The Wives of Bath

The Wives Of Bath

Cover art for 1993 Knopf hardcover edition
Author	Susan Swan
Cover artist	Chip Kidd (designer)
Country	Canada
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Knopf Canada (Canada), Alfred A. Knopf (US), Granta (UK)
Publication date	1993
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	237 pp (Canada)
ISBN	(Canada)
OCLC	28022236
Preceded by	The Last Of The Golden Girls
Followed by	What Casanova Told Me

The Wives of Bath is a novel by Susan Swan, inspired by her own childhood experiences at Havergal College in Toronto, Canada.

In late 1963, Mary 'Mouse' Bradford is sent to boarding school by her unsympathetic father and jealous stepmother. There, she meets the rebellious Paulie, and together they embark upon a quest to discover what, fundamentally, separates men from women.

In Swan's own words, "... the teachers and matrons of the boarding school remind [Mouse] of Chaucer's Wife of Bath because they are the only women she has met who live by their own rules. Yet even their power is limited, and Mouse concludes near the end of the novel:

We were all Wives of Bath – from the teachers who terrorized us with their bells and gatings to the overfed boarders and snobby day girls..but no matter how hard any of us struggled...Bath Ladies College was only a fiefdom in the kingdom of men.

Mouse introduces herself, and mentions her involvement in Paulie's "weird, Napoleonic act of self-assertion", though she doesn't specify exactly what it was that Paulie did, or even who she is. Mouse speaks of her distracted father, Morley, and her critical stepmother, Sal. She also tells the reader of the hump she has in her left shoulder as a result of a childhood bout of polio, which developed into kyphosis. Mouse has named the hump Alice, after her dead mother, and says that the hump is like a friend to her. Throughout the novel, Mouse's conversations with Alice provide comic relief and exposition on the story's dark events. In the second chapter, Mouse pauses the narrative and recounts details from Paulie's trial, something she continues to do sporadically throughout the novel. It emerges that Paulie committed a murder of some kind.

Mouse recalls how she was sent to the boarding school in Toronto- Bath Ladies' College- because her father had "an unfortunate inferiority complex about bringing up females" and because its headmistress, Vera Vaughan, was a distant cousin of Morley's. Mouse is nervous, keenly aware of her shyness and her physical shortcomings, and is bewildered by the strange atmosphere of the old-fashioned school. She meets the friendly janitor, Sergeant (who is a dwarf) and Paulie's brother, Lewis, whom she later catches shaving in her new dorm bathroom. Mouse meets Tory and Paulie that evening, immediately warming to the friendly Tory and taken aback by Paulie's brash manner. It is clear that, different as they are, the two have a very close friendship. Tory tells Mouse that Paulie's brother, Lewis, is her boyfriend, and that they are in love.