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Summary and Analysis of The Merchant's Tale
Prologue to the Merchant's Tale: The merchant claims that he knows nothing of long-suffering wives. Rather, if his wife were to marry the devil, she would overmatch even him. The Merchant claims that there is a great difference between Griselde's exceptional obedience and his wife's more common cruelty. The Merchant has been married two months and has loathed every minute of it. The Host asks the Merchant to tell a tale of his horrid wife. AnalysisThe prologues that link the various Canterbury Tales shift effortlessly from ponderous drama to light comedy. The lamentable tale of Griselde gives way to the Host's complaint about his shrewish wife. This prologue further illustrates how each of the characters informs the tale he tells. The travelers largely tell tales that conform to their personal experiences or attitudes, such as the Merchant, whose awful marriage is the occasion for his tale about a difficult wife. In most cases the influence of the narrator on his tale is apparent, but the authorial touch lightly felt. The Merchant's Tale, for example, gains little from the prologue's information that the Merchant is disenchanted with his own marriage. Only a few of these tales exist largely as extensions of the characters who tell them; the Wife of Bath's Tale is the most prominent of these stories. The Merchant's Tale: The Merchant tells a tale of a prosperous knight from Lombardy who had not yet taken a wife. But when this knight, January, had turned sixty, whether out of devotion or dotage, he decided to finally be married. He searched for prospects, now convinced that the married life was a paradise on earth. Yet his brother, Placebo, cited the advice of the scholar Theophrastus, who advised men never to wed, for servants show more diligence and do not claim nearly as much. To this the knight retorted with Biblical stories that state a man without a wife is bent on ruin. These stories cites the creation of Eve for Adam as proof that a wife is man's support, as well as examples of humble and devoted wives. January, wished to have a young wife of no older than thirty, for a young wife would be more pliable, but Placebo warned him that it takes great courage for such an aged man to take a young wife. He warned him of the misery that can come from taking a wife, for she could be shrewish or a drunkard, facts that a husband will not learn until well into the marriage. Despite the common opinion that Placebo has a wonderful wife, he knows what faults she has. They argue about the merits of marriage, with Placebo predicting that January will not please his wife for more than three years, but Placebo eventually assents to January's plan. January finally decided to take a young and pretty wife, foolishly believing that nobody would find fault with his choice. He spoke to Placebo and his friends about his choice, praising his intended wife. January, however, worries that a man who finds perfect happiness on earth as he would with his wife would never find a similar happiness in heaven, for one must choose between one perfect happiness and another. Justinus countered by stating that it is more likely that married men will get to heaven than single men. He muses that marriage might be January's purgatory. January thus married his intended, May, in a joyous ceremony. On their wedding night January, consumed with lust, ravaged his wife. He essentially forced himself on May, believing himself justified because they were now married. However, Damian, January's squire, was infatuated with May. He wrote a love letter to May that he pinned in a silk purse next to his heart. One day Damian was not attending January, and to cover for him the other squires told January that Damian was sick. May and January went to visit Damian, and during this visit Damian slipped May the purse with his love letter. She read it and then tore it up to destroy the evidence. May took pity on Damian and gave him a letter in return. Damian felt better the next day, and groomed himself to look presentable for May. January's house had a garden so magnificent that even he who wrote Romance of the Rose could not describe its beauty, nor could Priapus accurately describe its art. January loved this garden so much that only he was allowed to touch the key to it. In the summer he would go there with May and have sex. January became increasingly possessive of his wife, which caused Damian great grief. May made a double of the key to the garden in warm wax which she gave to Damian. January came to the garden looking for May, wishing to have sex, when Damian covertly entered. Damian hid in a tree. It so happened that at this time Pluto, the king of fairies, and Queen Proserpina were walking in this garden, discussing the injustices that women do to men, yet while one man in a thousand is good, no woman is worthy. He gives as an example Damian, May and January. Damian remained in the pear tree, waiting for January to be finished with his wife. May claimed that she was hungry and