The Prioress’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

This Canterbury Tale does not read well today, due to its rabid anti-Semitism

Chaucer’s Prioress is a very worldly lady who happens to have found herself in charge of a convent. This would not have been unusual in Chaucer’s time, as many young women were sent to nunneries when their families could think of nothing else to do with them. It was a cheaper option than finding them a husband, or perhaps they had been raped or got themselves into trouble and needed somewhere to escape to, either permanently or for a shorter time. Convents, of which there were thousands large and small, were sanctuaries for both rich and poor. They were full of women who, for whatever cause, could not be married, and nothing said that they had to be particularly religious.

As it happens, this Prioress seems to combine religious sentiment with feelings of other kinds. She certainly does not mock religion in the way that the Friar and the Pardoner do, for example. However, she is clearly very concerned to make a good impression on the social front, cultivating her appearance and good manners in ways that seem far removed from those of the convent. For example, she wears jewellery, she arranges her nun’s habit as fashionably as she can, and she even keeps pet dogs. The inscription on her brooch, “love conquers all”, can be…