Aestheticism of the bridal rooms in “The Merchant’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale”

By contrast, the aestheticism represented in “The Merchant’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale” focuses on sensual aspects of the intimate physical relationships between a couple. It is usually associated with concupiscence without fulfilling the production of offspring. Such a kind of aestheticism is not seen as the binary opposition of that in “The Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Clerk’s Tale.” Instead, it is distinguished because people differently understand beauty. The aristocrats in “The Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Clerk’s Tale” have leisure to pay more attention to intellectual beauty, while the commoners in “The Merchant’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale” only pay attention to sensual beauty. The couples who are vulnerable to the public gaze of the activities in their bridal rooms include Alison and John, May and January as well as the Wife of Bath and her husbands. Among these tales, the Merchant has offered the most detailed description of lustfulness in the bridal rooms.

On his wedding night, January tries to legitimize his burning desire for his bride by appealing to the “lawe.” He utters to May:

“It is no fors how longe that we pleye;

In trewe wedlock coupled be we tweye, And blessed be the yok that we been inne, For in oure actes we mowe do no synne.

A man may do no synne with his wyf, Ne hurte hymselven with his owene knyf,

For we han leve to pleye us by the lawe.” (IV 1835-41)

January obviously has a wrong concept about the nature of conjugal intercourse. He believes that the “lawe” allows a married couple to indulge in lasciviousness as long as they want. Yet, no sane law would draw up such a lax principle as January imagines. The focus of a sane moral law requires the priority of procreation over sexual pleasure. In other words, January evaluates intercourse merely in terms of quantity, not quality, in terms of the duration of the “pleye” time, not mutual love between him and his wife. After justifying his impure intention, he talks himself into believing the legitimacy of lasciviousness and seems very confident in the way he

practices the procreative art:

Thus laboureth he til that the day gan dawe;

And thanne he taketh a sop in fyn clarree, And upright in his bed thanne sitteth he, And after that he sang ful loude and cleere, And kiste his wyf, and made wantown cheere.

He was al coltissh, ful of ragerye, And ful of jargon as a flekked pye.

The slakke skyn aboute his nekke shaketh

Whil that he sang, so chaunteth he and craketh. (IV 1842-50)

January expresses too much of his passion through a series of actions—he “pleye,”

“laboureth,” “sitteth,” “sang,” “kiste,” “made wantown cheere” and “coltish wantonness,” “jargon,” “shaketh” his neck, “chaunteth,” “craketh.” It seems that he can only express his feelings by means of “performing” his sexual desires and skills.

His restlessness reveals his flippant attitude toward May. Just like art is “not expression, but construction, an operation aiming at a certain result” (Eco 1988:165), the procreative art is analogously not concerned with expression, but the making of offspring. It is the final product, offspring, not the makers, which really matter for the nature of the procreative art. On the contrary, the narrator Merchant draws our attention to the excessive emotions with which the husband “pleye.” Despite the fact that intercourse often lasts but a relatively short duration, the numerous acts it entails in January have been out of proportion to its duration. Soon we find out that what happens in the couple’s bridal room falls into the target of the Church Fathers. A Franciscan preacher Gilbert of Tournai (d. circa 1280) best comments on a bridal room such as January’s, fed by lust. “It was comparable to adultery in that it produced the same disastrous consequences—lasciviousness, jealousy, madness,”

while what grows in the aristocrats’ chamber is “true conjugal love, essentially social since it established an equal relationship between husband and wife.”³¹ That January indulges in passions and enjoys his bride’s sexual attractiveness is understandable, since Chaucer’s Reeve reminds the pilgrims of the aged desire: “for thogh oure myght be goon,/ Oure wyl desireth folie evere in oon” (I 3879-80). It is human nature to

31 Gilbert of Tournai, Ad conjugates. Sermo II, fols. 173va-174vb, qtd. in Vecchio 110.

satisfy desires, both for the young and the age, for men and women (the Wife of Bath is not young yet still keeps searching for a “prey”). Yet, the way January treats his wife is as frivolous as a playboy. What is worse is that he has no idea that his frivolous attitude toward his wife is against the “lawe.” St. Thomas explains,

If pleasure be sought in such a way as to exclude the honesty of marriage, so that, to wit, it is not as a wife but as a woman that a man treats his wife, and that he is ready to use her in the same way if she were not his wife, it is a mortal sin; wherefore such a man is said to be too ardent a lover of his wife, because his ardor carries him away from the goods of marriage.

