Canterbury Tales Of Miller
In his The Miller's Tale Chaucer presents a side of the courtly love
tradition
never seen before. His characters are average middle class workers
rather than
elite nobility. There is an interesting comparison between the
Miller's
characters and those in two of Marie de France's lais that share
very close plot
lines. Instead of being idealized Chaucer's characters are
gritty. Instead of
being involved in "courtly love" there is some evidence
that the
relationship between Alison and Nicholas is one of lust. Chaucer's
use of the
lower class makes the absurdity of what they are doing stand out.
In the lais of
Marie de France, Guigemare and Yonec, are built on the
same archetype which is
the same as Chaucer's Miller's tale uses. Marie's
lais can give provide a set of
"ground rules" for this archetype. The two
lais share several similar
elements. They both contain the same three central
characters, who possesses
fundamental similarities, the same beginning plot
line and several of the same
themes. The first character shared by the two
lais is the story's villain, the
aged husband. He is a powerful lord who is
much older than his wife. Because he
is conscious of this fact, he worries
constantly that his wife will betray him,
so he locks her up. He is both the
least and most important figure in the story.
He's important because
without his presence and actions the story could never
take place. But he has
very little actual interaction with the other two more
central characters.
The husband in Yonec is never described as meeting either
his wife or her
lover. In Guigemare the husband, wife and Guigemare are only
together when
the two lovers are discovered. The figure of the beautiful,
imprisoned wife
is the second central character. She is the quintessential
damsel in
distress, beautiful, noble (and with the exception of her one true
love)
chaste. The third character is the valiant lover who rescues the unhappy
and
imprisoned damsel. In both Guigemare and Yonec this character is a
knight,
and like his lover, the damsel in distress, he is the stereotypical
"knight
in shining armor." He is described as being afflicted by love, and
says he
will die without it. He will go to any extent for his true love. As
with
characters both Guigemare and Yonec share a similar plot line. The young
wife is
locked up by her jealous husband. Then by some magical means her
lover is
transported to her. After some protestation from the woman, and some
wooing from
the knight, the two become lovers, until they are discovered and
separated.
After this point the two plots diverge. Also central to both
stories is the idea
that these extra-marital affairs are not improper. In
Guigemare, the lady's maid
says to the knight: "The man who wishes to love my
lady must keep her
constantly in his thoughts and, if you remain faithful to
each other, the love
between you will be right and proper." (pg. 49)
Obviously fidelity is
important, but not forced fidelity. Love is more
important than marriage in
these lais. It's also important to note the
chastity of the lovers. There is no
mention of contact between the imprisoned
wives and their husbands. In Yonec the
Lord of Caerwent takes his wife
for the purpose of child bearing, but she is
imprisoned for seven years
before meeting her lover and no children are
evidenced from the text.
Guigemare has never been in love before he meets his
true love. This gives
the love and actions between the pairs seem even more
pure, and also makes it
seem to be less sinful. Love is a powerful force in both
these stories. It is
not only the driving force behind the character's actions,
but it also causes
them physical affliction. Marie de France writes in Guigemare:
"But love had
now pierced him to the quick and his heart was greatly
disturbed. For the
lady wounded him so deeply he had completely forgotten his
homeland. . .The
knight remained alone, mournful and downcast. He did not yet
realize the
cause, but at least he knew that, if he were not cured by the lady
his death
would be assured." (pg. 48) To Guigemare at least love is the
most important
thing there is. This consideration is even more striking by the
fact that
Guigemare either could not or would not fall in love while in his own
land.
