Pilgrims In The Canterbury Tales

Improved Essays
In the canterbury tales, chaucer encounters pilgrims and they agree to tell chaucer two stories on their travel. Before they start to talk about the stories, chaucer describes the pilgrims in physical detail revealing their inner nature. Three of the pilgrims that chaucer described their inner nature are the Wife of Bath, the Monk, and the Clerk. These specific pilgrims are described in a unique way. He is not just describing the physical features he is describing who they really are.

In the story Chaucer begins to describe each pilgrim, and the Wife of Bath is one of them. She is called the wife of bath because she is from the city called bath and is and she is an expert at being a wife. She seemed to be a professional wife. He describes

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In his prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer initially sets the tone for the prologue by providing the reader with in-depth detail on the setting. He then proceeds to introduce every pilgrim he meets at the Tabard Inn by revealing the characteristics they possess and ranking each individuals’ social status from highest to lowest. Chaucer therefore begins with the highest ranking pilgrim, the Knight, and depicts each pilgrim in detail through the last and lowest ranking character described, the Host. H.S. Bennett said, in reference to Chaucer’s writing, that “no detail was too small for him to observe, and from it he could frequently draw, or suggest, conclusions which would have escaped many.” Bennett’s words emphasize the…

    • 247 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During Medieval times, women had no place in society. The Wife of Bath made it certain for her to have a place in society. For every husband she married, she would obtain wealth from them by taking their lands and money. This was unheard of in Medieval times. The Wife of Bath accused her former husbands talking about how women will kill their husbands and accuse them of infidelity.…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Hell In Dante's Inferno

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Inferno, written by Dante Alighieri, explains the layout of Hell according to Dante himself. There are many circles and rings that house sinners based on the type and severity of their sins. Achilles, Brutus, and Attila the Hun are a few of the well-known figures mentioned during Dante's journey through Hell. The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, is a compiled collection of the tales of 29 people embarking on a pilgrimage. One of the people, the Wife of Bath, is purposely made to stand out during the General Prologue.…

    • 1060 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” explores some of the generalizations that have been seen throughout history about women as well…

    • 1047 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Wife Of Bath Quotes

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Shirley Morales Mr. Moser English 4 Period 1 28 Oct. 2014 Wife of Bath Essay The Wife of Bath is considered to be a noble, wise, and commanding character. She challenges the accepted roles of women during her time by showing superiority in her relationships, questioning the system, and being unrefined. The Wife of Bath simply yearns to be the more dominant figure in her relationships. She has made her point that a man, regardless if it’s her husband or not, “must not be above her” (Chaucer).…

    • 452 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women are viewed in a variety of ways, depending on culture and opinion. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales walks us through various tales of men and their interactions with women. Chaucer also includes the tales of the Prioress, the two nuns and the Wife of Baths. From a close reading of the text, it could be assumed that women were associated with little to no value. They were used primarily for sexual reasons and weren’t considered sacred.…

    • 903 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    So if men were superior, why did chaucer think women should hold the power? The Wife of Bath is Chaucer's prime example of how a marriage should be. The Wife of Bath, also known as Alyson, is a notorious harlot. She uses her body to get men to give her what she wants.…

    • 393 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Wife Of Bath Stereotypes

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath is one of the main characters on the pilgrimage. Her real name is Alison, and she is from a town in London called Bath. She is a large woman with red, rosy cheeks with a gap between her front teeth, which was considered attractive in the Middle Ages. She loves the finer things in life, especially clothes, and loves to talk and argue. She is intelligent, which is obvious throughout the arguments she makes in her prologue.…

    • 1270 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The speaker’s attitude to the various classes of pilgrims are different but all show fondness of each pilgrim. He begins talking about a knight who is described as a worthy man who “loved chivalry”. In line 47, the author says, “Full of worthy was he.” Nothing but good is talked about this Knight.…

    • 202 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the audience is introduced to the Wife of Bath first by the narrator, but then discovers further about this character in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Directly following her prologue, the Wife of Bath begins to tell her tale about a knight and an old hag. As we read the Wife of Bath’s Tale, we start to notice there are some similarities between the two stories such as the women’s power over men, a few physical similarities, and then the similarities between Jenkin and the knight. Although the stories are not exactly alike, the morals of both remain consistent.…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The wife of bath, thinks that the women should be obeyed in by their husbands but mainly for her own cause. Wife of bath feels it’s only fair. This essay discusses how wife of bath is a jealous type. Whereas the wife of bath she just wants to be married more so that she can have a higher status so the people can see her as more righteous and richer in glory and or to make her look holy and she will do anything to stand out to be more like an upper class person.(Chaucer pg.135 469-470lines "A worthy women all her life, what's more she'd had five husbands …")…

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the time of Geoffrey Chaucer and for thousands of years before, the society of the world was very patriarchal. Nearly every aspect of a woman's life was beneath a man's. This was especially evident in marriage. Women were expected to do their duty to their husbands and not wander beyond the boundaries of what was culturally acceptable for them. This view on women influenced many writers.…

    • 944 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Medieval period was a time of firsts, the first Crusade, the first census, the first manifestation of the modern-day perception of knights and kings alike. The fourteenth century was also full of literary firsts, the most predominant being the shift from scholarly reading to a more universal style of tales written in Middle English, introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer, a timelessly renowned poet. The Canterbury Tales, considered the most important literary piece of the Medieval period written in 1392 by Chaucer, is considered his greatest achievement although the work is fragmented. The Tales begins in Chaucer’s day, the fourteenth century, in a quintessential English town named Southwark. Inside this town is a pub named the Tabard Inn, owned…

    • 1503 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Inside Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, a reader finds their attention falling upon a rowdy, fair-faced woman, who has been married five times. She is open with her words, ideas, and sexuality. These features are simply unheard for women of her time. Her openness leads many readers to believe she is a woman beyond her time, a feminist even. However, upon further inspection one finds that the Wife of Bath is actually the embodiment of an anti-feminist, she is absurdly physically minded, and does not have an honest appearance..…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although the Canterbury tales is a satiric story about pilgrims, each character presents personality traits, appearances and tales that do not fit them in to absolute good or evil. However, instead of leaving the sinful characters to only be defined by their evil deeds, Chaucer manages to rationalize their deed to be a result of their nature. Giving them more of an amplified version of evil characteristics every human beings possesses. Through this rationale, Chaucer was able to show that no matter what their social status was, they were all Firstly, The gender parallels of each character reflect some of the worst characteristics in each other only adjusting their wrongdoings to be more fitting to their gender. For example, The Pardoner of…

    • 1673 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays