The Pardoner's Tale In The Canterbury Tales

On the basis of entertainment and lesson-teaching, it is not difficult to see which tale in The Canterbury Tales is the best. Each pilgrim journeying to Canterbury tells their own story with a lesson and a bit of entertainment, and their stories reflect their actions and personalities. “The Pardoner’s Tale,” “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” and “The Miller’s Tale” represent their storytellers while capturing the attention of the reader. However, only one of the tales has the strongest lesson and the most balanced amount of entertainment. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” rises above the other stories in terms of lesson-teaching and entertainment because it demonstrates a revolutionary lesson while resisting the urge of being too obscene or too hypocritical like the other two tales. The moral of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” refers to equality of women and men, a concept not common in the time period of The Canterbury Tales. In the tale, the queen sends a rapist on a quest to find what women most desire. The man learns that women want the ability to make decisions, and as a reward, his ugly wife transforms into a beautiful women when he …show more content…
The wife of Bath experiences first hand the effects of sexism and minority rights because of her womanhood. In her time period, it was nearly impossible for women to be equal to men financially and socially, but her tale speaks of women’s desire for equal power in the world. In comparison, “The Pardoner’s Tale” contains the moral of seeking God’s forgiveness and being a good person, but in reality, he uses religion to gain money from the other pilgrims. His actions of deceit counteract the lesson of his tale, voiding the tale’s theme because he has not learned the lesson of his own story. The lack of hypocrisy and advocation of social issue in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” allows its morals to be seen obviously instead of being overlooked for