The Debate on Marriage in the Merchant’s Tale et. al.

By now, the debate on marriage that comprises the first half of the Merchant’s Tale is obviously part of a series of such debates. The Wife, the Clerk, and now the Merchant have presented cases of marriage rife with irony, double meaning and with dream-like/fairy tale qualities. The actual voiced debates on marriage in the Merchant’s Tale between Justinus and Placebo and later Pluto and Prosperene reflect the debates between the pilgrims themselves. We begin to identify two sides, those who believe women and men are implicitly good and faithful and those who view marriage as a never-ending journey of mistrust and chicanery. An incomplete and possibly controversial listing:
Pro- marriage: The Wife, the Clerk, Placebo, Griselde, The Franklin
Anti-marriage: The Merchant, Justinus, Emelye, Walter, Prosperene
Some of the conflicts between men and women in marriage include the propriety or otherwise of marrying more than once (the Wife), whether the old ought to marry the young (Januarie), and the tendency of women toward adultery/sin (Alison, May) or complete lack thereof (Griselde).
Marriages were arranged mostly for economic reasons, and the Church’s position was that marriage was for procreation, according to an essay on marriage and divorce in the Middle Ages by Jo-Ann McNamara and Suzanne F. Wemple. Few married for love, and we can see in the Tales that lust and desire not to sin are more often reasons for marriage than mutual love and respect. Indeed, the Merchant’s Tale is essentially a tale about sexual opportunists: both Damyan and Januarie can be described this way. Like the other tales in the “marriage series”, including the as yet un-discussed Franklin’s Tale, the married couple at the end eventually find peace with one another. What differs is the mode of this eventual stalemate (cynicism intended, both by me and Chaucer, I believe). The Wife of Bath suggests that only after the surrender of maistrye to the woman can a marriage be at peace. The Clerk paints the simplest marriage as one in which the women is obedient to the point of supplicating, then mocks this ideal of his in his brilliantly- crafted envoy (as Max has interestingly shown above). The Merchant highlights the sins of women using both Biblical and pagan references (the Garden of Eden, Prosperene ate the pomegranate seeds). The Franklin concludes the set with a situation readers can finally accept, but I’ll leave that until later.

While the methods of obtaining contentment in marriage differ, the much larger theme of the tale reflecting the thoughts and desires of the teller binds them together into a set.