Gender Roles In The Canterbury Tales

Gender Roles: Interpreting The Opposite Sex
In today’s society men and women are often expected to perform different tasks, and occupy different roles based on their sex. Within different cultures, the view of how women and men should act and interact varies with political and religious influences, as well as personal influences. Geoffrey Chaucer suggests that people’s ability to understand the opposite sex is divided because of the stereotypes set in society for the opposite genders. Women are more likely to work as secretaries, and men are likely expected to work as managers and executives in the working field. With views like these people are less likely to empathize with other people for the plain idea that we feel that we must be separated.
In The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer explores the idea of the shrewd insights into human nature. In the story, a knight goes on a quest to answer the question of what women desire the most. He goes knocking at every house, yet everywhere he went no two people could agree on what women wanted the most. (lines 93-98) It appears as if women are hard to understand and decipher when it is men who simply have a misunderstanding of the women’s needs. It seems as if the knight will never find his answer to such a simple question until he comes across an old lady who

Sanders has come in contact with many women throughout his life, through his observations of how women have prospered in society he believes that women feel such pressure to be everything, do everything. It’s as if they’re trying to overcome a million years’ worth of evolution in one lifetime. (lines 15-18) He knows that some women would disagree with his views on roles like his friend Anneke, she feels that men are the ones who have it harder; being discredited for the things they have