how does don john in the shipman's tale relate to the middle age english life

This follows the Wife of bath's tale. It is simple and describes the close links between sex, money and women in the middle Ages. I suppose the connection works today as well but I won't get into that! The whole idea of sex for personal gain, even amongst the married, was common. A woman’s “tail” becomes an endless credit note: she will pay her husband, she says, in bed. Women, in this tale, and in the Wife of Bath’s are playing by patriarchal rules in order to beat the men; and the fact that they do beat the men might have been an uncomfortable shift of powers to many of Chaucer’s medieval readers.