The moral compass of humanity has always piqued the interest of authors. The Middle Ages were a time of immoral behavior, corrupt religious officials, and disregard for marital vows. Geoffrey Chaucer used The Canterbury Tales to explore his personal view of this dark period. In particular, he designed "The Wife of Bath's Tale", "The Prioress's Tale" and "The Sailor's Tale" to depict corrupt society, using women in each of them to make his point of view. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts women as shameless and complicit to suggest the moral corruption of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages was a time when women were expected to be paragons of virtue, but they acted contrary to these beliefs. As young women, they were expected to strive for perfection and protect their virginity (Bardsley 96-97). In reality, women were often free in their virtues and, according to François and Joseph Gies, "the chastity of women was eternally suspect in the eyes of the canonists, who perceived them as always eager for sexual gratification." Women were given mixed messages when they were told that they were sources of evil, but they were also told that they had to embody the model of Mary (Bardsley 172). In modeling Mary, women were to be virtuous and holy and not selfish. However, women were far from this model of Mary and they received little respect from men. Men dominated women and never escaped male control. As girls, their fathers controlled them, and later in life, they were submissive to their husbands (McLean and Singman 24). For this reason, women were considered scandalous if they attempted to obtain power, money or land. Chaucer is an example of this in “The Wife of Bath's Tale”. Living in a predominantly male society, the wife...... middle of paper...... Harper Perennial, 1978. 52-53, 58-59. Print.Hallissy, Margaret. A Companion to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. 225-235. Print.McLean, Will and Singman, Jeffrey L. Daily Life in Chaucer's England. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. Print. O'Brien, Timothy D. "Seductive Violence and Three Chaucerian Women." » Collegiate Literature 28.2 (2001): 178. Literary Resource Center. Internet. October 17, 2011. Rossignol, Rosalyn. Chaucer: A literary reference to his life and work. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2007. 68, 70-71, 77-78. Print.Saur, Michelle M. “Miller’s Tale.” Bloom's How to Write about Geoffrey Chaucer. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010. 98-99, 118-129. Print. “The Prologue and Tale of the Wife of Bath.” » Poetic criticism. Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Flight. 58. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Information Resource Center. Internet. October 25. 2011.