Prologue vs. Tale

Reading the Wife of Bath's Prologue was a rather arduous task. I was not expecting it to be so long! I opened up the book thinking "Oh, it is a prologue, 3-4 pages max, no big deal". Then I actually started reading. By the fifth page I was like "huh, a little longer than expected, but hopefully not too much longer". Then, by the eighth page, I was flipping through the book to figure out when exactly the actual tale began. About twenty pages later, I found the headline indicating that the prologue was finished and the tale was starting. I was kind of like:

It was not that the prologue was bad. On the contrary, I actually really enjoyed reading it, but reading Middle English can be incredibly time consuming and it took awhile. Naturally, when it came time to read the actual tale, I was expecting something way longer than the prologue. I was actually quite confused when I discovered that it was much shorter. Cue another cute cat meme:

I do not know, I guess it is because I am used to the prologue being a lot shorter than the actual story, but Chaucer kind of threw me for a loop there. Looking back on it now, I am actually quite glad that he did it. I really enjoy the Wife of Bath. I think she is a very unique character and has a lot of interesting things to say. By listening to her prologue, which was completely about her life, I feel like I got to know her a lot better. I really wish my high school let us read her tale. I always knew, even then, that I liked her, but I enjoy her even more now after hearing more about her life.

I know there is some debate over Chaucer's opinion of the Wife of Bath. I think, given that he dedicated so much time to telling her story, that he almost would of had to. I do not really write creatively, but when I had to for school I could never write about a character I did not like. Chaucer spent so much time making sure the audience really knows this character. Granted, it could have been because he enjoyed poking fun at her, but why put so much effort into a character that people could not learn anything from? Furthermore, given that he made her prologue (the portion that was about her life) so much longer than her tale, I think it puts a lot more emphasis on her personal story. I think Chaucer really wanted people to pay attention to her personal story. While the tale was nice, I really did enjoy the prologue so much more. Given how much shorter it is, the tale seems almost like a side note, not the actually point. I don't know, this is just my opinion.