Wife of Bath, more like Wife of Shower

Why Wife of Shower, you ask? Simple. Because:

Hallelujah!

All bad jokes aside though, the Wife of Bath has proven to be an interesting character. Five husbands... That's a lot of marriages to go through. It sounds like a lot of these marriages were pretty awful, to boot (though it's made abundantly clear that she certainly had a hand in how bad they were...). As I read through her prologue and heard the tale of her multiple failed marriages and abuse at the hands of her husbands (and the abuse she dealt back), I found that the Wife of Bath seems to fit quite perfectly into the role of the Black Widow.

No, not that one. The Wife of Bath's not nearly that cool.

No, when I say 'Black Widow', I mean the slang definition of the term. To provide you with this definition, I have turned to Urban Dictionary: 

1. A poisonous spider. 
2. A disingenuous woman who exploits her position in a relationship to the detriment of her partner. 
3. In the conflict between Russia and Chechnya, a Chechen widow whose husband died at the hands of the Russians and who consequently becomes a terrorist, usually a suicide bomber, herself.

Assuming she's not a literal talking spider nor a Chechen terrorist (although admittedly, both of those options are significantly more interesting), I'm referring of course to the second definition. The Wife of Bath has at the very least implied an ulterior motive in marrying so many men. She makes it abundantly clear that her fifth marriage was for love, which was in contrast to the other four. The implication here is that she wanted something from them- be it money, a place to live, or something else, she clearly desired something other than a relationship. Though I don't believe it's ever directly stated what, exactly, she was getting out of it-

Maybe?

 -the fact that she settled her dispute with her fifth husband by forcing him to hand over his estate to her would certainly imply she'd just been exploiting him, or when she lost her 'love' for him she decided to take everything he had.

A black widow also traditionally leaves her husbands dead- usually by murder- to my knowledge, although I don't believe there is is any indication that the WoB is a killer. Her fourth husband DID die, though- supposedly while she was on a pilgrimage- and I'm not sure the fates of her other four spouses was ever specified.

Basically, the Wife is someone to watch out for. She's clearly not in the game of love for love, and a relationship with her is something to be feared. In short...