Throughout Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the marriages in the stories are as different and as intertwined as the pilgrims themselves who told of these tales. The diversity amongst the marriages was well illustrated by the following tales, The Wife of Bath, Alisoun's departure from the standard beliefs, whose principle was that the wife should rule the husband for a happy marriage. The Clerk, Walter, showed the accepted and traditional view of the husband as the master over the wife. The Merchant as depicted by January showed personal bitterness towards women and in the Franklin's Tale, Arveragus and Dorigen idealized mutual love and honor between husband and wife.
             The Wife of Bath. "Of husbands at church door have I had five" (311), "welcome the sixth whenever come he shall" (312). Alisoun was thought to be a loose woman, almost trampish but her feelings were so, "I am free to wed, in God's name, where it pleases me" (312). She had three good husbands, all of which were old and rich who treated her well and she picked them clean, her other two husbands were bad. Her fourth husband had a mistress so Alisoun pretended to be unfaithful as well, an sent him to his grave. "But certainly I showed so gay a soul that in his own thick grease I made him fry for anger and for utter jealousy. By God, on earth I was his purgatory" (324). The fifth husband though she loved him the best was the one that beat her. After striking her for tearing out a page in his cursed book, seeing how she lay so helpless he said, "O my dear sister Alison, so help me God, I'll never strike you more" (332). "My own true wedded wife, do as you please the term of all your life, guard your own honor and keep fair my state after that day we never had debate" (332). Alisoun believed that the woman should be the master of the relationship, "Who shall be both my debtor ...