characters in prologue

The Knight



The Knight rides at the front of the procession described in the General Prologue, and his story is the first in the sequence. The Host clearly admires the Knight, as does the narrator. The narrator seems to remember four main qualities of the Knight.
 The first is the Knight’s love of ideals—“chivalrie” (prowess), “trouthe” (fidelity), “honour” (reputation), “fredom” (generosity), and “curteisie” (refinement) (General Prologue, 45–46).
The second is the Knight’s impressive military career. The Knight has fought in the Crusades, wars in which Europeans traveled by sea to non-Christian lands and attempted to convert whole cultures by the force of their swords. By Chaucer’s time, the spirit for conducting these wars was dying out, and they were no longer undertaken as frequently. The Knight has battled the Muslims in Egypt, Spain, and Turkey, and the Russian Orthodox in Lithuania and Russia. He has also fought in formal duels.
 The third quality the narrator remembers about the Knight is his meek, gentle, manner. And the fourth is his “array,” or dress. The Knight wears a tunic made of coarse cloth, and his coat of mail is rust-stained, because he has recently returned from an expedition.

The Knight’s interaction with other characters tells us a few additional facts about him. In the Prologue to the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, he calls out to hear something more lighthearted, saying that it deeply upsets him to hear stories about tragic falls. He would rather hear about “joye and greet solas,” about men who start off in poverty climbing in fortune and attaining wealth (Nun’s Priest’s Prologue, 2774). The Host agrees with him, which is not surprising, since the Host has mentioned that whoever tells the tale of “best sentence and moost solaas” will win the storytelling contest (General Prologue, 798). And, at the end of the Pardoner’s Tale, the Knight breaks in to stop the squabbling between the Host and the Pardoner, ordering them to kiss and make up. Ironically, though a soldier, the romantic, idealistic Knight clearly has an aversion to conflict or unhappiness of any sort.


The Squire


Character Analysis

The Squire is the Knight's son, accompanying him on this pilgrimage. We think he's a pretty good squire; after all, Chaucer tells us that he rides a horse well, can joust well, and he carves the meat for the Knight well at dinner. After the Franklin interrupts his tale, he praises the Squire for being everything a young man ought to be.

But, from his portrait we get the impression that the Squire is still pretty young – more of a man-boy than a man. Chaucer describes him as "embrouded" as if he were a "meede / al ful of fresshe floures, whyte and reede" (89 – 90) – embroidered like a meadow full of red and white flowers. That sounds more like a description of a maiden than a man! And, in his portrait, Chaucer spends a lot more time talking about how well the Squire can dance, sing, write poetry and, most importantly, indulge in serious crushes, than he does about the Squire's prowess on the battlefield. From his portrait, we end with the impression that the Squire is a teenager, a bit of a pretty boy, and prone to serious infatuations that keep him up all night.

The Squire's role in the General Prologue is probably to represent both youthfulness and femininity. Compare his portrait to that of his father, who is a grown-up version of the Squire, or to the Monk, who is a manly man, and we can get a good picture of how Chaucer was thinking about the differences between youth and age, and femininity and masculinity, and how these different categories are all related to each other.

The Monk


Character Analysis

The Monk, Chaucer tells us, is a manly man. The Monk's favorite past-time is hunting, and to this end he keeps gorgeous (and probably expensive) horses and greyhounds. Like the Prioress, the Monk is all sorts of things that, as a religious figure, he should probably not be – a hunter, overfed, expensively-dressed in fur and gold jewelry, and a cultivator of expensive habits. But the Monk is willing to admit that he doesn't live a traditional religious life of hard work, study, and fasting, claiming as his excuse that he is a modern man, disdainful of the old traditions. So, out with the old fuddy-duddies like Augustine, who would have the monk slaving away over his books in a cloister, and in with the new – the new, in this case, being a comfortable life of sport, fine food and clothing, and amusements outside the monastery's walls.

Of the Monk's physical appearance, we learn that he is fat, bald, and greasy, with eyes that roll in his head. In medieval physiognomy, the practice of drawing conclusions about someone's character from their physical appearance, rolling eyes like this might be a sign of impatience and lust for food and women. This part of the Monk's portrait foreshadows the interaction between the Monk and the Host after the Tale of Melibee. At this point, before asking him to tell a tale, the Host praises the Monk's brawn and bulk and laments that he is a religious figure because, were the Monk not pledged to celibacy, he would surely impregnate lots of women! The Host says that he thinks the Monk would be a stud if given the opportunity, but considering the Monk's lack of respect for the "old" traditions of the religious life (and that mysterious love-knot pendant tying his hood), we think it's likely that he probably already is one.

