of wo that is in mariage: (1-3; p. 117)
The Wife's account of her rhetorical method is straightforward, but misleading. She claims to speak of marriage's "woes," but seems to remember fondly both the unnamed and unfaithful "revelour" (husband number four) and Jankyn the clerk. Furthermore, the Wife proposes to rely only on experience, but spends the first 168 lines of her Prologue analyzing religious authorities from both the Jewish Bible and New Testament.
Many readers recognize that the Wife of Bath contradicts herself, but not as many have realized just how thin the line between experience and authority is in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue." When the Wife seems to divulge embarrassingly intimate details about her marriages, especially the first three, she draws on content and language from yet another kind of religious authority: tracts designed to persuade young girls to forgo marriage, embrace a religious vocation, and become virginal "brides of Christ." Thus, while Jankyn reads to Alison from the antifeminist tracts of ancient church fathers--his "booke of wikked wives" (l. 670, p. 132)--Alison regales the Canterbury Pilgrims with horror stories of marriage that come directly from religious literature directed at young girls.
Below is an excerpt from a well-known example of this literature. Entitled "Holy Maidenhood," this piece was produced by an unknown author around the year 1200 in Southwestern England. The Middle English is translated into modern English.
[Para. 1] But let us, as we promised earlier, show more clearly what those who are married suffer, so that you may thus perceive how happily you can live as a maiden in your virginity in comparison to the way they live . . .
[Para. 2] Thus, woman, if you do have a husband according to your desire and the pleasure also of worldly wealth, necessity will still befall you. And what if these are lacking to you, so that you have neither pleasure in him nor wealth either, and must groan penuriously within your waste walls, and in dearth of bread give birth to your brood, and, besides, must lie under a most hateful man who, even if you possessed every wealth, would turn it into misery for you?
[Para. 3] For now, even as you abound in riches, and your wide walls are splendid and luxurious, and you have many people under you as servants in hall, and your husband should become enraged with you and loathsome to you so that each of you quarrels with the other, what worldly wealth can be a delight for you? When he is out, you have sorrow, care, and fear for his home-coming. While he is at home, all your wide dwellings seem too narrow for you. His looking at you terrifies you; his hateful merriment and his rude behavior make you shudder, He chides you and bickers with you and scolds you shamefully; he mocks you as a lecher does his whore; he beats you and mawls you as his purchased slave and his family servitor. Your bones ache, and your flesh smarts; your heart swells within you from sore mortification, and your face flushes outwardly from anger.
[Para. 4] What sort of coupling will there be between you in bed? Even those that love one another best often disagree in that, even if they may show no semblance of it in the morning; and often over many a frustration, thought they love each other ever so much, one of the other suffers bitterly by himself. She must endure his will, much against her own, however well she love him, often with much misery. All his lasciviousness and his improper pranks--no matter with what impurity they be conceived, especially in bed-- she must suffer them all, willy nilly. May Christ prevent every maiden from asking or wishing to know what they may be! . . . .
[Para. 5] Let us continue further! Let us see what joy ensures afterward in the bearing of children when the seed awakens and grows within you. How many miseries from this at once ensue that cause you woe aplenty, contend with your own body, and with many tribulations war on your own nature. Your radiant face will grow lean and turn green as grass. Your eyes will cloud and fail at this time, and your head will sorely ache from the whirling of your brains; within your belly your womb will swell and bulge out like a water bag . . .
[Para. 6] After all this, from the child born thus will come lamentation and weeping that will force you to wake up at midnight, or the one who takes your place, so that you must tend to it . . .
[Para. 7] And what if I ask still further, though it may seem silly, how the wife is placed who, when she comes in, hears her baby screaming, sees the cat at the bacon and the dog at the hide? Her cake is burning on the stone, and her calf is sucking up the milk; the pot is running over into the fire, and the servant is grumbling. Though it may be a silly story, it ought to urge you away from it all the more strongly, maiden, for it does not seem in the least silly to the one who tries it!
[Para. 8] The blessed maiden who as God's free daughter and the spouse of his Son has excluded herself completely from such servitude and need not endure anything like this. So, blessed maiden, forsake all such sorrow in exchange for an exceptional reward, as you ought to do without any payment.
Source: Middle English Literature, ed. Charles W. Dunn and Edward T. Byrnes (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) 101-03.