Recasting the Canterbury Tales: Stage 1

The Prioress

For my version of the Canterbury Tales, I chose to recast my version of the pilgrim as the prioress. Chaucer’s portrait of the Prioress in the General Prologue was that of a beautiful, charming, elegant, and very religious woman. He surprisingly did not find a particular flaw with her, nor did he try to highlight any particular vice through her or manipulate her character in any corrupt or lewd manner the way he did with his other pilgrims. His satire of her was subtle rather than scathing and so it gave me a relatively easy task because I don’t think any of the other corrupt pilgrims would have fit into the context of a Catholic high school appropriately.

I chose her for my character for various reasons. The first was that since my resetting of the Canterbury Tales occurred in my high school, which was a Catholic high school/convent and so we would be surrounded by Christianity and religion, I thought it fitting that my new “pilgrim” should be someone of similar religious background and thus the prioress was the obvious choice.

Secondly, in the General Prologue, Chaucer mentions that “And French she spoke with elegant fluency after the School of Stratford at Bow” which gave me the impression that she was a learned woman, especially since French was considered one of the more elite languages of the day. This fit into the category of a school setting because that is essentially what we as the students of a high school would be there for - our scholastic education.

Chaucer goes on to describe the prioress as being kind and exceedingly well-mannered, especially focusing on her great etiquette and courtly demeanor. He illustrates her great compassion through her love for animals, especially her pet hounds. Even though I may not have appreciated it at the time or recognized it for what it was, those were just the kind of traits and behaviors the teachers (and nuns) strived to bring out in us. They always advocated a holistic education, that we should grow not only in knowledge, but also as human beings in the image of God and being called to love as He did, and emphasized the need for us to be “proper young ladies in society” - in dress, in modesty, in behavior, in all aspects; this is what the prioress herself made the effort to be. Her imitation of a woman of the royal court was in essence what we were taught to be at school.

Other points –
• Prioress’ tale although extremely religious and moral has underlying tones of anti-Semitism, which would translate into modern-day discrimination and judgment, which shows that no matter how ‘perfect’ someone appears or tries to be, we are but human and we are not perfect. And none of the girls at my high school, me included, were perfect. As much as we strived to be and were taught to be, we were human. (elaborate by talking about some struggles that being at an all-girls high school would be in terms of discrimination such as gossiping, criticizing others and their behaviours)
• The prioress was similar to the students even in dress. The prioress wore a brooch on her religious garb that said “Amor vincit omnia” – love conquers all. We also had to wear badges on our uniforms that said “Virtute et labore”, the motto of our school which meant Virtues and labor. (picture of convent badge here). This, although small, is a significant similarity because it just shows that we were reminded of what we were called to do/be. Just as the Prioress, although beautifully described, was simple and modest in her dress, so were we, in our uniform attire. (insert picture of girls in uniform here)