Nicholas In The Canterbury Tales

Similarly, Nicholas represents another contrast between the masculine and the feminine. At first glance, he is overtly heterosexual. However, the Miller gives several clues that suggest that Nicholas is perhaps not as vehemently masculine as he appears. For example, Nicholas is “sleigh and ful privee, and lyk a mayden meke for to see” (Chaucer 3201-3202). The Wadsworth Chaucer glosses “privee” as “discreet, secretive” (68). However, the Oxford English Dictionary adds another layer of meaning when it defines “privee” as “sexually intimate” (“privy”). Combined with the OED definition of “meke,”: “gentle, courteous, kind” (“meke”), “lyk a mayden” (Chaucer 3202), Nicholas’ gender identity becomes more fluid and feminine. Additionally, he

This aggressive heterosexual display is at odds with his reaction to her eventual acquiescence. Rather than taking advantage of the opportunity presented by her husband’s absence, and having sex with her immediately, Nicholas agrees to defer their encounter until such time as he can devise a plot to trick her husband. John becomes his object, and Alisoun is merely the means to achieve that object. His true desire is to have sexual domination over John, which he believes he can achieve through having sex with John’s wife. This sublimation of homosexual desire into heterosexual sex throws doubt on Nicholas’ gender identity. Miller comments that “what makes each of the male characters perverse from this perspective is the particular way each fails to respond properly to Alisoun, and so fails to participate adequately in the surrounding ideology of gender and desire” (16). When Nicholas finally does have sex with Alisoun, the Miller gives the act the most perfunctory of descriptions: “Withouten words 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” (Chaucer 3650-3653). There is none of the lustiness found in the sexual descriptions in The Reeve’s Tale, for example. This indicates that the act itself is not the culmination of Nicholas’ desire. Hansen concurs with this point when she says that Nicholas competes, “with John for sexual access to Alisoun, and, true to type, the male rivals actually demonstrate less interest in the female object of their alleged desire than in their own gender and class identity” (228). Since Nicholas can only achieve sexual satisfaction by besting John, and since he cannot do that in a homosexual way, he does the next best thing, and has sex with John’s wife