Wife of Bath and Gentileese
... Pauline Griffith Due- Sunday October 3, 2004 On their wedding night the Knight tells the wife that she is “so loothly and so oold also, And therto comen of so lough a kynde. ... According to the old wife gentillesse is “claimed from Christ not ancestry” (1123),that it “comes from God alone. ... The wife responds to this by saying “And ther as ye of poverte me repreeve, The hye God, on whom that we bileeve, In wilful poverte chees to lyve his lyf.” (1183-1185) In the Wife of Bathe’s tale, she is saying that gentillesse is not something that you inherit from your ancestors, but that it is how you live your life.