There are many fairy tales in which there is an ugly being, can be the man or the woman, and the other one must decide either to love him/her or not. And if he/she does they live happily ever after since the ugly character becomes pretty. The Wife of Baths Tale is almost exactly like one of these fairy tales.
A knight must find out what it is that women really want or he will be executed. He looks for the answer for a long time until an old lady tells him that if he marries her she will tell her the answer. She helps him correctly and the knight can live as he has said what women really want which is:
“"Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee
As wel over hir housbond as hir love,
And for to been in maistrie hym above.
This is youre mooste desir, thogh ye me kille.” (1038 – 1041)
After the knight marries the old ugly woman she asks him if he would like her to change. But as he learned before, what had saved his life, he let her wife decide since that was what she wanted most in the world as any other women. Thanks to this brilliant remark by the knight his wife then becomes very young and pretty.
This is very similar to that old fairy tale of the princes and the frog. In both cases one of them is ugly and makes the other unhappy until one day the princes or knight do a sacrifice, small one, and the ugly being becomes young and hansom. They all live a happy life afterwards.
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