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Geoffrey Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales

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In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Franklin presents a tale which deftly examines the tension between ideal vs. reality. In a perfect world the marriage promise between Arveragus and Dorigen sets the tone for the rest of the tale by means of marital equality but in reality no good comes from it. Although “The Franklin’s Tale” is arguably the most equal out of all the Marriage Groups, its repetition of acts of magnanimity overpowers that equality and turns it into a kind of competition. The foundation of marriage between them is decided together and creates this method of balanced responsibility that is almost ideal but realistically unable to occur due to inherent gender and social expectations. The Franklin’s final question regarding who the most “free” at the end of the tale is very debatable because of the different types of “free” in Middle English. The Franklin zero’s in on that question for only the men and leaves out an important character. Because Dorigen and Arveragus both agreed to the terms of their marriage contract, it seems unfair to leave out Dorigen’s impact she has on the overall theme of “free”ness. So given that each character in this tale is in chain of promised service to another, the ambiguity of the final question proposed by the Franklin complicates the ability to judge who is the most “free” when including Dorigen. The difficulty of answering the Franklin’s question is due to the multipurpose usage of the word “free” in Middle English.

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