The Canterbury Tales: The Clerk's Tale Marriage Quotes

Walter's refusal to marry is the "worst of alle" his faults because it prevents him from producing a legal heir. One of his most important obligations to his vassals is to ensure a stable transfer of power through the continuation of his bloodline. For this, a wife is a necessity.

The people will only be at ease once Walter has married, because this will mean he is on his way to producing an heir. Medieval people knew that bloodshed and civil unrest could result from an uncertain succession. These nobles are trying to ensure that this calamity does not occur in their province.

The "blisful yok of soveraynetee" is quite the paradox, but the meaning is that, although Walter will be tied or "yoked" to his wife, he will still be the sovereign in this marriage (translation: he'll rule her, and not vice-versa). The nobles are trying to counteract the idea that marriage is the beginning of a husband's slavish service to a shrewish wife.

Walter's nobles naturally want him to take a highborn wife. Doing so will not just do him and God honor, as they say here. If the wife comes from a powerful family, his marriage will also further secure his hold on power through the forging of an alliance.

If Walter has really never thought he would have to get married, then he's way naive. The continuation of his bloodline by means of a legitimate heir was one of a nobleman's most pressing duties. Walter's focus on the idea of marriage as a prison shows that he's thinking primarily in terms of himself and not of his responsibilities. Now, we can also question whether feudal responsibilities are inherently limiting of personal freedoms, but that's a question the tale doesn't bring up directly.

One of the ways we know that the "Clerk's Tale" is fictional is that Walter has the freedom to choose a wife merely for her virtue. In real life, a nobleman would have to marry someone from a rich and powerful family as a way of cementing his own power.

There are two ways to read the "and" in this passage. Either Walter views Grisilde's willingness to obey him in all things as something she must promise in addition to her regular duties as a wife, or he views this as a necessary part of wifehood. Our money's on the second option.

Grisilde is great not only at performing her wifely duties but also at caring for the general welfare of Walter's people. This makes her an ideal noble wife: noble wives were supposed to "wed" their husband's people (as well as their husband) and care for their welfare as much as for her own.

The narrator is suggesting that a husband owes his wife consideration for her feelings, and that flies in the face of Walter's idea of a wifely duty of absolute obedience regardless of how she feels about what she's being asked to do.

Although the narrator won't explicitly say so until later, it already seems like he might be advising real women not to imitate Grisilde. If they do, they may be subject to the whims of a man who knows no "mesure," or moderation, in what he asks of her.

Here's a concise expression of one of two totally contradictory viewpoints expressed by the narrator: 1) that wives should obey their husbands in everything, or 2) that they shouldn't.

Grisilde thinks that she shouldn't marry again after Walter kicks her out of the palace. (This is a view the Wife of Bath tried to refute in her Prologue.) The idea that a wife should not marry again after the death of her first husband was a commonly held one, coming in part from the church's prohibition of sex for any other purpose but procreation. The idea was that once a woman had borne a few children, she had no need for sex anymore.

Janicula's suspicions about Walter's intentions reflect the idea that like should wed like. They also show his acute understanding of the great disparity in status between Walter and his daughter. The fact that he allows the marriage to take place despite his reservations suggests that he is powerless to defy his lord.

The narrator contradicts himself again by claiming that "it were importable," or insufferable, for wives to imitate Grisilde's example. Earlier, he had claimed that a wife should will nothing "but as her husband wolde" (721). So which is it, narrator? You're killing us here.