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Coppee, Henry

"English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Designed as a Manual of Instruction"



HIS PRESENTATIONS OF WOMAN.--Woman seems to find hard judgment in this
work. Madame Eglantine, the prioress, with her nasal chanting, her
English-French, "of Stratford-atte-Bow," her legion of smalle houndes, and
her affected manner, is not a flattering type of woman's character, and
yet no doubt she is a faithful portrait of many a prioress of that day.
And the wife of Bath is still more repulsive. She tells us, in the
prologue to her story, that she has buried five husbands, and, buxom
still, is looking for the sixth. She is a jolly _compagnon de voyage_, had
been thrice to Jerusalem, and is now seeking assoil for some little sins
at Canterbury. And the host's wife, as he describes her, is not by any
means a pleasant helpmeet for an honest man. The host is out of her
hearing, or he would not be so ready to tell her character:
I have a wif, tho' that she poore be;
But of her tongue a blabbing shrew is she,
And yet she hath a heap of vices mo.
She is always getting into trouble with the neighbors; and when he will
not fight in her quarrel, she cries,
.


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