The Merchant’s Tale Theme Quotes and Analysis:
Marriage and Relationships
Quotes and Analysis:
❏ ‘To take a wif it is a glorious thing’ (56)
❏ Iambic pentameter emphasis on ‘take’
❏ ‘Under that hooly boond with which that first God man and womman bond’ (49/50)
❏ Epistrophe, heroic couplet, emphasis on bondage
❏ ‘Under this yok of mariage ybounde’ (73)
❏ ‘Who can be so buxom as a wyf?’ (75)
❏ Obedience and paradoxical idea of large breasts insinuating the lure of sex
❏ ‘If thou lovest thyself, thou lovest thy wyf’ (172)
❏ Syntactical parallelism, diacope, potentially inferring that January will honour
his wife, redemption?
❏ That is in mariage hony-sweete; (184)
❏ Polysemic: temptress, new life and fertility, nectar of the gods, sticky and
entrapping.
AO3:
❖ Theophrastus (81): author of the ‘Golden Book of Marriage’, preaches that women
lead men to their doom.
❖ Intertextual; Wyf of Bath, made her husbands suffer in purgatory, potentially the
Merchant hijacking Januarie’s opinions
❖ As soon as a woman was able to bear children, she could marry.
❖ Women had as many rights as a domestic pet. The author of ‘The Goodman of
Paris’, a french medieval guidebook on wifehood, instructed his young wife to take
note of his lapdog when looking to improve upon her wifely traits.
❖ Chaucer’s granddaughter was first married in her teens to a man in his fifties. She
bore one child to her third husband.
❖ It was not uncommon to buy a bride. Conventional opinions of marriage at the time
were not dissimilar to Januarie’s.
AO5:
★ ‘The Merchant’s misogyny is a product of his marital disillusionment’- Tolliver
★ ‘To the courts of love, marriage was the institution of boredom’- Holman
★ ‘Mutual love between spouses was notably absent- Kelly
Gender Roles and Antifeminism
Quotes and Analysis:
❏ ‘She is a shrewe at al’ (9)
❏ Pejorative
❏ ‘Bodily delit on wommen, ther was his appetit’ (38)
Marriage and Relationships
Quotes and Analysis:
❏ ‘To take a wif it is a glorious thing’ (56)
❏ Iambic pentameter emphasis on ‘take’
❏ ‘Under that hooly boond with which that first God man and womman bond’ (49/50)
❏ Epistrophe, heroic couplet, emphasis on bondage
❏ ‘Under this yok of mariage ybounde’ (73)
❏ ‘Who can be so buxom as a wyf?’ (75)
❏ Obedience and paradoxical idea of large breasts insinuating the lure of sex
❏ ‘If thou lovest thyself, thou lovest thy wyf’ (172)
❏ Syntactical parallelism, diacope, potentially inferring that January will honour
his wife, redemption?
❏ That is in mariage hony-sweete; (184)
❏ Polysemic: temptress, new life and fertility, nectar of the gods, sticky and
entrapping.
AO3:
❖ Theophrastus (81): author of the ‘Golden Book of Marriage’, preaches that women
lead men to their doom.
❖ Intertextual; Wyf of Bath, made her husbands suffer in purgatory, potentially the
Merchant hijacking Januarie’s opinions
❖ As soon as a woman was able to bear children, she could marry.
❖ Women had as many rights as a domestic pet. The author of ‘The Goodman of
Paris’, a french medieval guidebook on wifehood, instructed his young wife to take
note of his lapdog when looking to improve upon her wifely traits.
❖ Chaucer’s granddaughter was first married in her teens to a man in his fifties. She
bore one child to her third husband.
❖ It was not uncommon to buy a bride. Conventional opinions of marriage at the time
were not dissimilar to Januarie’s.
AO5:
★ ‘The Merchant’s misogyny is a product of his marital disillusionment’- Tolliver
★ ‘To the courts of love, marriage was the institution of boredom’- Holman
★ ‘Mutual love between spouses was notably absent- Kelly
Gender Roles and Antifeminism
Quotes and Analysis:
❏ ‘She is a shrewe at al’ (9)
❏ Pejorative
❏ ‘Bodily delit on wommen, ther was his appetit’ (38)
