Like the shipman's tale, the Merchant's Tale tells the story of a married woman who secures money from her husband and sex from an illicit lover by manipulating the roles of a medieval wife, and who escapes punishment through a quick excuse that plays on another wifely role. However, despite these similarities in plot, the reader is more likely to be conscious of the differences between the two Tales. In this chapter I consider how May, like the merchant's wife in the Shipman's Tale, subverts the wife's roles to get what she wants. Comparing their approaches brings out the differences between the two wives' situations and suggests why their behaviour has such a different impact on the reader. I place May and January's marriage in the context of contemporary ideals and practice in gentry marriages, showing how few of the conventional wife's roles January expects May to perform (something she has in common with Griselda in the Clerk's Tale), and go on to describe the areas of freedom customarily allowed to wives of her social class that she reclaims in order to get what she wants. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the financial arrangements in their marriage. This will give us a better idea of whether January and May would really have struck Chaucer's original audience as ‘gross deviants’.

Many of the differences between the Merchant's and Shipman's Tales are immediately apparent.