Maria Villasenor
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales includes four tales that deal at length with views of marriage. In his essay, “Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage,” George Lyman Kittredge was one of the first to recognize the debate about marriage, which the Wife of Bath initiates. He noticed that three pilgrims on the journey respond to the Wife’s arguments about how, in marriage, the woman should dominate the man: the Clerk, who tells a tale of the patient and noble Griselda and defends the traditional orthodox view of wifely submissiveness within marriage; the Merchant, who tells a tale about a wife who is the opposite of Griselda, who is not noble but deceitful; and the Franklin, whose tale is about mutual love and respect. Kittredge believes that the Franklin’s tale presents the noblest example of marriage because of the mutual openness and generosity of the knight and his wife. These are the tales that make up the “marriage group,” and all focus on the arguments about what a marriage should ideally be. The argument I make is based solely on the views of the Clerk and Franklin, whose tales are somewhat related in the marriage views that they express.
It is not the Franklin’s Tale that presents a higher and more noble example of marriage, but rather the Clerk’s Tale. This is a bold critical position for a college student to adopt; it challenges not only the view of George Lyman Kittredge, even today a highly respected Chaucer scholar, but also the received opinion about Chaucer’s views on marriage held by most Chaucer scholars. My position on the nobility of Griselda’s marriage also contradicts contemporary feminist views on marriage, views widely held in modern Western countries like the United States.
Before addressing the core of my argument regarding which of the tales is considered the most noble, I must first analyze the Wife of Bath’s Tale because she is the one who initiates the argument on marriage. The Wife is a woman who violates the traditional Christian views of marriage, yet she quotes from St. Paul and misinterprets what he said in order to get her point across. One of her arguments is that God made our sexual organs for pleasure as well as procreation. In her essay, “The Wife of Bath and the Problem of Mastery,” Patricia Anne Magee, a medieval literature critic, points out that, in Chaucer’s language,“ ‘God made marriage in paradys . . . to multiplye mankind to the service of God.’” This indicates that sex was made for the creation of human beings to serve God and not for pleasure.
The Wife argues that the Bible does not specifically say whether re-marriage was forbidden by God and states that Solomon had “a thousand wives or so.” Magee further adds to the views of the Church, “the Wife has had a series of marriages, violating the medieval notion of a ‘clean wydewe.’ ” The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics states clearly that second marriages were discouraged by the Church in the Middle Ages. By marrying five times, the Wife demonstrated that she is deceitful and cunning because she never followed or believed in the orthodox views of marriage. She mentions the teachings of St. Paul as a justification of multiple marriages, but twists his meanings by ignoring what doesn’t fit her argument. St. Paul says, “Just as Christ is head of the Church so the husband is head of the wife. Just as Christ loved his Church, so ought men to love their wives” (Ephesians 5:22–23). In her prologue, the Wife of Bath describes each of her husbands and how she mastered all of them and got her way through manipulation. She admits marrying her first four husbands because they were old and close to death and she would inherit their wealth.
She also admits that “the one” (her fifth husband) she married for love: “The one I took for love and not for wealth . . .” The fact is that she loved him because he dominated her and he would not allow her to master him. She tells the pilgrims, “And yet he was my worst, and many a blow / He struck me still can ache along my row / Of ribs, and will till my dying day” (272). He dominated her by physically abusing her.
Why didn’t she do something about his abusive ways by controlling him? The fact is that she loved the idea that he was the one who dominated her. Magee observes, “It is clear that she does not really desire power but yearns for it.”6 There is truth to this observation because once the Wife gained power over her husbands, she instantly grew tired of them. It was no longer a challenge for her after that. Her fifth husband, though, was a challenge because he was the one who had the power over her. At the end of her prologue, she tells the pilgrims that she gained power over the last husband by making him angry and tearing a page out of his favorite book so that he would strike her. She made him believe that she was dying and accused him of only wanting her for her money. He asked for her forgiveness and gave her back her freedom by telling her that she could do whatever she pleased for the rest of their marriage. Thereafter, she became kind and faithful and treated him better than she had treated any of her other husbands. This does not mean that she is finally a “true wife” as Griselda in the Clerk’s Tale, but the Wife of Bath does show some progress in her marital understanding at the end of her prologue.
