The Canterbury Tales and Pilgrimages

The characters in The Canterbury Tales meet while on a pilgrimage (a journey taken for a spiritual purpose to a
spiritually meaningful destination). Among the Christians of the Middle Ages, pilgrimages to Israel were particu-
larly popular, and the journey was a prove of their devotion to their faith. Another popular pilgrimage site for the
English Christians was Canterbury, about sixty miles southeast of London, about a week-long journey on horse.
Canterbury’s cathedral became a popular pilgrimage site following the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury who was murdered in 1170 by supporters of King Henry II.
The English particularly loved Becket as a saint due to his English heritage and they believed he could cure ill-
ness. While the pilgrimage itself receives scant attention in The Canterbury Tales, the fact that the characters
are on a pilgrimage to Canterbury draws out key themes: the showy, hypocritical nature of the characters.
Moreover, the pilgrimage offered Chaucer a setting in which to depict and satirize on a variety of human
stereotypes all belonging to the rising middle classes. No nobleman or peasants are indeed present.

A portrait of the emerging middle classes

In the poem there is a varied humanity: the Knight and Squire representing the military estate, the clergy, repre-
sented by the Prioress (and her nun and three priests), the Monk, the Friar, and the Parson; other characters
from the laity are landowners (the Franklin), professionals (the Clerk, the Man of Law, the Guildsmen, the Physi-
cian, and the Shipman), laborers (the Cook and the Plowman), stewards (the Miller, the Manciple, and the
Reeve), and church officers (the Summoner and the Pardoner). https://literaryenglish.com/short-introduction-to-
29-pilgrims-in-canterbury-tales/

The Knight
It is significant that Chaucer begins the account of the different pilgrims with the Knight in the General Prologue.
The Knight is the most distinguished of the company, his portrait is idealized by Chaucer as the symbol of a
disappearing age based on ideals of knighthood such as chivalry, honor, loyalty and courtesy. He is also a de-
vout man. The knight bravely fought in almost fifteen greatest wars on the lands of both Christian and heathen,
and he is the personification of the ideals in which medieval man had a profound belief.

The Merchant
The merchant wears expensive clothes and leads a wealthy lifestyle. He is clever enough to put on an appear -
ance of such dignity that he deceives people about the real state of affairs. No one realizes that he is in debt. He
is clever in the management of his affairs. He bargains in a dignified manner and trades in furs. He conducts his
practice of usury (chevyssaunce), i.e., the business of lending money at a very high rate of interest, in a cunning
manner. The hypocrisy puts him on level with most of the other pilgrims of The Canterbury Tales.

The Wife of Bath

The Wife of Bath is an attractive woman with a record of having five husbands and many lovers in her past
(while chastity was the most important female virtue in the Wife‟s living times). She is wearing a tight scarlet
hose, shoes of new leather, a broad hat (similar to a shield making her recall a warrior), and skirt with sharp
spurs, which indicates that she rides astride like most women of her class.
Her appearance demands attention and reflects her high self-esteem. The overall impression that emerges is
that of a strong character, proud, self- assertive, individual and self-conscious, so that many have seen her as a
modern character, rejecting the medieval ideal of the angel-woman; she also says that in marriage there should
be equality and each should “obey each other.”
Some critics have instead seen in her behavior, based on the exploitation of physical beauty to reach wealth, an
antifeminist attitude, showing how women were in reality considered greedy and dishonest by the sexist
tradition.