The Canterbury Tales: The Reeve's Tale Characters

John and Aleyn are two clerks (students) from a college in Canterbury that has its wheat ground into flour at Symkyn's mill. When Symkyn takes advantage of the college manciple's illness to cheat t...

The miller, Symkyn, is the type of guy who hangs around bars looking for a fight, which is probably what the narrator means when he calls him a "market-betere" (82). He's always ready should the op...

At the beginning of "The Reeve's Tale," we meet Symkyn and his whole family, which includes his twenty-year-old daughter, Malyne. For much of the tale, all we really know about Malyne concerns her...

Symkyn's wife is the illegitimate daughter of the town parson. Because she was raised in a nunnery, possibly with the daughters of noble families, and perhaps because she has some upper-class famil...