Geoffrey
Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales as a way to portray satire and a
lot of irony into his view of Europe during the time period. While
the tone can be taken as very sarcastic and mostly for fun, there
are some very serious scenes that in today's society would be
disturbing, at least, to unprepared young adult audiences today.
This is already apparent in
The Reeve's
Tale, which follows after
The
Miller's Tale, where he decides to tell a story about a
dishonest miller. This tale follows said miller and two university
students who indulge in less than desirable activities.
Unfortunately, this tale focuses around the two university students
getting into bed with the only females at the miller's home by any
means necessary, helping to bring
show more content
While the tone
can be taken as very sarcastic and mostly for fun, there are some
very serious scenes that in today's society would be disturbing, at
least, to unprepared young adult audiences today. This is already
apparent in The Reeve's Tale, which follows after The Miller's
Tale, where he decides to tell a story about a dishonest miller.
This tale follows said miller and two university students who
indulge in less than desirable activities. Unfortunately, this tale
focuses around the two university students getting into bed with
the only females at the miller's home by any means necessary,
helping to bring about the themes of feminism within the
show more content
It is up to the
reader to see these themes and take them to heart as they read on
in the tales, since Chaucer isn't afraid of using his satire of the
times and people in order to tell a real tale on the realities of
how society functioned during the medieval times. While this is
fiction, Chaucer intended to put in as many subtle or or obvious
views and ideals as possible with as little censoring as he could.
Thankfully, he succeeded in such a controversial book, but while
still being amusing and deep for fiction of the time. Going hand in
hand with instrumentality, comes the denial of subjectivity, which
is the disregarding of emotions and experiences in a human being.
When applied with the theme of feminism, it can be easy to see how
the men in this story disregard the wife and daughter's feelings
when in search of a goal literally within their grasp. A large part
of this comes from Alain when he is in the process of raping the
miller's daughter. He mentions how he has to sneak up on the
daughter while she's asleep and doesn't even offer her a chance to
cry out. (4192-4198) She is coerced into it and winds up just going
with the flow since Chaucer could have intended for her to be
slightly okay with what's happening, playing on the idea that women
could secretly fantasize about rape. While this isn't
necessarily
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