January

• ‘January’s wish to evade sin by getting married is inherently flawed as in the Middle Ages the Catholic church held that sex for anything but procreation was wrong.’ 
• ‘The bestial imagery used by January becomes a trope throughout the tale, underlining the lusty appetite which drives his actions and suggesting the true carnal nature which he hides beneath a veneer of social respectability.’ Sam Brunner 
• ‘The use of the word ‘appetyt’ implies that January regarded a woman as a consumable commodity, which is reinforced when he describes the woman he must marry as ‘tendre of age’ – like a piece of young meat.’  Jackie Shead 
• ‘Januarie is, of course, winter, depicted as an old man in medieval calendars.  He draws attention to his snowy hair when he compares it to blossom.’ Jackie Shead 
• ‘Pluto enables him to see both literally and also metaphorically, in that he realizes what is actually going on: then he relapses into psychological blindness again.  He believes May; he rejects the evidence of his senses, preferring self-deception.’ 
• ‘January’s ‘olde lewed wordes’ to May parody not medieval romance but The Song of Solomon, ‘the song of songs’, in the Bible.  Elizabeth Brewer 
• ‘January’s blindness, his self-deception, his lack of understanding of himself and of his actions, make him a figure of ridicule and contempt.’ Trevor Whittock 
• ‘The blindness represents simultaneously the old man’s lack of self-knowledge, his jealous suspiciousness and ignorant possessiveness.’ Trevor Whittock