~Wife of Bath's Prologue~

She starts off with the word "Experience". She has it in many things. Throughout her marriages she has learnt trades and qualities from her 5 husbands. So she feels she is qualified to speak on the "woes of marriage". It seems she is justifying herself for marrying so many times, since people tell her that "crist ne wente nevere but onis to wedding". She says that "God bad us for to wexe and multiplye" but how can she use this? She never speaks of children, so she must not have married for this reason! But she continues to give more and more excuses for marrying more than once. She says that God never said marry only ONCE, she gives examples of people in the Bible that she believes to have more than one wife.

She says that she married the best of men, because of their "nether purs and of here cheste". She married them because of the sex and their money! So surely she doesn't care about them. Which she proves when she says:

Whan myn housbond is fro the world y-gon

Som cristen man shal wedde me anon;

For thanne the'Apostle seith that i am free

to wedde, a Goddes half, where it lyketh me.

So she definately doesn't care, there is no way, if she is prepared to wed as soon as one dies, there is no emotions involved. What really makes me wonder is that she feels he must "paye his dette". What does he owe for? The marriage? The companionship? Her "instrument"?