The Canterbury Tales (Essay Sample)

The Canterbury Tales
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Introduction
The Canterbury tales are recorded tales that were allegedly told by twenty seven pilgrims to entertain each other as they travelled to Canterbury to visit Saint Thomas Becket the Martyr’s shrine. The author Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the tales at the end of the 14th Century during the Hundred Years war. He used the tales to criticize the then culture of the English society, especially the Christians. The twenty stories all are written in the English setting and it is still not clear who he intended them for. The following essay revolves around the main female character of one of the tales which was told by a pilgrim known to the rest as the man of Law (Chaucer, 1904, 5).
This story having been told by a man in the 14th Century may have cast the female characters in a biased light. As pointed out by Chaucer’s wife in one of the tales, the fact that women stories were told by men was a problem that she implied could be corrected if the stories were told by women. The female characters in the tale told by the man of law appear to lack any emotion, are impulsive and when they are not the villains they are victims of circumstances.
Usually story tellers tend to cast their character’s personalities based on their biased assumptions and attitudes towards what they consider real. Therefore, a man while telling a woman’s story will likely make her up according to his subconscious personality. For one, if all the characters i8n the man of law’s tale were male, it would sound more natural. The impulsiveness displayed especially by the villains appear to be inclined towards masculine motives than they would towards feminine ones especially considering the English setting which was wrought with feminine and masculine extremes. It also appears that most activity is initiated by the male characters while the female ones sought of react to the actions of the man.
The main female character in the story, Custance, appears to be the reason for some extreme actions such as the conversion of a Sultan and his entire sultanate’s conversion from Islam to Christianity. This is done in order to persuade the emperor of Rome, to give Custance, his daughter in marriage which he eventually agrees. In this part of the story Custance is cast in both positive and negative light. Positive because it appears that her hand in marriage is worth having a Sultan and entire sultanate convert to a foreign religion. Negative because she appears to have no say in the matter and the Sultan seeks to convince her father more than he does to convince her.
This probably was how marriages were negotiated in the 14th Century. The emphasis is on the Groom’s wants regardless of the bride’s wishes. The female character may or may not have wanted to marry the sultan, and the fact that her wishes are not addressed in the tale, and her father’s wishes seem to hold more weight shows that her opinion was not considered important. The passiveness of the female character casts her in a negative light.
The tale also appears to have only female villains. The Sultan’s mother massacres her son and his sultanates and banishes Custance into the sea on a ship. This has cast Sultan’s mother as a heartless, cold and hateful murderer who appears to have no motive for her evil actions. The problem that was highlighted by Chaucer’s wife of bath about having men tell women stories is evident here. A woman would know that a mother’s love towards her children is often strong and unconditional. Even in cases where they feel they have to punish their children, it is unlikely that they would deliberately kill them.
The story casts Custance as a passive character who is always the victim (C...