The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales In the Canterbury Tales we listen to a total of 28 stories, 2 from each traveler. Each story is much more different than the one before and not something we’ve expected from the one telling the story.. We paid close attention to 3 of these stories which were, the knight’s tale, the Miller’s Tale, and the Wife of Bath, all having one thing in common, feminism. Was Geoffrey Chaucer a Feminist? This is a very complex question due to the fact that in the 3 above mentioned tales, a woman was at some point in high power or the cause for someone else weakness even though they weren’t necessarily empowered throughout the whole tale. Geoffrey Chaucer seems to bring out an idea of “romance” based on the gender role. We start of with the Knight’s Tale, the longest tale actually, who tells us the story about two cousins named Arcite and Palamon, both in jail and in love with the same girl, Emily. Arcite sees Emily first and falls in love with her before Palamon even gets to see her. Through the window in Arcite cell is where he is able to see her. He tells Palamon to come look at the beautiful girl, which wasn’t such a smart thing to do because the moment Palamon laid his eyes on Emily he immediately falls in love with her too causing problems among them two giving her power over them. As the story continues, an old friend of Arcite comes along and negotiates his freedom but in return, Arcite can never come back to that country. Arcite is now a free man but he’s upset because he can no longer see Emily, while Palamon is still in jail but at least he can still see her from the window in the cell. Later on Palamon escapes from jail and is now free as well. Both Arcite and Palamon are disguised in order to stay in town just to see Emily. The Duke of Athens sees them and decides along with his wife to let them battle each other, Arcite is declared the winner but ends up dying at that moment which means Palamon gets to stay with Emily and gets married with her. This whole time Emily didn’t really have much say yet she and her beauty was the cause of such destruction among family (289-300) As we move on into our next tale which is the Miller’s Tale we come upon a love triangle (or rectangle??) story based around the life of Alisoun a beautiful, young girl who was the wife of John, a much older carpenter that rented a room to a college student named Nicholas who desires Alisoun. Alisoun being so young and taking her beauty into her advantage ends up cheating on John with Nicholas while he is away. As if having 2 guys after her isn’t enough, one day while at church Alisoun comes upon this guy named Absolon who falls in love with her as soon as he lays his eyes on her, allowing Alisoun just like Emily have power of the opposite sex. Going further into the story John comes back, but Alisoun and Nicholas still want to be together regardless the fact that technically she is still married so Nicholas comes up with this “brilliant” plan. The plan takes place on Saturday where Nicholas will pretend to act like God spoke to him about an event just like Noah’s Ark that was gonna take place, he makes John believe such lie to the point that John gets so worried that something will happen to Alisoun that he decides to buy 3 tubs in which each one of them will climb into so that they will survive such “event”. The day comes and as plan they climb into their tubs for “safe” keeping. John falls asleep while Alisoun and Nicholas climbs out of their tubs and into John’s bed to spend the night together. That same night Absolon comes by and asks Alisoun to give him a kiss, she didn’t want him so instead Alisoun decides to play a trick on him (540) tricking Absolon to kissing her behind, upset with this Absolon tries to get back at her by using a hot tool but instead ends up burning Nicholas. With such pain, Nicholas yells for water, making John think that the flooding as began and cuts the rope of his tub making him fall into the ground. Neighbors came to see what was going on, only to find John on the floor around a broken tub, Nicholas being burned on his butt, Absolon embarrassed, all while Alisoun is just there like nothing ever happened. Once again making Alisoun the star of it all, the one with all the power in her hands. Last but not least we come upon the Wife of Bath tale in which let’s be honest the whole tale is basically about women, what they want and what they can offer you. To start off (790-791) She makes Jenkin burn all his sextist novels and give up his land. When the knight rapes the virgin girl, he is put on a mission by the queen in which he needs to find out what women desires the most. He goes a whole year asking many different women, in which he gets answers like, money, riches, beauty etc, neither of these answers were right, the knight thought until he comes along and finds an old lady who gives him the right answer which is power, women want power, in return the knight is forced to get married with the old lady, which by the way he hated the idea. To sum it all up on the day of their wedding, things take a wild turn, although the knight hated the idea of being married to this old ugly lady, after an argument he decides to give the old lady the power of controlling him and in return the old woman turns into the beautiful young lady just for him, just because he gave her what woman desired the most, power (380-384). As we see here, Geoffrey Chaucer exposes feminist stereotypes such as power over man and even beauty can be seen as one in this case. The General Prologue comes alive and deeper into connection with the tales as we read along. The women in the tales are everything in the definition of Feminism allowing us to think that maybe, just maybe Chaucer was a feminist in his time period according to all the well put details in his Tales.