With the Monk's portrait, we see another satire of religious figures who are supposed to live a monastic life of deprivation and hard work, but instead live a life of luxury and ease. Similar to the Prioress, the Monk is doing all kinds of things which, were he really pious, he would not. The Monk, though, is more self-aware about his departure from the pious life, taking the defensive stance of being a "modern" man, an excuse that rings somewhat hollow to discerning ears.

The Wife of Bath


Character Analysis

The Wife of Bath is larger than life. With broad hips, a big butt, and a hat as big as a boat, she takes up a lot of space in the pilgrimage and in the poem as a whole. The Wife is dressed expensively in scarlet stockings and shoes of soft, new leather, and she has a penchant for fine, large headgear that Chaucer estimates weighs about ten pounds.

With a red face to match her red stockings, and a large gap between her two front teeth, the Wife's physical appearance matches a medieval stereotype about what a lustful person looks like. This stereotype held that such people couldn't control their passions, and the Wife's portrait falls in line with this idea by telling us how the Wife becomes angry if other wives go before her at the Church offering (where going first is a sign of respect given to the most highly-regarded woman in the parish), and by hinting that the Wife had numerous lovers before her five (five!) husbands.

It seems that the Wife has had great financial success in her business as a clothmaker in which, says Chaucer, she surpasses the clothmakers of Ypres and Ghent, who were renowned for this trade. From this piece of information, we can assume that the Wife is now a widow, for only a widow would have had the freedom not only to run her own business, but also to travel as widely on pilgrimage as the Wife has, to Rome, Bologna, Cologne, and Gaul.

The Wife's numerous lovers and husbands have made her skilled in the "old dance" of love, or sex, an expertise she draws upon in the long Prologue to her tale. There, we learn more about the Wife's history and hear her defense of a lifestyle revolving around sex and procreation. (Learn more in our guide to the Wife of Bath's Prologue.) But even from her portrait, we get the impression that the Wife is a fun-loving woman who likes to have a good time, making her an ideal companion on pilgrimage, for "in felaweshipe wel koude she laughe and carpe" (General Prologue 476).

With the Wife, Chaucer is representing the medieval estate, or social class, of wifehood. There were many anti-feminist stereotypes about wives during this time period. We see them expressed here, in the portrayal of the Wife as lustful, in the Host and Franklin's complaints about their wives, and in the Wife of Bath's Prologue. But the presence on the pilgrimage of a dynamic and articulate wife who gets the chance to answer her critics means that these stereotypes are not allowed to remain unexamined.

The Prioress


Character Analysis

The Prioress is trying to be very, well, dainty. She has all these funny habits, like singing through her nose, speaking incorrect French, and eating so carefully that she never spills a drop. She does these things, Chaucer tells us, because she "peyned hir to countrefete cheere / of court" (139 – 140), or tries very hard to seem courtly. When she sees a mouse caught in a trap, she weeps, perhaps believing that this is how a damsel of the court would behave. Of course, two lines later, we learn that she has no problem feeding her hounds flesh, so her weeping over the trapped mouse is probably, like most of her habits, an affectation – a behavior the Prioress adopts to seem a certain way (in this case, like a courtly damsel), but which doesn't really reveal her true feelings.

Though the Prioress may try to seem dainty, in point of fact she's a very large woman: Chaucer tells us her forehead is a full hand-span broad and, come to think of it, she's not underfed. In keeping with her goal of seeming courtly, the Prioress is very elegantly dressed, with a string of coral beads attached to a pendant that reads "Amor Vincit Omnia," or "Love Conquers All." The beads and the pendant are interesting because this being a prioress, or nun who is in charge of a convent, we would expect her to be carrying rosary beads with a crucifix on the end. But instead she is carrying vanity beads. The pendant, which could refer to God's love, in her case more probably refers to the courtly love between a damsel and hero in one of the romances that were popular reading material for women of this time period.

So here's the thing about the Prioress: as a religious figure, she should be all kinds of things that she very clearly is not. What are these things? Well, take a look at the Parson's portrait, which represents an ideal religious figure in the General Prologue, to find out the answer. With the Prioress, our first example of someone from the religious life, we have not only our first supposedly pious person with her priorities out of whack (a situation we'll definitely see again), but also our first example of someone who's trying way too hard to be perceived a certain way, and how ridiculous that looks.

We should note that the Prioress has a nun with her who serves as her "chapelyne" or secretary, and three priests, who probably help her out by saying mass and administering the sacraments in the abbey she runs. Although we get no portraits of these pilgrims, two of them, the Second Nun, and the Nun's Priest, tell tales later on.