Kittredge, G. L.
“Chaucer’s Discussion of Marriage.” Modern
Philology 9.4. (1912): 435-467. Web.
Main Argument:
Within The Canterbury Tales, there lies a
Marriage Act of the Human Comedy, beginning with the Wife of Bath and ending
with the Franklin’s Tale. Throughout this Marriage Act we can understand
Chaucer’s own views on marriage.
The pilgrims are
the dramatis personae.
“We should also
inquire whether the tale is not determined, to some extent, by the
circumstances – by the situation at the moment, by something that another
pilgrim has said or done, by the turn of discussion already under way” (1).
The Wife of Bath
“She addresses her
heresies not to us or to the world at large, but to her fellow pilgrims…The
words of the Wife were a kind to provoke comment…” (440)
The Clerk
“Clerks can “speak
well” of women (as our clerk has shown), when women deserve it ; and he now
proceeds to show that they can likewise speak well (with biting irony) of women
who do not deserve it – such women as the Wife of Bath and all her sect of
domestic revolutionists” (448).
The Merchant
“Thus,
its very lack of restraint – the savagery of the whole, which has revolted so
many readers – is dramatically inevitable” (451).
The Franklin
“This, then, is
the Franklin’s solution of the whole puzzle of matrimony, and it is a solution
that depends on love and gentillesse on both sides” (464).
Final Thoughts:
“There is no
connection between the Wife’s Prologue and the group of stories that precedes;
there is no connection between the Franklin’s Tale and the group that follows.
Within the Marriage Group, on the contrary, there is a close connection throughout.
That act is a finished act. It begins and ends an elaborate debate. We need not
hesitate, therefore, to accept the solution which the Franklin offers as that
which Geoffrey Chaucer the man accepted for his own part (467).”
http://www.jstor.org/stable/432643?seq=21#page_scan_tab_contents
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