Précis
A recent trend in the area of "historical criticism" has proposed the idea that the Wife of Bath may have murdered her fourth husband. This accusation is supported by acts of violence between Alisoun and her fifth husband related in her Prologue and by a passage talking about murder and lechery in which a woman kills her husband and has sexual relations with her lover with the corpse in the room. It is assumed to be a story in Jankyn's book of evil wives, but he makes the point of telling it to Alisoun and it is included in her Prologue.
Many similar cases had occurred in the past, yet this case was contemporary with Chaucer's time period and would have been known by his original audience. It pertains to the recent charges against Alisoun and Jankyn with pieces of evidence including "a suspicious incoherence and evasiveness, a wincing obsession with images of death and a guilty pattern of unwary admissions" (Hamel 134). These charges invoke as evidence Alisoun's dream of attracting Jankyn accompanied by visions of her lying dead in a blood-stained bed along with her physical fight with Jankyn and their unusual settlement. The circumstances around such an action would have necessitated careful planning since she lived in a city setting, and the short time between her husband's death and her new marriage could have aroused much suspicion of her neighbors.
An alternative indictment is that Alisoun had gone on her pilgrimage and came home to a dead husband, killed by Jankyn alone. If not that, then perhaps her husband died of natural causes while she was away, leaving Jankyn to be suspicious of her involvement in his death and the possibility of her plots against him. Either option was plausible, yet neither was of consequence to the couple. Alisoun and Jankyn were able to have their physical explosion, make amends, burn Jankyn's book and live happily, with him being acquiescent to her. Though he was against any type of female expression, Jankyn was able to overlook the feminist attitude of Alisoun's independent sexuality in order to live with her in a neutral environment.