A “middle ground” story in The Canterbury Tales that occupies a space between the idealization of marriage in the Franklin’s Tale and the abhorrent behavior of the conniving Wife of Bath is the Merchant’s Tale. In this tale, there is a main character who is both consumed with ideals of romantic love but who tries to balance these feelings out through marriage. The result is a strange combination of sinful lust and righteous, honorable (although only questionably ideal) marriage. In January’s mind, marriage is a “paradise” on earth and he is in heaven as a married man (Chaucer, 1650). However, this is partially because he is performing a strange balancing act that allows him the pleasures of marriage at any time he wishes to have them. As one author notes, “January has constantly engaged in fornication prior to his marriage, and he now sees marriage as a legitimate way to continue his lustful behavior” (McCarthy, 2002, p. 511). What is notable about this story is that it uses some of the conventions in tales of courtly love and marriage that are idealized (lovesickness, secret and sustained desires, and true love) but “punishes” these by making January pay for his selfish desire of a young woman. This is almost like a morality tale in that it points out some of the problems with romantic, courtly love, especially if someone is married and in love with his or her partner. It is in this humorous yet rather biting story that the form of the fabliau is most apparent, especially as it makes fun of love and its courtly characteristics versus the true reality.

While Sir Gawain and the Green Knight does not involve direct references to marriage for Gawain himself, the wife of Lord Bertilak does prove to be quite a temptation for him. Interestingly, he does not succumb to love sickness, but instead relies on a higher sense of good—the code that espouses chivalry—and this gets him through. The idealized marriage in this story does not concern Gawain or the Bertilaks; if anything, it is summarized by the love between Arthur and his wife. She serves the men who are guests in the castle and is gracious to her husband. She is more of a servant than like Dorigen, who is literally served by her Knight of a husband. In some ways then, Sir Gawain’s story is actually less associated with romantic love and idealized marriage than the story by the Franklin. Through these four tales however, it is possible to see an leveled order of idealized versions of marriage appearing with the Franklin’s idealizations at the top, followed by Gawain’s tales, then the Merchant’s Tale—and with the Wife of Bath at the very lowest end of the spectrum as she has little regard for any traditional concepts of marriage.

The three tales from Chaucer that are discussed here all represent minor grades of idealization in marriage. The Wife of Bath is the most bawdy rejection of all of the ideals that Averagus and Gawain would have seen valuable in a wife or woman and she is an object of both scorn and laughter for even a modern reader. On the other hand, the ideal marriage in the Franklin’s Tale provides the backdrop by which all readers can compare what marriage should be in its perfect state versus what it is in reality. The most “realistic” story in this context is that of the Merchant’s Tale as it has both some of the themes in romances (gods intervening, lovesickness, and illicit affairs) and also all of the elements of fabliau. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as a story that shows what a medieval man should strive for both within and outside of a marriage also serves to highlight the ways the characters in all three of Chaucer’s stories do and do not measure up to the ideal standard.

Works Cited

Hume, C. (2008). “The name of soveraynetee”: The Private and Public Faces of Marriage in The Franklin’s Tale. Studies in Philology, 105(3), 284-303

McCarthy, C. (2002). Love, marriage, and law: three Canterbury Tales. Studies, 83(6), 504-518.