Scholars often note how the Wife of Bath seems to fashion the old woman in her tale after herself. Your task is to compare/contrast elements of the wife's prologue and tale to help us better understand this association.
These responses are short, so you'll need to focus on details - isolate particular moments and language to focus on as you develop your interpretation. What ideas do you have about the source that can help you locate those details?
For example, age in both the prologue and tale plays a big role. Can you find moments where age is addressed directly? What do these moments tell us about age more generally?
One could argue that the idea of transformation is important in the tale. Is there any kind of transformations in the wife's prologue that could be compared to that in the tale? Or what about gender? When you start looking at the roles of men and women, are there comparisons to be made? What ideas do you have that can shape your search?
Sample Solution