Feminism In The Pardoner's Tale

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The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer tells the story of a diverse and peculiar group of pilgrims. In the prologue, Chaucer the Narrator provides a description of these pilgrims, and a contest is proposed to help pass time on this long journey; each of the pilgrims were to tell a few tales, and the pilgrim with the best tale would get a prize. Although Chaucer did not finish writing all of the pilgrims' tales or name a winner of the contest, the tales told by the Miller, the Pardoner, the Wife of Bath and the Friar provide insights regarding life in the Middle Ages as well as who they are as people.
In his farcical fabliau, the drunken Miller shows his fellow pilgrims just how rude, crude, and vulgar he can be. Although the tale he tells
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She is worldly, bold, shamelessly sensual, and desires to be in control of all aspects of her life; all of which impugned the expectations that society in the Middle Ages placed upon women and in essence makes her a 14th Century feminist. In her prologue, the Wife of Bath, Alyson, discusses the many ways in which she asserts the dominance of the many husbands she has had and judges them based on their willingness to submit to her power. On the fifth page of her lengthy prologue, Alyson states that “I’ll have a husband yet who shall be both my debtor and my slave and bear his tribulation to the grave upon his flesh, as long as I’m his wife. For mine shall be the power all his life over his proper bod, and not he.”(p. 262) She decided very early in her life that she would not be an idle woman who blindly conforms to her husband's desires; they would conform to hers. To her, a “good” husband submits to her dominance. Control is everything to the Wife of Bath, and her tale directly reflects this. In this tale, the knight deprives a maiden of control over her body, and as punishment is sent out to discover what women want most in their romantic endeavors. The knight finds the answer with the help of an ugly old hag who requires him to take her hand in marriage. In the end, the knight allows the woman to seize control over his body, which according to …show more content…
He seduces young women without paying their dowries, deceives the rich and poor alike to extort alms, and clearly has a vendetta against the Summoner who gets sinners like himself in trouble. Because of this mutual loathing, they decide to tell exploitative tales about each others profession. The Friar is first to insult the other and tells the tale of a summoner who encounters the devil on his way to extort money from a poor and innocent old woman. They both lie to each other about their identities and soon “swore to be brothers to their dying day.”(p. 296) After chastising an innocent old woman, the devil drags him off to hell where he would suffer for the rest of eternity. This tale reflects the Friar’s personality because within this tale, he manages to point out all of the sins that summoners commit, but is completely unaware of his own wrongdoings. Although vastly different in theme and voice, the tales told by the Miller, the Pardoner, the Wife of Bath and the Friar all have one thing in common. These tales provide insights on what life was like for members of different classes in the Middle Ages, and tell a story from a different point of view, directly reflecting the personality of the

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