In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, a group of pilgrims travels together to
             Canterbury and along the way tell one another stories to pass the time.
             Chaucer makes use of these stories and the people who tell them to comment
             on the society of his time, suggesting certain things by his choice of
             which pilgrim tells what kind of story. Some of the pilgrims are clerics,
             and others are government workers or members of the public. They represent
             a cross-section of the society of the day, as do many of the characters in
             the stories they tell. One of the persistent images in these stories is an
             image of women, which varies from the submissive to the more aggressive and
             which is found in both the pilgrims and their stories. In "The Franklin's
             Tale," ideas about women are expressed in the usual terms but in a
             different way, combining different traditions to produce an image of women
             and marriage as both an instance of male dominance combined with the
             courtly love tradition which so infused much of the poetry of the time.
             The image created of women is that they are decorative and virtuous,
             and this is also an element in the courtly love tradition. The traditions
             included by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales are different and more
             expansive, for the tales include a number of women from different classes.
             These woman are lustier and more accessible, as a rule, with one of the
             primary representatives being the Wife of Bath. Love in these stories is
             an ongoing battle between the sexes, sometimes in the courtly love
             tradition (as in "The Franklin's Tale" in which Dorigen and Arviragus are
             obsessed with meeting the requirements of courtly love, or in the
             description of the Squire in the Prologue, who also deliberately pursues
             the traditions of courtly love). The Wife of Bath is a lusty woman who
             also uses the courtly love tradition in her story, though she deliberately
             toys with it as she te...