But but but if we don’t read Walter as fate but as a character the story becomes yet more problematic. It has only just occurred to me that Griselda is the only character who is willing to see her babies stabbed to death , as the others are cruelly deceiving her but have no intention of hurting the children . I read it as someone who has handed over all responsibility to her husband including her entire moral compass, with disastrous results.
For sure, she did! And I suppose this was much more “normal” before women had equality under the law and so forth. In all honesty (and I thought about including this in the post but just went in a different direction), when Griselda gives up her child to what she assumes is certain death because of her husband’s wishes, I cannot help but think of the women I know who’ve had abortions solely because the father of the baby wanted that. It’s not true in all case, of course, but that dynamic still persists today.
I am also listening to ‘On Reading Well’. I could be used as a bad example in it. I was and am a phenomenally quick reader and praised for it when young , I read Doctor Zhivago in an afternoon at fifteen, I can now read a whole newspaper in under an hour but if I want to pause and appreciate literature have to rely on audiobooks, and find poetry almost impossible
Over a week on I am still thinking about this story. I left it thinking it was a very dark tale and that Chaucer also thought it do. If I had been a medieval Italian reading the story in the Decameron instead would I have thought ‘what a wonderful example of true wifely behaviour’ or was Boccaccio uncomfortable about it too?
I don’t know much about Boccaccio’s thinking. But I think the medieval mindset was not as “realist” as the modern one. But Chaucer definitely saw the darkness of the tale and offered his own counter point which is telling. Audiences received these kinds of fairytales watch the way lovers of fantasy receive those works today. I honestly don’t know. I love that you’re still thinking about the story. 😄
Ugh, that was so hard to read! It was such a relief to read the Envoy's afterward. I chuckled at this line: "Get friends; they'll do the business of a male." As a therapist who deals far too often with cases of domestic abuse, I kept thinking of real-life situations where women are trapped by trauma bonds and fear, having to appear compliant while their bodies and souls are suffering.
BUT, I appreciate your reminder this is a fairy tale and suggestion to view Walter through the lens of life's confusing vicissitudes. I just read Jessica Hooten Wilson's book _Reading for the Love of God_ in which she describes the meaning of "allegorical." As you said, the definitions of words matters! She says, "People typically consider allegory as stories with one-to-one correlations, as we would find in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. However, to read allegorically is to find a plethora of spiritual correlations in the text." Which you and the commenters have done, as this tale brings to mind other stories that portray women in a certain way (female rags to riches, not through grit and determination but at the whim of powerful men or magical happenstance). So, while it is challenging to read it "literally," it is also a challenge to read it contemplatively as a way to wrestle with themes of abuse, power, suffering, and social stratification.
Thanks for this response, Carmon, both raw and professional! It’s so interesting how a work like this (any literature, really) can both be realistic/literal and abstract/allegorical. The best works often work on both levels, allowing us to gain insights about our humanity in two ways.
And yay for Jessica Hooten Wilson’s excellent work!
The Clerk's Tale has always been blended in my mind with the 16th century ballad 'King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid'. In both of them, a king hitherto uninterested in marriage, decides to marry a beggar maid, she rises to the occassion, and becomes beloved by his subjects. Only King Cophetua doesn't test his beggar maid, the ballad being much shorter than the tale. But whenever I read a literary allusion to King Cophetua - and there are many in English literature, usually made by independent women who balk at a powerful and/or rich man offering them them marriage (e.g. Harriet Vane to Lord Peter Wimsey in 'Have His Carcase') - I think of the Clerk's Tale.
Kathryn, like patient Griselda, was put to the test by John of Gaunt, being first made his mistress and only marrying him in later life. It seems poetic justice that, although John of Gant's legitimate son, Henry Bolingbroke, intially seized the crown from his cousin Richard II, it was a female descendant, Margaret Beaufort, of Gaunt's illegitimate line by Kathryn Swynford, whose son, Henry VII, would found the Tudor dynasty.
Another real historical example would be Roxelana, the Ruthenian Christian slave who rose through the harem of Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent to become his legal wife (Suleiman broke with tradition to marry her) and a powerful and influential consort. But that would not happen until two centuries after Chaucer's time.
Anya Seton wrote a novel about her ‘Katherine’ in which I think she is made more of a patient Gruselda than she probably was , and Chaucer pops up quite a few times, as does Julian of Norwich and John Wycliffe .
