The Merchant's Tale - AO3

Chaucer biography

• Son of a vintner (a wine merchant), who withstood various reversals of fortune and a precarious career.  

• Born into the urban bourgeoisie (middle class), whereas his wife was the daughter of a ‘gentil’ (noble) French knight.  

• According to Paul Strohm, he ‘earned his rank not through birth but through service’, starting as a page and rising to an esquire in the noble household of Elizabeth Countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, the son of King Edward III.  

• ‘His great interest is in what may be called the “middle strata” of his society, the professionals and entrepreneurs and scrambling in-betweeners normally ignored in the formal medieval social theory that emphasised the three estates of knighthood, priesthood, and peasantry.’  

• He escaped the disastrous Black Death and would have been desensitised to the threat of mortality. 

• In his youth, he was captured in France on military service as a yeoman and ransomed for the large sum of £16. The king himself contributed to pay his ransom, suggesting he must have been of some value. 

• He became Controller of the Customs for wool, and later skins and hides. This was a lucrative, profitable civil service role. He would be expected to monitor rich and unscrupulous profiteers, such as Nicholas Brembre, in the burgeoning mercantile culture of his day. He might have taken bribes from wool merchants wishing to receive profitable tax cuts. 

• His comfortable quarters were over Aldgate in East London, through whose gates the Peasants’ Revolt would stream in 1381. He had experience in observing human nature at its most violent. 

• He underwent diplomatic missions to Genoa and Florence in Italy on trade negotiations, and was very well-travelled for his day. 

• His sister-in-law was the mistress and later wife of the enormously wealthy Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Gaunt was the uncle of King Richard II, and father of Henry Bolingbroke who deposed Richard II and usurped the throne, becoming King Henry IV in 1399. 

• He had recurring legal trouble and was harassed over unpaid bills. He was even subject to a suit for the abduction and rape of a young woman, Cecily Champagne… 

• His wife, Philippa, was inducted into the prestigious Fraternity of Lincoln Cathedral with Henry Bolingbroke (later King Henry IV), and he had allies in King Richard II’s faction who engineered his election as a shire knight (or county representative) for Kent in the Westminster Parliament. However, even whilst in Parliament, he would have been in a ‘familiar position… Familiar, that is, in its marginality, in the tenuous hold it would have given him on the status of shire knight.’ 

• In 1386, a petition called for his resignation from the Wool Wharf and was evicted from his Aldgate apartment. His controversial collaborator and associate, London mayor Nicholas Brembre, was discredited, and his aristocratic patron John of Gaunt (the wealthiest man in England) was abroad on an unpopular military mission so he had little social influence. 

• His personal woes multiplied: he lived apart from his wife and his children who were raised in Lincolnshire as loyal Lancastrians to John of Gaunt and Henry IV. 

Chaucer’s audience

• Many of Chaucer’s mature works were written for and read to a courtly audience where Chaucer functioned as an entertainer  

• Medieval literary works often composed for court patrons: The Book of the Duchess was written for John of Gaunt in memory of his wife 

• Said that the Canterbury Tales were inspired by many of Chaucer’s own varied experiences… e.g. his exposure to continental cultures + contact to people of many different classes  

• Chaucer is credited for establishing English as a major literary language  

• The rise of a bourgeois audience in the 14^th century and the increased manufacture of paper created a reading public wider than the nobles who  had known literature from recitation or reading allowed in castle halls

Chaucer’s literary intentions

• In 1369, he wrote a long poem of courtly love, 'The Book of the Duchess', not in French appropriate to its subject and audience, but in unliterary and still unstable English

• Wrote 'The Book of the Duchess' as a graceful elegy for Gaunt's first wife, Blanche

• In 1373, he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Italy to negotiate a commercial treaty with the Doge of Genoa

  • It was the year of Bocaccio's lectures in Florence on Danta; Chaucer returned steeped in new material

  • Poets and writers served frequently as ambassadors because their rhetorical powers conferred distinction on the elaborate speeches required

Chaucer on women

• The Man of Law says 'wommen are born to thraldom and penance, And to ben under mannes governaunce'

