Geoffrey Chaucer, through his writing of The Canterbury Tales, gives us (the audience) the best known contemporary picture of 14th century life. Chaucer chose to write The Canterbury Tales as a frame story. The outer frame is a story of pilgrims who are going on a "holy" pilgrimage to The Shrine of Beckett at Canterbury, and the inner frames consist of tales told by the individual pilgrims. In the inner tales Chaucer depicts the characterization of each pilgrim, and makes known that there is an underlying unresolved social or spiritual tension. "The notion of a "spiritual" [or "holy"] pilgrimage is deeply challenged by the very density of [Chaucer's] characterization" of the pilgrims (Baswell and Schotter 274). Some of the pilgrims display materialism, clerical corruption, cruelty, and carnal desires; and to a degree these have become the convention. The picture Chaucer draws with The Canterbury Tales is a picture that questions this convention. Chaucer's story is asking his readers to revaluate the church and society; and to redefine the convention because society is filled with moral and spiritual upheaval. This idea is apparent in the contrast between what a pilgrimage is really for and the morals and ideas of the people who partook in the journey.
             The concerns of the Hag and the Wife of Bath closely resemble those of Chaucer, and unite them in an interest to revaluate and redefine societies' convention. The Wife of Bath throughout her tale makes an argument about the conventional idea of women, sexuality, and marriage. According to the churches perspective women were evil temptresses, remarriage was adulterous, and sexuality was excluded. The Wife of Bath through her arguments, stories, and examples was hell bent on making the point that revaluation and redefinition was in order.
             The Hag during her argument on poverty is asking the knight to revaluate his idea ...