Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens: a summary of the plot

Imprisonment is the central theme of “Little Dorrit”, whether the prison be one of iron bars, a closed heart or mind, or those of politics, administration and economics. The prison that looms largest is that of the Marshalsea, where people could be consigned for many years for being unable to pay their debts. Charles Dickens is here making use of his own childhood experience, when his father, John Dickens, became a “resident” for a few months in 1824, bringing humiliation on the whole family.

The book opens in a prison in Marseilles, where the chief villain of the story, Rigaud (who also uses the name Blandois) is introduced, along with several people who are detained in quarantine on their way to London. These include Arthur Clennam, who is returning home from China where his father has just died, to London, where he finds his mother living in a dismal first-floor room, confined to a wheelchair from which she conducts the family business.

At his mother’s house, Arthur meets Amy Dorrit (usually referred to as “Little Dorrit”), who is doing casual sewing jobs there. He follows her home and discovers that she lives with her father at the Marshalsea prison, where he has long been imprisoned as a debtor. Indeed, William Dorrit has become immensely proud of his status as “the father of the Marshalsea”. The Dorrit family also comprises William’s brother, plus another daughter and a son.

Arthur becomes curious as to why the Dorrits are in this situation, which is why he encounters the “Circumlocution Office”, a satirical invention on the part of Dickens that represents all the offices of government that exist solely to push pieces of paper from place to place without ever actually doing anything useful.

Arthur also meets the Meagles family (who had been fellow detainees at Marseilles) and the engineer Daniel Doyce. Having decided to have nothing to do with his mother’s business affairs, which he suspects are based on sharp practice, he goes into partnership with Doyce, who is a brilliant inventor but no good as a businessman. He also becomes reacquainted with Flora Finching, who had been the love of his life many years before but is now fat and silly. She is the daughter of Christopher Casby, the grasping landlord of a slum tenement, Bleeding Heart Yard, which is not far from the Marshalsea.

Clennam and Doyce visit the Meagles at Twickenham, where they meet Henry Gowan, who is courting Pet, the Meagles’ daughter. Also there is Pet’s maid Harriet, who is known as Tattycoram, having been “adopted” from Coram’s Foundling Hospital and who is mistreated by the Meagles family.

The sinister character Rigaud calls on Mrs Clennam. He is clearly in possession of a secret that greatly alarms the old lady, but she refuses to confide in her son, who is genuinely concerned for her welfare despite the rebuffs he suffers at her hands.

The major turning point in the novel is the revelation that William Dorrit is, after all, not a pauper at all but entitled to a large estate. This has come about through the efforts of Pancks, who is Casby’s rent collector but is shocked by the conditions in which the tenants of Bleeding Heart Yard are forced to live. On Arthur Clennam’s behalf, Pancks discovers the document that allows the Dorrit family to leave the Marshalsea.

However, William Dorrit is freed from one prison only to enter another, that of his own pretensions. He is convinced that he must now enter the society to which his wealth entitles him, and thus takes on all the trappings that that entails. He employs a governess, Mrs General, to educate his daughters in the ways of society, a move that horrifies Amy, who only wishes to be herself.

In undertaking a grand tour of Europe, the Dorrit family meet the now married Gowan and Pet (accompanied by Tattycoram), and Rigaud, at the convent at the head of the Great St Bernard Pass.

At Martigny, William Dorrit meets Mrs Merdle, who invites him to invest his money in her husband’s London bank. Many others have also done so, including Arthur Clennam. However, William Dorrit never returns to England, as he loses his mind at a dinner given in Rome by Mrs Merdle, addressing his fellow diners as though they were prisoners at the Marshalsea, and dies soon afterwards.

Tattycoram has been persuaded to run away by the mysterious Miss Wade, a strong-minded but self-tormenting young woman who is one of Dickens’s most interesting minor characters. She is traced by Arthur to Calais, where it is discovered that she possesses papers that have been stolen from Mrs Clennam by Rigaud. However, she refuses to surrender these. Arthur is convinced that these contain evidence that will be of benefit to Amy Dorrit.

Merdle’s bank collapses, and its owner commits suicide. The Dorrit fortune disappears as a result, as does the capital of Doyce and Clennam. Arthur now becomes a Marshalsea prisoner himself. However, truths begin to be revealed, based on the documents suppressed by Mrs Clennam and stolen by Rigaud. In particular, a codicil to her husband’s will had left money to Amy Dorrit, and Arthur turns out to have been only the stepson of Mrs Clennam.

In a dramatic scene, Mrs Clennam, who is being blackmailed by Rigaud, rises from her wheelchair and leaves the house, determined to find Amy and seek her forgiveness. The old house collapses, killing Rigaud in the process.

At the end, many prison doors are thrown open, with Arthur being released from the Marshalsea when the stolen papers are returned, and from his emotional prison in which he had refused to allow his growing love for Amy to show itself. Pancks also forces Casby to free his tenants from their servitude in Bleeding Heart Yard, with Pancks revealing Casby to be a hypocrite and oppressor. Arthur and Amy are married.

© John Welford

The Wife of Bath's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Wife of Bath has to be Chaucer’s most remarkable character. She shares with Chaucer himself the distinction of being a pilgrim who represents no trade, profession or calling, but is there just as herself. She is not even representative of womanhood in general, because she is clearly a very unusual woman, in her own or any other era. Chaucer clearly sympathises with her general attitude to life, in that he gives her plenty of scope to express herself, but she also proves to be far from pleasant as an individual. It must be open to question whether Chaucer had a real person in mind when creating the Wife of Bath, as she seems to be too complex a personality to be the product of imagination alone.

The prologue

The prologue to her tale, at 856 lines, is only two lines shorter than the whole of the General Prologue, and is, on its own, one of Chaucer’s most successful pieces of writing. It is a confession, an “apologia” and a programme for matrimonial reform, all rolled into one. The Wife creates herself as she talks: strong-willed, opinionated, highly sexed, frank, humorous and masterful.

We know from the General Prologue that this is a woman who has “been around a bit” in more senses than one. We can guess her age as being in the mid to late forties, given her “hipes large” for example, and the amount she has packed into her life to date. She is clearly quite wealthy, from the description of her clothing, although we are also told that she is an excellent weaver of cloth, so we can assume that her wealth is not inherited. Only a woman with money could have afforded all the foreign travel she has undertaken, including three trips to Jerusalem.

