The Use Of Satire In The Canterbury Tales

Throughout the entire existence of human being there have always been the people who don’t agree with the rest of the population for whatever reason, these people are usually given the title social outcast or simply different. Most of the time these are people who aren’t very socially comfortable and might even be a tab awkward when it comes to social gathering, these are people that you probably don’t consider your friend. Never the less these people usually have strong beliefs against the normal society of their day for their own reasons and can be either outspoken or very private and to themselves about their personal beliefs and problems with the society. These people can be defined as being iconoclastic, or someone who seeks to overthrow
When we talk about the patriarchy of the time we need to understand that it was socially and moral acceptable for a husband to beat his wife, in all reality it was recommended. The man of the house was allowed a stick no thicker than the thickness of his thumb, thus the rule of thumbs comes into play, this stick was there to beat his wife with any and every time she didn’t act right. You might be wondering what exactly was the right way for a wife to act was, to my understanding she got beat of every little thing that happened. Chaucer had a huge problem with this social ideal; in fact I would stretch to say that he was the first outspoken feminist in history. Chaucer’s belief was that the women should have the control in the relationship, have all the power and become the boss. Clearly if Chaucer had just come about and started preaching about this he would have been looked down upon or even injured for thinking so, so he did what he did best and created a character to say it for him. This character as you probably have already figured out was named the Wife of Bath, she was a strong willed, out spoken woman who had been married five times and claimed that she indeed wore the pants in all five relationships. In her prologue in the Canterbury Tales she tells the story about how the one true thing
At any and all times that Chaucer is talking about talking about a character in his this tale it’s extremely important to remember that the character is completely made up and all of their ideas and words come directly from Chaucer himself. This of course wasn’t known to the readers of the story or they would have possibly lynched Chaucer for believing in such ways. Chaucer so creatively uses satire to talk about how the church is ran by hypocritical people, such as the Pardoner, is pure genius and should be treated as such. He even has a quote where the Pardoner says that he really doesn’t care about the people and they can all go to hell and pick blackberries for all he cares. This is so sarcastic and ironic that people actually tried to find the Pardoner, only to be told that Chaucer couldn’t remember where he was from. He once again uses satire to reach his audience when he uses the Wife of Bath to tell how women deserve to how the power in a relationship. She does so with a story of a knight, which we have already talked about, and in the end does cause the society to think