Geoffrey Chaucer, through his writing of The Canterbury Tales, gives us (the audience) the best known contemporary picture of 14th century life. Chaucer chose to write The Canterbury Tales as a frame story. The outer frame is a story of pilgrims who are going on a “holy” pilgrimage to The Shrine of Beckett at Canterbury, and the inner frames consist of tales told by the individual pilgrims. In the inner tales Chaucer depicts the characterization …showed first 75 words of 864 total…

…showed last 75 words of 864 total…Wife of Bath’s argument, and the Wife’s argument was part of Chaucer’s argument. Strangely, these three arguments make their own little frame story. So the Hag’s argument ties into or parallels The Canterbury Tales as a whole. The ironic pilgrimage, women and marriage, and poverty are all themes of argument used to persuade an audience to revaluate and redefine the conventions of society that would allow convention to represent new meaning.