The Misogyny and Complexities within a Merchant's Tale Anonymous College

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is an anthology of tales told by characters within the greater work. While taking a pilgrimage, the characters within the anthology begin to competitively tell stories as a way to pass the time. Many of these stories focus on love, marriage, and the storyteller's feelings about both subjects. Scholars often use the tales told by the Wife of Bath and the Clerk as examples of not only Chaucer's feelings about love and marriage but also the views of medieval society as a whole. Many, however, overlook "The Merchant's Tale" due to its complex and problematic portrayal of marriage and gender even within the problematic anthology of The Canterbury Tales. "The Merchant's Tale" tells the Romance of January, a blind knight, and his promiscuous wife, May; this tale is problematic due to its complex portrayal of not only marriage but gender through January's fantasies of a wife, May's adultery, and the blurred lines between tale and teller. “The Merchant’s Tale” begins with January the knight thinking about finding himself a wife. He believes that since he is of sixty years of age it is time for him to find a woman to be with until his death. He reminisces of his life as a bachelor and thinks of all...