However, the fact that strikes us most is that she has been married five times, and it is marriage that forms the main theme of the prologue to her tale, and indeed of the tale itself. It also becomes clear that she is a 14^th century precursor of "Bess of Hardwick", the 16^th century landowner who gained her wealth from the fortunes of the several men she married and who then conveniently died.

She defends herself for having had five husbands. There was a general consensus in medieval society that a widow or widower should not remarry, based on the universal belief in physical resurrection at the Day of Judgment, which would render anyone a bigamist for eternity if they had had more than one husband or wife when alive. However, our much-married lady reckons that God’s instruction to “go forth and multiply” takes precedence over any other considerations.

She has no problem with people who choose to be virgins, she says, but such a state was clearly never to her liking. Marriage, for her, is primarily a matter of sex, as she tells us that her choice of husband has much to do with how their “nether purs” shapes up. Why else should men and women have been given genitals of different types if not for use? Or, to quote her own words, “In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument as freely as my Makere hath it sent”. However, in her view a husband also has a duty to serve his wife sexually. She goes even further by saying that, in marriage, the woman should have power over the body of the man.

This latter view is too much for the Pardoner, who says that he was intending to get married soon but is now having second thoughts. The Wife of Bath tells him to wait until she tells her tale, and then see if she is not right in what she says. This is good enough for the Pardoner, and the Wife proceeds to outline her personal experience of marriage.

She relates how three of the husbands were good and two were bad. The three good husbands, who were “riche and olde” did their bedroom duties to her satisfaction, and also endowed her with plenty of their worldly goods. She comes across as a very calculating woman, in that she earns their love by granting sexual favours, and this love results in riches and land coming her way. She also makes it clear that she was always the boss in the household, using whatever means were appropriate at the time.

It is interesting at this point to note that the Wife addresses herself to womankind in general, advising them how to get “maisterie” over their husbands. However, her immediate audience consists almost entirely of men, the only other women on the pilgrimage being a prioress and a nun! As this prologue only has meaning within its context in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer must have had his wider audience in mind when writing these words.

She recites a long haranguing speech given to one of her husbands, addressed variously as “olde kaynard”, “olde dotard” and “olde foole”, as an example of how a wife can gain the upper hand. This includes a demand for equal access to the treasure chest, equal rights when it comes to roving eyes, and personal freedom, because “We love no man that taketh kep or charge wher that we goon”. This is clearly intended for the Wife’s male audience!

She also makes it clear that she wants more than equality from marriage. She demands faithfulness from her men but has no intention of being faithful herself. She is open about the deceits she has practiced, and about the constant nagging to which the husbands have been subjected. She refers to the ancient tradition (still carried on today) in the Essex village of Dunmow where a side of bacon is awarded to a couple who can prove that they have lived without a cross word for a year and a day. However, the Wife is not too bothered about missing her chance, saying, “yet in bacon hadde I nevere delit”.

Next, she tells us about her fourth husband. However, it is possible that Chaucer has slipped up here, because she twice tells us that she is going to mention the fourth husband; on the first occasion she is “yong and ful of ragerye (passion)” and she then laments the passing of the years and of her beauty before the second introduction to the fourth husband and a description of how she harried him to his grave after she had found him to be unfaithful. Perhaps the first “fourth” should have read “second” or “third”.

The fifth husband was a wife-beater, but the one she loved best of all. This is an interesting piece of psychology, because the Wife clearly respected the one husband who actually stood up to her and was sparing with his own sexual favours. The thing that is bought at a price has most value, as she says, even when that price includes violence. The paradox of why women stay loyal to men who abuse them is nothing new, as the Wife clearly attests.

She goes on at some length about how she met and fell in love with the fifth husband, who was half her age, the courtship taking place when the fourth husband was still alive. It would appear that this was the only marriage of the five that was a true love match, as the husband had no fortune of his own.

However, this has clearly been a turbulent marriage, and she tells the story of how she lost her hearing in one ear. This came about because he read a book that recounted many cases of women who had harmed their men, and warned her not to imitate them. This led to her tearing three leaves out of the book, and in the ensuing fight he hit her so hard on the ear that she has been deaf in it ever since. In his repentance, he agreed to burn the book and let her have the “sovereynetee” from then on.

The tale

After a short interlude that presages the row between the Friar and the Summoner that will lead to their mutually insulting tales, the Wife tells her own tale. This continues the theme of her prologue, namely that wedded bliss is only possible if the wife is in charge.

The tale is a version of the familiar folk tale of the “loathly lady” that has been told in various forms down the centuries, one of the most recent being the animated “Shrek” films, but here it is used for a particular purpose within the Wife’s argument.

In the days of King Arthur, a knight commits a rape and is sentenced to death by the King. However, the ladies of the court take pity on him and persuade the King to let the Queen make the decision as to his fate. She asks the knight the question, “What thyng is it that wommen moost desiren?” He has a year and a day to find the answer, on pain of death.

He finds this quest to be a difficult one, because there is no consensus among the women to whom he poses the question. The Wife gives a long list of possible answers. However, one thing that all women have in common, according to her, is that they cannot keep a secret, and she tells the story of Midas from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” to illustrate her point. His wife feels that she must tell someone about his ass’s ears, and eventually she tells the secret to the water in a lake. However, this has no bearing on the rest of the tale, so perhaps this little bit of male prejudice was just Chaucer being mischievous.

Despairing of ever finding the answer, the knight is making his way back to meet his fate when he comes across a group of women dancing. As he approaches them, hoping that they might help his quest, they vanish, and the only person he can see is an old woman. He asks her the question, and she promises to give the answer that will save his life, as long as he will do whatever she then demands of him. She whispers the answer in his ear and he goes off to face the court, with the Queen sitting in judgment.

The answer he gives is that what women want most is “to have sovereyntee” in marriage, and this is agreed by all the women present as being the right answer. However, the old woman now announces that the knight must fulfil his part of the bargain, which is that he must marry her, despite his protestations.

The wedding takes place the next day, but the knight is then extremely reluctant to perform his wedding night duties. He complains that she is loathsome, old, and low-born. She then preaches him a sermon on what constitutes true gentility and nobility, quoting Jesus, Dante and various classical writers. The gist of her argument is that riches do not make a person noble and that an outwardly noble person who performs villainous deeds will always be a “cherl”.

She offers him a choice. He can have her “foul and old”, and therefore be safe from being cuckolded, or “yong and fair”, with all the ensuing dangers of her being attractive to other men. He eventually appreciates the wisdom of submitting to her authority and leaves the choice to her. Having won the “maisterie” she then promises him the best of both worlds, to be both young and fair and true to him, which is of course the expected fairy-tale ending.

