\u27He Needes Moste Hire Wedde\u27: The Forced Marriage in Chaucer\u27s Wife of Bath\u27s Tale and its Middle English Analogues

In each of the three Middle English analogues of Chaucer\u27s Wife of Bath\u27s Tale (The Marriage of Sir Gawaine , The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, and John Gower\u27s Tale of Florent), the knight knows that marriage is what the hag demands in order to give him the answer to his question, and the knight marries the hag without complaint. Only in Chaucer\u27s Tale is the knight unaware that the hag will eventually demand to marry him, and only in Chaucer\u27s version does the knight subsequently complain violently when he is forced to wed her. Thus, Chaucer\u27s Tale contains greater coercion to marry than any of the analogues. This increased coercion is appropriate for a tale told by the Wife of Bath because her Prologue shows that her marriages have been relationships in which each spouse has struggled to dominate the other