More handpicked essays just for you.
Criticism of the Canterbury tales
Critical appreciation of Canterbury tales
Critical analysis of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
s in a stereotype? It’s a question humanity continues to ask, a question history continues to answer, and through a strategic placement between the archetype and the individual, a question Geoffrey Chaucer’s work The Canterbury Tales addresses. The Canterbury Tales is told through the narration of a character named after its own writer, Geoffrey Chaucer, whose presence as the universal observer sets a precedent for the provided literary commentary. In his narration, characters are confined to a set of archetypes or “stock characters” that not only impose generalizations, but seemingly brand each character to their surface-level representations. However, The Canterbury Tales does not define itself by complete character stagnancy. While Chaucer …show more content…
Initially, Alisoun is first characterized as a woman whose personality exists as a stereotypical entity and is only given special interest through her physical appeal to men. When Alisoun is initially introduced, Chaucer establishes a strong sense of her archetype through stating “She was a prymerole, a piggesnye/For any lord to leggen in his bedde/Or yet for any good yeman to wed” (I: 3268-3270). Her blazoning sexuality and wild ways exist not to reinforce her individuality, but to confine her to the eyes of men and their objective interpretation of her character. Her archetype itself lumps together all enchanting women and virtually erases all of their differences. Thus, Alisoun’s individuality is seemingly invalidated by her conformity to her stock character, making her an object to be ravaged and controlled by …show more content…
The circumstances surrounding John the Carpenter’s marriage to Alisoun reveal a marriage that’s already formed on unequal footing, as a result, John’s insecurity is confined as the archetypal controlling husband to uphold some form of power. When John marries Alisoun, it is revealed that “Jalous he was, and heeld hire narwe in cage/For she was wylde and yong and he was old/And demed hymself been lik a cokewold” (I: 3224-3226). While John was nonetheless controlling and confining of his wife, the deeper revelation is that his wife’s limitless male opportunities due to her age and beauty is threatening to him. He silently suffers and acknowledges that he could easily be replaced. Thus, while he is simply introduced as jealous and controlling, those characteristics are merely a concealment of the sad and self-actualized level of his character that offset his stereotype as merely a controlling
“I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” ( Tragedy and the Common Man). Arthur Miller follows his Millerian conventions of tragedy in the writing of The Crucible. Often literature uses tragedy to display a depressing theme represented by the tragic hero.
John, the husband, serves as a metaphor for masculine views of the time, and for the masculine side of humans, the side of reason and logic. "John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horor of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures" (1658). His character is almost stereotypical in its adherence to reason and its attittude towards his wife. He negates her intuition; "there is something strange about the house - I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window" (1658) He attributes her condition to "a slight hysterical tendency" (1658), which is, etymologically speaking, just a polite way of saying that she is instable due to being a woman. He is not interested in his wife's actual condition, rather in his diagnosis; "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (1659). His best advice is to not use her imagination (though trapped in an ugly room), but to become more reasonable and to resist her condition through willpower. When he does put her to bed and asks her to get well, he asks, not for her own self, but with him as the motivation; "He said [. . .] that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well" (1663).
Ostensibly, the narrator's illness is not physiological, but mental. John concludes that his wife is well except for a "temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis that is confirmed by the narrator's own physician-brother (Gilman 10). John's profession, and moreover his diagnosis, is a license to closely observe, scrutinize, watch, gaze upon, seek out, and investigate his wife and her ailments, which consequently permits him to deploy seemingly inexhaustible (medical, scientific) means for (re)formulating and (re)presenting the hysteric female--not only for the purpose of giving her discursive representation, but in order to "de-mystify" her mystery and reassure himself that she is, finally, calculable, harmless, and non-threatening. To speak of John in psychoanalytic terms, his preoccupation with his wife, her body, and her confinement, reveals unspoken anxieties: the fear of castration and the "lack" the female body represents.
