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Essay On Women In The Canterbury Tales

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Recommended: Women in medieval society

Women have usually been put down and told they could not do something because they are female and are “the weaker sex” this has happened for centuries and still is somewhat still happening today. This is a topic that can go on for a while with many different interpretations and what could have been different if males just let women help. However, book in the middle age have different views on women some are the devil designed to lead men astray others view them as object to obtain. William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer who have works that have been read for centuries are not any different. They treat most of their female characters worse than their male characters. They are undoubtingly a couple of the best writers to live, but could their …show more content…

However, most of his women character are described as devils leading men to their downfall. In the Miller tale of Canterbury Tales, the Alison, the wife of a carpenter, and Nicholas, the miller, plotted to sleep together without Alison’s husband knowledge. After they were caught Alison spun lies so she would not get in trouble. She made her husband seem insane and Nicholas bum got burned because he slept with her. While Alison did not plan to sleep with the Nicholas, she created a plan to do so and when they were caught in the act she told everyone that Nicholas forced her. This decision made it seem like women are heartless and cruel. However, most critics use the Wife of Bath Tale to decide whether or not Chaucer treatment of women was fair. Many believe that Chaucer treated women fairly in his books for the time period based on the Wife of Bath Tale. One writer, Priscilla Martin believes he is even supported of women and has model the Wife of Bath after himself, “The Wife of Bath shares [Chaucer’s] delight in fictional and narrative diversity. Of the pilgrims she is the closest to Chaucer. Like her creator, she criticizes through comedy, she weighs authority against experience and experience against authority, she is aware of the sexuality in textuality and she jollily subverts the conventions of male authorship. (217) Jill Mann also believes this and adds on and says all the positive characters were women, and the male characters were all

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