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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
to Regard the Merchant's tale simply as a conventional piece of anti-feminist literature, exemplifying the faithlessness of married women, is to overlook the Merchant's simultaneous concern with the role of the husband in matrimony and with his joint responsibility for the success or failure of his marriage. That responsibility is brought out in the course of the argument which takes place between January and his brethren when the old knight announces his intention of wedding a young girl. The debate emphasizes the folly of the proposed step, as much through the sycophantic approval of Placebo as through the objective and wise warnings of Justinus. But it is more than a question of folly. The Merchant draws attention to the knight's lechery, his indifference to a young woman's feelings, and his jealousy; and these weaknesses are stressed as the counterparts to May's wantonness, her indifference to January's feelings, and her infidelity. If May does wrong in breaking her marriage vows, January is also at fault in marrying for completely selfish reasons; and from the medieval theological standpoint, he is clearly wrong in arguing (E 1836–41) that in wedlock his lechery is not sinful.
1 For an earlier statement of this viewpoint, see C. Hugh Holman, “Courtly Love in the Merchant's and the Franklin's Tales,” ELH, xviii (1951), 252: “January is a perversion of marriage, whose motives are sensual and who converts what his era considered a venial sin into a deadly one.” R. M. Lumiansky, Of Sondry Folk (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1955), pp. 160–163, similarly draws attention to January's erroneous views, and he points out (p. 172) that the marriage between January and May “is doomed from the start because of January's sinful false reasoning.” The problem involved here is referred to forthrightly in the last of the Canterbury Tales: commenting on the physical union of husband and wife, the Parson insists that “if they assemble oonly for amorous love and … for to accomplice thilke brennynge delit, they rekke never how ofte, soothly it is deedly synne; and yet, with sorwe, somme folk wol peynen hem moore to doon than to hire appetit suffiseth” (I 942).
2 The book of “wikked wyves” which Jankyn read aloud to the Wife of Bath was a typical anthology of anti-feminist materials; and as Dame Alisoun recalls, her young husband began his readings with a denunciation
Quotations from Chaucer are from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1957).
3 “The Non-Dramatic Disunity of the Merchant's Tale,” PMLA, lxxviii (1963), 298.
4 The description of the comparable garden, in the Franklin's tale—the “verray paradys” of Arveragus (F 901–917)—forms one of the numerous structural links between the two tales and helps to underscore the antithetical parallelism of their plots.—For a discussion of the Merchant's reference to Paradise and of the controlling images in his tale (the garden, the blindness, and the tree), see Charles A. Owen, Jr., “The Crucial Passages in Five of the Canterbury Tales: A Study in Irony and Symbol,” JEGP, lii (1953), 297–301.
5 As is pointed out by Mortimer J. Donovan, “The Image of Pluto and Proserpine in the Merchant's Tale,” PQ, xxxvi (1957), 55, January's garden-paradise is depicted in terms reminiscent of Parnassus: the well, the green laurel, the luxuriance of the place, the opportunity it presents for the pursuit of pleasure—these features, traditionally associated with the abode of the gods on earth, make the garden “a suitable setting for the Roman deities Pluto and Proserpine.”
6 Chaucer's motives in metamorphosing the underworld deities of ancient legend into the king and queen of fayerye (E 2039, 2227) have been variously interpreted. J. S. P. Tatlock, “Chaucer's Merchant's Tale,” MP, xxxiii (1935–36), 372, asserts that in making the change, Chaucer was “following the practice of such popularizers of the classic as the early English lay and ballad of Orfeo” and that he was doing so “to preserve a modern tone.” According to Laura H. Loomis, “Chaucer and the Breton Lays of the Auchinleck MS,” SP, xxxviii (1941), 27–28, it would be rash to assume that Chaucer made the transformation without reference to Sir Orfeo. In the ballad, the king and queen of the fairies are unnamed; but, as Mrs. Loomis points out, they “rule that kingdom of the dead which is the dominion peculiar to Pluto and Proserpina alone.” And G. G. Sedgewick, “The Structure of The Merchant's Tale” University of Toronto Quarterly, xvii (1947–48), 342–343, suggests that in turning the rulers of Hades into “the little mean dark people of folk-lore,” Chaucer was deliberately pricking bubbles, reducing Pluto and Proserpina to “deities fit to witness and direct another case of the erotic blindness of men and the ‘passyng crueltee’ of women.”
7 The appearance in the Merchant's tale of dancing fayerye recalls the similar motif in the Wife of Bath's tale and draws attention to the connections between the Merchant's and the Wife's contributions to the “marriage debate”—connections not unlike those between the Merchant's and the Franklin's tales. There is again an antithetical parallelism of general theme (in the Wife's tale an unattractive elderly woman insists on marrying a young knight), and there are many echoes of ideas and phrases: the identical disclaimer of any desire for celibacy (D 112, E 1456), the reference to Theophrastus and his opinions on marriage (D 235–292, 671; E 1294–95, 1310), the concept of a wife as her husband's purgatory on earth (D 486–490, E 1668–73), the motif of dancing led by the fairy queen (D 857–861, 989–996; E 2038–41), the description of a woman whose swelling emotions prevent her from keeping silence (D 961–968, E 2305–10), and numerous proverbial sayings or metaphorical expressions (e.g., D 44c, E 1427; D 456, E 1848; D 491–492, E 1553; D 602, E 1847).