All sense of individuality and self worth is taken way from the narrator when her name is never revealed to the audience. Furthermore, John continues to belittle his wife by giving her the command to not walk around at night. Although the John thinks in his mind that he is looking out for the best interest of his wife, in actuality, he is taking away his wife’s abilities to make choices for herself. There is a possibility that John’s controlling personality is one of the factors that led to his wife’s psychosis. Such a controlling life style more than likely limited the narrator’s ability to live any life outside of the home.
The readers are not told why she finds Absolon so repulsive compared to Nicholas or why she married someone so much older than her in the first place. Beyond her actual actions in the tale, all the readers are given is a very detailed summary of her appearance. Chaucer is able to spend 35 straight lines describing her slender and delicate body and even her shoes were laced high, but cannot tell us if she has any actual desires or any basic personality traits. In this time period, and in most time periods, a person’s inward disposition was much more important than the outward one.
Even the effeminate Absolon brings her drinks, cakes, and money. Despite her husband’s supposed jealousy, Alisoun moves about freely and goes where she likes. She enjoys her independence and takes her pleasure in a very masculine way, all while exercising her feminine wiles. I would argue that Alisoun represents a near-perfect example of gender
The restraints that John puts on his wife end up deteriorating her mental state to
" Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wished he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there" (474). John doesn't know how his wife
The Wife of Bath’s insecurity and cynicism are just two of the ways in which she fulfils negative stereotypes of women. She tries to separate herself from other women of her time by taking control of her life by means of sex, but if she were truly progressive, she would have found a way to elevate herself without using her body. Alisoun is exactly what men fear and dislike about women; she is promiscuously sneaky, and she takes advantage of men. This is why while trying to present herself as strong and independent, her actions ultimately confirm misogynistic stereotypes of women; in the end, she is even more digressive to the cause feminism than a normal woman would be.
Alison depicts the societal view of a sneaky woman who will tempt men into sin with her beauty. While a medieval author like Chaucer believed the societal views of an oppressed woman, Christine de
... allows the present day reader to gain insight into commonly held beliefs regarding women during the 14th century. By allowing Alison to have a sense of humor and joke about aspects of her marriage, Chaucer was able to make numerous points regarding women that would not have been acknowledged had a female author created them. By making Alison a laughable character, Chaucer was able to make points about women such as the unfairness of double standards, the acknowledgement of female desire, and the reality of women marrying well to improve their economic situations. Chaucer also provides us with detailed examples of commonly held stereotypes regarding women that are still relevant approximately seven centuries later.
In the Middle Ages, the roles of women became less restricted and confined and women became more opinionated and vocal. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight presents Lady Bertilak, the wife of Sir Bertilak, as a woman who seems to possess some supernatural powers who seduces Sir Gawain, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale, present women who are determined to have power and gain sovereignty over the men in their lives. The female characters are very openly sensual and honest about their wants and desires. It is true that it is Morgan the Fay who is pulling the strings in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; nevertheless the Gawain poet still gives her a role that empowers her. Alison in The Wife if Bath Prologue represents the voice of feminism and paves the way for a discourse in the relationships between husbands and wives and the role of the woman in society.
Chaucer uses these initial character portraits to identify the specific characteristic that each class contains. This creates the idea of a completely separate class societal that lacks unity and maintains grievances towards the other. We see this throughout The Canterbury Tales as each pilgrim’s tale belittles another class. Specifically, the Reeve and Miller’s tales are perfect examples of pilgrim’s tales belittling one another. By satirizing other classes by pilgrims of different classes exemplify the stereotypical perception for each medieval class and the shortcomings that a member of the class would not admit too.
As a man fascinated with the role of women during the 14th Century, or most commonly known as the Middle Ages, Chaucer makes conclusive evaluations and remarks concerning how women were viewed during this time period. Determined to show that women were not weak and humble because of the male dominance surrounding them, Chaucer sets out to prove that women were a powerful and strong-willed gender. In order to defend this argument, the following characters and their tales will be examined: Griselda from the Clerk's Tale, and the Wife of Bath, narrator to the Wife of Bath's Tale. Using the role of gender within the genres of the Canterbury Tales, exploring each woman's participation in the outcomes of their tales, and comparing and contrasting these two heroines, we will find out how Chaucer broke the mold on medievalist attitudes toward women.