The Wife of Bath and the Pardoner are the two pilgrims most frequently chosen for character analysis assignments, and for good reason. Both are richly developed, both openly reveal their own motivations in extended first-person prologues, and both invite genuine interpretive debate about how sincerely Chaucer wants readers to take them. Grading essays about these two figures well requires understanding what makes each character distinct in terms of the analytical challenge they present.

Essays on the Wife of Bath tend to succeed or fail based on whether students engage with her rhetorical skill as a deliberate authorial choice. She is constructing an argument using scripture, personal experience, and rhetorical technique, and students who treat her simply as a loud or comic figure without acknowledging the sophistication of her argument are missing a major part of the character's design.

Essays on the Pardoner tend to succeed or fail based on whether students grapple with his self-awareness. He openly admits his own corruption before telling his tale, which means the interesting analytical question is not whether he is corrupt but why Chaucer has him confess so openly. Students who miss this confession often write essays that simply restate his hypocrisy without engaging with its stranger implications.

Both characters also invite productive discussion of the gap between a pilgrim's stated identity and their actual behavior, though the gap functions differently for each. The Wife claims authority through experience while the narrative shows her manipulating that experience strategically, while the Pardoner claims moral purpose while openly admitting mercenary motives.

Setting Rubric Criteria That Work for Both Characters

If your assignment allows students to choose between these two figures, the rubric needs criteria general enough to apply fairly to both while still rewarding depth specific to each character's particular complexity. A criterion focused on "engagement with the character's self-presentation versus their actual behavior" works well across both choices without favoring one over the other.

• Check whether the essay engages with the character's own stated self-justification
• Look for evidence drawn from both the prologue and the tale, not just one
• Reward analysis of rhetorical or persuasive technique specific to the chosen character
• Watch for oversimplified moral judgment that skips interpretive complexity
• Confirm the essay distinguishes the character's voice from Chaucer's own narrative stance

Common Weaknesses Specific to Each Character

For the Wife of Bath, the most common weakness is an essay that either fully celebrates her as a feminist icon or fully dismisses her as a comic stereotype, without acknowledging that both readings have textual support and the tension between them is the point. For the Pardoner, the most common weakness is restating his hypocrisy repeatedly across several paragraphs without ever moving toward why that hypocrisy matters for the tale's meaning.

Naming these specific patterns in your feedback, rather than a generic note about needing more depth, helps students understand exactly where their analysis stalled and gives them a concrete direction for revision.

Balancing Fairness When Students Choose Different Subjects

Some students will find the Pardoner easier to write about because his hypocrisy is more explicitly stated in the text, while the Wife of Bath requires tracking a longer and more argumentative prologue. Being aware of this difference in difficulty helps you calibrate fairly rather than assuming a shorter, more focused Pardoner essay is automatically less sophisticated than a longer Wife of Bath essay.

If you notice a pattern of students avoiding the Wife of Bath because her material feels more demanding, a brief in-class discussion highlighting her rhetorical strategies before the essay is assigned can level the playing field between the two options.

Feedback That Pushes Both Types of Essays Further

For strong essays on either character, feedback that asks the student to consider how a different pilgrim in the collection might react to this character can push their thinking into new territory. This kind of extension question works well as a margin comment on essays that have already met the core requirements and are ready for a more sophisticated challenge.

For weaker essays on either character, returning to the specific line where the character reveals their own motivation and asking the student to unpack it more slowly tends to be more productive than a general note about needing deeper analysis.