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The Merchant's Tale - Quotes

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The document includes key quotes from the entire tale, selected to help you answer a wide range of questions. They are separated into the following themes: women, marriage, sex, power, relationships, class, religion and deception. They are succinct and chosen selectively.

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  • June 13, 2022
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  • 2021/2022
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elizabethabbott
Key Merchant’s Tale Quotes
Women

 ‘So true and full of wisdom’ – merchant says is a husband’s view of his wife
 ‘She shall not pass twenty years old’ – January puts conditions on love + outlines him to be
the senex amans stereotype
 January tells his friends that older women know too much -> wants a younger wife whom he
may shame to his will and who will bear him children
 ‘Fair figure’ and ‘fair face’ – January describes May when he looks through the market-place
trying to find someone to marry vs him saying ‘love is blind’ – there is an earnest tone but
underneath = lusty desire
 ‘Ravished in a trance’ – January’s reaction when he looks at May
 ‘In his imagination he began to menace or threaten her’ – shows the potential for violence in
men towards women + wants to hurry the process of the wedding ceremony -> have sex,
showing his lustful desires + references to sexual desire: ‘sexual desire’ + ‘eager’ + ‘harder’ +
‘strain’ -> aggressive verbs
 ‘Fainted and swooned’ – Damyan reacted as much as January did when he saw May ->
almost suggests May carries a sense of divinity
 ‘Fresh’, ‘his paradise’ – January’s description of May
 ‘creature’ – January claims May is the creature that he best loves
 The host is shocked by the tale and says women will ‘always deviate from the truth’

Marriage

 ‘Wedlock is so easy + clean’ with all other states being ‘not worth a bean’ – says the
merchant
 A wife is said to be God’s gift to man -> merchant justifies desire to marry (‘God hath sent
him a wife’)
 ‘Pay their debt’– idea in marriage a woman owes her husband his sexual satisfaction (sounds
more like a business proposition)
 ‘Mirror polished bright’ – idea of reflection: he wants a female version of himself +
suggestion that
 Description of the wedding feast and music accompanying it is very elaborate + detailed,
especially when compared to the rushed description of the wedding.
 ‘A man may do no sin with his wife’ – comment on entrapment of marriage + contextual idea
that rape was allowed if it was in marriage
 When January became blind, he made sure to always hold May tight to him but this caused
her to often cry -> shows marriage/relations are not always equal/looking out for care of the
other
 ‘and al myn heritage, toun and tour’ – things January says May will win if she is faithful to
him -> idea that one must ‘test’ love
 Just before May and Damyan have sex, May refers to her marriage vows -> irony + lack of
binding nature of marriage
 The merchant claims his wife ‘hath an heep of vices’ and ‘my reweth soore I am unto hire
teyd’ (she bitterly repents being tied to her)

Sex

 January drinks mulled wine, claret, and strong white wine -> as aphrodisiacs

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