Whan That Octobre — Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales: Part 6

Recycled photo FTW!

The Intro

Welcome back to Whan That Month — Lucas Blogs About The Canterbury Tales. Last month I tackled the first half of the fourth fragment and talked about how "The Clark's Tale" didn't really do it for me. This month we're closing out that fragment and talking about "The Merchant's Tale." Will my opinion be any different? Let's find out. But first let's talk about:

The Merchant's Prologue

Turns out that the Merchant knows a thing or two about unhappiness in marriage because he spends pretty much all of his prologue complaining about his wife. Turns out that unlike the patient Grisildis, she's a nagging shrew who would even overwhelm the devil if they were married. Even though they've only been married for two months, he swears by Saint Thomas (yes, that Saint Thomas) that no other man could know more of unhappiness in marriage than he. Harry Bailly interrupts him to encourage him to begin—

The Merchant's Tale

In Lombardye (I won't insult your intelligence) there's this elderly knight named Januarye (see previous parenthetical statement), who's thinking of getting married because he wants an heir. So he sits down with his best bros Placebo and Justinus and asks them what they think. Placebo gives him the hard sell on marriage even going so far as to say something along the lines of "who could be unhappy if they're married?" while Justinus is like "Nah, brah, listen to this list of stories about unhappy marriages." Januarye listens to Placebo and soon finds himself engaged to a beautiful young woman named May (sometimes Mayus if Chaucer needs an extra syllable). Everyone seems happy at the wedding feast except for Januarye's squire Damian who's secretly pining after May. So after the wedding, he slips her a love letter and, upon reading it, she slips him a reply, and eventually they start plotting how they can have an affair. Meanwhile, Januarye builds May a beautiful garden where they can do the things people don't do in bed. However, he's stricken blind and becomes super possessive and jealous, ensuring that May is always at his side. So, on July 8th (or maybe June 8th, according to a footnote) she tells Damian to sneak into the garden and hide. Then she goes to the garden with January, and signals Damian to climb up into the branches of a pear tree. Who should be watching these three but Pluto and Proserpine. Pluto goes off on a misogynistic rant that relies heavily on Ecclesiastes and swears that he'll restore Januarye's sight so that he can catch May and Damian in the act. Then Proserpine swears by her mother's father (Saturn) that she'll see to it that May can talk her way out of it. We'll see who's right. May tells Januarye that she's craving a pear, and asks him to let her climb up on his back in order to get up into the tree. He obliges and once she's up the tree and in Damian's arms(and here the Merchant pauses to apologize to the ladies for the blunt language he's about to use), Damian pulls up her smock and thrusts into her. At this moment Pluto restores Januarye's eyesight and he sees May and Damian having sex in the pear tree. He, rightly, loses his shit. But May says that she was merely struggling with Damian, and that surely his eyes are playing tricks on him since his vision was only recently restored. And would you believe it? Januarye agrees that she's probably right, so May assures him that his eyes will probably deceive him again in the future, so he should think nothing of it. And they live happily ever after.

The Merchant's Epilogue

Harry Bailly seems particularly moved by the story of Januarye and May, so much so that he confesses that his wife is a nagging shrew and that women generally are duplicitous predators who make men miserable. And thus ends the fourth fragment.

What'd Lucas Think of The Merchant's Tale?

So, it's actually a pretty fitting companion piece to The Clerk's Tale. Both are tales of spousal deception that result in an ultimately happier relationship once said deception is revealed. There's also the fact that both parallel The Book of Job. Obviously, Grisildis in The Clerk's Tale goes through Job-like suffering, meanwhile a big chunk of The Merchant's Tale is devoted to Januarye seeking his friends' counsel.  They both also have outdated morals, although Chaucer doesn't feel the need to contradict the message of The Merchant's Tale the way he did with The Clerk's Tale.

So, let's talk about that first. To a modern reader, the abject "take my wife, please" misogyny of the prologue, the tale itself, and the epilogue is what's most apparent. I mean, on its own the story of an unfaithful wife tricking her husband into facilitating a tryst isn't necessarily misogynistic. That said, the whole thing is framed by the Merchant talking about how unhappy he is in his marriage and how horrible his wife is, the story begins with Justinus's arguments against marriage — most centered on unfaithful wives — and the divine intervention that preserves Januarye and May's marital happiness being to allow May to be sufficiently deceptive to gaslight Januarye into disbelieving his own eyes. So, you know, a little off-putting on that level.

Now as far as the story itself goes, it is less of a slog than The Clerk's Tale. It's a little like a cross between The Knight's Tale and The Miller's Tale. It's a bawdy tale of infidelity which also features the Greek/Roman gods intervening. And it is fun to see Chaucer mixing these elements from high and low genres. That said, I don't think the interlude with Pluto and Proserpine really works. Partly because it reinforces the story's misogyny, and also because it kind of grinds the story to a halt just when it's getting to the punchline. 

And, by this point in The Canterbury Tales, these sorts of ribald stories about younger wives cuckolding are getting a tad stale. While I did think it was a better story than The Clerk's Tale, I can't say that I was crazy about The Merchant's Tale. Anyway, that's end of the fourth fragment, next month we'll start in on the fifth which comprises tales from the Squire and the Franklin.