st prominent
characteristics of the speech. When the wife of Bath taunts her husband
with the reproaches she pretended he had heaped upon her, she
intersperses her repetition of his objurgations with abusive and
disdainful names by way of comment upon his monstrous sentiments. Old
caynard or villain, Sir old lecher, thou very knave, lorel or worthless
fellow, old dotard schrewe or sinner, old barrel full of lies, Sir old
fool, are some of the appellations by which she marks her opinion of the
doctrines she fathers upon him. After reciting his alleged complaint,
that women concealed their vices till they were married, she adds that
the maxim is worthy of "a schrewe," or scoundrel. When she imputes to
him the declaration that no man would wed who was wise, or who desired
to go to heaven, she follows it up with the wish that thunder and
lightning would break his wicked neck. When he is charged with having
said that there were three things that troubled earth, and that a wife
was one of them, she hopes that the life of such a villain will be cut
short. When she taxes him with quoting the proverb that a house not
water-tight, a smoky chimney, and a scolding wife drove men from home,
she retorts upon him that he is himself a scold, and intimates that his
years are an aggravation of the vice. This is not only natural as the
sort of scurrilous language which the wife of Bath would have used if
the drunken invectives had been real, but was part of her plan for
bringing her husbands into subjection. Her indignant recriminations were
intended to browbeat them into meekness.]

[Footnote 9: She enlarges in the original upon this device, which was
one of her capital resources. She quotes the proverb, that he first
grinds who comes first to the mill, and upon this principle, when she
had done wrong, she began by attacking her husband;

Or elles I had often time been spilt.

The poor man thus suddenly assailed stood upon the defensive,
endeavoured to vindicate his innocence, and was heartily glad to hold
his tongue on condition of receiving forgiveness for faults he had never
committed.]

[Footnote 10: By pretending that she went out to watch her husbands she
got the opportunity for indulging in freaks and jollity with her
youthful friends.

Under that colour had I many a mirth.
For all such wit is given us of birth;
Deceipt, weeping, spinning, God hath give
To women kindely while they may live.
And thus