Ther is a long and large difference
Bitwix Grisildis grete pacience
And of my wyf the passyng crueltee.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Merchant’s Prologue. The Merchant is in an unhappy marriage. He compares the great patience of the Marquis of Saluzzo’s wife Griselda, the character in the Clerk’s Tale, with the extreme cruelty of his own wife. While the Merchant blames his wife for all his problems, he doesn’t give any description of why she is so cruel – so we tend to see him as prejudiced against women.