(ST, Suppl., Q. 49, Art. 6c, emphasis mine) According to such a definition, January commits a mortal sin when he overuses the procreative art and treats May as merely a sex object, not as a wife. Perhaps there is no fundamental difference in the way he treats her as that he treated his former lovers.

In other words, he is too ardent a lover of his wife, and his discordant soul is too susceptible to the curve of emotions. Therefore, the bridal room of January and May

“flagrantly satisfies erotic and aggressive desires and flouted authority” (Kendrick 57).

On “Whether it is a mortal sin for a man to have knowledge of his wife, with the intention not of a marriage good but merely of pleasure,” St. Thomas’s answer is as follows:

Some say that whenever pleasure is the chief motive for the marriage act it is a mortal sin; that when it is an indirect motive it is a venial sin; and that when it spurns the pleasure altogether and is displeasing, it is wholly void of venial sin; so that it would be a mortal sin to seek pleasure in this act, a venial sin to take the pleasure when offered, but that perfection requires one to detest it. But this is impossible … because pleasure in a good action is good, and in an evil action, evil; wherefore, as the marriage act is not evil in itself, neither will it be always a mortal sin to seek pleasure therein.

(ST, Suppl., Q. 49, Art. 6c, emphasis mine) It is one’s intention that leads sexual pleasure to be good or evil. In January’s workshop, what is denounced is ugliness in his way of performing the procreative art.

It is teeming with lust, beset by internal discord and torn by the restless soul. The

relationship and love between husband and wife is here reduced to sex and possession.

It is erroneous to think that love between a couple “differs from other types of love only through its connection with sex.”³² Gist notes that St. Thomas “declares the marriage act at least venial, perhaps even mortal, sin” (12). We can find from the passage above that Gist is right in that St. Thomas “measures the relative sinfulness of the act by the amount and type of pleasure derived from it” (12), yet perhaps she forgets to mention that “pleasure in a good action is good … as the marriage act is not evil in itself, neither will it be always a mortal sin to seek pleasure therein.” The tenet St. Thomas sticks to is the principle of moderation and appropriateness. As long as one accomplishes the marital act in compliance with reason and order, there should be no need of questioning its legitimacy. Such an elaboration suffices to defend St. Thomas against Gist’s accusation that he holds a totally negative attitude toward marital sex. Yet, this will not be able to justify the fact that January exaggerates the most pleasing aspect of sexual intercourse to the extent that their conjugal debt is distorted and hence ugly. The result is an excess of sweetness to the point of vulgarity.

Not only the aged husbands misuse the procreative art, restless young wives in the commoners’ marriage also abuse the power of the procreative art which often results in the complicities with extra-marital affair and the appropriation of a couple’s bridal room by an outsider. Two examples can illustrate such an assertion: John’s bridal room is appropriated by Nicholas, while January’s garden of love by Damian.

William F. Woods discusses the private and public space in “The Millers’ Tale” and argues that “the most private space in the tale and the richest metaphor for its world is what Alison herself embodies: the promise behind those black eyes, inside the embroidered collar, above the long laced boots” (166). In addition to the most private space that Alison embodies, John’s house is also compared to such a space.

These two are “established as analogous, mutually signifying tropes for the forbidden paradise that constitutes private life in a small town like Oxford” (166). This paradise is desired not only by John but Nicholas. Despite the fact that John

32 New Catholic Encyclopedia, v. 13, 148.

constructs the private space, Nicholas tries to make that private space exclusively his own. The same pattern of plot can also be found in “The Merchant’s Tale.”

