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Infidelity.
To begin, Chaucer's examples of infidelity, or more specific, his use of characters who do not submit to the doctrine that reserves sex for marriage, exemplify his characterization of the nature of sex. For example, the mere surplus of sexually deviant characters emphasizes in itself the absurdity of society's antithetical views of sex. This abandonment of sex's sacredness appears in both male and female characters. Typically, in the extramarital affairs in The Canterbury Tales "the woman is invariably the strayer" (Haskell, 9). Obvious examples of this include the wives in both the Miller and Reeve's tales. Men are continuously made "cokwolds" by their wives" failures to uphold the tradition of monogamy. However, the men also represent deviations from the ideals of the ideals of the romance genre and the values of Augustine. Recurrently, the male clergy members define lechery and sexual aggressiveness (Haskell 10). For example, the monk in the prologue strays from Augustinian ideals in multiple aspects. Instead living of a life of prayer and service, the monk values money, hunting and time spent outside his monastery. This abandonment of ideals extents to sex in that the monk is also marked by a balding head, a medieval symbol of lust and promiscuity. Furthermore, the wife in the Reeve's tale is the daughter of the town's parson, a man respected for chastity; this again shows the deflection of medieval standards for the clergy. Even the friar from the prologue "hadde maad ful many a marriage of yonge women at his owne cost." Chaucer hints at the seductive, lecherous side of the supposedly or ideally abstinent friar. Because those forbidden from sex and those forbidden from polygamous sex repeatedly ignore these social parameters, Chaucer renounces, however slyly, the importance that both the romantic and dogmatic philosophies of sex portray.
To continue with this derailment of the significance of sex through infidelity, we must also examine the inclusion of fabliau tales in The Canterbury Tales.