• The Parson advises husbands to 'loven his wyf by discrecion, pacinently and atemprely and thanne she is as though it were hys syster'

• Canterbury pilgrims are a reappraisal of the various points of view represented in the 'Roman de la Rose'

  • The courtier = the Knight -> fell in love at first sight and was struck to the heart -> slept little and howed himself to be ever 'courteous, lowly and servysable' -> Emylya traditionally modest, reticent

  • Inferior kinds of love corresponding to the lower orders of society -> robust Wife of Bath used to mock current ecclesiastical theories about virginity -> wives as lewd as their husbands (The Miller's Tale, The Merchant's Tale)

  • Antagonistic conceptions of the troubadour poets and the church fathers harmonised by Dorigen's husbands in 'The Franklin's Tale' -> both 'hir servant and hir lord' -> Chaucer gives no details about how this delicate balance is achieved

• In his Envoy to Bukton on marriage, he says 'ful hard is to be bonde'

Estates Satire

• Estate - a class of persons, especially a social or political class or group; a member of a particular class or rank; a person's position in society 

• Generally determined by someone's occupation, but somewhat influenced by clerical or marital status 

• Estates literature: 

  • An enumeration of the estates, whose aim seems to be completeness 

  • A lament over the shortcomings of the estates; each fails in its duties to the rest 

  • The philosophy of the divine ordination of the three principal estates, the dependence of the state on all three, and the necessity of being content with one's station 

  • An attempt to find remedies, religious or political, for the defects of estates 

Literary tropes

Fin amour (courtly love) 

• A medieval European literary concept of love, emphasizing nobility and chivalry  

• Was a highly idealized form of love – where a knight would perform great deeds for a lady (who was of a higher social rank) 

• Courtly love elevated a woman’s status in society by making them the object of the knight’s affection 

• A lover was expected to serve his lady, to obey her commands, and to gratify her ‘merest whims’ – women were supposed to guide men in chivalric duties 

• A woman – most likely a married one! – expected be served and impressed 

• According to Mark ‘women were free to choose their own partner and have complete control over him’ 

• Absolute obedience and unswerving loyalty were necessary in ‘fin amour’ 

• The love was invariably adulterous – primarily because marriage at the time was more of a business deal 

• The concept was popularized by the troubadour poets of the period – and had a significant influence on medieval literature 

• The affair between May and Damyan parodies courtly love. Damyan is not a knight, nor does her perform any great deeds for May. 

 

Senex amans  

• Old man married to a young woman and thus the object of mockery 

Proverbs and beliefs

• Tobias Nights

• "Marry in May and you'll rue the day" -> not well matched

• "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?"

The Garden Setting

Eden

• Definition from Hebrew - 'place of pleasure'

• Also called the Terrestrial Paradise

• Site of the first human society in the form of Adam and Eve's marriage – perfect bless arose from this harmonious companionship

• Associated with the 'Fall' from a pre-lapsarian state of perfect bliss and innocent nudity, due to the temptation of Eve by Satan

• According to a belief common in the Middle Ages, before the Fall Adam and Eve would have copulated without lust, solely to reproduce

• Many believed that the first sin committed after Eve tasted the forbidden fruit was carnal lust

• Moralists during Chaucer's time believed it was woman's temptation that drew men into a life of lechery and sin

• Often depicted as an idyllic walled garden

• Their home after expulsion was often depicted as a rocky and barren landscape beyond the landscape of the lush garden

 

Gethsemane

• Garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem

• Where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept the night before his crucifixion

• Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ and told the soldiers to find Jesus there on the night of his arrest

• Jesus asked Peter, James and John to pray so they would not fall into temptation, but they fell asleep. Twice Jesus woke them, though later that night Peter denied knowing Jesus three times to save his life

• January is certainly no Jesus...exposes how he falls short of these ideals

 

Story of Susannah and the Elders

• Included in the Book of Daniel

• Two lecherous judges secretly judges secretly watch Susannah, a beautiful and virtuous wife, bathing in her walled garden

• When she refuses to sleep with them, they accuse her of committing adultery - a legal crime at that time

• The villagers demand her death, but a boy named Daniel separates the judges to check their stories and realises they lied

