Chaucer's Humor by Jean E. Jost;

Author:Jean E. Jost;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 1994-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

In other words, it was a gift to her in her role as part of the household, part of the facade of “cheer.” The gift recalls her divided marriage, the semi-erotic overtones of “beele cheere” suggesting the wife’s independent source of funding, as well as the merchant’s seducing the public by maintaining an expensive image. Now, of course, her debt has fractured her own image as keeper of “oure good.” Yet from her point of view (since this “transformation” is really nothing more than a shift from a man’s view of the world to a woman’s, from counting house to bedroom), the divisive debt is actually a source of plenty; “scoring it on her taille” will generate capital because, like a merchant’s gold, it too is a “plough” for “creauncing,” for “driving forth the world” and making it bear. “Taillynge” heals the division in this mercantile marriage because it rewards him for being hardy, wise, and riche, but it also provides her with a controlling interest in exchange for being free, buxom, and fresh abed.

In the following lines, the wife describes her new arrangement, restating and thus “transforming” the terms of the old one, as money given for “myn honour” (VII.408) becomes array she bestows for “youre honour” (VII.421); the uneasy external alliance of “cosynage” (VII.409) is displaced by an intimate marital bond (“Ye shal have my joly body to wedde,” VII.423); and the ambiguous, manipulative “beele cheere” (VII.409) is replaced by “Forgyve it me, myn owene spouse deere; / Tume hiderward, and maketh bettre cheere” (VII.426). The merchant accepts this arrangement, in effect, when he tells her “Keep bet thy good” (VII.432, my italics), for he is acknowledging (as of course he must!) that she is part owner, indeed the gatekeeper of this operation.

The comedy of this ending is essentially different from the social irony earlier in the tale.18 When all values are subordinated to profit, oaths lose their force, the home lacks warmth, love is not fulfilling, and all trades, even merchantry, clothe themselves in precious illusion. The fading of value and the flight into pretense that we have seen in this tale are devolutions, the transformations of descent. They are versions of the Fall (hence the garden scene).19 On the other hand, the wife’s confronting her loss of integrity, or “image,” by capitalizing on her sexuality and making a virtue of necessity, is a version of atonement. It is a return to wholeness like the merchant’s recovery when he has, “Thanked be God,” bought “al hool his marchandise” (345); like the monk’s return to his abbot (perhaps); and certainly it is like the Wife of Bath’s hardy, rich and wise affirmation of life:20

Lat go. Farewel! The devel go therwith!

The flour is goon; ther is namoore to telle;

The bren, as best I kan, now moste I selle;

But yet to be right myrie wol I fonde.

(VII.476–79)

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