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Unit 13: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Non-detailed Study): Discussion and Analysis-V

prepared rich garments and jewelery in Griselde’s size. That morning, the marquis came to Janicula’s Notes
home and asked him for his permission to marry his daughter. Janicula was so astonished, he turned
red, and could not speak–but did manage eventually to assent to the marriage.
Walter, however, wanted Griselde herself to assent before he married her, and, the two men went
into her chamber. Walter asked her hand in marriage, and asked her to to be ready to do whatever
he said, whenever he said it, but never to resent him; if she agreed to this, he said, he would swear
to marry her. Griselde swore never to disobey him–and he took her outside to introduce her to his
populace as his new wife.
The marquis’ servants took Griselde and dressed her in all new, expensive clothes for the wedding;
she appeared as if she had been born as nobility, not from her actual humble origin. Her virtue and
excellence became renowned throughout Saluzzo, and in many other regions, for she was essentially
a perfect wife – she appeared as “from hevene sent”. Soon she gave birth to a baby girl, although
she would have preferred a son to be his father’s heir.
(III) Soon after his daughter was born, the marquis decided to test his wife. The narrator, at this
stage, explicitly expresses doubt about why the marquis would test his wife: “as for me” he says, I
think it sits “yvele” (“evilly”) “to assaye a wyf whan that it is no need” (“to test a wife when there is
no need to”).
The marquis told her that although she was dear to him, to the rest of the nobility she was not. They,
he said, objected to her new daughter, and wanted her to be taken away from Griselde and put to
death. Griselde received this news without grievance, and answered that she and her child would
do anything that pleased her husband. Rather than putting the child to death (though allowing
Griselde to believe her child was dead), the marquis instead sent the child away with one of his
sergeants to be raised by his sister, the husband of the Earl of Panago, in Bologna. Walter did pity
his wife, who remained steadfast and dedicated to him, silently accepting her fate and that of her
child whom she believed dead. Griselde never spoke of her daughter, nor even mentioned her
name.
(IV) Four years passed, and Griselde had another child, a boy, and, when it was two years old,
Walter repeated the same test. The people, Walter argued, did not want the low blood of Janicula to
succeed him as marquis. She accepted this, and told Walter that she realized she was of low birth
and would consent to die if it pleased him. However, she did point out that she had had no benefits
of motherhood, only the pain of childbirth and a continued pain of losing her children. The same
sergeant came to take away her son, and Griselde kissed her child goodbye.
The people came to loathe Walter, thinking that he had murdered his children. Walter, unruffled by
their disapproval, devised his next test: organizing the court of Rome to send a counterfeit papal
bull which ordered Walter to divorce Griselde and take another wife. Upon hearing this, Griselde
remained steadfast.
However, the marquis had written a secret letter to Bologna, ordering the Earl of Panago to return
home his children with huge pomp and circumstance, but without telling them whose children
they were. Indeed, the Earl was to pretend that the daughter was to marry the marquis himself.
(V) Walter told Griselde of the papal bull, returned her dowry to her, and sent her back to her
father’s house. She was stoic upon hearing this, and, though she reiterated her love for Walter, she
did not repent for loving him. She only asks that she not be sent naked from the palace, but will be
given the simple smock, just the like the ones she used to wear in poverty, to wear to spare her from
suffering the indignity of returning home completely unclothed. Walter granted this request, and
in, stripping herself of all of her riches, Griselde returned home to her father in her poor clothes
once more.
The people followed her home, weeping for her bad fortune, but Griselde herself did not shed a
tear, and, as she approached the house, her father ran out to cover her with his old coat. The narrator,
at the end of this part, compares the suffering Griselde has endured to that of the biblical Job.

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