Geoffrey Chaucer presents a broad portrait of life in his Canterbury Tales both in the pilgrims themselves and in the characters in their stories. The women in these tales are neither better nor worse than they should be, and they are much more realistically portrayed than the idealized women of many other writers of the era. They can be hypocritical and they can be saintly. They are sensual women pursued by and often pursuing men, and they can also be both as base as or nobler than the men. Membership in the church is not an assurance of nobility for either sex. The church women, like the church men, are very human. The Prioress is a woman of the church, while the Wife of Bath is a worldly woman, and they are very much alike in many ways. The Wife of Bath can be seen as a character exhibiting primordial behavior, or behavior that is both original and primitive for her time. Modern critics find much to discuss in Chaucer regarding the role of women, and feminist critics find evidence both of male domination and female assertiveness in the pages of this lengthy poem. The way Chaucer treats women in his work and the views expressed in the poem regarding women and marriage will be analyzed with a close reading of the Prologue to "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and the "Nun's Priest's Tale," with reference to some of the women in other of the tales as they relate to the ideas expressed in these chapters to the larger saga.
Karl Federn describes the views of women that prevailed in
the Middle Ages and discusses their sources. He finds that with
the beginning of the Middle Ages there was a shift in the poetic
representation of women. Chivalrous poetry became less sensual
and more elevated, and religious and philosophic ideas were
interwoven into the poetry. He finds that the essential feature,
however, was the position of women and the new conception the
poets had of love. Th...