Merchant's Tale Key Themes and Quotes 1

Marriage and women
1. Trapped in marriage
  1. "housbonde"
    1. 'Bound' together, 'housebound' - physical restriction
  2. "secure"
  3. "wedlock"
2. Merchant thinks he can 'purchase' a wife
  1. "As if one took a mirror, polished bright, and set it in a common market-place"
  2. Has desired characteristics of a wife
    1. "obediant"
    2. Paradise -> heaven, god-given gift, there for him and not herself, fulfills sexual pleasures, earthly purgatory
    3. "His earthly paradise, and his source of consolation"
    4. "keeper of thy household"
    5. "old fish and young flesh"
      1. Recurring animal imagery - as if he is hunting prey
    6. "one can guide a young thing, just as one can mold warm wax with hands"
      1. Wax motif - wants a wife that is impressionable and can be manipulated
    7. "gentil" = noble
    8. "fresh may" - innocent
3. Merchant thinks marriage solves all problem
  1. "They are so knit together no harm can there befall"
4. Cares strongly about about bloodline - link to DOM (cardinal's comments)
  1. "I would rather hounds had eaten me than that my heritage should fall"
5. Passiveness of May - doesn't speak until halfway through text
Religion
1. References to Adam and Eve
  1. "woman are created for man's help...'let us now make a helper for this man like to himself'; and then he made Eve"
2. Comparison of women to fruit, in reference to the Garden of Eden - poisonous and forbidden
  1. "fruyt of his tresor"
3. Biblical quote reference - 'body is a temple'
  1. "I ought to consider to whom I give my body for always"
4. "Perhaps she may be your Purgatory!
  1. Ladder to heaven or hell? Women are good or bad for men?
Love/sexuality
1. Ironic view as he desires a young woman / foreshadows blindness
  1. "love is blind always"
2. Courtly romance (or the corruption of)
  1. Exchange of letters between May and Damien
    1. "she tore it all to pieces and in the privy softly threw it"
3. Sexual control and confinement
  1. "he will no one allow to bear the key"
    1. Garden as a metaphor for May's body - key to her body - ironic
4. Destruction of May's innocence
  1. "I must do injury"
  2. May = prime and bloom / healing
    1. Comparison to meaning of January = 'Janus', God of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and ending.
Deception/betrayal
1. January becomes physically blind but was already metaphorically blind
  1. "now thou hast deprived him of both of his eyes"
2. Lack of trust between January and May
  1. "He would suffer her to ride and walk, unless he had a hand always on her"
3. May physically and metaphorically uses January to get to Damien - 'stab in the back'
  1. "If I my foot set upon your back"

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Merchant's Tale Key Themes and Quotes 1

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	Created by Livvy Allen over 6 years ago