Chaucers Canterbury Tales - Wife of Bath - Feminist or Anti-feminist?

In view of the fact that the Wife of Bath herself does seem to behave in the manner women are accused of behaving by the anti-feminist writers, it is not impossible that the Wife of Bath's Prologue could be considered a vehicle for the anti-feminist message under the guise of a seeming "feminist" exterior, since her confession is frequently self-incriminating (e.g. her treatment of her husbands, her tendency to "swere and lyen") and demonstrates the truth of the claims made by the anti-feminists even while she is disparaging them and making them look bad -- as in her claim that anti-feminist writers (specifically the "clerks", i.e. learned scholars) are revenging themselves on women because of their own sexual impotence that prevents them from enjoying "Venus werkes", which is rather acute psychological analysis on her part, and extremely persuasive, until one remembers that the clerks are right about her at least, if not about other "wives". Her arguments in favor of marriage, though demonstrating a hearty common sense, are also suspect -- while it is true that marriage peoples the earth and replenishes existing stocks of "virginitee", her own marriages do not seem to have produced any offspring, and while it may be "bet [...] to be wedded than to brinne", her marriages, despite her claim that "in wyfhod I wol use myn instrument", do not seem to have prevented her from "goon a-caterwaw[ing]" and by inference engaging in fornication ("I ne loved nevere by no discrecioun / But evere folwede myn appetit, / Al were he short, or long, or blak, or whit") [good], which is after all what marriage was, according to her, supposed to prevent. Moreover, from the account she gives of her marriages, it becomes increasingly obvious t... ... usual folk stereotypical anti-feminism is shown to be justified in at least her case, the absurdity of the more virulent breed of anti-feminism is made clear by Jankin's book of "wikked wives", an erudite, if rather motley, collection of what are mostly homicidally-inclined females (Clytemnestra, Livilla etc.) that he seems to regard, or at least claim to regard, as the norm. As a result, the Wife of Bath's Prologue should not be dismissed simply as "merely an attack on women and married life"; there is much more ambiguity involved, and it would be inadvisable to ignore the fact that it is primarily a brilliant character-study of an individual rather than a didactical anti-feminist treatise in disguise. Work Cited Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed Mack, Maynard et al. W. W. Norton and Co. New York, NY. 1992.