wanted a pear. Since January was blind and could not climb the tree, he hoisted her so that she could climb to where Damian was hiding. While she was in the tree, she and Damian had sex. At this point Pluto came upon the three and witnessed this injustice. He restored January's sight. Trying to deny what had happened, she tells him that he must still be blind, for if he truly had sight he would never had seen her having sex with Damian. Foolishly January believed this. Analysis: The structure of the Merchant's Tale is somewhat lopsided. While the Merchant prepares the reader for a story of a villainous wife, he instead begins the tale with an extended dissertation about the benefits and drawbacks of marriage. The debate between January and Placebo is a relatively dry collection of classical and biblical anecdotes, but it serves to frame the comic sex farce to come as a more serious look at marriage. The beginning passages of the tale also serve as a warning against marriage. When the aged January decides to take a wife he is already sixty and rapidly approaching senility. His wish to marry stems from a realization of his own mortality rather than any love for a wife in fact, he decides to marry before he has found a fiancee. The Merchant even indicates that January's life to this point has been fulfilling, leaving dotage as the only reason for him to take a wife. His arguments for marriage therefore appear empty in comparison of those by Placebo. While both Placebo and January can cite literary references to back up their claims for their respective positions, only Placebo has the weight of experience to support his claims against marriage. Furthermore, January holds irrational expectations for his wife. He expects to marry a young and beautiful woman who will care for him, not expecting any ill effects from this arrangement he even foolishly believes that he will be so happy that he may ruin his chances for heaven. The Merchant therefore dooms the marriage of January and May from the outset. Even in their calendar names they are mismatched: the elderly January is in the winter of his existence, while the young May represents the birth and fertility that comes during the spring. The marriage moves the story into a different realm. The literary tone of the story gives way to the conventions of fabliau. Each of the three central characters in the tale fit most of the established conventions for fabliaux, although there are significant adaptations in tone and plot points. January is an aged buffoon oblivious to the sexual cravings of his young wife. May is a youthful wife, lusty and crafty in her deception. Damian is equally cunning and fits the fabliau profile of an interloper in a marriage who does not fit into a fixed social class. The plot hinges on the interloper (Damian) contriving to have a sexual tryst with the wife (May) only to have the cuckolded husband learn of the affair and be humiliated. The major aspect of the story that departs from the traditional fabliau mold is the station in which these characters fit. However absurd the character behaves, January is not a lower-class barbarian equal to John the carpenter in the Miller's Tale. The authorial condemnation of May also departs from the other fabliaux of the Canterbury Tales. Like Alison of the Miller's Tale, she is crafty, but May is also wicked. She escapes without punishment from her husband, but unlike the Miller's Tale this is not a satisfactory conclusion. While the Miller's Tale prized cunning and crafty behavior, the Merchant's Tale adheres to more traditional values. Therefore, May's escape from punishment is a dissonant element of the story, for she behaves contrary to the established values that the Merchant has set for his tale. Although January is a more sympathetic character than May, he is by no means commendable. Although the narrator does not treat him with the same moralistic condemnation as he heaps upon May, January is still a vulgar object for the audience's mockery. His sexual exploits are grotesque and animalistic. The description of his first conquest of May is replete with violent sexual imagery. January's repeated insistence that their intercourse includes a rationalization that a man and wife are one person, and no man would harm himself with a knife, an unpleasant phallic image. January uses May only as a sexual object; he hammers away upon her, bringing her only pain and boredom. The Merchant's Tale also stretches the conventions of fabliau through the climax of the tale in which Pluto and Proserpina intrude upon the sexual intrigues among January, May and John. Proserpina and Pluto discuss the virtues of men and women in marriage, coming to the conclusion that few men are commendable, but absolutely no women are worthy. Their intervention in the situation gives divine sanction to the condemnation of women, purposely giving January his sight so that he can condemn his wife (although in a mordant twist, January can literally not believe his eyes).
ClassicNote on The Canterbury Tales
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