As The Pardoner's Tale Analysis
Chaucer’s Critique of Medieval Society
As The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer progresses, the tales often critique one's sexual past while judging how they act through the tales, along with their gender. As karma and greed also have an extremely strong presence in the “Reeve’s and Pardoner’s tales” they both value money over the people that are important in their lives. The Wife of Bath critiques every aspect of male superiority as she is an extremely enthusiastic "feminist", that defends her side through finding the numerous amount of flaws in others arguments. This not only creates bad opposing arguments, but also helps her build a stronger argument. Her argument consists of why females should not be valued based on how many guys they …show more content…
While the Pardoner’s tale progresses, many may identify the transition from the three men’s original objective, as it heads towards a race for money. As Death acts, he does not directly injure anybody, but he rather leads his victims towards their individual weakness, and allows them to fall into a trap that he has set for them. The group of men in the Pardoner’s tale is easily discovered because of their sudden change in direction towards the gold under the tree of which Death has lead them to. Their rowdiness and crave for gold becomes apparent as the text describes them as “three young rioters” (446) as they “run, and reached the reached the tree, and where they found / a pile of golden florins on the ground” (447-448). The men change drastically from the beginning to end of the tale, not only in physical way, but also mentally, suggested by their ability to simply murder their friend for their own benefit. This tale helps support the Wife of Bath’s argument of female justice in her society because the tale clearly showcases the stupidity of men. Along with the selfishness and greed sketched out by the three men in the “Pardoner’s tale”, the “Reeve’s tale” also portrays women as objects and creates a faux identity of a sexual, inanimate toy for men to use as they wish. Alan and John use the Miller’s wife and daughter as a piece of a plan in order to get revenge for their injustice that was inflicted upon them by the Miller. This helps support the Wife of Bath’s fight for equality and justice of women as they commonly suffer things such as rape and abuse because they are not viewed as equal to men to the men’s
As The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer progresses, the tales often critique one's sexual past while judging how they act through the tales, along with their gender. As karma and greed also have an extremely strong presence in the “Reeve’s and Pardoner’s tales” they both value money over the people that are important in their lives. The Wife of Bath critiques every aspect of male superiority as she is an extremely enthusiastic "feminist", that defends her side through finding the numerous amount of flaws in others arguments. This not only creates bad opposing arguments, but also helps her build a stronger argument. Her argument consists of why females should not be valued based on how many guys they …show more content…
While the Pardoner’s tale progresses, many may identify the transition from the three men’s original objective, as it heads towards a race for money. As Death acts, he does not directly injure anybody, but he rather leads his victims towards their individual weakness, and allows them to fall into a trap that he has set for them. The group of men in the Pardoner’s tale is easily discovered because of their sudden change in direction towards the gold under the tree of which Death has lead them to. Their rowdiness and crave for gold becomes apparent as the text describes them as “three young rioters” (446) as they “run, and reached the reached the tree, and where they found / a pile of golden florins on the ground” (447-448). The men change drastically from the beginning to end of the tale, not only in physical way, but also mentally, suggested by their ability to simply murder their friend for their own benefit. This tale helps support the Wife of Bath’s argument of female justice in her society because the tale clearly showcases the stupidity of men. Along with the selfishness and greed sketched out by the three men in the “Pardoner’s tale”, the “Reeve’s tale” also portrays women as objects and creates a faux identity of a sexual, inanimate toy for men to use as they wish. Alan and John use the Miller’s wife and daughter as a piece of a plan in order to get revenge for their injustice that was inflicted upon them by the Miller. This helps support the Wife of Bath’s fight for equality and justice of women as they commonly suffer things such as rape and abuse because they are not viewed as equal to men to the men’s