The Triangle of Money, Aristocracy, and Religion from The Canterbury Tales

 Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a criticism of the social and religious corruption of medieval England where rich, aristocratic, and religious communities backed up each other in their common interests. During the Chaucerian period, the church dominated most dimensions of common people’s lives, but it also shared the domination power with the upper-class society in exchange for money or worldly interest. The image of a sacrificing and abstaining clergyman became simply absent. Besides, a person’s social respect came as a birthright, and all human virtues and glories were attached to a person of high birth automatically. Chaucer showed how the triangle of money, aristocracy, and social class facilitated corruption, gender discrimination, domination, and moral degradation through his characters and tales.

A society where religion runs after money is very much expected to be corrupted. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, such a reality of medieval England is presented through the characters of the Friar, the Prioress, the Pardoner, the Monk, the Nun's Priest, the Second Nun, and the Parson. The prioress eats sauce, meat, and wine in one sitting, and feeds her dog with roasted meat. It is clear that she doesn’t have a job to earn. So, the source of her rich food is the church money which is supposed to feed poor people. Besides, the monk wears the best furs in the land and a gold pin. His numerous horses and their maintenance costs, too, come from the public money given to the church. And, yet, he passes all-day riding and hunting leaving the church ground. The friar not only receives gold coins instead of letting the rich people regret him for their sins but also flirts with girls bribing them with silver cutleries.

Author Geoffrey Chaucer illustrates how independent, free-thinking women were perceived as less attractive and immoral by social standards, while men are admired for these traits through his depiction of each character. Although many of the stories contain minor female characters, only two of the women, the Prioress (nun) Madame Eglentyne, and the Wife of Bath, Alice, are introduced in the prologue. The Prioress represents the ideal female of the time. She is meek, submissive, visibly well-dressed, and conservative. On the other hand, the Wife of Bath is a feminist icon because of the feminist ideals she upholds in her stories. But, she is abhorred by the other pilgrims as a lusty woman only because she married five times, although she remarried after the death of her husband in each case.

Domination of poor and lower class people by the upper-class ones is a common practice in the Prologue. The Knight is supposed to tell the first tale only because of his social position, and not for any apparent pleasing story. His son, though is held with honor, is a lustful boy, always looking for women to flirt with. Besides, when a rich man can buy pardon for any crime he commits, he can always continue crimes against the poor people.

The Canterbury Tales represents the moral degradation of English society in the medieval period. Religion is bought and sold with money. A priest is a lecherous flatterer. Rich people have limitless freedom to commit any crime whereas the poor are always downtrodden. Being a male opens the common door for a person to indulge in sexual activities beyond the marriage bond whereas being female demands to meet certain stereotypes. A pilgrimage doesn’t call for psychological purity.

Thus, it can be concluded that the triangle of social power, money, and aristocracy leads to social degradation in morality, discrimination of class and gender, and domination in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.