Women In The Canterbury Tales

Hugvísindasvið

Chaucer’s female characters
In the Canterbury Tales:
Born to thralldom and penance,
And to been under mannes governance

Ritgerð til B.A.-prófs
ENS401G
Særún Gestsdóttir
Maí 2010

Háskóli Íslands
Hugvísindasvið
Enskuskor

Chaucer’s female characters
In the Canterbury Tales:
Born to thralldom and penance,
And to been under mannes governance

Ritgerð til B.A.-prófs
Særún Gestsdóttir
Kt.: 131178-4099
Leiðbeinandi: Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir
Maí 2010

Abstract
This essay analyzes and compares female narrators and six female characters in Canterbury
Tales to women‟s status in England in the fourteenth century and aims to demonstrate that the female narrators and characters are representatives of
Women were a part of a patriarchal society where the clergy and the aristocracy, ruled by men, established and endorsed female inferiority. The woman was seen as the weaker sex, of less importance, intellectually inferior, emotionally unstable, and morally feeble.8 This perspective was supported by the clergy, which taught that women were feebler than men, for it was Eve who was deceived by the devil and tasted the forbidden fruit. Eve then convinced Adam to do the same and caused the human race‟s exile from the Garden of Eden. Therefore, the church argued that a woman could not be trusted. A woman was also seen as inferior due to the fact that God created a man first and from his ribs he created a woman. The man existed first and is therefore superior, and the woman should obey her superior, just as the first born male is heir to a throne.
In Ephesians 5. 22-23 a New Testament passage, it is claimed that a woman should be a subject to her husband and that the husband is the head of the wife. This was based on the church‟s interpretation of passages in the Epistles to the Corinthians and the Ephesians.9
Women were in every way seen as creatures created to obey and please the male
And whan I saugh he wolde nevere fine
To reden on this cursed book al nyght,
Al sodeynly thre leves have I plyght
Out of his book, right as he radde,
(III (D) 788-791).
She would no longer listen to stories of bad wives and knows that these stories were written by men not women. She would not let her husband or the patriarchal social order win her in a battle for autonomy. When she felt that she was being threatened to submissiveness she fought back. In her prologue the Wife describes herself as “Stibourn I was as is a leoness”(III
(D) 637). The Wife‟s stubbornness and experiences in life made her a worthy critic of the patriarchal society and her strongest argument was her knowledge that aspects varied from one person to the next.
In her prologue the Wife implies that there are always two sides to every story. She explains this with a parable of a lion that complains about a picture that shows a man killing a

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lion, suggesting that if the lion had painted the picture the outcome would be very different.23
With this perspective she argues against male-written texts “….book of wikked wyves”(III
(D) 685) and says that if women had been able to compose the stories would be quite