Reading response 1 In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The General Prologue from the Canterbury Tales, he speaks of a pilgrimage that people often embark on. As he is in route on his pilgrimage, he encounters twenty-nine pilgrims that he spends a great deal of time characterizing. Based on the evidence that Chaucer provides, each pilgrim has a distinct personality that we can recognize from the way people behave in today’s society. However, Chaucer purposely makes the Wife of Bath stand out more in the prologue than any other pilgrim that we are introduced to. To begin, in the prologue, Chaucer makes it his duty to show readers the Wife of Bath’s unique character. The Wife of Bath is one of the two female storytellers in the story. She is introduced to readers as one that possess a love and sex symbol. She is also exposed as that of a worldly character, in not only her travels, but also her sexual experiences. Throughout her time, she has married five different men, “Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde five” (Chaucer 462) and used her body as a sex symbol to control them. The Wife of Bath is known as one to use her body as bargaining tool, withholding sex until she gets what she wants, “Of remedies of love she knew parchaunce for she coude of that art the old daunce” (Chaucer 477-78). The Wife of Bath is also intentionally described in a provoking way to produce a shocking response from readers. As noted in the prologue, her clothes, and physical features are thoroughly described to