In the Clerk’s tale, Geoffrey Chaucer expresses his views towards women very openly. As the marquis tests Griselda, his wife, the author makes her entire patience and direct obedience to the husband seem rather ironic and senseless. To make this irony even more obvious, he adds his “Envoy” after finishing the manuscript. Despite a very discriminating position against women throughout the Clerk’s tale, Chaucer challenges this first view in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and her prologue. In the prologue, the reader discovers new opinions on women that might have been important to Chaucer as a person. He feels that women are equal to men, but yet he cannot express all his feelings personally because this would endanger his repetition as a writer. Generally, Griselda from the Clerk’s tale and the Wife of Bath are entirely different characters with different views upon women’s place in society, but Chaucer stays neutral and has a rather central view in order not to shock the men who read his tales at that time.
In the “Envoy,” Chaucer reemphasizes the fact that Griselda’s actions were not only painful for her, but also ineffective and did not make any changes to her position. “Griselda and her patience both are dead / And buried in some
. . .
Yet, he does not express her views as his own in order not to cause men to think of him as a feminist. Women like Griselda do not have any impact on society which makes Chaucer angry because they simply should have taken the initiative. In his opinion, women should start a revolution in order to improve their situation and to decrease the superiority of men. 355) These lines express that Chaucer wants to encourage women to start a revolution by showing an example of the immediate effects. “Never let innocence besot your head / But take the helm yourselves and trim the sail / and print this lesson firmly in your mind / for common profit. 355) In this quote Chaucer describes that men and women are remembered and cherished for the actions, not for their inactions. If Chaucer were a woman, he would be in great favor of emancipation, but even though he is a man, he wants women to emancipate for society’s sake, and for the women’s sake. “O noble wives, in highest prudence bred, / Allow no such humility to nail / Your tongues. The tone and mood change from a rather ironic tone in the Clerk’s tale into a sudden, serious text. He lets he reach this extreme in
order to show how the perfect women is his eyes would act. In her long prologue, the Wife of Bath gives advice to the young men, and she tells all the pilgrims about her life, love and her five marriages that all ended in divorce. Then, Chaucer turns directly to the female readers. Generally, Chaucer and the Wife of Bath have the same central opinion, but the Wife of Bath seems to be more extreme than Chaucer himself. The simple way that the Wife of Bath controls any resistance shows that Chaucer wanted to demonstrate that his opinion was right, and that the old theories and beliefs should be renewed.
Approximate Word count =
1170
Approximate Pages =
5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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