The Wife concludes by praying that Jesus “shorte hir lyves, that wol nat be governed by hir wyves”.

Discussion

One might argue that the Wife of Bath fails to prove her point with this story, because the knight is hardly a free agent, either in making his choice or in taking the old woman as his wife. By committing rape in the first place, he has not only put his life in jeopardy but he has also forfeited his nobility, as the old woman says. He is therefore forced to give sovereignty to his wife, and his protests are evidence that he would not have done so had the circumstances been otherwise.

So, taking the prologue and the tale together, what can we say about the Wife of Bath? I reckon that she is a very complex character, and certainly by far the most psychologically interesting fictional woman in pre-Shakespearean literature. I find it curious that, despite her very active sex life over many years, she never mentions having had any children. Has she therefore turned her thwarted maternal instincts towards her husbands and converted her feelings into close control over their actions and decisions?

This is a woman who has had a hard life and has found her own ways of dealing with the pressures of survival in 14^th century England. There is a hard edge to her, and a ruthless, calculating side that is far from attractive. We know from the General Prologue that she has a temper, and refuses to take second place to anyone. We now learn that being one of her husbands was not going to make for an easy life, and perhaps the love-hate relationship of the fifth marriage is the best way to achieve a sort of happiness with a woman like this. One can sympathise with her, but she is hardly somebody that most of us could like.

She has been seen as literature’s first feminist but it is by no means conclusive that Chaucer is on her side in this. She makes a strong case for her point of view, but is it perhaps too strong? Is Chaucer’s real message for men that, if they do not watch out, women such as this will take over their lives? The tales that follow continue the debate, and it is left to the reader to decide where his or her sympathies lie.

© John Welford

The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes: an early children's book

“The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes” was an early book for children that had a huge influence on the way that children were taught to read, from its publication in 1765 until the mid 19^th century. Although its sententiousness and overbearing morality might cause hilarity today, it was in several ways a revolutionary publication in its time.

Publication and authorship

“Little Goody Two-Shoes” was published by John Newbery (1713-67), who can claim to be the first British publisher of books aimed specifically at children. He had a double career, both as a publisher and a manufacturer of patent medicines, and was not above using the former to advertise the latter. He had a highly developed social conscience, as well as a belief that children learned best through play.

“Little Goody Two-Shoes” is not credited to an author, which has led to speculation that it might have been written by Oliver Goldsmith. However, there is no clear proof of this, and the evidence would seem to point to Newbery himself being the author.

Plot and storyline

Margery and Tommy are an orphaned brother and sister, so poor that Margery only has one shoe. They are befriended by a gentleman who takes Tommy away to London and orders a pair of shoes for Margery. She is so pleased to own a whole pair of shoes that she points them out to everyone she meets, “See, two shoes”, and thus earns her nickname.

Margery has been living with a local clergyman, but is forced out by the wicked local squire and has to fend for herself. She teaches herself to read by borrowing books from the children at the local school and is soon able to teach the children, using games and songs as her method of instruction.

She grows up to become a schoolteacher and is a model of enlightened teaching. When the school roof falls in, Margery rescues the children. She is later able to offer marriage guidance to a quarrelling couple by advising them to count to twenty before losing their tempers.

Her scientific approach to education is not universally popular, however, and she finds herself arrested as a witch when she uses a barometer to forecast the weather.

Despite the ills that have befallen her she never gives in to despair, neither does she bear any grudges. Indeed, when she hears about a plot to break into the squire’s house and murder him, she tells him about it and saves his life, despite him being the cause of her initial poverty by dispossessing her father and evicting her.

She eventually marries a wealthy baronet and is reunited with her brother Tommy, who has made his own fortune overseas. She uses her wealth to good effect, buying the estate of the squire and handing the land back to the tenants. When she dies, she is mourned by all.

Social and political purpose

Although this is ostensibly a children’s book, there is much more to it than that. In his introduction as “editor”, Newbery clearly writes for an adult audience (“children of six feet high” in his words) as he points to the evils visited on the populace by grasping landlords and the legal system that favours the rich against the poor. This was written at a time when “enclosures” were forcing tenant farmers off the land and removing the common land on which the poorest rural people depended for a living. It is not surprising that Goldsmith was thought by many to be the author, given the strength of his anger directed at the squirarchy for this trend (as in “The Deserted Village”).

As well as the educational purpose of the book, with methods of teaching spelling as a game explained in great detail, Newbery introduces other enlightened thoughts along the way. For example, at one point Margery thinks she has seen a ghost but realises that it is only a neighbour’s dog. Newbery uses the incident to attack the common belief in ghosts and fairies, thus setting himself on the side of the rationalists and against the craze for fairy stories.

On this latter point, it is notable that “Little Goody Two-Shoes” was published in the same year as “The Castle of Otranto”, by Horace Walpole, this being the first of the “gothic novels” that were to influence the publishing scene for the rest of the century and into the next. It is particularly interesting to note that one known reader of “Little Goody Two-Shoes” was Jane Austen, whose own “Northanger Abbey” was a satirical attack on the gothic novel. It is probable that this was Jane Austen’s first completed full-length novel (although it was published after her death), and one can speculate that “Little Goody Two-Shoes” was an important influence on her as a writer.

“Little Goody Two-Shoes” is not a book that anyone would read to their children today, for the reasons mentioned in the opening paragraph above. Indeed, the only reason why people today might have heard of it is because the term “Miss Goody Two-Shoes” is sometimes used to insult someone who is prissy or prudish. We simply do not regard a person like Margery as a model to emulate, although this was not the case in past generations. It is however an interesting milestone in the history of children’s publishing, and the Jane Austen connection adds an extra reason for not forgetting it completely.

© John Welford

The Man of Law's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Man of Law’s Tale (from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), with its introduction and epilogue, has been preserved on a fragment of manuscript separate from any other tale. It cannot therefore be certain that Chaucer intended this to be the fifth tale, which is where many modern editions place it. Indeed, it would appear from its epilogue that the Shipman is about to tell the next tale, whereas what we usually get next is the amazing prologue of the Wife of Bath, followed by her tale. This is simply evidence that Chaucer was never able to edit the work as a whole, but it is unfortunate that we cannot relate this tale to its neighbours with any certainty.