8 Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed. W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1941), pp. 341–356. For a detailed listing of the published analogues, see Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1955–58), iv, 403 (K. 1518).
9 In a Latin version by Adolphus of Vienna (Fables, written about 1315), the blind husband, hearing a noise in the pear tree, complains to his Creator, whereupon God restores his sight; the wife excuses herself simply by saying she had been informed that the only way to cure him was to take a lover in this fashion, and the husband accepts her word. In an early fourteenth-century Italian novellino, it is St. Peter who appeals to God to restore the husband's sight, and God grants the request after pointing out that the wife will find a way of excusing herself. In a German tale of c. 1450, “Von einem Plinten,” Christ and St. Peter pass by the tree, and the saint expresses the wish that the blind husband might be able to see the wrong being done to him. When Christ replies that the wife would in any case find an excuse, St. Peter wonders what answer she could possibly give and adds that he would like to hear it. After the husband has recovered his sight, the wife swiftly explains that it was her love-making that had worked the cure, and the grateful husband promises to reward her. In a similar version, extant in Low German, it is again St. Peter who appeals to God to restore the husband's vision; the wife then alleges that she had tried seventy-two different cures before finally discovering the one that was successful. There is also a late Portuguese tale about a blind father, his unmarried daughter, and her lover. Here, too, it is Christ and St. Peter who are the observers; and after God has cured the old man, the lovers are married.
10 In the Latin version found in Steinhöwel's collection of fables (Aesop, 1476–77), the blind husband utters his complaint to Jove. The wife extricates herself from the quandary with the lie that Mercury had visited her in a dream, instructing her to embrace her lover in a pear tree; the husband believes this and rewards her. In the French version by Macho (Esope, 1480), the husband appeals to the gods to give him back his sight, and Jupiter grants the request; in reply to the man's reproaches, the wife avers that Venus had promised to cure his blindness provided that she please her lover.
11 On Chaucer's apparent responsibility for the substitution, see Tatlock, p. 372, and Sedgewick, p. 344.—It is noteworthy that in John Gower's Mirour de l'omme, written before 1381, Pluto (Emperor of Hell) and Proserpina are introduced as distinguished guests at the joyous festivities celebrating the wedding of Siecle to Orguil, the eldest of the seven daughters of Pecché; and these festivities, like those following January's wedding, are also attended by Bacchus and Venus:
The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford, 1899), i, 14, ll. 961–972. Did Chaucer recall this passage when writing his description of January's nuptial feast, and was it the recollection which prompted the introduction of Pluto and Proserpina into his own tale? It is also possible, however, that Chaucer was acquainted with a version of the pear tree story comparable to one of the unpublished Irish analogues (first recorded in the 1930's), in which the intervening supernatural powers are two fairies. If so, it might well be that it was memories of Sir Orfeo which led Chaucer to identify the fairy interveners of the folk tale with the rulers of the underworld.
12 Robert A. Pratt, “Chaucer's Claudian,” Speculum, xxii (1947), 419–423.
13 Claudian, ed. and tr. Maurice Platnauer (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1922), ii, 292–377.
14 The legend of Proserpina, together with that of the Pierides, is found in Metamorphoses v. Chaucer frequently used Ovid as a quarry for narrative materials, and in the Man of Law's prologue (B1 92–93) he refers to both the Pierides and the Metamorphoses.— The legend is retold briefly in Gower's Confessio Amantis, v, 1277–1302 (Complete Works, ii, 437).
15 Pluto can, in fact, be regarded as a mirror-image of January. For an account of the parallels between Chaucer's hero and Claudian's Pluto, see Donovan, pp. 50–53. January and May, Donovan concludes, “show marked affinities to their respective divine counterparts.”
16 In view of the many links between the Merchant's tale and the Wife of Bath's prologue and tale (see above, n. 7), it is perhaps pertinent to mention that the motif of rape is also anticipated in the Wife's tale, where it is the knight's ravishing of a maiden which sets the action in motion (D 885–888).
17 Donovan, p. 52. Compare also E. T. Donaldson, ed. Chaucer's Poetry: An Anthology for the Modern Reader (New York, 1958), p. 922: “As a girl Proserpina was ravished by Pluto, whose gloomy kingdom of the underworld she was henceforth compelled to share for half the year. May's hell was little better. Nothing, of course, excuses her conduct toward her ravisher …”
18 Chaucer's habitual care in the use of literary allusions is well illustrated in the Merchant's tale by his ironical mention of various Old Testament heroines as examples of model wives (e.g., E 1362–74, 1704–05); in reality, as is noted by Tatlock, p. 376, these women “were all deceivers of their men.”
19 For detailed discussions of the evidence bearing on the content of the lost Tale of Wade and the significance of the hero's boat, see R. W. Chambers, Widsith (Cambridge, England, 1912), pp. 95–103, and the forthcoming article, Karl P. Wentersdorf, “Chaucer and the Lost Tale of Wade,” to be published in JECP.
20 Kudrun, ed. Karl Bartsch (Leipzig, 1867), Âventiuren v-viii.
21 Jordan, p. 295.
