The Role Of Feminism In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

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women and gender was handled during this time period and how present society can still improve. To call Chaucer a feminist can be difficult to explain since he does not express the idea of equality of men and women, and on the opposite side of the same coin, when a scholar tries to judge Chaucer base on feminist ideas, even if this ideas are correct, they are practically trying to take Chaucer out of his time period and judge him base on our standards. The proper way to study Chaucer is to understand what period he comes from.
Chaucer was born around the early 1340’s which was just after the beginning of the Hundred Years War. Chaucer would go on and serve with the army in France on several occasions. During Chaucer’s life, the Black Plague
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This collect was mentioned in The Canterbury Tales by the Wife of Bath in her prologue and it was called “book of wikked wyves” (Chaucer Line 685). Within this collection there are three essays that give antifeminist views from different prospective. First essay is Theophrastus “The Golden Book on Marriage”, which takes on a more philosopher’s point of view, the second is St. Jerome “Against Jovinian”, which takes a religious perspective, and then there is Walter Map’s “The Letter of Valerius”, which like Theophrastus, takes a more philosophy prospective against …show more content…
Jerome’s work, Against Jovinian (Rigg 357). Within the first paragraph, Jerome makes comments that women are trying to attack the teachings of Paul. He then adds that if the husband dies then the woman is already going to be looking for the next one at the funeral of the first. Jerome makes women seem unholy and evil, by saying that they disregard the belief of “Christian chastity”. He then says that they should learn chastity from the non-believers or “pagans”. His comments make women to be unholy for disregarding a church father, Paul, making them seem worse than a pagan because he has to get the teachings of one for the woman. Jerome also makes the man worried about the unfaithfulness of the women by making the man believe that before his body is even cold, the woman he loved will be out looking to satisfy her needs (Jerome

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