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Prioress of Chaucer

The Prioress character in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is portrayed as both pious and vain. As the second-in-command of Westminster Abbey, she is described with religious terms but also as wanting attention through her charming smile and graceful cloak. Her coral jewelry and golden brooch engraved with "Amor vincit omnia" reveal her devotion to love over God and material desires despite her position. Chaucer uses these details to challenge the typical view of a nun and create a complex character that combines piety and secular temptation.

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564 views2 pages

Prioress of Chaucer

The Prioress character in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is portrayed as both pious and vain. As the second-in-command of Westminster Abbey, she is described with religious terms but also as wanting attention through her charming smile and graceful cloak. Her coral jewelry and golden brooch engraved with "Amor vincit omnia" reveal her devotion to love over God and material desires despite her position. Chaucer uses these details to challenge the typical view of a nun and create a complex character that combines piety and secular temptation.

Uploaded by

manazar hussain
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Prioress

Geoffrey Chaucer was a learned poet remarkably ahead of his time. In breaching the fragile
boundaries of society, he was able to create authentic characters whose traits and
appearances portrayed more of life's aspects than ever before. From a piece of his
unfinished work, The Canterbury Tales: The Prologue, he molds for the reader a figure of
significant importance during an age ruled by Christianity. The religious devotion expected
of a church official and temptations of a secular life meld to create the Prioress. 

As second in command at the Westminster Abbey, the Prioress' character would naturally
create a sense of unmatched devotion to God in the reader's mind. A woman described as
"Madam Eglantyne" (line 125), "dignified in all her dealings" (line 145), and "so charitably
solicitous" (line 147) exemplifies her reverence for the Almighty. Compared to her other
descriptions however, these religious connotations are observed minimally. Chaucer relies
on the colloquialisms of society to develop her religious characteristics and focuses instead
on the atypical aspects of her life; traits of a vain woman desperate for attention.

Characteristics such as the Prioress' "coy" smile, and cloak with "a graceful charm" (line
161), were by no means accidental. They make evident the fact that she goes out of her
way to be noticed. Such attributes are generally avoided when depicting a woman of the
Cloth. Collectively though, these descriptions along with her sedative manners and "courtly
kind of grace" (line 143) express her fears of living life alone. She desires a sense of
attraction that her position as Prioress cannot afford her, yet she finds it impossibly difficult
to seclude herself from worldly temptations. 

Her secular desires however, do not end with a longing for attention. Her "coral trinket" (line
162) and "golden brooch of brightest sheen/On which there first was graven a crowned
A,/and lower, Amor vincit omnia" (lines 164-166), make obvious both her material
aspirations and philosophies of love. As a woman of Christianity, she should possess only
those things necessary of life. The Prioress does not nee
jewelry to carry out her duty to God, and it is with these objects that Chaucer shatters the
classic view of a nun. Blatantly, the brooch engravings symbolize her unorthodox faith in
"love conquers all." As a religious figure, the phrase upon her neck should have more
emphasis in "God conquers all." Likewise, the corals in her bracelet and golden pin, further
personify her deviations from the Church. Coral, an object of the ocean, and gold are both
symbolic of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. It is, therefore, deducible that Chaucer's
portrayal of Madam Eglantyne, with Pagan references, is intended to exploit her secular
ways.

Chaucer's poetic abilities enabled him to create characters that revamped the typical
models of medieval society. He effectively expanded the narrow views of an entire
population with his numerous characters in The Canterbury Tales: The Prologue. The
Prioress, a religious figure of importance during her period, embodies expected religious
qualities, as well as the traits of materialism, ideals of love, and longing for attention. She is
a woman who has been forged from a new cast, making her a strikingly singular person in
today's society.

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