Two Wives and Ten Husbands: A Comparative Reading of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and The Wife of Willesden’s Prologue

Abstract

This paper juxtaposes two literary works, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue in The Canterbury Tales (1386-1400) and Zadie Smith’s The Wife of Willesden’s Prologue in The Wife of Willesden (2021). Both women, one in the fourteenth century (Alisoun) and one in the twenty-first century (Alvita), say what they feel and follow any path that they choose. They hardly mind what others say about them. They decide their own mind and their own perspectives. They hold five husbands seamlessly: in the space of 40 years in the case of Alisoun, and over 50 years in the case of Alvita, adjusted to fit the modern difference in life expectancy. In presenting these two literary pieces, this paper examines the relish of reading about the assertive ladies of both worlds, who claim their lives to be theirs more than anyone else’s. What is conspicuous in this comparative reading is that Smith’s pastiche of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue in the theatrical form brings to life the five voiceless husbands of Alisoun, whose distantly muted voices the audience and the reader are allowed to hear reverberating in Kiln Theatre in their aural imagination. Thus, this comparative reading brings out the voices of Alvita’s five husbands and their views of their shared wife. Moreover, the paper examines how Alisoun’s husbands see Alisoun, and imagines how Alisoun would have been looked at when the reader of The Canterbury Tales was left with only Alisoun’s view of herself.