The Clerk's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer

The world has moved a long way in the last 700 or so years, so that behaviour that was admired then is regarded with revulsion now, and doubtless the people of Geoffrey Chaucer’s time would react with horror at much of what we  regard as normal and commonplace today.

An example of the former is the Clerk’s Tale in the Canterbury Tales. The story of “patient Griselda” would find no place in a modern version of the Tales, because it would be regarded as completely unrealistic and deeply offensive to women. However, as so often with Chaucer, all is not quite as it seems here, and the Clerk’s Tale, in its context, can be seen as an early stirring in the direction of “women’s lib”.

The Clerk

From the General Prologue, we know that the Clerk is an impoverished scholar, whose chief desire is to own lots of books. He might therefore be seen as being unworldly, and unlikely to prove to be exciting company for the other pilgrims.

Indeed, when called upon by “mine Host” to tell a tale, he is reprimanded for being aloof and quiet, “as coy and still as a maid”. The Host, as is his wont, requests “some merry tale”, but he has come to the wrong person here!

The Clerk tells us exactly where he (and therefore Chaucer himself) has got this story from. It is well known that only a few of Chaucer’s tales were original to him, but it is only here that the source is acknowledged. This is an important point, because it lets Chaucer off the hook as far as the story itself is concerned. He is saying, “this story has its faults, but please don’t blame me, because I got it from someone else”, in this case Petrarch, whose own source was Boccaccio.

The Tale

The story is of a noble Italian lord, named Walter, who is persuaded by his people to marry and produce an heir. He agrees, on condition that he has a free choice and that the people will respect her, whoever she may be, “as though she were an emperor’s daughter”.

His choice is Griselda, the daughter of a poor man of the village. He goes about his proposal in a somewhat unorthodox way, in that he makes all the wedding arrangements first and then approaches her father and Griselda to ask for her hand in marriage, which both agree to.

There is a brief comic moment when the court ladies are ordered to remove her old clothes and dress her in a sumptuous gown. We can imagine their distaste at the first part of this job, as we are told, “these ladies were not right glad to handle her clothes wherein she was clad”.

All proceeds well, and in the fullness of time Griselda produces a baby girl. However, at this point things get very strange indeed. Walter decides to “tempt his wife”. As the Clerk himself says, Walter had absolutely no reason to do this, as “he had assayed her enough before”. He goes on: “I say it is evil to test a wife when there is no need, and put her in anguish and dread”.

The test consists of removing the child from Griselda and allowing her to believe that it was to be killed, although the baby girl is actually sent far away to be looked after by Walter’s sister. Griselda is saddened by this event, but does nothing to prevent it happening, as this is clearly her husband’s will and she is bound to obey it. Walter looks carefully for signs of change in her manner, but finds that she is just as loving and servile as ever.

Four years later, Griselda has another child, a boy this time, and, two years after that, Walter does the same thing again. Once more, Griselda is forced to give up her child, Walter’s excuse being that his people will not accept the estate being inherited by the grandson of a pauper. Once again, she believes that the child will be killed, but, as before, she submits meekly to what her husband commands.

The final test comes when Walter proposes to divorce her and take another wife. Once more, she does not complain. To make things worse, he sends for the two children to come back to him, making it appear that the daughter, now aged twelve, is to be his new wife. Griselda returns to her father’s hovel, after making a long speech in which declares that she brought nothing but herself into the marriage and will take nothing out of it, stripping off her fine clothes before walking off.

Walter’s behaviour now gets worse still, as he sends for Griselda and orders her to prepare the house to receive his new bride, as nobody knows better than she how it should look. When the children arrive, he asks Griselda for her opinion of the new “wife”, and she appeals to Walter not to treat her as she was treated herself, as this is clearly a highly-born lady who could not endure the same indignities that she has had to go through.

At this point, Walter comes clean and admits everything that he has done, that Griselda will always be his wife, and that these are her children, now restored to her. She has clearly passed the test, and therefore they can all live happily ever after. The unreality of the story continues, in that there is no recrimination against Walter, only thanks for having saved the children.

Discussion

The tellers of the tale, both the Clerk and Chaucer himself, speaking directly to the reader “out of character” as it were, now offer their comments on the story. The clerk makes clear that this degree of testing is clearly unacceptable, and that the story should be taken not as a model of how a wife should behave towards her husband, but how everyone should submit to the will of God, namely by blind unquestioning obedience and meek submission to misfortune because everything will turn out fine in the end. This is therefore an allegorical tale that is not to be taken literally.

In his “envoy”, Chaucer makes it very clear that he in no way agrees with the theme of the tale that he has put into the mouth of the Clerk. This is no way for either a husband or a wife to behave. “Wives, you who are strong as camels, don’t allow men to offend you in this way. Slender wives, who might easily be pushed around, be as savage as an Indian tiger and make as much noise as a mill, I entreat you”. This is the women’s liberation movement in full swing, hundreds of years before women got the vote, or were even regarded as being anything other than the property of their husbands. Bear in mind that one of the pilgrims most admired by Chaucer is the very liberated Wife of Bath, who is actually addressed by name by the Clerk at the end of his tale.

So why did Chaucer include this tale at all, if he was so opposed to its message? I think that he wanted to include examples of virtually every kind of story he could think of in his collection, and this is a typical story of its age.

There would indeed have been people around at the time who would have applauded Walter’s actions, and still more who would have admired Griselda’s patience, but Chaucer is not one of them. We should therefore regard the Clerk’s Tale, even from the perspective of its context and its time, as being a tale of action to avoid rather than to emulate, and this is the message that Chaucer wishes to convey. If God wants to treat humanity in such ways that is up to him, but it is not right for men to exercise domination along similar lines.

© John Welford