Chaucers Conception of Religion - Literature review Example

The Prioress The purpose of the journey in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a pilgrimage to a holy location, the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket, in the town of Canterbury. However, this idea is sometimes lost by the reader as the many tales told by the individuals undertaking the journey are explored. There are numerous themes and ideas presented through the tales, including issues of women’s rights, chivalry, thievery, nobility and knavery. These subjects are expanded greatly by the fact that the various individuals in the story come from a variety of backgrounds representing as many aspects of medieval society as Chaucer could capture. As he continues to present opposing viewpoints through his mixed company of pilgrims, Chaucer presents a story about the journey of religion up to this point and what it was intended to mean for the average person. Rather than being an individual journey of spiritual enlightenment, Chaucer suggests through the final Parson’s Tale that the experience of religion is something that must be shared with others and explored from a variety of approaches before one can claim they have experienced religion. Chaucer’s conception of religion as a journey shared by many people is evident in the way that the Prioress and her tale is thrown into relief by comparison with the other characters and stories told, particularly against the Wife of Bath. While the Wife of Bath is worldly in the true sense, the Prioress represents the medieval feminine ideal, soft-hearted almost to a fault and academically well-educated. These differences can be easily determined as early as the general prologue as each character is described. The Prioress is shown to be the ideal by the positive statements made of her and her pleasing physical appearance while the Wife of Bath is described with a much less pleasing appearance and behaviors that match. While some may consider this presentation to be an indication that Chaucer was attempting to uphold the misogynist ideals of his time, a careful analysis of this comparison reveals that Chaucer was instead attempting to contradict them to demonstrate how their association leads to a more rounded spirituality for both. During Chaucer’s age, and throughout much of history, misogyny has been a relatively widely accepted way of viewing women. Misogyny is a word that refers to a “hatred of women” (“Misogyny”, 2009). When speaking on a social level, the word is used to indicate a general distrust and disparagement of women and their abilities. “Women are described as ‘the devil’s gateway’ (Tertullian). They are ‘big children their whole life long’ (Schopenhauer). According to Aristotle and Aquinas, a woman is a ‘misbegotten male’” (Clack, 1999: 1). Women who ‘behaved’ and adapted themselves to fit perfectly within a specific social ideal were ‘good girls’ and therefore tolerated while women who moved out of this definition even a little bit were demonized. It is clear, though, that Chaucer was attempting to encourage other ways of thinking about women through his portrayals as the supposedly acceptable Prioress is revealed, in her comparison to the Wife of Bath, to have a much less forgiving and spiritual soul. The Prioress is described as possessing all of the attributes a man was supposed to look for in a woman in Chaucer’s time. She was “smiling, modest was and coy” (General Prologue, The Prioress, 2). She could sing well in the proper way, speak French fluently, had excellent manners so that “never from her lips let morsels fall, / Nor dipped her fingers deep in sauce” (General Prologue, The Prioress, 11-12), was pleasant to be around in any company and was charitable almost to a fault. “The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues – piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Welter, 1966, p. 152). Physically, she is given attractive attributes such as a fine nose, bright blue eyes, a small red mouth and a fair forehead. Chaucer tells his reader, “truth to tell, she was not undergrown” (General Prologue, The Prioress, 39), indicating a pleasant figure that men are not supposed to notice in that way when looking at a nun. Her clothing is neat and is well-maintained as would be expected of a lady high born. Although she has all the requisite values of an ideal woman, the Prioress is deviant in that she prefers to remain unmarried and has opted to dedicate herself to the church as a means of retaining her independence while still remaining within socially acceptable standards. However, her story, although centering around the tragic tale of a young boy killed for his religion, doesn’t really touch on the lessons of religion at all. Her tale centers upon the actions of a small boy whose primary desire is to honor the Virgin Mary. This is exemplified not only in his daily actions to honor the image of her, but is also emphasized in his desire to be good for his widowed mother. These two desires come into conflict when he becomes obsessed with learning a hymn honoring the Madonna rather than learning the lessons his mother wants him to learn. His misbehavior regarding his lessons is repaid when his singing enrages some Jewish men who murder him. “In a privy they threw the boy, I say, / A place in which these Jews purged their entrails. / O cursed people, unchanged since Herod’s day” (Chaucer, 2003: 172). Although he is presumably rewarded by being pulled into heaven, his earthly remains are treated horribly, suggesting that while his spiritual intentions were correct, his material intentions were unacceptable. In her description of the Jews who committed the murder, the Prioress employs language and topics more often considered masculine because of their baseness and reveals a hatred against these people that is matched only by the capacity for forgiveness found in the Wife of Bath’s tale. “The nature of the tale itself must be studied. Analogues of the tale show that the Prioresss version is much more violent and bloody than other circulating versions” (Wickham, 1999). This shift to a more powerful note in her call for vengeance for the poor mother waiting at home on the part of the Prioress highlights the parent’s rights to the services of the child. This is made clear as the story ends with a reminder of how the child’s clear singing had once brought praise and attention to the mother. It is the power of the Virgin Mary that gives the child the ability to continue singing after he has been murdered just as it is the Mother Mary that will come for him as soon as the grain of rice is removed. In this story, like the Knight’s tale, the Prioress manages to couch her feminine perspective in terms of socially acceptable norms as well as express female autonomy and perspective. The story is intended to be a lesson in morality and proper Christian behavior but instead focuses on the Prioress’ beliefs that the female should be served and the Jews should be persecuted, neither attitude in keeping with traditional religious teachings of love and serving others. It is when these stories are compared that it becomes obvious that Chaucer is examining the various belief systems of these widely separate people. In contrast to the ‘proper’ Prioress, the ‘base’ Wife of Bath tells a story of love and forgiveness in which a knight who has committed a terrible crime against a woman is sent on a quest to discover what it is that women want. Despite his crimes, he is constantly given sympathy and assistance despite being forced into a marriage he doesn’t want but must make to preserve his honor. In finally realizing that he should leave it up to his woman to decide what she will be, he is finally given his heart’s desire. The entire tale focuses on exactly the kind of love, forgiveness and spirit of service that is missing from the Prioress’s tale. While the Prioress displays all the desired attributes of a well-bred woman, her restrictions and blind spots are revealed in her comparison with the attitudes and approach to life undertaken by the wife of Bath. At the same time, the coarseness of the wife of Bath is exposed in all its ugliness by the refinement of the Prioress. As long as each of these women remain in their own sphere, they are unable to recognize their various faults and thus undertake the necessary steps to bring their thinking closer to an understanding of a religious experience, an awakening to the self through association and contemplation of others. This can only be accomplished, Chaucer argues in the voice of the Parson, through the type of sharing and discussion undertaken by the disparate members of the party on its way to and from Canterbury. Works Cited Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Clack, Beverley. Misogyny in the Western Philosophical Tradition. New York: Routledge, 1999. “Misogyny.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. (2009). Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly. Vol. 18, N. 2, P. 1. 1966, pp. 151-74. Wickham, Victoria. “Chaucer’s Prioress: Simple and Conscientious, or Shallow and Counterfeit?” Luminarium. (1999). Read More