• Angered, the villagers kill the judges instead

• May is antithetical – she is complicit in urging Damyan into the garden

• No dramatic, poetic or divine justice at the end of 'The Merchant's Tale'

 

The Song of Solomon

• Last section of the Tenakh and in the fifth book of Wisdom in the Old Testament

• The dialogue can either be read as an allegory of the relationship between God and Israel, Christ and his Christian Church or a celebration of sexual love, desire and intimacy between man and woman

• The woman recalls a visit from her lover in the spring and forecefully takes him to her chamber, though this is revealed to be a dream. The woman's chastity is likened to a 'locked garden', though she invites him to enter the garden and taste the fruits

• Replete with rich sensory and sensual imagery

 

Le Roman de la Rose

• Medieval poem written in the 13th century in Old French and presented as an allegorical dream vision

• The word Rose is used both as the name of the titular lady and as an abstract symbol of female sexuality

• The walled garden belongs to a nobleman called Deduit - the Old French word for pleasure

• It depicts a courtier's attempt to win his beloved's love in a walled garden

• Part of the story was translated by Chaucer into Middle English in the 1360s. It was very popular and influential

 

Locus Amoenus

An idealised place of safety or 'pleasant place'

• Associated with a pre-lapsarian Eden or pastoral paradise akin to the classical heaven or Elysian Fields, often where a romantic encounter occurs

• An earthly paradise, described by Dante 'Here spring is endless, here all fruits are'

• The secular equivalent was the 'hortus delicarium', the garden of pleasure. It too was an enclosed space protected from the rigours of everyday life, a place where the wealthy, particularly women, could enjoy cultural amusement and intellectual inspiration

• In the Metamorphoses, the locus amoenus is almost inevitably the site of a violent or destructive encounter; its pleasant atmosphere belies an impending threat

 

Hortus Conclusus

• An enclosed garden - a symbol of wealth, status and possession? Fear of theft? Fear of being seen?

• A 'safe' place to contain the 'dangers' of femininity?

• Christians saw the enclosed garden as a symbol of the perpetual virginity of Mary with her 'enclosed womb', as well as her being protected (by a wall) from sin. The metaphor is derived from a verse in the Song of Solomon

The Tabard Inn – 14^th century Southwark 

• Relatively lawless suburb of London 

• Drinking establishments would have been filled with criminals, prostitutes and drunkards 

• Also attracted Christian pilgrims   

Pilgrimages

• Made to sites associated with Saints, Apostles and Christian martyrs 

• Catholics believed they would develop spiritually due to the physical and economic sacrifices endured during the journey, but also hoped they would receive blessings and miracles of healing by worshipping the shrines of specific saints on arrival at their destination 

• They were also an opportunity for common people to travel to exotic places and meet new people 

• They would often buy and collect badges, essentially religious souvenirs, to pin to their hats and cloaks as proof of the journey they had undertaken 

• Canterbury was the site of the murder of St Thomas Beckett 

Lollard movement

• A religious reform movement that advocated for greater personal piety, a translation of the Bible into vernacular English, and challenged Papal authority and transubstantiation 

• John Wycliffe criticised the Catholic Church's hierarchy and worldliness, leading to his dismissal from Oxford University 

• The movement faced severe persecution as it was seen as a threat to the social order 

• It was associated with the 1381 Peasant's Revolt (which was led by John Ball, a Lollard preacher) 

Marriage

• Primary Goal: To create stable family units based on respect and duty, and to enhance or maintain family status and wealth. 

• The Dowry: The bride brought a dowry (land or money) into the marriage, which would pass to the groom's control. 

  • Peasant women who did not own land often had to pay a fee called a "merchet" to their manorial lord to marry. 

  • The Dower: The groom provided a "dower," often a matching sum or portion of his estate, which was set aside to support the bride in case she was widowed. 

  • Marriage Contracts: Aristocratic archives often contain detailed marriage settlements, which were financial bargains. 

    • Example (1476): In the marriage of Henry Stanhope and Jane Rochford, Henry's father promised an estate worth £20/year (which would be Jane's dower) and a future inheritance of £46 13s 4d/year. In return, Jane brought a cash dowry of 300 marks. 