In 'Jane Eyre', when Jane, newly engaged, tells Mr. Rochester she doesn't want to be showered with jewels and silks, in my memory, Jane compared Rochester to King Cophetu, but when I read it again, I see Jane actually compared Rochester to King Ahasuerus, who, of course raised the Esther, a Jewish exile, to be his consort, in a manner very similar to King Cophetua and the king of the Clerk's Tale. It is certainly a recurring theme of a man of high rank raising a woman of lower rank to his level, and it is interesting to me that so many female writers, such as Sayers, Bronte, and even Georgette Heyer, make reference to that theme in order to reject it for their female heroines. It is as if they all, consciously or unconsciously, have taken Chaucer's closing admonition to women to speak up for themselves, to heart.
What Karen said. They can be particularly aggressive towards female Christian voices. For those familiar with the Gospels, they remind me of what Jesus's disciples are described as being like before the coming of the Holy Spirit - wanting to call down fire on opponents, pulling out [verbal] swords to maim those who are just doing their job, turning the weak away from healing and blessing, and telling those who don't think exactly like them that they aren't truly following Jesus - all things which Jesus had to stop his disciples from doing and reprove them for doing.
That’s a word, Holly! I never quite made that connection with the disciples’ behavior before the coming of the Holy Spirit. That is something for me to chew on. So much LACK of the fruit of the Spirit in these attitudes. And you are right about the particular aggression toward women. To be completely honest, the sheer misogyny was something I was blind to for a long time. I’m still slow to recognize it. I think that’s owing to a lot of factors, but one of them is that I think it is resurging in some younger generations, and it had experienced a slight respite back in my day.
I will give it a shot and would love for others to chime in with their definitions.
It’s basically a culture perpetuated on social media (of course) of mainly young-ish men who are not only adamant in their theological beliefs but also adamant in correcting everyone else. In short, on the hunt for any opportunity to flex and see themselves doing so in the social media mirror.
I am disturbed that of all the tales this one comes across to me as the most modern . I can see a book where a psychopath takes a woman on order to control her, tests this by ordering her to allow him to commit horrible crimes, and then is disconcerted when she does
Yes, I was thinking while reading it again this time that the 'theobro' culture that preaches absolute submission of the wife would have a field day holding this up as a example. I was relieved to see Karen's more figurative interpretation of the story.
Walter also loses out - it suggests that he is saddened that his wife is so willing to obey him in letting her children be killed and his people, who once lived him turn against it
Walter struck me as a pompous ninny, too self-important to stop doing the tests even when it was causing everyone pain and too cowardly to trust completely in his wife's promise of faithfulness. At the end of the story, one could envision him in a decade's time deciding he needed to arrange another set of tests, just to make sure.
It is absolutely a recurring theme. Even the first “official” English novel (as contested as that category may be) centers on a servant girl being raised by her master/husband: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.
Yes. Although, in Pamela's case, the elevation occurs only after she defies her master's immoral demands - like Fielding, I am toyally skeptical of that happy outcome - and so Pamela was unlikely to be a 'patient Griselda'. Come to think of it, Esther also ran counter to Griselda's silence, in speaking up for her people.
Fielding definitely has the shrewder insight...😅 It’s just almost always the man raising the woman (for obvious reasons). I’m sure there are opposite examples, but none are coming to me now ...
If Walter is meant to represent the vicissitudes of life, then the parable in Luke 19:11-27 comes to mind. The servant's view of the returning King is so negative that he is immobilized. (But he did not pass the test by doing nothing.) Was this view of God common in Chaucer's day? The whole story seems so odd. How is patience and submission a virtue when someone is going to kill your baby?
Good questions. And please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to suggest the story should be read as an allegory. It is at its core a fairytale. The character of Grizella does have a long tradition of embodying the virtue of patience, which is why I think a sort of mythical reading of the tale is helpful. But putting that aside, all fairytales are pretty violent and gruesome, or at least most of them. So that certainly isn’t unusual in this case.
Yes please for more tales
But but but if we don’t read Walter as fate but as a character the story becomes yet more problematic. It has only just occurred to me that Griselda is the only character who is willing to see her babies stabbed to death , as the others are cruelly deceiving her but have no intention of hurting the children . I read it as someone who has handed over all responsibility to her husband including her entire moral compass, with disastrous results.
For sure, she did! And I suppose this was much more “normal” before women had equality under the law and so forth. In all honesty (and I thought about including this in the post but just went in a different direction), when Griselda gives up her child to what she assumes is certain death because of her husband’s wishes, I cannot help but think of the women I know who’ve had abortions solely because the father of the baby wanted that. It’s not true in all case, of course, but that dynamic still persists today.