The Clerk’s Tale can be understood as an example of higher religious idealism in marriage because of Griselda’s virtue and patience toward Walter and his demands. In this tale, the husband dominates the wife. Griselda submits, under the most trying circumstances, to her husband, Walter; therefore, it reflects a traditional ideal in Christian marriage. Did Griselda love her husband or did she act out of a sense of duty? Griselda represents the highest love because she continued to love even when it was not reciprocated. Walter asks for her hand in marriage on the condition that she does whatever he asks, no matter what pain he may cause her. She accepts this condition and promises him that she will abide by his commands without complaint. The testing of her patience and fidelity thus begins.
The first test comes when her firstborn baby is taken away. Her second child is taken in the same way, and both are apparently killed. The final test comes when Walter tells Griselda that he intends to marry a younger woman. Through these three tests, Griselda is hurt but never questions or shows her grief, rather, she patiently accepts whatever Walter demands of her. As a wife, it is her duty to be submissive and do, in a patient manner, whatever is asked of her by her husband; as St. Paul said, “they are to be submissive as the law also says” (1 Corinthians 14:34–35). The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics describes the position of the man and the wife within a marriage during the Middle Ages: “The supremacy of the husband as the head of the wife is recognized, and the duty of wifely obedience declared.” In promising Walter that she will do whatever he asks, she declares the duties she has to fulfill.
Immanuel Kant said, “For any action to have moral worth, including a loving one, it must be motivated be a sense of duty.”8 In making a promise to him, Griselda accepts the duties of a wife, mother, and one subject to her husband. It is her duty to handle his affairs when he was away. It is her duty to bear him a son who will someday reign from his father’s throne. It is her duty to be a mother to her children for the little time that she has them. It is her duty to love Walter no matter what terrible pain he causes her to go through; Griselda says, “My heart will never turn or change its place.”9 It is her duty to be subject to her husband, as St. Paul said in Ephesians.
Griselda does indeed follow the teachings of St. Paul. She endures the most terrible tests but passes all of them without showing emotion, because it is her duty, as she declared when she made that fateful premarital vow to Walter. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics states that, “Love is perfected when its most laborious duties are performed with gladness.”
Indeed, Griselda has to accept having her two children taken away from her and later find out that her husband is to marry another, yet she keeps to her word and never questions her husband’s authority or shows grief. It is as though she believes her vow is recorded in Heaven. The testing she undergoes certainly qualifies as filled with “laborious duties.” She performs all of those duties well and with patience. I am not trying to imply that she was glad that her children were taken away; I am simply saying that she performed her duties without showing her sadness.
Griselda keeps her word, and without the slightest objection she does everything that Walter requests; it is not an accident that in the end their marriage is blissful. Their love is perfected because of her patience and the performance of her duties; their marriage is ultimately ennobled. Who is responsible for this marital nobility? Griselda. The protagonist in the tale is Griselda. She is the one who had power over Walter, and not Walter over her, as many readers today believe. In terms of reading the tale, most people may associate it with the Wife of Bath’s Tale because it is the complete opposite. Yes, indeed the spirit of this tale is contrary to the Wife’s argument, but more importantly, the Clerk’s Tale can be seen as the most idealistic conception of marriage in the Canterbury Tales because Griselda follows the ideal Christian view of marriage. Griselda can be seen as the powerful figure in this tale because she never lets Walter break her will with his cruel tests. She has power over him because he obsesses about her patience and fidelity. In the end, Walter confesses that her children were alive and that she had been lied to in order to test her patience. He realizes that she is the noblest possible wife because she fulfills her promise and never stops loving him.
Griselda is not just a symbol of sentimental Christian patience, though patience is a virtue and of fundamental importance in achieving emotional stability and wisdom. She is also a woman who followed God’s will, as expressed when He said “. . . and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16).
I conclude with the Franklin’s Tale, which in Kittredge’s view, presents Chaucer’s highest example of marriage because of the mutual love, respect, and generosity that Dorigen and Arveragus have for one another. In his essay, “Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage,” Kittredge states that, “[this is] the ideal relation, that in which love continues and neither party to the contract strives for the mastery.”
In the beginning of the tale, Dorigen and Arveragus vowa to each other that they will always respect each other’s words and actions. Then they are married. A year passes and Arveragus has to leave home for a lengthy period in search of knightly deeds in Britain. Dorigen, who loves her husband more than life itself, is overcome with sadness and grief during his absence. The Franklin states that she is noble because “She wept his absence, sighed for him and pined / As noble wives will do . . .” While Arveragus is away, she meets a young squire by the name of Aurelius at a dance. Aurelius had been in love with her for two years and finally worked up enough courage to go to her and confess his love. Of course, since she loved her husband so much, Dorigen ignores his statement. She must have sensed that she has burned a hole through his heart, so to raise him from his despair, she decides to make a bargain with him instead: He is to remove all the rocks on the coast of Brittany, and if he is successful, she would love him more than any other man on earth. Well, this seems to be an impossible condition to Dorigen; she believes that he will never be able to get rid of the rocks. But Aurelius, desperate for her love, finds a student who has knowledge of magic to perform the task. Aurelius tells Dorigen that the task has been done and demands the fulfillment of her promise.
