Merchant's Tale Key Themes and Quotes 1

Merchant's Tale Key Themes and Quotes 1

1. Marriage and women

   • Trapped in marriage
     • "housbonde"
       • 'Bound' together, 'housebound' - physical restriction
     • "secure"
     • "wedlock"
   • Merchant thinks he can 'purchase' a wife
     • "As if one took a mirror, polished bright, and set it in a common market-place"
     • Has desired characteristics of a wife
       • "obediant"
       • Paradise -> heaven, god-given gift, there for him and not herself, fulfills sexual pleasures, earthly purgatory
       • "His earthly paradise, and his source of consolation"
       • "keeper of thy household"
       • "old fish and young flesh"
         • Recurring animal imagery - as if he is hunting prey
       • "one can guide a young thing, just as one can mold warm wax with hands"
         • Wax motif - wants a wife that is impressionable and can be manipulated
       • "gentil" = noble
       • "fresh may" - innocent
   • Merchant thinks marriage solves all problem
     • "They are so knit together no harm can there befall"
   • Cares strongly about about bloodline - link to DOM (cardinal's comments)
     • "I would rather hounds had eaten me than that my heritage should fall"
   • Passiveness of May - doesn't speak until halfway through text

2. Religion

   • References to Adam and Eve
     • "woman are created for man's help...'let us now make a helper for this man like to himself'; and then he made Eve"
   • Comparison of women to fruit, in reference to the Garden of Eden - poisonous and forbidden
     • "fruyt of his tresor"
   • Biblical quote reference - 'body is a temple'
     • "I ought to consider to whom I give my body for always"
   • "Perhaps she may be your Purgatory!
     • Ladder to heaven or hell? Women are good or bad for men?

3. Love/sexuality

   • Ironic view as he desires a young woman / foreshadows blindness
     • "love is blind always"
   • Courtly romance (or the corruption of)
     • Exchange of letters between May and Damien
       • "she tore it all to pieces and in the privy softly threw it"
   • Sexual control and confinement
     • "he will no one allow to bear the key"
       • Garden as a metaphor for May's body - key to her body - ironic
   • Destruction of May's innocence
     • "I must do injury"
     • May = prime and bloom / healing
       • Comparison to meaning of January = 'Janus', God of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and ending.

4. Deception/betrayal

   • January becomes physically blind but was already metaphorically blind
     • "now thou hast deprived him of both of his eyes"
   • Lack of trust between January and May
     • "He would suffer her to ride and walk, unless he had a hand always on her"
   • May physically and metaphorically uses January to get to Damien - 'stab in the back'
     • "If I my foot set upon your back"