How are women portrayed in The Millers Tale Essay

The m menacinging machines write up was written and is rank in medieval England, a time when wowork force had much fewer rights than men, and were much or less just stimulateed by their fathers, and then by their economises when they got unite. 17th century United States in The Crucible has a slightly divers(prenominal) society but in any case has the similar male dominance. The handmaidens Tale is set in a dystopian future day where women are withal heavily dominated by men, but in a completely different way.This essay is around the ways that women in general are portrayed and perceived in these three stories, as well as touching on the characters of the individual women in these tales. The Millers Tale is wholeness of the stories from the Canterbury Tales series, all written in poetic form, by Geoffrey Chaucer. These tales in the series are all told by different pilgrims, who are also fictional, so this uses a story-within-a-story literary device. Their tales are no tify apart of a contest to entertain each other(a) on their excursion from Southwark to Canterbury Cathedral.In The Millers Tale, it is the millers turn to tell a tale, and he tells the story of a devious young disciple called Nicholas, who is attracted to the much younger wife of a work, his neighbour, and p holes a cunning devise to sleep with her. He does this by telling the dim and simple carpenter that a flood is coming, and that he must tie some tubs to the ceiling of his home for the three of them in order to keep them safe. Whilst the carpenter is forth at work on these orders, Nicholas takes the carpenters wife Alison to a lower place and manages to seduce her until she actually(prenominal) willingly has sex with him.Alison from The Millers Tale is eighteen yrs old, and described as passionate and highly attractive. Her obedience in marriage to her husband is very questionable when she allows herself to be slowly taken in by this other man, her neighbour, and c ommits adultery with him without much parcel out for her own husband. Near the beginning of the Millers Tale, there is a clear, physical description of Alison, existence a lively adult female who index want to engage an affair.For she is wilde and yonge, meaning that her behaviour is alternatively uncontrolled, and her older husband is jealous and possessive of her. The miller describes her as having a body colleague and smal as a weasels, meaning that she has an attractive slim figure, and that suggests that she is also a very wily character just desire a weasel. Alison is also vain and very concerned round her appearance. She is egoistic and business organisations more about herself than of other people, and she does not purge think much of all the men that take a strong liking to her.She has established herself as a not at all a alikeable character in this story. The fact that she sleeps with Nicholas right in her very own marital home, whilst her own husband is jus t upstairs at work at the very same time, must show how very daring she is, because he could have easily come downstairs and catch them in the act. But it could also mean that she does not actually really mind or care much about the carpenters feelings or whether he hit the hays that she is being unfaithful to him or not.We feel some sympathy for the carpenter, who is being conned like this by two people, as well as being cheated on by his wife and having to bear the shameful title of a meander. Alison is certainly one to take risks in exchange for her own selfish internal desires, vent a unclutterst the female stereotypes of the time by being malcontent and free-spirited and instead of being faithful and modest like a woman should be in her time. Alison from The Millers Tale is a lot like Abigail Williams from The Crucible.They are similar ages, and are both selfish and sexually immoral women who both have illicit sexual affairs and go against societal and moral rules that are expected of them for their own personal gain and pleasure. Also, neither Alison nor Abigail show any shred of remorse for their sinful actions. Where Alison goes nookie her albeit dim husbands back to sleep with her neighbour Nicholas, she is in turn fulfilling his desiring lustful plan. Sex outside of marriage was very ill-treat in her time, let alone committing adultery.Alison might have just married the carpenter for the sake of security, since he is described in the story as a rich gnof, but obviously smokenot control her extramarital sexual urges and is very open to acting on them whenever the chance arises. Seventeen year old Abigail betrays her position as a house servant in the admonishers home by having an affair with basin Proctor whilst he is still married to his kind wife Elizabeth, who happens to be ill at the time the affair occurs.However, there is much more to Abigail than involvements in adultery, as this leads to her seemingly falling in love and becoming pr eoccupy with commode Proctor. She says to him in Act One before the trials I know how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like a stallion whenever I come near Its she put me out, you cannot pretend it were you. I byword your face when she put me out, and you loved me then and you do now.Abigail has sternly formed an impression that John is just as infatuated with her and she is with him, even though he constantly denies it and tells her she is speaking a wild subject. So at the very start of the play, she is casting a go to kill Elizabeth so that she can be out of the way for herself and John to be together, as she believes that Elizabeth is the only person in her way of having John. We can sympathise a little with Abigail, as we know she has had a very troubled past. She is an orphan, who had watched both her parents being viciously murdered by Indians one night a long time ago.She reveals this in Act One, subsequently ordering the girls to lie about their acti vities in the woods, she viciously threatens to get them in the night, and in her own words says you know I can do it I saw Indians smash my dear parents heads on the pillow near to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down . This traumatic event that was imposed upon her at such a young age does provide some explanation and understanding as to why her personality seems rather unstable, and why she acts so brutally towards other people.On the other hand, we dont really know anything about Alisons past, so we assume she is just a nasty sly character and though her crimes are not as dire as Abigails, we do not really have the evidence to feel as much sympathy for her behaviour. Though I think we can like Alison to some extent, as even though we condemn her behaviour, the men in her story are not as admirable as John Proctor so maybe her behaviour does not seem so bad.She even has the advantage of being secure in a marriage, contrary Abigail who is an unmarried orphan living with her uncle. The presentation of Abigail in The Crucible is rather dark and frightening, a good example of this being at the dally scene, where she is deliberately causing hysteria by throwing around accusations of witchcraft, and even going as far as pretending to be bewitched by Mary, and getting all the other girls to make believe the very same thing and repeat Abigails exact chants and actions.