What Is The Role Of Women In The Canterbury Tales

In The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, feminism plays a major role. The tales told by female narrators display “absolute obedience as the ideal, it also acknowledges the terrible demands that can be made in its name and their irrationality, and above all ... the price of obedience,[and] the suffering it can entail” (The Cambridge 192). Chaucer doesn’t directly speak about feminism, however throughout the novel numerous female characters in the patriarchal society were taken advantage of by men. In tales such as “The Clerk’s Tale” and “The Man of Law’s Tale”, women were isolated from their families, and forced to abide by male orders. In this way, Chaucer allows the readers to understand that traditional aristocratic women were
Often women in the fourteenth century were obligated to abandon their families, to marry a unknown significant other, whom they have never met, they are to respect the request and comply with no complaints. Constance was one of the victims that was involuntarily ordered to leave her family and home, to travel to an unknown country to marry a man whom she’s never met. With such confusion she comes to a puzzled realization that she is being “sent into a stranger-nation, And parted from the friend that long kept her tenderly, To suffer subjugation, To one she scarcely knew by reputation?” (Chaucer 130). Constance grasps the fact that her father without hesitation
Griselda is similar to Constance, she is wedded to a unknown man by the name of Walter, when she’s taken from her home he request her to adhere to his orders before actually getting married, he informs her about his demands by