A Comparison of Geoffrey Chaucer's the Miller's Tale and the Wife of Bath's Tale

In The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Chaucer is both a pilgrim on the journey and the writer of the book. Chaucer’s point of view of society and humans in general is best illustrated through the similarities and differences between “The Wife of Bath’s Tale and The Miller’s Tale” where the treatment of women in the fourteenth century, the justice system in the fourteenth century, and the behavior and justification of that behavior by men emerge at every turn throughout the novel in “The Miller‘s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale’C The treatment of women is a common theme in every one of the stories in The Canterbury Tales, In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” Chaucer shows value in women because the knight is punished for raping a woman.

Also, a woman also shows the knight a new point of view on nobility and equality in love.

However, the fact that King Arthur does not plan on punishing the knight until the court made up of women become upset over it and demands that he be punished, shows that the justice system does not really provide justice, it just tries to not get bad press.

Chaucer is commenting that the punishment for the knight is not because he raped the woman, it is because he got caught and other people heard about it. If the court of women had never heard about the rape, the knight would continue free and probably rape more women, with no intervention from King Arthur.

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This shows that his behavior is justified by the male regent who continues to enable this sort of behavior. Compare this to The Millers tale, where Nicholas grapes Alisoun very perversely and is not punished in any way. However, in The Millers’ tale, no one else knows that Nicholas had groped Alisoun.

When she yells, “let be, Nicholas, or I‘ll cry ‘Help! and Alasl‘” it is shown that Alisoun knows if someone caught Nicholas in the act he would be punished, which proves that the fear of punishment is not enough in their society, because it does not stop Nicholas from groping women. However, Alisoun’s tone through The Miller is mocking, which shows that she may just be trying to test him to see if he will continue to pursue her By looking at Chaucer’s point of view we can see that Chaucer was a very forward-thinking man. In his mind Nicholas should be punished for groping Alisoun, so automatically he infers that if Alisoun yelled then Nicholas would be caught and punished. However, Nicholas uses the rules to justify and prove his prowess in breaking them since he uses the rules for that purpose, punishment would not control him in the future since he wants to break the rules.

In the fourteenth century this may have not been the case though Most likely, Nicholas would have been caught and would have to pay reparations for theft of property to Alisoun’s husband since women were considered to be property. Chaucer could also be making a comment on the roles of men and women in society through Alisoun in The Miller’s Tale and the woman who was raped in The Wife of Bath’s Tales If the opposite had been true in each tale and it had been the women that force themselves on the men what would be the case? This is an issue that still comes up today when female sex offenders are not prosecuted to the same lengths as male sex offenders. Also, many male victims do not turn in the offenders for fear of repercussions, Perhaps Chaucer saw that women were not being treated equally to men in almost all aspects of life and he also saw that men were not being treated equally to women in the aspect of sexually based offences.

This shows just how forward thinking Chaucer was and also perfectly depicts how he infuses his personal thoughts and ideas into the stories that the pilgrims tell, In both of the tales Chaucer also makes very strong comments about the justice system during the fourteenth century, In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” when she says “Because of this violation, there was such a clamor and such petitioning to King Arthur that this knight was condemned to die according to law, and should have lost his head” Chaucer is revealing the way the justice system is structured, there is no punishment for rape until someone complains, The laws that they do have regarding rape are not enforced or upheld by anyone yet they are not repealed, so they are still technically laws but there is rarely punishment for breaking them, Chaucer says that the only reason the knight was ever prosecuted was because people were upset that he was left off the hook.

Much like the fair treatment of men and women under the law, this is still happening today, about six hundred years after Chaucer was alive A perfect example is the recent Trayvon Martin case. George Zimmerman was not originally prosecuted until the public became outraged and started a petition to have him tried, which the government agrees to to stop a potential riot and/or for fear of losing their power, not to ensure thatjustice is served That is basically the same thing that happened in The Wife of Bath’s tale which shows that perhaps Chaucer knew that these were problems that were not likely to ever go away. The structure of the justice system in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” compares to that of it in “The Miller’s Tale” because when Nicholas gropes Alisoun and exhorts “‘Unless l have my will of you, sweetheart, I’m sure to die for suppressed love” this shows the role of the justice system in fourteenth century society by showing the way the justice system deals with less serious offences.

What Nicholas did and said to Alisoun would today be considered sexual assault, which today is punishable by many years in jail and in more serious cases, such as rape, the death penalty. Of course, this can only be assumed since it is never outrightly said what the laws are regarding sexual assault, but since the knight was original to be put to death we can assume if punished, Nicholas would at least receive jail time or the equivalent to it in the fourteenth century This directly contrasts with “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” because in her tale the knight is in a way punished for his actions, by having to waste a year of his life searching for the answer to what women most desire, even though in the end he is absolved and redeemed, Nicholas gets off free from groping Alisoun, Even though Alisoun only seemed to mind for a second, she did at first state that “I won’t kiss you; on my faith” which shows that she is at first not interested in Nicholas’s sexual advances, yet The Miller‘s point of view is that this is just a way to test if he is worthy of heri.

It appears Chaucer is commenting on the justice system not being equal to all, being strongly skewed towards men. Another issue that Chaucer chooses to comment on is the behavior and justification of the behavior of men. The knight in “The Wife of Bath‘s Tale” and Nicholas in “The Miller’s Tale” both get away with heinous acts. One point Chaucer brings up through the similarities and differences of these two tales is how can the people in charge be trusted to be fair when the rules that they are hired to enforce are not fair? This comes up in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” because the men do not feel the need to prosecute the knight for raping the woman, or they themselves have raped women and would feel hypocritical prosecuting someone for something that they have done. Can you fault the men for this when the whole society around them agrees to these cultural norms? Chaucer continually comments on the way men both behave and are perceived.

In “The Wife of Bath‘s Tale” the women generally perceive men as stupid, weak, and easy to manipulate which is evidenced when The Wife of Bath remarks “‘Even if you ask Argus, with his hundred eyes, to be my bodyguard (as he can do it best), in faith, he can‘t guard me unless I please; I still could deceive him, as I hope to thrive”’ seeding her belief that women are much smarter than men, and even the strongest man would be no match for her witsi She Still believes this even though the men at this time manipulate the laws to work towards their benefit and use them as excuses to control women This compares with The Miller‘s tale because Alisoun ends up outsmarting all of the men. These two tales show that Chaucer at least thought women were equal in intelligence, if not more intelligent than men Again, this shows how forward thinking Chaucer was for his time.

Throughout Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales we see his thoughts, ideas, and political views infused in each character‘s prologue and story. By comparing and contrasting “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” with “The Miller’s Tale” we can see Chaucer’s views on the treatment of women in the fourteenth century, the justice system in the fourteenth century, and the behavior and justification of the behavior of men Headed for the revelations to come after his death, Chaucer anticipated these issues still being prevalent and gave his country a piece of literature that breaks down the boundaries of class and gender, keeping him relevant year after year since none of these issues go away.