Critical Quotes

Question 1

Cathy O’Neill

Answer 1

‘May’s cleverness and ingenuity means we root for her as she outwits the controlling January’

Question 2

Graham D. Caie

Answer 2

‘Chaucer has made May in the second half of the tale sufficiently unattractive to lose the sympathy she gained earlier’

Question 3

Martin Stevens

Answer 3

‘Dimly misogynistic and bitter… a story intending to show the deceitfulness of women’

Question 4

Norman Harrington

Answer 4

‘We are left to believe that a level of happiness is possible through folly and self deception’

Question 5

Philip Allan

Answer 5

‘The Merchant’s Tale has nothing to do with trade or any of the business that occupies the Merchant himself’

Question 6

Cathy O’Neill

Answer 6

‘The tale can be read as a critique of the gender imbalance of the medieval marriage market in which women were traded as commodifies’

Question 7

Stephanie Tolliver

Answer 7

‘January shops for his bride’

Question 8

Yakar

Answer 8

‘May does not yield to subjection, which the dominant medieval patriarchal discourse of gender demands’