Question

Lines 1–28: What lines from this passage indicate the relationship between the Wife of Bath and the Friar?

Answer 1

From the Friar's Tale, it is easily inferred that the Friar has no respect for Summoners and holds them in disdain. The Friar's Tale seems to exist for a single purpose: the humiliation and degradation of members of a certain profession. The Tale begins by exposing the means by which summoners blackmail and extort persons, but does not attack the church system that allows this to happen, but rather the men who represent this system and exploit these workings of the church. Yet the Friar's Tale surpasses the Reeve's Tale in its vitriol for its main character. While Symkyn, the immoral miller of the Reeve's tale, is hardly an exemplary character and exists only for ridicule, he at least is given a proper name that separates him from his profession. The main character of the Friar's Tale is an impersonal representation of all summoners and the fate they deserve.