Geoffery Chaucer

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in "The Friar's Tale" "drew large profits to himself thereby," and as the devil observes of him in this tale, "You're out for wealth, acquired no matter how" (Chaucer 312, 315). The miller is not shown as badly in "The Reeve's Tale" as the others, however; his trickery against the clerk is repaid when the clerk sleeps with his wife and daughter. In these three tales Chaucer shows how greed is present in all men.
However, in "The Cleric's Tale," the wife of the lord Walter is patient and accepting of everything her husband does. This does not show that wives should accept whatever their husbands do, but that "Griselda's patient acceptance of the inscrutable will of her earthly husband may be taken as a moving example of how the Christian should submit to the Divine will," whatever may befall him in his life (Edden 370). "If Griselda showed such patience to the will of a flawed earthly husband, then what patient submission ought the faithful Christian to show to the will of a ...

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