Arveragus returns to find his wife miserable, and he asks her why she is crying. She then confesses to him about her bargain with Aurelius. In doing so, she does not act in accordance with her vows, which would have led her to commit suicide in order to free herself from her bargain. Instead, she takes the problem to her husband to ask what she was supposed to do; therefore, she is following the teachings of St. Paul, in which he stated “And if they [women] want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home . . .” (1 Corinthians 14:35). Arveragus tells Dorigen that she must abide by her promise by telling her,
All may be well, but you must keep your word . . . I rather would be stabbed than to live to see
You fail in truth . . .
Truth is the highest thing in a man’s keeping . . .
(Franklin’s Tale 429)
In telling her to abide by her promise, he thereby reasserts that he is the “head” of the marriage, which is the Bible’s abiding principle: the husband is the dominant figure in the marriage. He does not want to see her fail in truth, but what about her vow to Arveragus?
. . . God grant there never betwixt us twain, Through any fault of mine, dispute or strife. Sir, I will be your true and humble wife . . .(Franklin’s Tale 429)
By making the bargain with Aurelius, Dorigen has already failed in staying true to her husband. So what means more, her words to her husband or her words to Aurelius? Surely, her words to Arveragus take precedence over her rash promise to Aurelius, which makes the bargain to commit adultery invalid. Arveragus did not want to see her fail in truth, but the truth of the matter is that she had already failed as a true and humble wife because of her lack of prudence and her lack of respect for her husband. Dorigen, like Griselda, had duties to fulfill, but did not fulfill the main duty of being a wife, which is to keep one’s marriage vow. Arveragus should have commanded Dorigen to stay instead of giving her consent to abide by her promise to Aurelius, which makes it acceptable for his duped wife to commit adultery. D. W. Robertson argues that no one can validly give up anything he has the right to hold.
A wife is to submit to her husband as the Church submits to Christ. Griselda is an example of a true and loyal wife who not only submitted to her husband, but to God’s will as well. The marriage of Dorigen and Arveragus does not truly qualify as noble because of the lack of truth in Dorigen’s words and her readiness to be unfaithful not only to her husband but to her marriage vow. It is true that Dorigen and Arveragus were reluctant that she fulfill her rash promise, which made adultery necessary, but they were both ready to look the other way as far as the adultery was concerned. Therefore, the highest example of nobility within the marriage group is Griselda because of her obedience and fulfillment of her words to her husband. Again, we simply cannot dismiss Griselda as a woman who represents passive suffering; she is a model of patiently yet actively cooperating with God’s will. In patience, she rises far above the Wife of Bath and Dorigen in the Franklin’s Tale.
Patience is the noblest quality of a marital relationship according to Geoffrey Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, especially when patience is practiced within the context of single-minded adherence to the truth of a Christian’s relationship with God and the sincerity of one’s vows. Griselda’s devotion to Walter is the result of her patience and her determination not to play with words. Such an attitude may be too much to expect in real life, but Chaucer shows that spiritual wisdom is possible in rare persons like Griselda. The poet also shows that while mutual generosity in the dealings of a husband and wife is an important virtue, the truly indispensable virtue in a successful marriage is patience, which is defined as willingness to accept unwelcome events and to let the future unfold on its own.
Works Cited
Holy Bible: The New King James Version: Containing the Old and New Testaments. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
Brody, Saul N. “The Comic Rejection of Courtly Love.” In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature. Edited by Joan Ferrante and George D. Economou. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1975. 221–261.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Clerk’s Tale.” In The Canterbury Tales. Trans. Nevill Coghill. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1951.
Foley, William M. “Marriage (Christians).” In Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.Edited by James Hastings. New York: Scribner’s 1958.
Kittredge, George Lyman. “Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage.” In Chaucer Criticism: The Canterbury Tales. Edited by Richard T. Schoeck and Jerome Taylor. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960.
Magee, Patricia Anne. “The Wife of Bath and the Problem of Mastery.” In Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992.
Roth, John K. Ready Reference Ethics: Love. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1994. Strahan, James. “Love (Christians).” In Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Edited by James Hastings. New York: Scribner’s, 1958.