Canterbury Tales Description Of The Nun And The Wife Of Bath
- The Prioress And The Wife Of Bath: Two Distinguished Women - The Prioress And The Wife Of Bath: Two Distinguished Women In "The...
- Treatment Of Women - 151-159) Another attractive image of women in The General Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury...
Submitted by Eleelfe on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
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Canterbury Tales Description Of The Nun And The Wife Of Bath
The Canterbury Tales: Description of the Nun and the Wife of Bath
Of the twenty- nine pilgrims whom Geoffrey Chaucer joins for the journey to Canterbury, only three are women: the Prioress, the Second Nun and the Wife of Bath. All three tell a story, but in the General Prologue there are only portraits of the Prioress and the Wife of Bath.
Whereas the men in the General Prologue are defined in terms of a large number of professions, e.g. knight, innkeeper, parson, merchant, lawyer etc. The women are seen in only two roles: the nun and the married woman.
The two portraits exemplify the two major roles for women in fourteenth- century England. It is said that the medieval society consisted of three estates: those who work, those who fight and those who pray and women were sometimes lumped together as a fourth estate. Thus the nun belongs to the people who pray and the Wife of Bath would find herself in the so- called fourth estate.
Neither woman fits her role perfectly. I would like to take a closer look at the description of the two women . How does Chaucer describe them and how do the other pilgrims see them?
The Prioress
The Prioress is the first woman appearing in the General Prologue. She is also the first of Chaucer's characters to be given a name of her own. Her name is Madame Eglentine.
The Prioress is exceedingly well-mannered. She smiles sweetly and uses only the mildest oath. She knows how to chant the liturgy and does intoning it through her nose in a seemly manner. She can speak French, but only as it is taught in England, not as it is spoken in Paris. The Prioress has also learned the social graces of the fourteenth- century proper behavior at table.
She does not drop any bits of food on the way to her mouth, nor does she allow bits of food to fall onto her breast. She does not "wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe". (I, 129) when she dips bit of food into it. Before...
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