The Prologue

The introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale (which includes the prologue proper) is somewhat puzzling. We are given a precise date and time, namely ten o’clock in the morning of the 18^th of April, which the apparently well-educated host has worked out from the angle of the Sun to the horizon and the length of shadows cast by nearby trees. At all events, it is time for another tale, and the host quotes Seneca in his lyrical exhortation to the Man of Law to be the next teller.

However, the Man of Law now declares that he is unworthy of the task, because the best stories have already been told by none other than the poet Chaucer! He then proceeds to mention by name several tales in “The Book of the Duchess” and “The Legend of Good Women”. We therefore have the remarkable instance of Chaucer the poet writing praise of himself through the mouth of one of his characters. Could this be a form of advertising perhaps? Are the readers of the manuscript intended to turn to Chaucer’s earlier writings for more of the same? At all events, there is wonderful comedy here, in that the Man of Law is clearly unaware that one of his fellow pilgrims is the very poet in comparison to whom he declares himself unworthy. We, the readers, can appreciate the further joke that the writer of the Man of Law’s Tale is, of course, the very same Chaucer!

The Man of Law, not being up to composing such wonderful poetry as Chaucer’s, states that his tale will be in prose. What then follows is a tale in rhyme royal, namely seven-line stanzas with an ABABBCC rhyme scheme. Another joke? Or did Chaucer write the introduction with one intention in mind, but forget this when it came to writing the actual tale? We know from the other tales that use this verse form, namely those of the Clerk, Prioress and the Second Nun, that this was a scheme that suited the more refined tellers, and there is also a link in that the four stories contain little humour and deal with classical or moral themes. The introduction may have led us to expect self-mockery, but this is not what we get.

The Tale

  

After a short disquisition on poverty, which comprises the “prologue” by name, the story begins. A group of Syrian merchants visit Rome, where they first hear about, and then see, Constance, the beautiful daughter of the Emperor (a Christian). On returning to Syria, they tell the Sultan about her, and he determines that he wants her for his wife. However, in order to do this he realises that he will need to convert to Christianity, which he does along with his whole court.

The marriage is arranged, although it is not to the liking of Constance, who laments her fate before setting sail for the Sultan’s court. Also unhappy is the Sultan’s mother, who sees no reason why she, and everyone else, should be forced to abandon their religion. She therefore determines to hatch a plot that will thwart her son’s plans. This takes the form of engineering the slaughter of the entire company at the pre-wedding feast, including the Sultan but excluding Constance, whose fate is to be set adrift in a rudderless ship, with adequate provisions, to make her own way home as best she can.

Being a pious Christian, she prays to be saved, but seems not to have thought it worth praying to be washed up quickly on a friendly shore, as she drifts for “yeres and dayes” the whole length of the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. The Man of Law is keen to point out that her preservation is miraculous, but we might wonder at her partial deliverance, eventually leading to her arrival in Northumberland (north-east England), three years after leaving Syria.

Her ship runs aground close to a castle, the constable of which takes her ashore and, with his wife Dame Hermengild, looks after her. She will not tell them who she is, but is eventually able to convert Hermengild to Christianity and the two become firm friends.

We are told that there are only a handful of Christians living in the area, the rest having fled to Wales. When the constable, Hermengild and Constance are out walking on the beach, a blind man, who is a Christian, calls on Hermengild to restore his sight. She cannot respond without betraying her new faith to her pagan husband, but Constance uses the opportunity to convert him as well.

A young knight in the town has fallen in love with Constance, but she rejects him and he plots revenge on her. When the constable is away, he breaks into the bedchamber where the two women are asleep and cuts the throat of Dame Hermengild, leaving the knife next to Constance.

When the constable returns, accompanied by King Alla, he finds the body of his wife, next to Constance and the blood-stained knife. The constable tells King Alla about how Constance was found in the wrecked ship, and neither of them can believe that she has committed the murder. The actual murderer accuses her of the crime, but everyone in the castle bears witness to her goodness and to how much she loved Hermengild.

At her trial, the knight swears to her guilt on a book of Gospels (a strange touch, given that he and the king are both pagans) but he is suddenly struck down, with his eyes falling from his head. He is soon executed, the king and many of those present are converted, and Constance becomes queen.

The story now starts to take a familiar turn, because the king’s mother, Donegild, is opposed to the marriage.

While Alla is away fighting, Constance gives birth to a son, and the constable sends a messenger to inform the king. However, the messenger goes first to the king’s mother, to whom he tells the news. She gets him drunk and substitutes a different letter which he then takes to the king. This letter says that the child is such a horrible creature that his mother must be an elf who practices sorcery.

The king’s replying message, however, refuses to condemn his wife, merely hoping that her next child will be more to his liking. The messenger makes the same mistake again, allowing Donegild to get him drunk on the return journey and substitute a false message to take to the constable.

This second message is an instruction, on pain of death, to banish Constance and her son, setting them adrift in the ship in which she first arrived. Not understanding why this should have happened, but having no choice but to obey what appear to be the king’s commands, the constable prepares the ship and Constance embarks with her son, after an ardent prayer to the Virgin Mary for her protection.

When Alla returns the truth comes out, leading to the execution of Donegild, but by this time Constance is well out to sea.

It is five years before Constance once again comes to shore, again within sight of a castle, but this time she is not so lucky with the character of the man who discovers her. The steward of the heathen lord of the castle attempts to rape her, but she is protected by the Virgin Mary and, as she fights the man off, he falls overboard and drowns. The ship now drifts off once more, eventually returning to the Mediterranean Sea.

The tale now turns to the Emperor of Rome, Constance’s father, who takes vengeance on the Syrians by sending a senator with an army to punish those who slew the Christians at the feast. Having done this, they return to Rome and, on the way, come across the drifting ship on which are Constance and her son. The senator takes them home with him, where they are looked after for a “longe tyme”. The senator’s wife, we are told, just happens to be Constance’s aunt, but neither of them knows this at the time.

King Alla repents of having had his mother executed and makes a pilgrimage to Rome as an act of penance. The senator visits the king to pay homage, taking Constance’s young son with him. When Alla enquires about the boy, the senator tells him the story of how he and his mother were found. Alla then returns with the senator and he and Constance are reunited. A second reunion then follows, namely between Constance and her father, the Emperor.

We are told that her son eventually becomes Emperor himself, although Alla and Constance return to England, where Alla dies a year later, after which Constance spends the rest of her life in Rome.

The tale is followed by a short epilogue that has no bearing on the tale itself, in which the Parson is invited to tell the next tale but the Shipman interrupts to say that he wants to hear no sermon from a “Lollard” so will tell the next tale himself. As it happens, the tales of both the Parson and the Shipman appear much later in the sequence as it is usually put together.

