How would you compare and contrast the Wife of Bath with the old woman in Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale"?

The old woman in the Wife of Bath's story is one of several examples of the 'loathly lady' archetype in medieval poetry. Readers of the tale would have been broadly familiar with her story: she is ugly, and indeed 'a fouler wight ther may no man devyse' (1005). She is also of low birth and is older than the ideal wife, making her far from the preferred marriage partner for the knight who weds her. The loathly lady knows, however, that despite these considerations, the knight has made a binding promise to her, which she repeats before the court. She achieves her ends through shrewdness and strategy. 

This level of strategy and cunning is one of the reasons many comparisons have been drawn between her and the Wife of Bath herself—she is also skilled in rhetoric, as is made evident in the speech she delivers to her husband on issues such as the advantages offered by old age and poverty, and the true source of gentility. Like the Wife of Bath, she is a woman above marriageable age who marries a younger man and then lectures him severely when he criticizes her for things she cannot change. There are obvious parallels between this behavior and the Wife of Bath's treatment of Jankyn, her younger husband. Much has been written, therefore, on the subject of how far the loathly lady is a stand-in for the Wife of Bath—an avatar in her own tale. 

There are, however, other elements working against this interpretation. In the first instance, although both the Wife and the lady give long and skillful speeches, the topics of their speeches are quite different. We know from the Wife of Bath's prologue that she would never allow herself to be forced into poverty and would also never return power to her husband after it has been given to her, as the loathly lady does. Furthermore, at the end of the tale, the loathly lady transforms into a beautiful young woman, a male-gaze fantasy of obedience and attractiveness. The Wife of Bath, meanwhile, has no intention of changing under pressure from society (men), and she remains the voice of female sovereignty even while the loathly lady loses her own sovereignty.