I am also listening to ‘On Reading Well’. I could be used as a bad example in it. I was and am a phenomenally quick reader and praised for it when young , I read Doctor Zhivago in an afternoon at fifteen, I can now read a whole newspaper in under an hour but if I want to pause and appreciate literature have to rely on audiobooks, and find poetry almost impossible
There’s definitely some benefit to fast reading. But it sure would be interesting to exercise your slow reading muscles with some poetry. :)
Over a week on I am still thinking about this story. I left it thinking it was a very dark tale and that Chaucer also thought it do. If I had been a medieval Italian reading the story in the Decameron instead would I have thought ‘what a wonderful example of true wifely behaviour’ or was Boccaccio uncomfortable about it too?
I don’t know much about Boccaccio’s thinking. But I think the medieval mindset was not as “realist” as the modern one. But Chaucer definitely saw the darkness of the tale and offered his own counter point which is telling. Audiences received these kinds of fairytales watch the way lovers of fantasy receive those works today. I honestly don’t know. I love that you’re still thinking about the story. 😄
Ugh, that was so hard to read! It was such a relief to read the Envoy's afterward. I chuckled at this line: "Get friends; they'll do the business of a male." As a therapist who deals far too often with cases of domestic abuse, I kept thinking of real-life situations where women are trapped by trauma bonds and fear, having to appear compliant while their bodies and souls are suffering.
BUT, I appreciate your reminder this is a fairy tale and suggestion to view Walter through the lens of life's confusing vicissitudes. I just read Jessica Hooten Wilson's book _Reading for the Love of God_ in which she describes the meaning of "allegorical." As you said, the definitions of words matters! She says, "People typically consider allegory as stories with one-to-one correlations, as we would find in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. However, to read allegorically is to find a plethora of spiritual correlations in the text." Which you and the commenters have done, as this tale brings to mind other stories that portray women in a certain way (female rags to riches, not through grit and determination but at the whim of powerful men or magical happenstance). So, while it is challenging to read it "literally," it is also a challenge to read it contemplatively as a way to wrestle with themes of abuse, power, suffering, and social stratification.
Thanks for making us think!
Oh, and thank you for explaining the structure of this section. I noticed the change in the rhyme scheme and wondered about that.
Yes to exploring a couple more of the stories!
😃
Thanks for this response, Carmon, both raw and professional! It’s so interesting how a work like this (any literature, really) can both be realistic/literal and abstract/allegorical. The best works often work on both levels, allowing us to gain insights about our humanity in two ways.
And yay for Jessica Hooten Wilson’s excellent work!
More tales, please!
😊
The Clerk's Tale has always been blended in my mind with the 16th century ballad 'King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid'. In both of them, a king hitherto uninterested in marriage, decides to marry a beggar maid, she rises to the occassion, and becomes beloved by his subjects. Only King Cophetua doesn't test his beggar maid, the ballad being much shorter than the tale. But whenever I read a literary allusion to King Cophetua - and there are many in English literature, usually made by independent women who balk at a powerful and/or rich man offering them them marriage (e.g. Harriet Vane to Lord Peter Wimsey in 'Have His Carcase') - I think of the Clerk's Tale.
Also I suppose Chaucer’s sister in law , beautiful sexy Kathryn Swynford who married a Plantagenet , falls into this category
Kathryn, like patient Griselda, was put to the test by John of Gaunt, being first made his mistress and only marrying him in later life. It seems poetic justice that, although John of Gant's legitimate son, Henry Bolingbroke, intially seized the crown from his cousin Richard II, it was a female descendant, Margaret Beaufort, of Gaunt's illegitimate line by Kathryn Swynford, whose son, Henry VII, would found the Tudor dynasty.
Another real historical example would be Roxelana, the Ruthenian Christian slave who rose through the harem of Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent to become his legal wife (Suleiman broke with tradition to marry her) and a powerful and influential consort. But that would not happen until two centuries after Chaucer's time.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing those real life examples. The more I think about it, the less far-fetched this tale seems!
I don’t know about her. Will have to look into this story.
Anya Seton wrote a novel about her ‘Katherine’ in which I think she is made more of a patient Gruselda than she probably was , and Chaucer pops up quite a few times, as does Julian of Norwich and John Wycliffe .
I see! Going to look for that now ...
Oh, and yes, more tales from Chaucer please.
OK! 😊
I don’t know that ballad and will have to look it up! Thank you for drawing that connection.
