Women and Love In Chaucer Essay -- Chaucer Poetry Poem Essays

Women and Love In Chaucer Chaucers opinion of women and his views on make do are very prominently featured in his poetry. Focusing on women, one must first of all examine the popular views concerning women during Chaucers time. Arlyn Diamond writes of Chaucer that, . . . he accepts uneasily the medieval view of women as either better or worse than men, solely never quite the same. (Green 3) This is pellucid in Chaucers enactment of women in such poems as The wife of Bath and The Clerks Tale which labialize the reader with antithetical views of women. The Wife of Bath is one of the most unforgettable characters Chaucer ever created. She is considered, in view of Diamonds statement, to be better than the men in her life. Patient Griselda in The Clerks Tale is a peasant woman, married to a nobleman, who tests her loyalty through a series of ordeals in which she is lead to consider her children to be murdered. In this tale Chaucer is exposing his reader to a woman who is infra he r husband, and is treated horribly by him. Chaucer frequently treats the women he writes about as objects, some prize to be won by the heroic man. This is evident in The Knights Tale, in which the two protagonists, Palamon and Arcite, war over the hand of Emily, who they hasten never met, but only gazed upon from a distance. Their devotion to her branches not from sleep together, but the want of men to contain and control the women surrounding them. Now on to the subject of make do. Chaucer writes in The Knights Tale of a love based on physical beauty, where the two protagonists fall in love at first sight. This is a common device used in medieval literary works to create conflict between characters. The Book of the Duchess focuses on the real love between the Black Knight, and the White Woman. This allows Chaucer to explore the nature of love in context.Chaucers Wife of Bath is a domineering woman who demands the men in her life to be subservient. The reader gains from her prol ogue that she is concerned with sovereignty, which she views as the control or mastery in the relationship. She does not appear to truly love whatever of her husbands. The first three are older men whom she seems to marry for their money. They fall off on quickly leaving her with wealth, standing, and the chance to find herself a more than suitable man. Her fourth husband was a profligate, a man of costless morals, who keeps ... ...t sight. The pointless death of Arcite only emphasizes the hollow nature of this love. Love in The Book of the Duchess is treated differently. When Arcite dies there is no real pain matte for his loss. This is not the case with the death of the Black Knights lady. Chaucer spends about eight one C lines allowing the knight to lament his lost love. In his poetry Chaucer tries to be kind-hearted to the plight of women. He endeavors to discuss love honestly, accepting the contradictory types of love and giving them all equal opportunity to prove thems elves. The problem, however, lies in the subjects, for no matter how long or intently you look at them, they lead invariably be as complex and incomprehensible as they always were.Works CitedGreen, Richard Firth. Chaucers Victimized Women. Studies in the Age of Chaucer. Ed. Thomas J. Heffernan. Vol. 10. 1988. 3-21.Wynne-Davis, Marion., ed. The Tales of the Clerk and the Wife of Bath. By Geoffrey Chaucer. Routledge New York, 1992.Edwards, Robert R. Stephen Spector. Ed. The Olde Daunce Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World. Albany deposit University of New York Press. 1991 154-176.