Book Review Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales The Merchants Tale

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The Merchant appreciates the preceding Clerk’s Tale though he feels as if he cannot relate to it, as while Walter is cruel to Griselda in the story, the Merchant finds that it is his wife who is cruel to him. He talks as if he has great experience and authority on this, though he lets slip that he has only been married for two months. He tells a story of his own about marriage. It is the story of Sir January; a Knight who is now aged about sixty. The Knight has lived a honourable, virtuous, action packed life, but he has never married or made love to a woman. He decides in his dotage, that he ought to make up for lost time, before it is too late. He has lengthy and rather dull debates with friends on whether he should marry, and who might make an ideal bride. He hears all kinds of views ranging from advice to avoid marriage, to warnings that a young bride might soon tire of an ageing lover. In the end however, he decides to marry anyway and watching for attractive young ladies, he settles on a lady called May, who is just twenty years old, but regarded as virginal and virtuous. The marriage takes place, and for a time, the couple seem happy, but there is trouble brewing a young man called Damian lusts after May, and sends her love letters revealing his desire. May replies to him that she would like to meet him and make love, but her husband never lets her out of his sight. The situation seems to get worse when January goes blind, and seems to need more attention and care from his wife than ever. However, May exploits this to set up a means to make love to Damian. She duplicates keys to the Knight’s gardens, and passes the duplicate key to Damian. She then sweet-talks her husband into taking a walk with her in the gardens. Once there, she talks January into playing a game of hide and seek, and while he stumbles round blindly on the ground, she climbs a tree with Damian to make love to him up there. The gods witness the events and intervene. T hey give January the gift of sight, and he soon sees what the lovers are up to. However, May insists that what he has seen is just a ritual she has performed in order to get his sight miraculously restored. She adds that she must repeat the exercise from time to time to ensure that his sight never fails again. January is delighted by the news and decides that his wife must love him very much to do such a thing. In many ways this is a story about the blindness of love, and how irrational we can be, failing to see the obvious, and our willingness to accept the preposterous. Arthur Chappell