The Three Estates & The Canterbury Tales
When a text is geared toward a particular class of people, it is said to be written ad status, Latin for "to the estate," that is, to everyone in a particular social category. This idea of the "estates" is vitally important to the social structure of the Middle Ages and to Chaucer’s literary work.
Bear in mind that feudal society was traditionally divided into three "estates," or social classes. The "first estate" was the Church, or clergy. The "second estate" was the nobility, or those who fought to further the cause of the monarchy and church. It was common for aristocrats to enter the Church and thus shift from the second to the first estate. The "third estate" was the peasantry. These "estates" were defined primarily by livelihoodas well as by social class at birth.
Women were classified differently. Like men, medieval women were born into the second or third estate, and might eventually become members of the first by entering the Church, willingly or not. But women were also categorized according to three specifically "feminine estates”: virgin, wife and widow. A woman's estate was determined not by her profession but by her sexual activity: she is defined squarely in terms of her relationships to men in general. Interestingly enough, the Wife of Bath argues in her own prologue to her tales that the feminine estates of "wife" and "widow" should be valued as much as that of "virgin." As we move into our reading of The Wife of Bath’s Tale, the following bears reflection: how does the Wife seem to feel about the concepts of matrimony and marital relations? Does she elevate or pervert the idea of feminism?
The rigid division of society into the three traditional "estates" begins to break down in the later Middle Ages. By the late fourteenth century, we see the rise of a mercantile, or merchant class, in the cities, i.e. an urban middle-class, as well as a new subdivision of the clergy: intellectuals trained in literature and writing and thus "clerics" like Chaucer's Cleric, but who were not destined to a professional career within the Church.
As is fairly obvious from even a cursory read of the The Canterbury Tales: The Prologue, Chaucer is highly conscious of these social divisions known as the "Estates." While the genre of The Prologue is a "frame narrative," it is also an example of estates satire, a genre which satirizes the abuses that occur within the three traditional Estates.
- As adapted and modified from Debora B. Schwartz
Questions After Reading
1. What are the Three Estates, and how should they affect our reading of Chaucer’s work?
2. Consider the social climate of Chaucer’s day. Is the treatment of social class and social change reflected accurately in The Prologue? How so? How not?
3. What is meant by “Does she elevate or pervert the idea of feminism?”
4. What is meant by cursory? by satire?
5. Ultimately, what statement do you think Chaucer was trying to make in The Prologue?