Marriage & Relationships Quotes, Context & Critics

Question 1

‘To take a wif it is a glorious thing’ (1268)

Answer 1

Emphasis on ‘take’

Question 2

‘Under that hooly bond with which that first God man and womman bond’ (1261/62)

Answer 2

Emphasis on bondage

Question 3

‘Under this yok of mariage ybounde’ (1285)

Question 4

4. ‘Who can be so buxom as a wyf?’ (1287)

Answer 4

Obedience and paradoxical idea of large breasts insinuating the lure of sex

Question 5

5. ‘If thou lovest thyself, thou lovest thy wyf’ (1385)

Answer 5

Syntactical parallelism, diacope, potentially inferring that January will honour
his wife, redemption?

Question 6

6. That is in mariage hony-sweete; (1396)

Answer 6

Polysemic: temptress, new life and fertility, nectar of the gods, sticky and
entrapping.

Question 7

Theophrastus (81): author of the ‘Golden Book of Marriage’,

Answer 7

women lead men to their doom

Question 8

Intertextual; Wyf of Bath, made her husbands suffer in purgatory,

Answer 8

The Merchant’s own opinion presented as Januarie’s opinions?

Question 9

Marriage age?

Answer 9

As soon as a woman was able to bear children, she could marry.

Question 10

‘The Goodman of Paris’, a French medieval guidebook on wifehood,

Answer 10

Advised young wife to take note of his lapdog - to improve upon her wifely traits.

Question 11

Chaucer’s granddaughter

Answer 11

First married in her teens to a man in his fifties.

Question 12

Not uncommon to ‘buy’ a bride

Answer 12

Januarie’s opinions not unusual

Question 13

Tolliver on misogyny

Answer 13

‘The Merchant’s misogyny is a product of his marital disillusionment’

Question 14

Holman on marriage and boredom

Answer 14

‘To the courts of love, marriage was the institution of boredom’- Holman

Question 15

Kelly on lack of love in marriage

Answer 15

‘Mutual love between spouses was notably absent’-

Question 15

Tolliver on Januarie’s - mercantile ideology

Answer 15

“January shops for his wife”