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LCappellaro-The Prioress
[author: Lucia Cappellaro - postdate: 2007-05-02]
The Prioress Right from the title the reader understands the character is introduced by her social rank: she is a nun and exactly a Prioress. The writer begins to talk about the Prioress with irony and parody. For example in line four, the writer tells that she was known as Madame Eglantine, because she spoke French well and elegantly, but she had only studied French and she had never been to France.
In line ten, the poet tells that she had good tables manners and infact “she never let a crumb from her mouth fall” and it goes on: “she never soiled her fingers, dipping deep into the souce ”. So she was very careful when she was at table for meals and she followed etiquette but this is not a habit of nuns. She was careful to follow the manners of the court.
After the description of the Prioress's manners, the writer describes her moral; she was sensitive because if she saw a mouse caught in a trap she made it free. One day she kept some little dogs and she fed the dogs with roast meat or milk.
She was an unusual nun because she had blue-grey eyes, great beauty, her nose was “well-shaped” and the mouth was tender, very small, and red.
From this description it seems the poet might love the Prioress because he describes the nun in peculiar details that remind the ones you refer to when you appreciate a woman.
Finally the writer tells that she carried a coral rosary with gauds of green, and from it hung “a brooch of shining gold“; on it was inscribed Amor vincit omnia. I think that a nun doesn’t think of love because a nun should think about charity and help other people. With this description Chaucer wanted to criticize the Church, because the Charch was corrupt.