Men Fall in Love with their Eyes and Women Fall in Love with their Ears
"Men fall in love with their eyes and women fall in love with their ears." This quote can summarize all of the Canterbury Tales if one was to replace the word love with lust. Love is not defined by the emotional sense of the word but in the sexual desire of two people. In all of the stories not one person can be defined as in love in the modern sense, because there is no spiritual connection.
"The Miller's Tale" is a perfect example of this loveless love. There is a girl of eighteen and she is married to a man and loved by two other men who only love her for her beauty. She is first introduced with the lines, " She was a fair young wife, her body as slender/ As any weasel's, and as soft and tender..." and the description of her body and clothes continues for about a page. (Chaucer page 106) However, her personality,
housekeeping, loyalty, generosity, nothing of this manner is mentioned only her "tender loins." Well like in the other stories the girl ends up cheating on her husband with a man who sings her a sweet line. This theme continues in the other tales; in "The Merchant's Tale" the same idea happens: May, a young wife, cheats on her old husband, January, with his squire who gives her a sweet message in a silk bag. Now a reader may say that male characters tell both of these tales, in response to this "The Wife of Bath's Tale" should be reflected on next. In this story a knight rapes a woman and is redeemed by the Queen because he answers her question in a way that pleases her. In the end the knight has to marry a woman who is horrendously ugly because she told him how to answer the Queen's question. Yet, eventually the ugl
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