Marriage in The Canterbury Tales Essay

Chaucer and Marriage in the Canterbury Tales

Chaucer has written many stories of literature in his time of the middle ages. The Canterbury Tales is one of the many pieces of literature he has written. In these stories there are many themes we see. One of these themes that we acknowledge is marriage. In three of his tales, The Wife of Bath, The Merchants Tale, and The Clerks Tale, we see this theme of marriage.

In The Wife of Bath we see a marriage where we have a wife who is controlling her husbands. She marries men only for their money and she marries more than one. In one of the scholarly journals I have found the author writes, The Wife of Bath both in her tale of the young knight and the old hag and her autobiographical prologue to the tale, is more concerned with the husbands obligation than with the wifes obligation to satisfy the sexual needs of her partner (Nelson). The women, back in the time of Chaucer, were expected to be the ones to satisfy their husbands in all ways they can.

We can say, The theme of "The Wife of Bath's Prologue/Tale" is female domination over her husband (Jablonowski). Chaucer turns the idea of male domination over his wife, which was expected in his time, around in his tale, The Wife of Bath, by showing the wife controlling the husband and expecting him to satisfy her every need.

A different view about marriage is seen in the Clerks Tale. This tale fits in well with the time of Chaucer unlike the Wife of Bath. In this tale we have a man who is an older gentleman and is known as the Marquis. His people encourage him to get married and he does so. He decides to marry a poor young girl that he sees in passing.

Before they get married he asks this girl for her hand in marriage and he also tells her that when she marries him she must do whatever he says and to never resent him. She decides to marry him and follows his commands. Later in the marriage he decides to test her loyalty to him.

When she has a daughter he decides to take the daughter away from her and kill her. She followed his command and allowed him to take her child and kill her. He does this to all the children that she has. The final test he has for her is to divorce her and marry someone else.

He does divorce her and sends her back to her poor father but he then also calls her back to help him put together a wedding for his new bride. She helps him with this as he asks. This continues to show her loyalty to him even though they are no longer together. In the end she finds out that her children were not dead and that it was all just a test of her loyalty to him.

This tale talks about the loyalty in a marriage. For a marriage to be strong and last we see that a lot of that has to do with being loyal to your husband. Of course we do not see the woman testing the man of his loyalty because that did not matter back in the days of Chaucer. The only thing that mattered was the loyalty that the women had for their husbands.

Although the idea of the husband being loyal to his wife is not a big part of these tales we end up seeing this in the tale and prologue of the Wife of Bath. We see The wife of Bath being the one to have control over her husbands instead of the other way around which is presented in the Clerks Tale where the husband controls the wife.

We follow this idea of a controlling marriage where we expect loyalty to play a part in, in the next Tale which is the Merchants Tale. In this tale the loyalty of the woman for the man is not there. She marries the man but then falls in love with someone else and ends up cheating on him.

Another thing we also see in each of these tales is the idea of an older man marrying a younger woman. This idea follows along with the times of the Middle Ages, Chaucers time. The Wife of Baths first marriage was at the age of twelve. In the clerks tale and the merchants tale we see that the wives in them are young teens marrying older gentlemen. In one of the articles I found it talks about how these women benefit from marrying older gentlemen as well as it being their role to do so.

It talked about these women becoming widows. If they became widows they would own a lot of property that these men would give to them. They would also have a lot of money. In addition to gaining control of whatever share of property falls to her, she will also have jurisdiction over the inheritance of any children, male or female, in their minority (Hallissy). This is a quote from the article explaining how the widower will receive her property from her husband as well as have control over her childrens inheritance. This is one of the advantages these young women had back in the time of the Middle Ages.

We see this widow advantage in the Wife of Baths tale. The Wife of Baths privileged situation-heir to the worldly goods of three rich old husbands, so affluent that she can indulge her lecherousness with two poor young husbands-illustrates the advantages of being a widow in the middle ages (Hallissy). She became a rich woman when she married three men and inherited everything from them when they passed on. In doing this she was able to then marry two other men who were poor but the problem with that was those men still took control of her like the men of that time were seen to do.

The nobility could afford to choose young brides, girls in their early to mid-teens, because the womans role was basically to produce children, not to contribute by her labors to the domestic economy (Hallissy). This quote coming from the same article sums up the roles of men and women in the time of Chaucer. It tells us that the men can choose young brides because the women had no other obligations other than having children. The men were the ones that had the obligation to do domestic work of any kind.

The idea of infidelity is also seen in these tales. We mainly see this in The Merchants tale. As I said the young wife ends up cheating on her older husband. The old husband of the Merchants Tale, to consider a case where the mutual obligation might be expected to hold, finds it necessary and indeed perfectly willing to promise property that was not part of his original marriage agreement in an offer to pay his young wife for her undivided attention to his needs (Nelson). The husband was willing to add more to the marriage agreement in order for her to stop her act of infidelity towards him and have her full attention on him.

Having someone who cheats on you is an embarrassment. Getting a divorce in the time of the middle ages was also something they did not like doing because it was also an embarrassment. Instead of being upset with her and divorcing her, he decides to get her to stop cheating on him by bribing her. In the end it does not seem to work.

In The Clerks tale we do not see this infidelity come about but from what I have found from researching other articles is that she may have been scared to disobey her husband and father. Griselda Consents to the union of marriage, as her father does. This suggests that her free consent to the union might be undermined by her fear (McCarthy). This statement says that she may be afraid to deny the request of marriage to the marquis because of her fear of getting in trouble with her father as well as with the marquis. Fear of their husbands, from what I get from these tales as well as the research I have done, is what most women had in the time of the Middle Ages.

In the Wife of Baths Tale we do see some form of infidelity. When she is married to her fourth husband she falls in love with another man. After the death of her fourth husband she ends up marrying the man she fell in love with. Falling in love with someone else when you are married can be seen as infidelity. I see this infidelity in these marriages as an expectation for our society today because a majority of the women were not able to choose their own husbands and they were still young and beautiful, two factors which can contribute to infidelity in our society today.

In each of these three tales we also see the idea of a marriage promise. A marriage promise is an obligation to each other in the marriage. In the wife of bath we have the husbands keeping their promise to the wife by satisfying her every need and we know that the wife is keeping her promise by keeping these men happy because she has them under her control.