Discussion

The Man of Law’s Tale is full of unlikely coincidences, historical inaccuracies and geographical improbabilities, so what can we make of it? It is a form of story that is known in about 60 different versions in folklore, commonly referred to as that of the “calumniated wife”, meaning “falsely accused”. Chaucer’s source is the “Anglo-Norman Chronicle” of Nicholas Trivet, a writer of the early 14^th century. The elements of false accusation, unjust punishment and letters going astray, but with virtue being triumphant in the end, are familiar elements in the various versions, but Chaucer exercises considerable freedom with the theme, punctuating the narrative with moral and philosophical reflections like those of a Greek chorus.

The religious theme is strongly emphasised in this tale, with Christianity being seen as triumphing over Islam and paganism, in the same breath as good over evil. In historical terms, this is one area where the story fails to hang together, because the real-life character of Constance would have been dead a number of years before Mohammed had the revelations that led to the founding of Islam. Another problem is that the actual Emperor featured in the story ruled in Byzantium rather than Rome. However, it is not surprising that Chaucer would have been unaware of these inaccuracies.

As a story, it is well-paced with remarkable and unexpected happenings at every turn, although it leaves many questions unanswered, such as why people would have acted in the way they did. For example, why would the murdering knight have imagined that Constance, having killed her friend, would then have gone back to sleep alongside her? As Constance was his object of hatred, why did he not kill her at the same time? Another thought is, why does the Emperor take so long to send an army to Syria? However, no doubt it is modern nit-picking to raise such objections!

The characterizations in the tale are not particularly good, as the events of the story take precedence in what is quite a short tale. Indeed, Constance is almost an allegorical symbol, being the incarnation of Fortitude in a similar manner to how Griselda in the Clerk’s Tale becomes a representation of Patience. Nonetheless, we can imagine the pilgrims thoroughly enjoying this tale, whether for its moral precepts or wondering how things would turn out in the end.

© John Welford

The Cook's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Cook’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales presents us with a major problem, in that it scarcely exists! All we have is 58 lines, which is hardly enough to set the scene, let alone get into the meat of the story.

On several occasions, Chaucer links two or more tales together, usually by one of the pilgrims reacting to a tale, sometimes violently, by telling a tale that counters the first one. The Miller has told a tale at the expense of a carpenter, and the Reeve, who has been a carpenter, takes offence and tells his tale about a dishonest miller. At this point, Roger the Cook claims the next turn with a story that appears to be going to follow the same scurrilous pattern as the two preceding ones.

In the prologue to his tale, Roger first congratulates the Reeve on his tale, which he has obviously enjoyed. He then offers to continue the theme, by saying that he can tell a story along the same lines.

The Host, Harry Bailey, then invites Roger to do precisely that, but makes a few pointed remarks about the dubious food hygiene practised by the Cook. Harry comments that pilgrims, presumably referring to pilgrims in general and not the current batch, have felt the worse for wear after eating his goose with parsley. Roger’s reputation as a London cook has clearly reached Harry down at the Tabard in Southwark, as he remarks that Roger’s shop is infested with flies and that he serves meat pies that have been re-heated twice.

We already know from the General Prologue that Roger has a weeping sore on his leg, followed immediately by the information that blancmange (a savoury white dish made from chicken and milk) is one of his specialities. This is not the sort of thing one would want to eat if prepared by a man whose leg is oozing with pus!

In other words, according to Harry, if you are going to offer us a tale about yet another “rogue trader”, you had better be on your guard! Roger takes all this in good heart. Whatever his faults, he is clearly a good-natured fellow who can take a joke at his expense, which is more than can be said for some of his fellow pilgrims. Keeping the banter going, he threatens to tell a tale about an inn-keeper, but then says he will keep it for later.

So then we hear his very short tale. It concerns an apprentice called Perkin, who has been given the name Reveller because of his behaviour. Roger devotes most of his lines to telling us about how Perkin spends his free time drinking, dancing and enjoying himself. Part of his revelling consists in playing dice with his friends, which is clearly an expensive pastime because he funds his gambling by taking money from the till of the grocer’s shop where he is an apprentice.

  

Eventually, his master reckons that having Perkin living in his house, with all the other apprentices, is not such a good idea. This rotten apple could easily infect all the others. So Perkin is dismissed and has to find new lodgings. This he does by going to a friend who is a fellow gambler and reveller. The friend’s wife keeps a shop and supplements her income by prostitution.

And that is all we get. The tale ends here, as does this particular fragment of the manuscript. Why? One possibility is that Chaucer did indeed finish the tale, but that pages have been lost from the manuscript. In support of this view is the fact that there is no material that refers to the sudden end of the tale. All the preceding tales are linked by text that makes them flow from one to the next, but the fragment comes to a sudden halt at this point.

However, whether or not Chaucer had finished the tale, some explanation is needed for what happens later. In a fragment that clearly covers a much later part of the pilgrimage (there are geographical clues to this), the Host calls attention to the Cook, who is lagging well behind the others and is clearly the worse for drink. His “penance” is to tell a tale, although the Manciple now steps in and offers his tale instead.

The interesting point is that the Host makes no reference to the Cook’s earlier effort, either as having been finished or unfinished. It has been suggested that this fragment was originally intended to describe events in the early part of the return journey. If so, it is not so surprising that the Host does not ask for “another tale”. However, had the first tale been left as we now have it, some comment to that effect would surely have been made by the Host. The implication is therefore that the tale was finished, but the text has not survived.

It has also been suggested that the Cook’s tale is indeed a finished piece as it stands. The basis for this view is that the tale is a snippet of autobiography, intended to explain the Cook’s own character as a “reveller”, and possibly to suggest the cause of the weeping sore on his leg. The thinking is that the sore is a symptom of a venereal disease and that, by mentioning that his new landlord’s wife is a prostitute, no more needs to be said.

In my view, there are two main problems with this theory. One is that there is still no concluding conversation or comment. Surely at least the Host would have said something, seeing that he had plenty to say before the tale started? Can we believe that the “missing pages” only contained this material and no more of the tale itself?

The second problem is that there is clearly a story to be told, but it is not. Chaucer is a master story-teller, and for him not to do so in this case, having started the build-up in typical style, makes no sense. No, I for one simply do not buy this idea! What we have is completely unbalanced and a failure as a piece of finished text. This is not what Chaucer would have wanted to leave us.

