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Chaucer's Treatment Of Women In The Canterbury Tales

682 Words3 Pages

Kenzie Salter
Ms. Morris
Advanced English 12- 6th Period
27 November 2017
Chaucer’s Early Ideas
Geoffrey Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales in the 1380s. His work consisted of many poems that told a story of a pilgrimage to Canterbury. He included many details about the characters, including The Wife of Bath. She played an important role in showing Chaucer’s opinions. These opinions did not exactly match those that were more common during the Middle Ages. Chaucer was well ahead of his time because in The Canterbury Tales he portrayed women as having power, equality, and ownership of property.
Chaucer showed that the queen in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” held power. He wrote that the knight’s case became so widespread that it was taken to the king, but upon request the queen asked to take over and “so ceaselessly, he gave the queen the case” (Chaucer 140). The king easily passed over the power to decide what to do with the knight, which was uncommon during Chaucer’s time. Women usually did not have a say, especially in an important decision such as the life or death issue of the knight. Leicester explained in paragraph seven that the knight needs to learn about women, which the queen forced him to do, making him …show more content…

In “The Prologue” the Wife is characterized as having “transfers of land and wealth that may be indicative of her legal status” (Robertson par. 1). This is implied because she inherited it from her husbands. This was uncommon during the middle ages because women were not allowed to own land. Robertson clearly states in paragraph three that “her husbands had given her land and wealth.” Clearly, as stated in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the Wife “had taken two or three priests” (Benson) and inherited these from each of her husbands. This showed she was wealthy and had a high status because women did not own property or become wealthy on their own during Chaucer’s

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