So those are the basic elements involved in the "imprisoned
wife" archetype
used by Marie. In The Miller's Tale Chaucer uses same basic
plot line, and
similar characters. One of the largest differences between the
Chaucer's
characters and Marie's characters is their level of wealth and their
position
in society. This causes them to be portrayed in a different manner
than
Marie's rich, noble characters. The first of the three major
characters is
present largely unchanged. He is not of course a king or lord,
but John the
carpenter is obviously a man of at least some amount of wealth,
evidenced by the
fact that he has a house that is big enough that he can rent
rooms from. He is
also more present than the jealous husband of Marie. He
does not lock his wife
up in a tower and stay far away from her. Unlike the
husbands in Marie's lais he
still has contact with his wife. The two sleep in
the same bed (as we see when
Absalom tries to sing to Alison). John's
level of jealousy is not as great as
that of Marie's husbands. When he
awakens to hear Absalom singing to his wife he
does nothing. And as Absalom
continues to try to woo John's wife away from him
in his presence, he still
does nothing. The king in Yonec kills his wife's
lover, in Guigemare he at
first attempts to do the same. He even allows a man,
Nicholas, to be near
to his wife. The only man allowed close to Guigemare's
lover is a priest who
had "lost his lower members." Alison, Chaucer's
imprisoned wife, is less of
the ideal than her counterparts in Marie. Certainly
she is beautiful. But her
is beauty is slightly flawed. She is "graceful
and slim like [a] weasel." By
comparing her with a weasel Chaucer makes
Alison seem to be dirty and
untrustworthy. Morally the comparison between Alison
and her counterparts in
Marie is more confusing. Chaucer describes her as having
a "wanton eye." But
her protestation seems to be more real, and
Nicholas seems to have gone
to farther lengths to make her his lover. When
Nicholas professes his
love to her Chaucer describes her reaction as such:
"[She] twisted her head
away hard/ and said, 'I won't kiss you, on my
faith;/ why let me be,' she
said, 'let be, Nicholas, or I'll cry
"Help!" and "alas!"'' (pg. 155) Alison
seems quite adamantly
opposed to becoming Nicholas' lover here, as opposed to
the wife in Yonec, who
simply needs proof that her lover to be is Christian.
Her refusals, and then
Nicholas only winning when he had "pushed her so
hard" sounds, at
least to the modern reader, to be rape. But just lines later
she swears a vow
with Nicholas. The shifts made by the women in Marie are not
nearly so drastic.
At no point in Guigemare or Yonec do you get the
feeling that the women will
refuse either of their lovers. Their protests are
almost just for propriety
sake, the medieval version of playing hard to get.
But in Alison's refusal there
is no apparent support for her actions shortly
thereafter. Possibly the reason
for Alison's shifting actions is due to
Chaucer's image of women at the time, as
was argued against by Christine de
Pisan. The figure of the rescuing lover is
divided into two parts by Chaucer.
Pleasant Nicholas is the actual lover, but
Absalom is the stereotype of
the courtly lover. Aside from the fact that he
actually becomes her lover
Nicholas shares very little with the knights of Marie
de France. He is not
especially handsome, being described as looking "as
meek as a maiden." Also
unlike Guigemare certainly he is not chaste, nor is
this his first love.
Chaucer writes: "he knew all about secret love and
pleasurable consolations."
(pg. 151) This makes the love between Alison and
Nicholas seem to be less
pure. Instead of Alison being the only woman for him,
as is Guigemare's
lover, she may just be another in a string of many. Absalom,
on the other
hand, possesses many more of the qualities that one would expect
that a lover
in a story about courtly love would have. He is described as being
handsome,
or at least well groomed. He involves himself in what could be
described as
"courtly" pursuits such as dancing (Chaucer says that he
knew twenty
different steps) and can play two instruments. His attempts at
winning her
love are more traditionally romantic. He sings under her window,
sends her
gifts and even money to try to earn her love. Like Marie's
knights
Absalom is "afflicted" by love. Alison causes him to stay awake
at
night. But he is also "a little squeamish/ about farting and prim
in
speech." (pg. 157), not the most masculine of characters. The Miller
views
John's marriage to Alison as a mistake. He says: "People should
marry
according to their condition,/ for youth and age are often at odds."
(pg.
153) In considering what happens to the two lovers at the end of the
story there
is no indication that Chaucer thought that what they were doing
was wrong. It
would seem that if their actions where thought to be incorrect
then they would
have been discovered, and some sort of misfortune would have
resulted (to cite a
more extreme case, the Jews in the Prioresses Tale). But
instead, of being
punished they get away with their affair. Absalom gets his
revenge on Nicholas
with a hot poker, but John the carpenter seems to be the
ultimate loser.
Nicholas and Alison get away with their night of passion,
and he's made to look
like a fool in front of the whole neighborhood. Class
is the major difference
between the characters of Chaucer the Miller's Tale
and Marie's lais. Marie's
lovers are idealized, what each knight and lady
should strive for. Chaucer's
lovers are dirty, animal like and raucous. The
Miller's Tale is a parody of the
courtly love tradition. But the fact that
Chaucer uses the lower classes as his
characters makes his story even more
absurd. Instead of being wise they
are
foolish.
Bibliography
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury
Tales trans. Kent & Constance Hieatt;
Bantam 1964 de France, Marie
The Lais of Marie de France trans. Glyn Burgess
& Keith Busby; Penguin
1986