The Merchant and The Wife of Baths Tales - Essay Example

? Canterbury Tales Canterbury tales: An analysis of The Merchant and The Wife of Bath’s Tales. Introduction The wife of Bath’s tale and the Merchant’s tale are two tales among the tales classified under the marriage group tales of the Canterbury tales. These two tales are about two different people with a completely different perspectives and moral standings in life. Some consider themselves perfect yet they are far from it while others try to be perfect and it only serves to drive them further from perfection. These tales address issues that are quite common in our current societies but people rarely notice. The merchant is an old man who is in search of love and at the same time does not want to admit that love is important in a marriage. On the other hand, the wife of Bath’s tale is about a woman who values the traditional values of love and courtship. She is obviously a very confident person and outspoken as well; she has been married five times and she seems well learned and very religious for she often quotes the scriptures. She is not amused by the trouble people go to in order to get marriage partners and stay in marriages. This paper will address different themes as they are depicted in both tales. According to her, marriage is some sort of slavery for women and she believes that experience is always the best teacher one could ever get. Chivalry Reading the wife of Bath’s tale one has to admire the wife’s chivalry; she often condemns others for what they do wrong and yet her morals are not that upright. She has been married five times and she could not mind a sixth one yet she talks about men like they are some sort of tool she owns trying to control them. She justifies her five marriages in her prologue saying that when God created man he told them to go and multiply. “But well I know and say, and do not lie, God bade us to increase and multiply; that worthy text can I well understand.” (Line 27-30) She is even amused by the coincidence of her story and that of the Samaritan woman who Jesus told that she had five men who were not her husbands. Her chivalry is so obvious when she criticizes King Solomon in another bid to justify her marriage to five husbands. She says… “Why should men speak of it reproachfully? Lo, there’s the wise old king Dan Solomon; I understand he had more wives than one; And now would God it were permitted me to be refreshed one half as oft as he! Which gift of God he had for all his wives! No man such that in his world lives. God knows, this noble king, it strikes my wit, Praise God that I have wedded five!”(Line 35-40) Her prologue seems to be an attempt to justify her actions and convince the readers that she is a good person. She rarely tries to hide the fact that she has made mistakes in her past and she is willing to admit that and move on without making any apologies. Medieval chivalry is not only depicted by the wife in her prologue but the knight in that tale is the most chivalrous person. His chivalrous character starts to show when he rapes the girl without giving it a second thought. He does not care what will happen when the story about the rape is out. His thrive is only for the moment and does not pause to give a thought to the consequences of his actions. He also promises the old hag a favour when he does not know what this favour will be (The Wife of Bath’s tale). In line (1060-61) she says “ Before the court, now, pray I now, you sir knight; Said she, that you may take me for your wife. ” His only thought at the moment he made the promise was to get the right answer that he can tell the queen because his time was up and he needed salvation from the impending danger. Courtly Love and marriage In both Wife of Bath’s tale and the Merchant tale, there is a lot of contrast on their view towards marriage and courtly love. Courtly love is basically characterised by the medieval times way of arranging marriages for children without the chance to have them fall in love and choose who to marry. An old man named January decides that it was time he got married and talked to his brothers about getting him a noble wife who was younger than him for the sole purpose of producing an heir and lawful sexual satisfaction. January himself was not a very faithful man and his brothers bring to him a young wife named May who later falls in love with another man who works at January’s home. When the gods strike January with blindness, he changes his behaviour and turns to a very loving and romantic man only that it is too late for him because May has already fallen in love with Damian and end up making love at the garden that January had created for May. This is like a slap on the face to January who despite his initial actions, he had fallen in love with May and now was about to lose her to Damian. May’s act of betrayal to her husband angers the gods who decide to restore January’s sight so that he could no longer be fooled by his young and adulterous wife who was slowly gaining control and power over him. In a bid to save May, Proserpina decides that since January will have his sight restored, it was only