Examples Of Greed In The Canterbury Tales

When Greed Goes Wrong In the Canterbury Tales the Skipper’s Tale contains Feminism criticism, Historical criticism, and Archetypal criticism. All three tie into the theme of the story which is greed. Greed is well written in many older stories and even newer stories in society. A comparison to this would be The Lorax by Doctor Seuss except, in the Skipper’s Tale it is more focused on money than “truffula trees”(Doctor Seuss, The Lorax). Like Doctor Seuss Chaucer uses criticisms to generate his themes. In the first and second pages of the Skipper’s Tale, feminism is used strongly to give a sense of time era. By using “But since I am a wife, I shouldn’t be Telling a soul about our privacy…A wife should always say about her mate.” (Chaucer 163-167) In these lines it shows how women are supposed to respect the male and how the male has the dominance. Although the author states “And if he can’t, by some course of events, or doesn’t wish to go to such expense because he thinks it's money wasted lost then must another take care of our cost.” (Chaucer 15-18), the indicated shows

Chaucer uses a medieval time era, where everyone and everything is corrupt. In the Skipper’s Tale Saint Denis, a merchant in France, is greedy with his money as with all the other merchants in the medieval time period. Also not only is this a connection to the medieval times, the merchants best friend which is a poor monk named Don John. Including this to the story it only makes since. Stating in the Skipper’s Tale “This fair wife made agreement with Don John… To take her in his arms for all the night.” (Chaucer 314-316). Monks are supposed to be poor and help out the religious community.On the other hand in the Skipper’s Tale the monk turns on his cousin and takes his money and his wife. Connecting to the medieval time era everyone wanted just one thing… which is money. Money was and is the key element to the world no matter the time