The Merchant's Tale
Hey! Hope you don't mind me asking a question-
I'm doing OCR, and for paper 1 we compare The Duchess of Malfi and The Merchant's Tale. I've been thinking about notions of morality and good and evil in the two texts. I have quite a few things to say for Duchess of Malfi, but when it comes to Merchant I haven't got too much- there doesn't necessarily seem to be any 'good' or truly 'moral' actions/characters, which is definitely interesting in terms of interrogating morality and how morality is defined by context/society. I'm not sure how familiar you are with The Merchant's Tale, but I'm just wondering how I would go about writing something about positive morals/actions, given that the text seems to negate implication and lacks true punishment or reward? I feel like my points for Merchant tend to be a bit same-ish (that it seems like an amoral text) and I want to try and mix it up a little so there's range in my arguments!!
As one idea, I would maybe try to think about the Merchant narrator as a character with his own motivations and moral compass and using the critical view that his misogyny is product of marital disillusionment extend this to question whether the tale he tells is immorally inclined or shaped by societal expectations and therefore not really 'bad'... (if that even makes sense??)
Do you have any other suggestions/ideas? Thanks :)
Hi! Thanks for posting! I really appreciate it!
It's been a while since I've read 'The Merchant's Tale', but I think the place I would see debates about morality would be in the debate over whether marriage is being honoured or not! Personally, I think that central to Chaucer's work is the idea of the tension between external appearance and internal truths. Both the Merchant and January are in loveless marriages, which I believe Chaucer presents as a really immoral situation for yo to be in! Not in the sense of good vs evil, but in the sense of your life not matching your sense of self and morality. There's a discrepancy between the external appearance of morality that these men gain through marriage and the reality of their situations.
It's interesting to me that the Merchant doesn't (or can't) find fault in his wife and instead chooses to tell a story about an unrelated knight. He claims that his wife is cruel, yet at the same time, he generalises his experiences to all married men. He claims that any man who married would be able to confirm his woe, and uses language that suggests he feels shackled by the institution of marriage itself! So while yes he has complaints about his wife not being obedient enough ('shrew' etc), he displays a general disdain for a Christian institution that is arguably being projected onto his wife.
There's a real tension here because the idea is that not marrying and participating in that holy sacrament ruins a man, but at the same time the thing that they're concerned about with getting married is the outward appearance of what it would look like. Would it fulfil their duties? Would the woman be a treasure and provide him with an heir? It's what marriage can do for them rather than them actually taking marriage seriously.
Of course, it's easy to consider May to be the most immoral character since she did cuckhold her husband, but I think there are plenty of hints throughout the text that things are not that black and white! The part about the consummation of their marriage is arguably very one-sided and quite gross, really taking ltitle regard for May's feelings or comfort. There are all those bits about him being wanton in the way he treats her that suggest things aren't that simple. At the beginning, he's also described as having followed his bodily desires, right? He was clearly not following the biblical sex rules before that! Plus, Proserpina sees the problems with this man and makes a long, impassioned speech about how men often project their own shortcomings onto their wives!
The fact that Pluto concedes once she makes this speech and then says he will only give January's eyesight back because he's already vowed it proves it for me. Pluto fell into the trap of disregarding the experiences of women, which Proserpina calls him out on. The men in this are completely silencig the women around them to their own detriment. I mean, the Merchant has only been married for two months and he is already claiming the worst things about his wife.
For me, the Merchant's Tale is the story of how men hold women to different standards and hold them in contempt and that failing to take marriaeg and women seriously are the real immoral acts!
Shani C. Thanks so much!! Will definitely have more of a think about that aspect of the tale. I think what you've said is also particularly interesting for comparison to the Duchess of Malfi too, given the discrepancy between moral standards for men (ie their control of the aristocratic court, female relations, and in the Cardinal's case a religious position) and the moral standards placed upon women.