The prioress was called Madame Eglantine which is the name of a flower when she should have been named after a saint or something or someone out of the bible. She had a beautiful face and she smiled simply and modestly. She had a posh accent and could speak fluent, elegant French. She had impeccable table manners, she never let anything fall from her lips and she neither did she dip her fingers too deep into the sauce. She would shed a tear if she saw a mouse caught in a trap. She had a few dogs and she fed them with the finest bread and food. She wept bitterly when one of them died. Her wimple was becoming pleated. Her mouth was small and red. She also wore a rosary with a golden brooch around it. The prioress was very concerned with the way she looks. She should have focused on helping and feeding the poor as that is part of her job than feeding her dogs the finest and most expensive food.
The monk was an outrider. An outrider was permitted to leave the monastery to go about the monastery’s official business in the outside world. Chaucer tells us that he was no ordinary monk and he didn’t wear his uniform, he was a very experienced hunter, selfish and unholy, he didn’t study and ate very fine and large meals. He had many fine horses in his stables for when he went out hunting or riding, he also owned some greyhounds. This definitely is not the humble and caring behaviour that we would normally expect from a monk as it tells us that he enjoys killing God’s creatures as a hobby. Chaucer states ‘what sholde he studie and make him selven-wood, upon a book in his cloystre always to paire, or shynken with his handes and.laboure’. This tells us about the monk’s attitude to his job and studies about God. It implies that he thinks that the churches teachings are old fashioned and he therefore thinks that he doesn’t need to study them. Instead of wearing his monk robes he decides to wear very expensive and fine animal skins and linens. Chaucer writes ‘I seign his sleeves ypurfiled at the hond, with grys and that the fyneste of a lond’. This means that he was wearing a jacket with fine or fur trimmings. This also makes you wonder how he purchased all these fine and expensive clothes and fine food. Monks don’t have a lot of spending money so this could suggest that he was using charity or the church funds to obtain these luxuries, therefore he would be dubbed untrustworthy. However the poem also says ‘a manly man, to been an abbot able’. This suggests that people obviously thought highly of him as he was moving up to a higher position within the church. So to be selected to be an abbot you have to host some services. He was good at his job at times even though he refused to ignore the teachings of the church.
In some ways, Chaucer’s monk and prioress are very alive. They both take a lot of pride in the way that they look and how others perceive of them. They both seem to lavish attention and money on animals in some way. They are both meant to be loyal servants of God and help others that are not as fortunate but instead they feast upon luxuries which are unheard of normally. They both seem unsure of where their priorities lie for example the monk doesn’t study and his hobby is hunting. The prioress feeds her dogs with the finest bread and seems to care more for animals than for humans. The monk is more blatant about the way he feels about the church and his disregard for the rules of the Catholic Church.
What Chaucer is saying through the view of these two abnormal followers of God is that the church don’t focus on the people that volunteer to help others otherwise these two characters would probably not be allowed to follow God under the church. The monk and prioress should be unselfish people caring for everyone in need and helping them in any way possible and should not have any doubts about God and should study hard and follow the church’s principles strictly! But they don’t they worry more about animals and their leisure time also they are concerned about how they look and what they eat.