Question - The Wife of Bath tells anecdotes from her personal life. Does his story also concern universal truths? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a famous piece of British poetry from the 14th century. A collection of 24 short stories, it features vivid and diverse characters, linked to all classes of society, all on pilgrimage to Canterbury, an important place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Although all the characters are fictional, their tales amount to social documents that provide details about the social conditions of that time. The Wife of Bath is one such fictional creation of Chaucer. The prologue to his tale is the longest of all prologues. She is a brazen woman, who boasts of having been married five times and also having enjoyed sex with strangers. He brazenly presents anecdotes from his personal life and uses everything from biblical texts to astrological symbols to justify his actions and resulting events. This article attempts to analyze and clarify whether his story also concerns universal truths and in what way. Chaucer arrives in medieval times, when all knowledge was guarded and propagated by the Church; everything was spiritual. Amusingly, Chaucer provides a contrasting image through his characters. Wife of Bath is undoubtedly a very controversial character, who, with all her pomp, overturns all presumptions and expectations. She is presented, unlike the general idea of ​​a delicate and refined woman, as a realistic and complicated woman who defends her life without trying to hide her robustness. While talking about her life, Wife of Bath certainly touches on multiple societal issues that can be considered universal truths, especially those regarding marriage and women. The Wife of Bath, in the very first lines of the prologue, establishes that her rhetoric is largely based on experience when she says, "Experience, though noon Auctoritee were in this world, is not right to me" (lines 1 -2 )1. It is therefore wrong to conclude that his words are equivalent to universal truths since experience is subjective while truth is objective. But it is precisely this notion of objectivity and standards that the Wife of Bath challenges through her harangue. She expresses not only her opinions but also those of her husbands. She talks at length about the institution of marriage and how society hinders women in every way. Interestingly, the Wife of Bath is the only character in the book who is referred to by her filial relationship rather than her professional position. in society. It is a direct commentary on the way a woman is viewed and described in society. Her identity is only a mere recognition of who she is a wife, mother, sister or daughter, which is a universal truth. However Wife of Bath emancipates herself from this social chain. She openly seeks her freedom as an individual, especially financial and sexual freedom, which women have been denied, which is again a universal truth. Her desire to seek financial freedom is very evident from her account of her first three husbands. They were all rich and old. The characteristic factors, rich and old, conveniently worked in her favor because being old they would die first and she would directly inherit all their property and money. He speaks very resourcefully about how cunningly he would deceive them by constantly lecturing them using false arguments. She told them that in a drunken state they had lectured her about wives being full of madness, using her own.