Geoffrey Chaucer Quotes

The Canterbury Tales, The Clerk’s Tale. In one of the tale’s most disturbing passages, Griselda makes no protest when her daughter it to be taken from her by Walter, presumably to be slain. She shockingly tells her husband that she and her children are his property and he may save or kill his own thing. The case of a mother unquestioningly accepting a husband’s evil will towards her children is one of the things that makes the Clerk’s Tale disturbing and uncomfortable reading. Where is her motherly instinct to protect her child? Where is the courage to stand up for what is right? Griselda may be virtuous in many ways, but she lacks the virtue of courage to stand up to Walter’s brutal behavior.