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The Merchant's Tale Analysis

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“The Merchant’s Tale” The merchant has a very different view on marriage. Right from the beginning the merchant is very bitter towards the ideas of marriage. Right from the beginning the merchant states that his tale will portray wives in a very different way than the other tales. The merchant offers such high praise of marriage and such praise for the role of the wife that his guests are confused as to whether he is sincere or being sarcastic. January (old with white hair like snow) marries May (young and beautiful like the May flowers) after rejecting the good advice of Justinius (the just or righteous man) and following the advice of Placebo (the flattering man). January wants to marry to fulfil God’s wish that a man and woman should marry, …show more content…

May and Damian were still having their secret affair but January could not see them at all. He was blind and blind to the affairs that were going on around him, “Alas this noble January, he so generous once in his prosperity went blind…” (Chaucer 379). One day when May and Damian were getting ready to have sex in the garden Pluto saw this, he restored January’s sight. January, seeing his cuckoldry, let out a huge roar and asked his wife what she was doing. May said the only way to restore his eye sight was by struggling with another man. In the “Miller’s Tale” Alisoun sleeps with Nicholas after only the smallest of times, even going so far as to condemn her husband to tricks and humiliation to spend the night with Nicholas in their bed. Alisoun is portrayed as an object meant to be ravaged by the men around her, rather than a person who makes her own decisions about her sexuality. The betrayal of her husband was in her nature. Alisoun's character has lots of stereotypes about women, which portrayed them as dangerously lustful liars and cheats. May can also fit all the stereo types of women being cruel and cheaters, because she also deceives her husband and sleeps with another man. May tells her husband he was just seeing things when he did see his wife sleep with another man. Both women are cheaters and their husbands are fooled by them. January doesn’t fall

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