Women in The Fabliaux :: essays research papers

Females argon portrayed in the Fabliaux as having certain distinctcharacteristics. In Les Quatre Sohais Saint-Martin, The Chevalier Who Made Cunts Talk, and The Millers Prologue and Tale medieval women are portrayed in connatural ways. Women are imaginative and therefor their thought processs must be controlled. They also, in the Fabliaux, require sex and have sexually creative minds. These third Fabliaux texts present women that are similar and represent commonly held views about the female sex of the time.Women in the Middle Ages were thought of as having wildly creative imagings. They were capable of oft more description and creativity then men. This is portrayed in Les Quatre Sohais Saint-Martin. The grump women, when presented with her husbands four wishes, begins to wish for pricks all everyplace her husbands body. After first describing her husbands catamenia state as soft and like a furry animal (lecture notes) she goes on to imagine that she wishes for big pricks , short pricks, curved pricks, strait pricks, and other kinds all over his body including his ears, knees, forehead, and abdomen. She does not merely wish for one, hard prick still instead lists all the types she can think of. Because the husband only wishes that the same comes to her (lecture notes) it is unadorned that the wife is the one with the creative imagination. In The Chevalier Who Made Cunts Talk the women are also very imaginative. After the Chevalier rescues the three naked womens garment they decide to each present him with a gift as a reward for acting so honorably. The first grants him a loon. The second grants him the cleverness to make all cunts speak to him. The third, not wanting to be upstaged by the first and second, gives him the talent to make all assholes speak. It is here that the extents of the female imagination are demonstrated. The Chevalier finds these gifts to be so wild that he thought the girls were mocking him Those meadow girls made fun of me (Guerin 233). In the Middle Ages a womans imagination was considered a powerful thing that must be controlled. If a womans thoughts were not controlled there could be drastic consequences like strange characteristics in children. The thoughts and actions of the women in these Fabliaux are representative of this wildly held belief among men. The women in these three Fabliaux are also very interested in sex.