January’s garden of Eden is of course a private space, though it is alfresco. The private space in the two locations, John’s and January’s bridal rooms, are also

“established as analogous, mutually signifying tropes for the forbidden paradise that constitutes private life in a small town like Oxford” or in a financial city like Lombardy.

Believing the impending Second Flood, the carpenter John (apparently oblivious of God’s promise not to destroy the world by deluge) hides himself in the tub hung under his roof. He is exhausted due to a string of preparatory travail—“The dede sleep, for wery bisynesse,/ Fil on this carpenter right” (I 3643-44). Then, the adulterers seize the chance and take action:

Doun of the laddre stalketh Nicholay, And Alisoun ful softe adoun she spedde;

Withouten wordes mo they goon to bedde, Ther as the carpenter is wont to lye.

Ther was the revel and the melodye;

And thus lith Alison and Nicholas, In bisynesse of myrthe and of solas, Til that the belle of laudes gan to rynge,

And freres in the chauncel gone synge. (I 3648-56)

These adulterers take John’s marriage bed as their pleasure bed and shamelessly trespass the moral codes. Nicholas even seems to have made that private space exclusively his own. In a similar vein, May and Damian act in collusion to deceive and cuckold January. While January is momentarily blind, the wife betrays him by stealing the key to the garden to Damian.

This fresshe May…

In warm wex hath emprented the clyket That Januarie bar of the smale wyket, By which into his gardyn ofte he wente;

And Damyan, that knew al hire entente,

The cliket countrefeted pryvely. (IV 2116-21)

In one occasion January takes May with him to the garden of love, which is metaphorically an extension of their bridal room. Damian enters the garden earlier than the couple do, and at the signal of May, he climbs into “the pyrie” (IV 2217).

Later May goes up the tree and right there “sodeynly anon this Damyan/ Gan pullen up the smok, and in he throng” (IV 2352-53). Pluto and Proserpine just argued about May’s chastity, and having thus seen the nasty art (craftiness, trickery) concocted by May and Damian, Pluto promptly restores January’s sight. The aged husband sees what happened yet afterwards is naïvely talked into believing the lie May devised:

that she was struggling with a man in order to search for the cure to heal January’s blindness. After she goes down from the tree, January

kisseth hire, and clippeth hire ful ofte,

And on hire wombe he stroketh hire ful softe,

And to his palays hoom he hath hire lad. (IV 2413-15, emphasis mine) Kenneth Bleeth makes an interesting observation on the act of stroking. He argues that January’s stroking of May’s womb and his joy at their reconciliation show that Chaucer incorporates into the plot the motifs associated with the Biblical narrative and tradition of “Joseph’s Doubting of Mary” (58). Out of instinct, the old carpenter Joseph suspects Mary’s chastity while being told of her pregnancy. Yet, when he later hears the angel’s prophecy of Christ’s birth, he apologizes to Mary. In “The Merchant’s Tale,” January also apologizes to May, not because of his suspicion of her pregnancy (she is not pregnant by the end of the tale), but because of his “blind”

judgment imposed on her. One does not seem to be able to detect procreation as one of January’s motives for intercourse as we have seen in his bridal room. Bleeth, however, contends that “January’s expectation of fatherhood is probably a delusion, while his renewed intimacy with May appears to have been achieved at the price of future deception” (64, emphasis mine). True, January has been living in delusion before and after his marriage, yet he has never thought of procreation as the reason for having sex with his wife, hence there should be no delusion of such a kind. Just like the carpenter John is not aware of the truth of his being cuckolded, the knight January also has no idea of the truth. Being indulged in sexual play, January is ultimately set

up by his squire and the squire’s sexual play. Thus, the bridal room and the garden incur disastrous consequences.

Often, when Chaucer presents the abuse of the procreative art, the plots of the tales take age into consideration. This is what we have in “The Miller’s Tale” and

“The Merchant’s Tale.” Each of the elderly husbands often cannot subdue his passion and thus become too ardent a lover of his wife. To some extent, the medievals tend to be biased about age: neither in the courtly tradition nor in marriage are the elder expected or encouraged to express their passion and sexual desires.

