Chaucer and His Relation to English Society - Essay Example

In The Canterbury Tales, his flight of imagination anticipated what the future generations would like to observe about his Age. He is hailed as the unofficial chronicler of England of the fourteenth century. The singular importance of Chaucer is that he catches the spirit of his age in totality relating to all segments of life. Thus, he is a poet par-excellence who is able to comprehend the socio-spiritual tidings of the fourteenth century. He has the entire history of the century under his pen, not in fragments, considered from societal terms.
The Canterbury Tales and the Prologue
The description related to different types of individuals, ipso facto, is the picture of the different segments of the society. In the Introduction David Wright mentions, “…..the realism of the portraits of the people who tell the stories, and the interplay between the tales and the characters of the tellers, that is completely original.”(Introduction, xi, 2008) Further, according to David Wright, Chaucer had a good grasp of the secular issues because he “was a public man as well as a poet, an eminent civil servant, diplomat, administrator, Justice of the Peace, and
Member of Parliament…” (Introduction, xii, 2008) As Chaucer was ready to set out on his pilgrimage to Canterbury, en-route, he met other pilgrims. He wrote,
“That I should let you have a full description
Of each of them, their sort and condition.”(Chauser,2)
Through the characterization of each individual, he provided the accurate prevailing position of that section of the society to which the individual belonged.
The major elements of the Wife of Bath's prologue
In Chaucer’s Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale as elucidated in detail by Geoffrey Chaucer (2008), she shared information relating to all aspects of her life. The style in which she provided her autobiographical sketch, which was of considerable length, brought her to the top position in The Canterbury Tales. The points enumerated in the Introduction by Peter G Beidler (1998) et al, are “First she is a woman, one of the first female characters of any depth or seriousness in British literature. Second…we know about her clothes, her occupation, her husbands, her travels, her beliefs, her bearing, her combativeness, her irreverence, her peculiar brand of feminism. Third, the close connections between her personality and her tale of rape, quest, and redemption.” (Beidler, xxv, 1998) She gave more importance to the ground realities than the rules of established authority. She defended her position by examples from the scriptures like King Solomon, who had many wives, and St. Paul’s assertion that it was better to marry than to burn. She saw nothing wrong in marrying five times. She challenged scholars of the Bible to prove that God commanded virginity. The purpose of the creation of sex organs was functional as well as pleasure, according to her. Her quest to seek dominance over her husbands was both interesting, difficult to trust, and yet it revealed certain fundamental facets relating to the man-woman relationships. Some of her conclusions were awesome like, what she believed to be the happy match was one in which the wife had control and the correct response of the knight that most women craved for sovereignty over their husbands.
With the character of Wife of Bath, Chaucer sent a strong message to the anti-feminists of the era. That was the time when the antifeminism of the church was the strong controlling factor of society. All sorts of negative traits were attributed to them. They were dubbed as monsters. They were not allowed to participate in rituals of the church and had no say in the church doctrine. At the time when virginity was considered as the supreme virtue, Chaucer, through this character, defended her five marriages. She challenged the view that sex was meant for the purposes of procreation only, and not for enjoyment. She thus dismissed the view that women should be submissive. The necessity of willpower for women was highlighted and the message goes that life was to be lived not with cowardly submission. Wife of Bath defended the intellectual caliber of women and their sovereign role in the institution of marriage, to live a happy and long life. Throughout the Tale, the Wife collided head-on with the traditional values. According to her, the revelations of the scripture needed to be interpreted in tandem with the practical experience. (Chaucer, 219-238, 240-250)
Steve Ellis (2000) argues, “The opening illustration, to the “Prologue” of The Canterbury Tales, shows Chaucer knee-deep in a garden of flowers, standing beside a large well and a bird-filled tree.” Read More