The Wife of Bath's Tale and Purgatory

Hwaet! I am so glad I took Dante last semester! I am seeing things in Chaucer that I never saw before.
Today I wish to argue that The Wife of Bath's Tale fits very nicely with Dante's view, not only of 'contrapasso', where the punishment fits the crime (as Gilbert and Sullivan put it), but that for the knight in the tale, his punishment works towards his redemption, as happens in Purgatory.
The knight is shown grace twice- the first time is when Queen Guinevere and her ladies ask Arthur for mercy from the death penalty. I will get to the second in a moment.

The knight in the tale commits the horrible crime of rape. He approaches a damsel in distress-- one whom the knight should be protective of-- and when he cannot seduce her, he rapes her quite violently. It is anti-chivalry. As his punishment the knight must marry an old crone, one who is low-born and hideously ugly. It is a punishment to be in bed with her. This is an appropriate punishment for one who forced sex on another. The punishment fits the crime.

But after he hears a sermon about his hypocrisy (you think I'm low born and yet you did what you did to the maiden?), the knight proves that his punishment has redeemed him. The knight has changed, and as another gift of grace, he is rewarded with a beautiful and loving wife.