Both Andreas Capellanus and John Gower propound sexual moderation or even asceticism for the elders. Andreas Capellanus, in explaining “What persons are fit for love,” argues,

Age is a bar, because after the sixtieth year in a man and the fiftieth in a woman, although one may have intercourse his passion cannot develop into love; because at that age the natural heat begins to lose its force, and the natural moisture is greatly increased, which leads a man into various difficulties and troubles him with various ailments, and there are no consolations in the world for him except food and drink. (32)

Physiologically, Andreas Capellanus may or may not be right, yet psychologically, he is certainly prejudiced to hold that only food and drink can comfort an elder man or woman. He fails to acknowledge a higher and more profound level of spiritual union between husband and wife when they reach maturity. Gower also wrote two verses devoted to such a problem. In a verse titled as “More about unlawful desire,” the poet first preaches to a general readership admonishing them to exercise reason in the choice of love:

Though love is everyone’s, the man whose love Is out of bounds is reckoned not as lover;

Yet Venus lures the heart by random lot

Which does not let him reckon reasonably. (Book Eight)³³

Gower then addresses to the aged lovers in the next verse, called “That lust is not appropriate for old men”:

33 The original Latin title is “Item de voluptate illicita,” Gower 89.

He wastes his time who wants what he can’t have;

Where might is missing, wanting wants a cure.

When warmth departs, then frosty bristled Winter Will not be up to Summer’s exercise.

What May has Nature gives not to December, Nor to a flower can mud or mire be matched;

And thus decrepit pleasure, youthful dotage Won’t flourish in the service Venus seeks.

Therefore it’s meet that whom white age has touched Should cultivate chaste bodies after that. (Book Eight)³⁴

In these two passages, Gower is insinuating that age does not always bring wisdom.

These elder lovers or husbands, for example January, have no awareness that they only waste their energy and time in pursuing what they do not deserve. The more they long for sexual warmth, the more they experience bristled frostiness. In their cases, only age comes alone. Chaucer’s description of the mental condition of old husbands like John is often exaggerated and ironic. Among the pilgrims, no one sympathizes aged desires except the Reeve. He exclaims:

“We olde men, I drede, so fare we:

Til we be rotten, kan we nat be rype;

We hoppen alwey whil that the world wol pype.

For in oure wyl ther stiketh evere a nayl, To have an hoor heed and a grene tayl,

As hath a leek; for thogh oure myght be goon, Oure wyl desireth folie evere in oon.

For whan we may nat doon, than wol we speke;

Yet in oure ashen olde is fyr yreke.” (I 3874-82)

Yet, the topos of “Know thyself” is so recurrent throughout every aphorism in Gower’s passage that the Reeve’s voice is drowned. The major flaw January has would be lack of wisdom, which leads him to a misjudgment of the values of marriage.

Owing to a mixture of lavish concupiscence and extra-marital complicities, the rooms of the commoners reveal the aestheticism of sensuality.

34 The original Latin title is “Voluptatem senibus non convenire,” Gower 90.

4. Profaneness of the bridal workshops in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” “The Merchant’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale”

Such an aestheticism of sensuality portrayed in the bridal rooms in “The Merchant’s Tale” and “The Miller’s Tale” further leads to the profanation of the procreative art, which consists of the motive to “play” and intemperate concupiscence.

It is assumed that “constant biological drives would lead to pregnancies and childbirth” (Macfarlane 51), yet in these two tales and “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,”

the opposite situation is presented: the barrenness of the “spring and autumn” couples is foregrounded. In “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” despite that she intends to

“speke of wo that is in mariage” (III 3), the way she describes her bridal-room affairs does not sound that her sexual pleasure is destroyed by that “wo.” She tells the audience,

In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument As frely as my Makere hath it sent.

………..

Myn housbonde shal it have bothe eve and morwe, Whan that hym list come forth and paye his dette.

An housbonde I wol have—I wol nat lette—

An housbonde I wol have—I wol nat lette—