Marriage

• ‘Why a storyteller claiming to have suffered marital torments should then declare a wife to be ‘Goddes yifte verraily’ is one of the Tale’s interpretive challenges, alerting the reader to one of its most distinctive qualities: the tonal complexity of the narrative voice.’ Dr Jenny Stevens 
• ‘Characteristically, the tale shows Chaucer’s disapproval of marriages in which there was great disparity of age, and his sympathetic attitude to women.’ Elizabeth Brewer 
• ‘The idea of marriage as a mercantile transaction was particularly prevalent among the upper classes, so as part of the fledgling merchant class the Merchant would have been eager to adopt these views to help him climb up the ranks of the feudal society.’ Aisling Murray 
• ‘January’s contribution to the debate is that marriage is an excellent institution – so long as it allows an old man to marry a malleable young woman who will bend to his wishes like ‘warm wex’, do everything he wishes, care for him when he is sick, become a slave to his libido and bear him a male heir.’ Aisling Murray 
• ‘Like the Merchant, Justinus is unhappily married – his life is of ‘alle blisses bare’ – but unlike the Merchant, he is still able to view the concept of marriage objectively, and does not denounce every marriage as doomed to failure just because his own is not perfect.’ Aisling Murray 
• ‘Chaucer recommends that men ‘Cherisse thy wyf, or thou shalt nevere thee.’ This powerfully suggests that in marriage, two people become one, and so to hurt the other would be to hurt yourself.’  Aisling Murray 
• ‘The Merchant’s class provides a perfect opportunity for Chaucer to satirise the view of marriage as a mercantile transaction.  Then he uses a monk, a celibate and therefore not an authority on marriage, to back up his argument.’ Aisling Murray 
• ‘The greatest irony of the marriage debate, which spans several hundred lines in the tale, is that it is no debate at all: no-one in this tale considers it, or enters into it, with an open mind.’ Sam Brunner