Wife of Bath

plural Wives of Bath

1. An independent and strong woman who seeks her own pleasure and who advocates for herself in a marriage.

   of the fizzy, lemon or sherbet-green Ranus ranus/plonked down in Trinity like a little Naugahyde pouffe,/of eighteen soldiers dead in Oriel,/of the weakness for a little fol-de-rol-de-rolly/suggested by the gap between the front teeth of the Wife of Bath

   1995, Paul Muldoon, The Annals of Chile: Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 22

   2 more examples

   In its treatment of Mary's example as powerfully generative for the pious reading subject, the Book not only negotiates these poles but offers a more penetrating critique than the Wife of Bath of the problem of preaching as a "self-interested" masculine practice. The Marian act of serving "Elizabet... and alle hure holi felouschup" is posited as more than simple domestic submission: as an emblematic act of humility, it becomes the entry point into an argument for humility as the only essential qualification for preaching.

   2008, Nicole R. Rice, Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature, Cambridge University Press, page 124

   Here, as in the tale of Medea's love for Jason, in which Jason's father, Aeson, is described as a tired old man (Book VII, lines 158-62), old age is very close to death, and thus the signs of corporal aging inspire varied reactions—the tenderness of Baucis and Philemon toward each other, as well as the curses of the Wife of Bath of the envenoming old age that will change, and then kill her. Like the Wife of Bath, one can rail at age, observe its difficult comedy, object and try to correct it. But, perhaps because that final stage of human life following old age—-life's cessation—is irresistible, it is against the aging of our bodies that we make a last complaint.

   2015, Albrecht Classen, editor, Handbook of Medieval Culture, volume 2, De Gruyter