Chaucer and Gender in the Canterbury Tales.

Lee A. Zito
The women of the fourteenth century were expected to be beautiful, dainty creatures just as in any century. But with the religious outlooks that are presented in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales it seems as though women spent a huge part of the fourteen century apologizing for Even and original sin.
In many of the stories that deal with women, young women are punished, abused, taken advantage of, or brushed aside and assumed to be ignorant. The excuse of the males seems to underlie the whole dughters of eve persona. Women are seducers with malicious intent upon virtuous men.
Jus…