There are many mysteries in all branches of the Arts, from Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” to the identity of the “Mona Lisa”. The Cook’s Tale is another one to add to the list!

© John Welford

An interpretation of Alice in Wonderland

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, by Lewis Carroll, has attracted a great deal of critical attention since it was first published in 1865, much of it centred on the hidden meanings and allusions that it might contain. There are, for example, many references to people who were known to the author’s original audience of the three daughters of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who used the pen name of Lewis Carroll, was a talented mathematician and logician who incorporated many verbal and logical tricks in his writing, and untangling these has given pleasure to a host of commentators ever since.

However, the thought that has occurred to me is that “Alice” can be read as a hidden attack on the Church of England, and possibly on Christianity as a whole. I do not know if this thought has been expressed elsewhere or if I am the first person to have spotted the signs – the latter seems unlikely somehow. I doubt very much if I have stumbled upon something that nobody has noticed or suggested before! A far more probable scenario is that this interpretation has been going the rounds for decades but I have simply not been well-read enough to have found it.

The key to this thought is Alice’s experience, early in the book, of eating and drinking things that change her size so that she can get through a door into a beautiful garden. She has already had the experience of falling down a rabbit hole into a strange new world. This struck me as being akin to the Christian idea of being “born again”, with the rabbit hole representing a birth canal, and the eating and drinking being symbolic of the bread and wine of holy communion. The beautiful garden is akin to the Garden of Eden.

Access to the garden is not easy, and indeed this is not achieved by Alice until after she has met many of the best known characters in the book, including the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter. Likewise, the progress of the Christian convert is not supposed to be without its difficulties, and many experiences that both help and hinder can be expected before arrival in the “Promised Land”.

Other episodes in the book can also be regarded as Christian symbols, notably the trial in the final chapter that can be likened to the last judgment in the Book of Revelation.

Why do I say that “Alice in Wonderland” is an attack on the Church rather than an allegory in favour of it? This is because of the remark made quite early in the book by the Cheshire cat that this is a world in which everyone is mad. Even Alice is mad: “You must be”, said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Once in the garden, Alice is in a nightmare world rather than a paradise. Despite the “bright flower-beds and cool fountains”, the roses are being repainted because they are the wrong colour and the world is governed by a queen who orders executions at the slightest excuse. A mad game of croquet is organised from which Alice is happy to escape to the relative serenity of the Mock Turtle’s world of verbal dexterity in which things almost make sense, but not quite.

In other words, if this world is symbolic of the Church of England after a convert has entered it, then it is a world of oppression alternating with nonsense in which language is twisted into shapes for which it was never designed.

Of course, “Alice” is a book designed for the amusement of children, which is why the underlying meaning that I have suggested is not made explicit. Nevertheless, I maintain that it is there all the same.

The question must then be asked as to why Dodgson might have wanted to express his doubts in this way, and that leads to the further question of why he might have had such doubts in the first place.

Dodgson was a lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford. As the name might suggest, Christ Church was a religious foundation. Indeed, the college chapel doubles as the Anglican Cathedral of the Oxford Diocese and the head of the college is also the dean of the cathedral and must therefore be an ordained priest in the Church of England.

In Dodgson’s time, all resident staff members were expected to take holy orders. Dodgson took deacon’s orders in 1861 and should have proceeded to take priest’s orders a year later. However, he did not do so, and needed the express permission of Dean Liddell in order to keep his job. Various reasons have been suggested as to why Dodgson refused to become a priest, and one of those is that he was having serious doubts about the validity of Anglicanism.

It is known that Dodgson was interested in “alternative” forms of religious experience, such as Theosophy, and that he also underwent a personal crisis in the early 1860s in which he experienced a profound sense of guilt, the reasons for which are another source of debate. Whatever the cause, he would have had good reason to want to express his doubts about the Church of England in ways that were clear to him but not so to other people, particularly children.

Just at the time when he was having all these doubts, and appealing to Dean Liddell to be excused the next stage towards the Anglican priesthood, he was enjoying trips up the river with the Dean’s children and telling them stories about a strange world that one could only enter after “communion” with magic substances.

A coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not! As I said above, it is quite possible that this account of the underlying meaning of “Alice” is common knowledge in some quarters. If not, I hereby claim to have made a fresh contribution to the understanding of “Alice in Wonderland”!

© John Welford

The Reeve's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Reeve’s Tale follows immediately after the Miller’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and is told as a rejoinder to it. A reeve, in medieval society, was in the pay of the lord of the manor, responsible for seeing that the lord’s crops and animals were looked after. Under the feudal system, the villagers were required to work partly on the lord’s land, or offer a portion of their professional services, for no return other than the lord’s protection and access to his court of justice. The reeve would therefore act as the lord’s enforcer to make sure that this work was done properly, and he was therefore unlikely to be a popular character.

We know that Chaucer’s miller has a “thombe of gold”, meaning that he was adept at cheating his customers, and that he would probably have waged a running battle with his local reeve who would doubtless have spent considerable time trying to prove that the miller was on the fiddle. The reeve of this pilgrimage appears to have fallen out with the miller at quite an early stage; no doubt they saw each other as enemies from the moment they first met.

We know from the General Prologue that the reeve was a carpenter by profession, and that the miller’s tale, about a cuckolded, elderly carpenter, was aimed directly at the reeve, who we also know to be getting on in years. At the end of the miller’s tale, the reeve’s prologue begins with an account of general merriment on the part of the pilgrims, who have all been highly amused by the tale; all, that is, apart from the reeve.

The reeve begins by reflecting on the bitterness of old age. Don’t expect too much merriment from me, he tells them, when you get to my age there’s not much left apart from envy and anger. He cannot therefore let the miller get away with his jibe against an elderly carpenter without getting his own back, and that is precisely what he intends to do.

  

The Tale

The story concerns a miller called Symkyn, who has a wife who comes from “noble kyn”, a daughter of twenty, and a young child still in its cradle. Symkyn is apparently a typical miller in that he is in the habit of stealing from his customers; it was not difficult for a miller to give less weight in flour than he had received in corn and to take the difference for himself.

The mill is near Cambridge, and one of the miller’s customers is a Cambridge college. However, the college is suspicious that the miller has cheated them, but they have no way of proving it. Two of the students, John and Aleyn, offer to take some corn to the mill to see if they can get the proof. The students propose to watch the corn go in and the flour come out, but that hardly suits the miller’s purpose. Instead, he sets their horse loose to run off with the local wild mares. Needless to say, the miller steals some of their flour while the students go chasing after the horse.