  • Binding Nature: 

    • The economic and legal aspects of the contract were paramount. Consummation was often prohibited until these were settled. 

    • Breach of a marriage contract was treated as a financial dispute. A noble who broke a contract in 1391 was bound to pay a £40 fine. 

Manuals and books on marriage

Manuals/books

• 'Hali Maidenhead' (early 1200s) urges young women to devote themselves to God -> 'She is a slave under the marriage yoke. She shall become a man's servant to do all and suffer all that he pleases'

• 'Treatise on the Rules and Duties of Monastic Life' compares wedded life to the tender love of Jesus for a newly vowed recluse

• 'Handlyng Synne' (1303) by Robert Mannyng of Brunne

  • Declared that forced marriages of children for grain might lead to the breaking of vows when they grow older

  • A wise woman, a patient, understanding wife, could win her husband from evil by being oblivious to his follies, but the case of a woman who sinned was hopeless and would bring her to 'helle fyre'

• 'Piers Plowman' advised men not to marry for money but to choose suitable mates - 'for no londes, but for love loke thou be wedded'

• 'Summa Predicantium' lamented the number of men who 'boast of the number of women with whom they have fulfilled their lusts'

Young Brides 

• January follows clerical advice when he insists upon a young bride: 

• John Chrysostom claimed that youth insures chastity and marital affection. 

• In 14^th century, the poem The Good Wife Taught Her Daughter advises early marriage in order to stabilize the allegedly fickle feminine character that might disrupt coupled harmony 

• Quite interesting in light of the trouble the ageing January experiences as a result of a later marriage 

The Ideal Woman

For the Bourgeois Wife: Le Menagier de Paris 

• Written by a 60-year-old husband for his 15-year-old wife, this manual's goal was to ensure she was "perfect in manners and morals and fully competent to run a house." 

  • Primary Duties: The two "chiefly necessary" goals were the "salvation of your soul and the comfort of your husband." 

  • Religious & Moral Instruction: 

    • Detailed instructions on how to behave at mass, say morning prayers, and confess to a priest. 

    • Obedience: Submission to the husband's demands was essential. The text presents the ideal wife as a helpmeet, not a slave. 

    • Example of Submission: A story is told of a lawyer's wife who nurtured her husband's bastard daughter without ever showing "ill-will or angry or reproachful word." 

  • Household Management: 

    • Practical advice on gardening, hiring servants, and purchasing food. 

    • Instructions on how to entertain guests, including a list of "amusing riddles." 

  • Personal Demeanour & Dress: 

    • Dress: A wife "must be honestly clad without new devices and too much frippery or too little." 

    • Conduct: She was instructed to keep her head straight and eyelids low, unlike "bold and foolish women" with "necks stretched forth like a flag in flight." 

Further marriage context

General

• Little about sexual habits was likely to be hidden from the unmarried girl

  • The Chavelier de La Tour Landry designed his tales of carnality for the moral edification of his motherless daughters – included lechery, fornication and rape

• Thomas Aquinas' sexual context of original sin "set Christian dogma thereafter in opposition to man's most powerful instinct"

• "Allas, allas, that ever love was a sin!" - the Wife of Bath

• Augustine ruled copulation for the delight in it and not for the end intended by nature (reproduction)was a sin against nature and therefore God

• Celibacy and virginity remained preferred states because they allowed total love of God, "the spouse of the soul" (Augustine)

• 'Miroir de Mariage' - marriage appears as a painful servitude of suffering, sorrow, and jealousy (for the husband)

• 'Menagier de Paris' - written for his fifteen year old wife

  • She should obey her husband's commandments and act according to his pleasure rather than her own because "his pleasure should come before yours"

• Married love was a desired goal to be achieved after rather than before

  • Wife's duty to achieve this by constant attention, good care, amiability, docility, acquiescence, patience and no nagging

• Bickering between man and wife were so frequent that the custom arose of making awards to peaceable couples, hence the annual celebration of the Dunmow Flitch

  • 'He that repenteth not of his marriage in a year and a day...may lawfully go to Dunmow to fetch a gammon of bacon'