In 'Jane Eyre', when Jane, newly engaged, tells Mr. Rochester she doesn't want to be showered with jewels and silks, in my memory, Jane compared Rochester to King Cophetu, but when I read it again, I see Jane actually compared Rochester to King Ahasuerus, who, of course raised the Esther, a Jewish exile, to be his consort, in a manner very similar to King Cophetua and the king of the Clerk's Tale. It is certainly a recurring theme of a man of high rank raising a woman of lower rank to his level, and it is interesting to me that so many female writers, such as Sayers, Bronte, and even Georgette Heyer, make reference to that theme in order to reject it for their female heroines. It is as if they all, consciously or unconsciously, have taken Chaucer's closing admonition to women to speak up for themselves, to heart.
What is ‘theobro’ culture ?’ I don’t like the sound of it...
What Karen said. They can be particularly aggressive towards female Christian voices. For those familiar with the Gospels, they remind me of what Jesus's disciples are described as being like before the coming of the Holy Spirit - wanting to call down fire on opponents, pulling out [verbal] swords to maim those who are just doing their job, turning the weak away from healing and blessing, and telling those who don't think exactly like them that they aren't truly following Jesus - all things which Jesus had to stop his disciples from doing and reprove them for doing.
That’s a word, Holly! I never quite made that connection with the disciples’ behavior before the coming of the Holy Spirit. That is something for me to chew on. So much LACK of the fruit of the Spirit in these attitudes. And you are right about the particular aggression toward women. To be completely honest, the sheer misogyny was something I was blind to for a long time. I’m still slow to recognize it. I think that’s owing to a lot of factors, but one of them is that I think it is resurging in some younger generations, and it had experienced a slight respite back in my day.
Oh, how blessed you are not to know...😬
I will give it a shot and would love for others to chime in with their definitions.
It’s basically a culture perpetuated on social media (of course) of mainly young-ish men who are not only adamant in their theological beliefs but also adamant in correcting everyone else. In short, on the hunt for any opportunity to flex and see themselves doing so in the social media mirror.
Sounds really irritating- I’ll steer clear of it
I am disturbed that of all the tales this one comes across to me as the most modern . I can see a book where a psychopath takes a woman on order to control her, tests this by ordering her to allow him to commit horrible crimes, and then is disconcerted when she does
Yes, I was thinking while reading it again this time that the 'theobro' culture that preaches absolute submission of the wife would have a field day holding this up as a example. I was relieved to see Karen's more figurative interpretation of the story.
Me too!
No doubt they would. Saw one out there today unironically depicting the Crusaders riding in to save Election Day.
Ironically, I've just been reading first hand accounts from that period of history, and it was such a futile waste of male human lives.
“The most modern” of the tales is chillingly accurate.
Walter also loses out - it suggests that he is saddened that his wife is so willing to obey him in letting her children be killed and his people, who once lived him turn against it
Walter struck me as a pompous ninny, too self-important to stop doing the tests even when it was causing everyone pain and too cowardly to trust completely in his wife's promise of faithfulness. At the end of the story, one could envision him in a decade's time deciding he needed to arrange another set of tests, just to make sure.
It is absolutely a recurring theme. Even the first “official” English novel (as contested as that category may be) centers on a servant girl being raised by her master/husband: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.
Yes. Although, in Pamela's case, the elevation occurs only after she defies her master's immoral demands - like Fielding, I am toyally skeptical of that happy outcome - and so Pamela was unlikely to be a 'patient Griselda'. Come to think of it, Esther also ran counter to Griselda's silence, in speaking up for her people.
Fielding definitely has the shrewder insight...😅 It’s just almost always the man raising the woman (for obvious reasons). I’m sure there are opposite examples, but none are coming to me now ...
Great connection to Esther!
If Walter is meant to represent the vicissitudes of life, then the parable in Luke 19:11-27 comes to mind. The servant's view of the returning King is so negative that he is immobilized. (But he did not pass the test by doing nothing.) Was this view of God common in Chaucer's day? The whole story seems so odd. How is patience and submission a virtue when someone is going to kill your baby?
Good questions. And please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to suggest the story should be read as an allegory. It is at its core a fairytale. The character of Grizella does have a long tradition of embodying the virtue of patience, which is why I think a sort of mythical reading of the tale is helpful. But putting that aside, all fairytales are pretty violent and gruesome, or at least most of them. So that certainly isn’t unusual in this case.
Two thirds of them in the U.K. apparently. Also so many many child abuse cases where the stepfather carries out the abuse and the mother permits it.
Sorry that was a reply to your earlier reply to my comment
I did not know that statistic. It is not surprising to me, sadly.