Eventually the horse is caught and brought back to the mill, but it is now too late for them to go back to town and they ask the miller to put them up for the night, for which they are willing to pay. The miller agrees, gives them a good meal, and then sorts out the sleeping arrangements in the only bedroom that the mill has to offer.

This means that John and Aleyn must share a bed, so that the miller and his wife can be together and the daughter has a bed of her own. The cradle with the baby in it is placed at the foot of the bed containing the miller and his wife; keep an eye on that cradle, it’s the key to all of what happens next!

The miller and his family all sleep soundly, but snore so loudly that the students cannot sleep. Aleyn decides that he will have his wicked way with the daughter; apart from anything else, it will count as payment for the flour that he is sure has been stolen by the miller. John warns him not to wake the miller.

Aleyn loses no time in doing what he said he would, which leaves John lying there in a state of frustration. However, he then puts a plan of his own into play. He gets up in the dark, finds the cradle at the foot of the bed shared by the miller and his wife, and moves it to the foot of his own bed. When the miller’s wife gets up to obey a call of nature, she consequently gets into the wrong bed on her return. (Hm! Perhaps it was a good job that it was not the miller who got up in the night!)

Aleyn wakes up and decides to go back to his own bed, having first been told by the grateful miller’s daughter where he can find a loaf of bread that the miller had baked from the stolen flour. Aleyn comes across the cradle and stops short of getting into what he assumes must be the miller’s bed; instead, he gets into what really is the miller’s bed and whispers into the miller’s ear, thinking it to be John’s of course, all the details of what he has just done to the miller’s daughter.

Events now move with startling speed. The miller jumps up and smashes Aleyn’s nose, which bleeds profusely. The two fight on the floor, until the miller falls backwards and lands on top of his wife, who is of course in bed with John, but does not know this. She therefore assumes that it must be the two students who are fighting in the dark.

John jumps up and starts feeling his way along the wall for some sort of weapon. The wife does the same, and is the first to find a big stick. As a shaft of moonlight allows her to see something white on the floor, she thinks it must be Alleyn’s nightcap and aims a blow at it. It is actually the miller’s bald head that she has seen, and she manages to knock down her own husband, after which the two students add a few more blows.

The students then dress hurriedly and make their escape, taking their flour and the baked loaf with them. The reeve ends his tale by pointing out that the miller has been soundly and justly punished for his misdeeds, and also that he, the reeve, has paid the pilgrim miller back for his earlier story at the reeve’s expense.

Discussion

This story is similar to the Miller’s Tale in being in the “fabliau” tradition of a short story told by and for ordinary working people. In these tales, it was the plot that counted far more than the characterizations and descriptions. Many of these stories were realistic in nature, generally humorous, and often indecent. Chaucer has retained these essential points, although adding more description and relying on the element of poetic justice.

However, there is more humour in the miller’s offering than the reeve’s. At the latter’s conclusion, it is only the cook who is heard to laugh, and to offer another tale in similar vein, whereas the whole company found the miller’s tale to be to their liking. There was no real violence in the miller’s story, apart from the application of a red-hot piece of metal to a bare buttock, but blood is spilled in the denouement of the reeve’s tale, and the students continue to lay into the miller even after he has been knocked to the ground.

Likewise, the sex in the miller’s tale is consensual, and it is what the two plotters want to happen. In the reeve’s tale, two rapes take place, in effect. There is certainly no foreplay involved!

The reeve’s tale has all the makings of a rollicking bedroom farce, of the type that became extremely popular in 19^th century French and 20^th British theatre. It could have been an enjoyable comedy of errors, with people getting into the wrong beds and all the consequences of so doing. But the reeve spoils it all by being so unpleasant. His aim is, after all, to spite the miller who has insulted him, rather than to entertain his fellow pilgrims. In this, he has lived up to the promise given before he started his tale.

What this all boils down to is the theme that runs throughout the whole of the Canterbury Tales, namely that the main characters are not within the tales but outside them. We learn a great deal from the pilgrims through the stories they tell, which is also why Chaucer gives us such interplay between the characters before and after (and sometimes even during) the telling of their tales. It is therefore a mistake to read the tales outside their context, and part of that context is the section of the General Prologue devoted to each of the tellers (or nearly all). In this instance, the miller is a likeable character who tells a bawdy but good-humoured tale about characters we can get to like. The reeve is an unpleasant man who cannot tell a pleasant tale.

© John Welford

The Miller's Tale. by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Miller’s Tale is one of the best-known and best-loved of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, due to its “naughty” nature and the tight and pacey narration.

The Miller is the second pilgrim to tell a tale. The first of the pilgrims to do so was the Knight, who told a very long tale based on the medieval tradition of courtly love, according to which women are placed on a virtual pedestal and worshipped from afar. In the current case, the woman does not even know that she is the object of devotion for seven years!

The tale is full of long descriptions, speeches and prayers, with all the conventions of knightly chivalry being incorporated in a classical environment, with a few Graeco-Roman gods being thrown in for good measure.

And then the Miller makes his presence felt. What a contrast of mood! We suddenly turn from this gracious, probably elderly, knight, who is full of courtesy and good manners, to a man who is definitely from the working class, with no social graces at all, and who is roaring drunk into the bargain.

The host, who is keeping the pilgrims in line and making sure that they fulfil their bargain of each telling at least one tale, then turns to the Monk for the next story, but is rudely interrupted by the Miller, who insists on being heard. “In Pilate’s voys he gan to crie and swoor …” as Chaucer puts it.

The Miller knows that he is drunk, and therefore blames any slurring of his speech on “the ale of Southwerk”, which was presumably supplied by “mine host”, but of which the Miller has already consumed more than his fair share. He also tells us that he wants to tell his tale because it concerns a carpenter and his wife, and he plainly wants to “have a go” at the Reeve, who is also a carpenter, and we have to imagine that the two have been arguing with each other along the way.

Chaucer now speaks in his own voice, to apologise, it would appear, for having to include this tale at this juncture. It is as though he was saying “everything was going so well, and now this happens. Don’t blame me, I’m only being an honest reporter, it really is not my fault.” Of course, this is just Chaucer with tongue planted firmly in cheek. His humorous effort to detach himself from his own work is made even funnier when he advises his reader to “turn the page and choose another tale” if he or she is likely to be offended by the sort of story that characters like the Miller or the Reeve are likely to tell, and we would prefer something of “morality and holiness”.