fair that May should also be given some sort of a way out of the situation. Being a goddess, she gives May the ability to talk herself out of any situation including this one where her husband witnessed her betrayal with Damian. May has completely triumphed over January and despite the fact that he was earlier portrayed as a very independent and strong man, she is dominated by the young and cunning May. Merchant’s tale portrays women as morally weak and adulterous while men are portrayed as weak and blindsided in most of their decisions. Since time immemorial people have always experienced and dealt with love but differently. There should be no rules on love but people have always managed to lay down the rules of engagement even in such simple and pure actions as being loved by someone and deciding whether to give your love back in return. The medieval times brought about a very different way of showing love between couples and people in love or intended to get married (Lewis, 1959).Unlike the current times when the people getting married had a say in choosing their partners, courtly love was a decision made by those who yielded the power. There was no relationship that preceded the marriage affair and people believed that love will always grow with time once one gets to know their spouses. In wife of Bath’s tale, much discussion is focused on the issue of marriage and whether is right or wrong to be married to more than one man or woman as God intended in the beginning (Lewis, 1959). The wife acknowledges that she has been married five times and she could not mind a sixth husband if she found someone. “Of husbands at church door had have five; For men so many times have wedded me (Line 6 & 7)” She dislikes the way people judge her and look at her like a loose woman when many of them are not virgins or were not virgins at the time they got married. She is a sensible woman who does not bother to hide behind the mask of ignorance to excuse her behaviour. In line 37, she talks of how she wishes she just could have half the number of husbands as Solomon had wives. “And now God would it permitted me; To be refreshed one half as oft as he! ” (Line 37 & 38. )Despite (line 44) being glad that she only had five husbands because it was wrong to be married so many times “Praise be to God I have wedded only five”. In line 136, she brings to focus another important problem in marriages; sex. She states how she makes her husbands buy her good things and treat her nicely in exchange for sex and if they failed to do as she wishes, she would withhold sex from them “That man shall pay his debt to his wife”. This is true in so many ways even in our current society where the only punishment women could impose on their husbands was and still is withdrawing sex. She rationalises her carefree attitude on sex by stating that the sex organs are different because God did not intend for them to be only for urinating. She therefore figures that sex is alright although she wishes that she would have had sex more often had she been married to nicer men: Out of her five husbands, three were not good to her but two were. Out of these, the first four were very rich and older than her and yet she finally married a man who was very young; actually 20 years young than her and used to beat her. Eventually she realises that dominance was the only thing that could save her from husband number five. Telling the story of the Knight during the years of King Arthur, she manages to dominate her husband and is happy that she has finally been able to get the one thing that almost all women yearn for. Through line 152-56 the wife reasons that God does not demand virginity and if it were so, he would not have created man and woman so differently. She views courtly love as pretence that a lot of people find necessary to indulge in. “ I bear no malice to virginity” (Line 148) For starters she is a mused that a knight in the king’s palace could defile a young girl going against all the chivalry and setting aside any sense of honour. She refers to the knight’s actions as an act with no sense of code of conduct. According to her, such acts could be avoided if all women could gain the kind of power she had over her last husband. If all women learnt how to keep their men on a tight leash there would be no such acts committed against women. Men of noble blood may fail to act nobly according to her, (1152-58); nobility is something that could not be acquired by just being born into nobility. “ From this you see that true gentility; Is not allied to wealth a man may own ” Since being noble meant that one could not just marry anyone; social class was important to courtly love and the knight had every right to be hesitant in marrying the old hag although he had made a promise to do so if she helped him (1073-75). However, he is compelled to marry her because he had given her his word and there was no way he was going to let his word be spoken in vain. The question lingers on the two decisions. Is it important to be a man of his word or was courtly love more important? What did the knight loose by sacrificing courtly love and marrying someone