The Franklin’s Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer
This Canterbury Tale poses a dilemma — should a wife keep her word (given in jest) if this means being unfaithful to her husband?
A franklin, in Chaucer’s time, was a freehold landowner whose status would have been that of minor gentry. Chaucer’s pilgrim is described as having been a Member of Parliament, a magistrate, a sheriff and a district auditor, and would thus have been a very important person in his local community. He is by no means a poor man, as is evident from the description given in the General Prologue, which concentrates on the man’s food consumption.
Indeed, this is someone who eats as well, or better, than many people would have done had they been from the higher echelons of society. We are not told if he has a large family (we learn later that he has “a son”), or if he entertains his neighbours to dinner on frequent occasions, but his cellars and larders are stocked as if this must be the case. Surely one person cannot eat all those pies, partridges and bream!
Although the only physical description we have is that his beard was as white as a daisy, suggesting that he is no longer young, we can imagine that he was probably extremely fat. At a time when a bad harvest meant that people could starve to death, the morality of…
