Page 123 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes Damian sat high in the pear tree, and May told her husband she longed to pick and eat one of the
pears. January bent over so that May could stand on his back to climb the tree-she grabbed a branch,
and climbed up into the tree with Damian, who pulled up her dress and began to have sex with her.
But, when Pluto saw this, he restored January’s sight–and January, seeing his cuckoldry, let out a
huge roar and asked his wife what she was doing.
Without missing a beat, May responds that she had been told that the best way to restore January’s
eyesight was to “struggle” with a man in a tree; January responds that she was not struggling, but
having full penetrative sex. In that case, May continues, her medicine is false–January clearly isn’t
seeing clearly, she argues. And when January asserts that he can see perfectly, May rejoices that she
has restored her sight, and persuades January that he did not see her having sex with Damian.
January is delighted, kisses her and hugs her, and strokes her on her stomach, leading her home to
this house.

13.2.3 Epilogue to the Merchant’s Tale

“Goddes mercy!” said the Host, praying God to keep him from such a wife, and noting that clever
wives easily deceive foolish men by ducking away from the truth. “I have a wyf”, the Host continues,
who, though she is poor, is a shrew, always blabbing–and she has several other vices too! The Host
then cuts himself off again from discussing his wife, as he worries that someone in the company will
report his doing so back to his wife. He is, he claims, clever enough not to reveal everything, and
therefore his tale is done.
Analysis

There is a real sense in this tale of goodness slightly gone bad, ripeness becoming slightly rotten.
This starts, perhaps, with the opening paean to marriage and the description of January as a worthy,
noble knight. It is only as we read on that we realize that, in fact, this apparent positivism is flecked
with a bitter irony. January, the noble knight, is also portrayed in unforgiving detail, even down to
the scratchy bristles on his neck, and the loose skin on his aged body. We, like May, recoil at the
description–there is nothing, for example, of the comfortable, stylized presentation of (for example)
the Nun’s Priest’s Tale here. The narrator is unstinting when he wants to focus our attentions on
something unpleasant.
The authorial condemnation of May also departs from the other fabliaux of the Canterbury Tales.
Like Alison of the Miller’s Tale, she is crafty, but May is also wicked. She escapes without punishment
from her husband, but unlike the Miller’s Tale this is not a satisfactory conclusion. While the Miller’s
Tale prized cunning and crafty behavior, the Merchant’s Tale adheres to more traditional values.
Therefore, May’s escape from punishment is a dissonant element of the story, for she behaves contrary
to the established values that the Merchant has set for his tale.
May, unlike her husband, largely escapes from the spotlight of the tale – it does not have access to
her thoughts (only God knows, at one point, what she thought of her husband) nor does it really
describe her body in anything like the detail it lavishes on her husband’s. What we see of May is
largely a matter of her secret signs and cunning behavior: and the only lengthy description of her,
significantly, is given in the context of presenting her as a good option for January to marry. What
appears beautiful on the visible outside is clearly rotten in the middle.

Why is it appropriate that this tale be told by the Merchant?

This too is represented in the strand of Biblical imagery throughout the tale. It is rather obvious,
perhaps, to see May’s infidelity with Damien (whose very name, some critics argue, means “snake”)
as a version of Eve’s transgression with the snake–both, indeed, take place in a beautiful garden,
though the Bible’s Adam does not share the physical disgust of January. Characteristic of the

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