who did not fit his social status? Or did he have more to lose by not keeping his own word and obeying the rules that applied to courtly love? Courtly love was like a court in the real sense: it was a situation where the involved parties had nothing to do with the decision on their love life. According to the author of the book, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Patterson, 1981), it is important to note that unlike the present society where men are viewed as the loose canons in a lot of marriages, women in these two tales were actually the ones who went outside the vows of marriages betraying their husbands and marriages. When May meets Damian she does not pause to think that she is married. She encourages him and finally commits adultery with him infront of her husband who witnesses everything only to be convinced that his sight had played a trick o him. The old man January prefers marrying a virgin someone who is younger than him. Whether it was for purposes of control or because the old man was trying to have an heir is not clear. The irony is however when the wife of Bath’s does not really get why people are so obsessed with virginity and yet it was a necessity according to her. Casual sex to her is okay as long as it is an act of two willing adults. Her problem is with people like the nameless knight who take advantage of unwilling women. The merchant sounds like an old man who does not like women and their conniving ways. He pities the old man January who seem to him under the spell and total hold of May and there is no escape for men like him. Women are portrayed as possessions that men should have just like any other item. It is beyond him how January turn to a bleeding heart eventually allowing May to be involved with unimportant people like Damian and taking her back even after witnessing her act of betrayal. There seems to be a clash in Chaucer’s two tales because both sexes are given an upper hand; the women in the Wife of Bath’s tale and the men in the Merchant’s tale. This analysis will not be complete without a look at the several critics that have been written on the two tales and especially the merchant’s tale. For instance in his article, Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale: another swing of the pendulum (Harrington, 1971) writes that the tale is more written in the sense of a comedy and not like a serious piece of writing that is worthy reading. He goes on to say that the tale was written in a very savage and cynical satire and does not pay attention to the issues that it set out to discuss in the beginning (25). The lack of a prologue in the merchant’s tale was also another reason why Harrington finds fault in this tale. Unlike the other Canterbury tales which are mostly defined by their prologues, the merchant tale is a poor attempt by the merchant to tell a story about another old man who pursues his pleasures and engages in actions that can hardly be justified for a man his age (27). Another vocal critic of the Merchant’s tale is (Lee Patterson, 1981) In his book Chaucer and the Subject of History. He writes that the Merchant’s tale is a poor attempt by Chaucer to portray the merchant as a chivalrous man who values family life and marriage (337). He questions the valence of the tale and wonders why everything in it is portrayed as mean, foolish or ugly. He hopes that the writer should be more positive depicting a people full of hope and love to conquer the future. Patterson’s problem with the merchant is not that he does not believe in the future; his problem is that the merchant seems to want to do both at the same time. He wants to believe and yet he is not ready to commit to any kind of belief. He is man sitting on the fence unable to make a decision on whether he should believe in love or not. Conclusion. Despite the critics and the obvious flaws made by the author of these tales or the narrators in the bid to tell us of their life’s story: these two tales remain an epic in the hearts of lovers of literature due to the mastery of their literature and medieval language. Though people may dislike the character of Bath’s wife, she is the person we would all love to hate for she represents many a women of today’s world. She tells the truth without hiding her mistakes and admits that she is human and therefore allowed to make mistakes. Her honesty is admirable. REFERENCES Chaucer Geoffrey. "The Canterbury Tales." The Riverside Chaucer.3 'de d. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Baltimore: Penguin Books,1952. Harrington, Norman. Merchant’s Tale another swing of the pendulum. Available on http://www.jstor.org/pss/460998 Holman, H . "courtly Love in the Merchant's and Franklin's Tales." ELH, vol. 18,N o.4( Dec.,1 951)2, 41-2529. Available on http://www.jstor.org/pss/460998 "The Knight's Tale."Chaucer Trans Coghill40-100. "The Merchant's Tale."C hauceIr5 4-168 "The Wife of Bath's Prologue.” Chauce1r 05-116. "The Wife of Bath's Tale." Chaucer 116-122. Lewis, C .S. The Allegro of Love. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Patterson, Lee. Chaucer and the Subject of History: Cambridge: Mass, 1981. Read More