THE GOOD WIFE OF BATH

Karen Brooks

HARLEQUIN

In this retelling – fleshing out – of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath tale from the Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), Tasmanian author and academic Karen Books gives us the Wife her own words. We follow Eleanor Cornfed from her first marriage at the age of 12, through four other marriages, her many pilgrimages in Europe – even venturing as far as Jerusalem – and the business sense that gave her the money to go on the journeys. But throughout it all, she must battle the conventions and mores of the day that did not allow a married woman to own land, control money or engage in business. But Eleanor proves nothing if not smart and resourceful, while at the same time continually falling victim to her impulsive nature. Brooks gives us not only the landscape of the Middles Ages, but its language, pestilence, smells, filth, noise and hypocrisy in a way that drenches the reader in the era.

BARRY REYNOLDS VERDICT: A pilgrim’s progress