What greater incentive could we want to persuade us to plunge into the Miller’s Tale, having been given such a delicious warning of the earthy delights to come?

The Miller’s Tale

Despite his drunken state, the Miller is quite capable of giving us more than 650 lines of perfectly rhymed couplets. He starts by introducing the cast of characters, firstly Nicholas the clerk, whose is basically an astrologer, and the lodger of John, an elderly carpenter. John has recently married Alison, who is described as being “wild and young”. John is fully aware that Alison is likely to be sexually attractive to other men, and so he keeps a very close eye on her.

When the carpenter is away one day Nicholas makes his advance on Alison. There is no ten-year wait here, as in the Knight’s Tale, but a direct assault upon the woman in question. Alison does not take long to promise herself to Nicholas, but they both know that finding an opportunity to take things to their logical conclusion will not be easy. Nicholas is sure that he will think of something.

However, there is another rival for Alison’s charms, namely Absolon the young parish clerk. He takes to serenading Alison beneath her bedroom window, and is course overheard by John the carpenter. Alison has no time for Absolon, and mocks him at every opportunity, as she has her sights set elsewhere.

Nicholas comes up with a plan. For the first part of it, he shuts himself away in his room for the whole day, until John becomes anxious about his welfare. When his servant lad reports back that Nicholas is lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, John breaks down the door, at which Nicholas tell him that his astrological research has told him that Noah’s Flood is about to happen again, and very soon.

In order to save the three of them, so Nicholas tells the carpenter, the latter must acquire three large wooden tubs and suspend them from the roof beams. He must also cut a hole in the gable, so that, when the flood waters rise, all they have to do is cut the ropes and float out through the hole to safety. One vital precaution is that John must suspend his tub well away from that of his wife, lest he be tempted to “synne” and so not be worthy of God’s grace in saving him. How thoughtful of Nicholas to consider the morals of his landlord!

With John safely suspended in the roof, Nicholas and Alison should be free to have their wicked way. And indeed, the plan starts out well, as John the carpenter spends the next day making all the arrangements, including building ladders for the three of them, providing food and ale to last them until the flood subsides, and sending his servants away. All this effort has worn him out, so that, once in his tub, he falls into a sound sleep. Nicholas and Alison can now resort to the marital bed instead.

The plot thickens

However, the two lovers are not the only ones who have plans. Absolon wonders why the carpenter has not been seen around all day and reckons that he must be away. This is therefore a good chance to woo Alison without interruption. He plans to knock at her window before first light and steal a kiss from her.

When he announces his presence, Alison, who is still in bed with Nicholas, tells Absolon that she can never love him because her love is given to another. Absolon pleads for a farewell kiss, at which she sticks her bare backside out of the window. In the darkness, he kisses it, and is alarmed to find that he is kissing something a lot hairier than he expected. Alison and Nicholas, not surprisingly, find this to be highly amusing, but Absolon now seeks revenge.

He goes to the blacksmith and borrows a piece of hot metal from the forge. Going back to Alison’s window, he tells her that he has a gold ring for her, which she can have for another kiss. However, this time it is Nicholas who fancies a laugh at the parish clerk’s expense, and he sticks his backside out of the window, letting fly a fart for good measure. Absolon replies with a whack from the hot metal, which Nicholas finds to be far less amusing than what had gone before.

Yelling “Help! Water! Water!”, Nicholas wakens John, who is still in his tub in the rafters. Thinking that the cry of “Water!” refers to the expected flood, John promptly cuts his rope with the axe and comes crashing down, breaking his arm in the process. When the neighbours turn up, Alison and Nicholas tell them about John’s insane belief in Noah’s Flood, and everyone now regards him as being mad. The Miller then brings his tale to a rapid conclusion.

How the Miller’s Tale has been received at different times

We know the response of the pilgrims on hearing the Tale, because Chaucer begins the next section, the Reeve’s Prologue, by telling us that everyone laughs loud and long, with the exception of the Reeve, who takes it as a personal affront and soon replies with a tale of his own that has the sole intention of getting revenge on the Miller. We can imagine that even the “gentle” characters, such as the Knight and the Parson, had a good belly-laugh on hearing the Miller’s Tale, with absolutely no embarrassment being shown at mentions of arses and farts.

There have been periods of history when such a tale would have had a very different response. Bawdy, earthy, sensuous humour such as this did not go down well in the Victorian era, for example, when Chaucer was very much out of favour, mainly because of Tales like this. Thomas Bowdler would have been hard pressed to make the Miller’s Tale suitable for the ears of young ladies (it was he who produced a sanitized version of Shakespeare by taking out all the rude words, often with hilarious results to a modern ear).

Chaucer’s humour

It must be admitted that there is nothing subtle about the Miller’s humour. This is about as basic and knockabout as humour can get. However, there are subtleties in the writing that are worth a second look. For example, there is a wonderful play on words, early in the Tale, that is lost on modern readers. The Miller follows “As clerkes ben ful subtile and ful queynte” with “And prively he caughte hire by the queynte”. The word “queynte” has gone in two directions since the 14th century, as from it we have acquired both “quaint” and a notorious four-letter word beginning with “c”! Chaucer’s original readers would not have missed this!

Chaucer’s characterizations

Another response is to admire the wonderful characterizations produced by Chaucer in the Miller’s Tale. We have the somewhat stock character of the dim-witted elderly fool who is set up to be duped and cuckolded, but also the clever, scheming clerk who eventually suffers for being just a bit too clever, and the jilted lover who is both a fool and an avenger.

Above all, though, we have the splendid female character, Alison, who is a prototype of many female characters in literature. She is sharp, sexy, and sassy, a young woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. She has a wicked sense of humour and a streak of cruelty. She also has the sense and good fortune to be the only main character who escapes with no punishment for her deeds, either physical or emotional. By the end of this short tale we feel that we would recognise her if we met her in the street; indeed, no modern TV soap opera would be complete without a good sprinkling of Alisons.

My personal response, as a long-time admirer of Chaucer, is to wonder at the genius of a man who could put two such tales as those of the Knight and the Miller side by side, and get away with it. Not only that, he succeeds at convincing us in two very different genres: the tale of courtly love, as might be told in the houses of the great and the good, and the “fabliau” of bawdy ribaldry that would be suitable for the drunks in the tavern. We know, from the fact that the General Prologue and the first four tales form a continuous manuscript sequence, that it was Chaucer’s intention to start the Canterbury Tales with this contrast of styles. It is not just me who believes that he pulled off this feat with enormous success!

© John Welford