Response to "The Wife of Bath"

Throughout the prologue, the Wife of Bath continuously defends her lifestyle. She begins by defending the fact that she has been married five times, using references to the Bible as a defense. She points out that men in the Bible often had more than one wife, so how can one fault her on having five husbands. She points out that no one has ever told her how many husbands the Bible allows, so therefore she has made up her own mind about it. She says that God has never forbid marriage. She puts down virginity, saying that God gave her gifts to use and she will use them well.
The Wife admits that she used sex to trick her husbands, as she sometimes refused to g...