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The Miller’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale feature two characters that, though they may appear to be different, are actually very similar. They both seem to confirm the anti-feminine beliefs that existed at the time Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales. However, they go about it in different ways. Alison, the woman in The Miller’s Tale, tries to hide the fact that she has a passion for men other than her husband, and keep her position as an upstanding citizen intact. The Wife of Bath, meanwhile, has no qualms about displaying herself as she really is. She is not ashamed of the fact she has married five times, and is about to marry again. She hides nothing. While Alison differs from the Wife of Bath in appearance and the way she conducts herself in public, inside they are more alike than Alison would probably care to admit.

At the beginning of The Miller’s Tale, there is a rather lengthy description of Alison’s appearance. She looks beautiful from the outside, true, but throughout the description, Chaucer drops little hints that things are not always what they seem. At the very beginning of his description, he compares her body to that of a weasel’s ["Fair was this younge wif, and therwithal As any wesele hir body gent and smal." (Miller 103)], and, since a weasel is not one of the more favorable animals to be compared with, he immediately, albeit subtlely, implies that Alison is not as decent as she would have people believe. Chaucer continues in his ostensibly favorable description of Alison, but concludes the paragraph by implying that Alison would have little qualms about sleeping with a man other than her husband ["She was a primerole, a piggesnye, For any lord to leggen in his bedde, or yit for any good yeman to wedde."(Miller 104)].

Alison herself seems to do an adequate job of keeping her appearance as a faithful wife intact. Her husband John, though, seems to be able to see through this ruse, as the lines "Jalous he was, and heeld hire narwe in cage, For she was wilde and yong, and he was old, And deemed himself been like a cokewold," (Miller 103) suggest. It turns out John has good reason to be jealous, since, as soon as he leaves, Alison begins having an affair with Nicholas. Yet, even in an affair, Alison initially tries to keep her wholesome image intact ["And she sprong as a colt dooth in a trave, And with hir heed she wried fast away; She saide, ‘I wol nat kisse thee, by my fay. Why, lat be,’ quod she, ‘lat be, Nicholas! Or I wol crye "Out, harrow, and allas!" Do way youre handes, for your curteisye!’"(Miller 105)]. Eventually, though, she does crumble, and tells Nicholas that she will secretly meet with him.

For her part, though, Alison cheats on John with only one man. When Absolon, who is extremely smitten with her, comes to call, Alison not only brushes him off, she treats him badly: "She loveth so this hende Nicholas That Absolon may blow his bukkes horn; He ne hadde for his labour but a scorn. And thus she maketh Absolon hir ape, And al his ernest turneth til a jape." (Miller 107) Through this, Alison also shows the reader that she is not all she appears. She couldn’t just ignore the poor guy; she had to make him look like a fool.

Of course, it is at the end of The Miller’s Tale when Alison displays her true colors to the fullest extent. She knowingly participates in a trick Nicholas devises that will ultimately make John look very foolish to the local townspeople. More importantly, though, she tricks Absolon into kissing her on her derriere, and, worse yet, she feels absolutely no shame about it at all. The passage is the highlight of the tale, as it shows Alison at her most devilish, and not the least concerned at keeping up appearances:

This is not the end of Absolon, though. Seeking revenge, he comes back with a branding iron, ready to teach Alison a lesson, via the branding of her buttocks. However, this time it is Nicholas that sticks his rear out the window, and he gets branded, prompting a run through the streets, shouting for water with which to cool his roasting rump in. John, meanwhile, takes this shouting for water to mean that the flood Nicholas had jokingly predicted had arrived, and John goes madly running through the streets. Nicholas and John look like fools, but Alison does not. She weasels her way out of the mess, thereby fully realizing the description Chaucer gave of her at the beginning of the tale. She remains, in the eyes of the public, an upstanding woman.

The Wife of Bath, on the other hand, is not seen as an upstanding woman by any means, nor does she desire to be seen as one. Almost as soon as she begins speaking, she tells us, the audience, that she has been through five husbands, and she is looking for a sixth. She also basically comes right out and says that she marries for money: "…I shal saye sooth: tho housbandes that I hadde, as three of hem were goode, and two were badde. The three men were goode, and riche, and olde;…" (Bath 121) She continues to say that she never valued her husbands’ love; why should she bother, as long as she was getting the husbands’ money? She seems proud of the fact that she had her husbands eating out of the palm of her hand; anything she desires, they give to her.

The Wife of Bath tells us that she is not alone; all women basically behave the way she does. She no doubt would cite Alison as an example if she knew her. According to the Wife of Bath, women, if they know what’s good for them, can lie twice as well as men can. If that wasn’t enough, the Wife also claims that women take advantage of their husbands and victimize them; this is especially true, she says, for ugly women: "And if that she be foul, thou saist that she Coveiteth every man that she my see; For as a spaniel she wol on him lepe, Til that she finde som man hire to chepe." (Bath 123)

The Wife of Bath attests that all women need to be the controlling factors in marriage; that is how they will get their husbands’ money. If women can’t marry for money, they must marry for sex, for those are the only two things that really matter. Women must have control of their husbands, according to the Wife, and she is proud of the fact that she governed her husbands. If she had to put them in their place, she would make her husbands feel guilty, even if they had nothing to feel guilty for. She also would beat her husbands, if she felt the need arose. If she in turn would get beaten, she would gain some love for her husbands. In fact, her fifth husband routinely beat her, and she loved and respected him most of all.

The Wife of Bath felt that all women act the way she acts, and if they do not, then they should. If she knew of Alison, the Wife of Bath would certainly be proud. Or would she? Alison hid her evil ways behind a façade of wholesomeness, whereas the Wife of Bath let it all hang out. It seems that she wants all women to behave that way. When Alison comes away unscathed (in more ways than one) at the end of The Miller’s Tale, it is uncertain whether the Wife of Bath would applaud the fact that Alison got herself out of a jam, or would chide Alison for hiding her true colors. What is certain, though, is that Alison and the Wife of Bath are really two very similar characters. They just have different ways of expressing their similarity.

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