From the standpoint of exemplary morality the Clerk's Tale can easily offend ordinary “prudence.” The tale is emphatically a problem exemplum in which the most pressing practical question – for medievalists and medievals – is what to do with Griselda's voluntary submission to the inhuman demands of Walter. What is it good to do with her example? Does Griselda epitomize wifely perfection in acting as she does; does she represent a spiritual ideal to which readers should aspire without acting as she does; or is she morally repugnant for doing what she does? At what level of generality or specificity, ultimately, are readers to take the example? The question is just as well put in terms of whether to take the letter or spirit of the tale, but in any event it is difficult to tell whether Chaucer hasn't positively impeached the Clerk's morality, whatever register it occupies, making a mockery of exemplary morality.

Such are the questions which constellate around the tale as if they were subject to simultaneous attraction and repulsion. The Clerk, however, would attempt to provide a center of gravity by referring his audience to a general morality –