Comparing Miller's Tale and Merchant's Tale
Alison in the Miller's Tale and May of the Merchant's Tale are similar in several ways. Both are young women who have married men much older than themselves. They both become involved with young, manipulative men. They also conspire to and do cuckold their husbands. This is not what marriage is about and it is demonstrated in both tales. What makes the Miller's Tale bawdy comedy and the Merchant's tale bitter satire is in the characterization. In the Miller's tale we are giving stereotyped characters. The principals are cardboard cut-outs sent into farcical motion. The Merchant's Tale gives us much more background and detail of the character's lives. The reader is more involved and can feel their situations. Here we will focus on the two women of each tale and how they demonstrate this difference.
Alison is described as young and wild. She is like an animal: " Thereto she koude skippe and make game/ As any kyde or calf folwynge his dame" (I. 3259-60). We know that she would be willing to go along with any idea as long as it is "fun". We can see her childish immaturity in the scenes where she lets Absalom "kiss" her. We do not learn the details of her marriage such as her feeling toward John, her husband. We simply know that it is a mis-matched marriage with a large age gap between them.
May is not described in much detail compared to Alison. She is simply young, meek and beautiful. The disgusting details of her marriage though are clearly shown. January makes speeches about his desire to consummate his marriage and loathingly promises to take his time. We are with May when the real horror she feels at having to sleep with January is describe...
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...In response she acts impertinent and insulted: "'This thank have I for I have maad yow see/ Allas,' quod she, 'that evere I was so kinde!'" (IV. 2388-89). How ridiculous and awful that January believes her explanation.
Therefore we can see while both stories have similar elements, the Miller's Tale is straight comedy. The reader is not shown the emotions of the characters. Alison is not a fully developed character. She is and stays what she was described as in the beginning of the tale: an eighteen year old wild girl. The tale is more a parody on courtly love.
In contrast, in the Merchant's Tale the reader is shown the disgusting details of January's motives and subsequent marriage. May's character is more fleshed out, the assaults against her explicitly shown. We may feel sorry for the carpenter but January never gets our sympathy.
On page 113 she tells her brother to call her a man's name instead of her name so that she could fit in as a boy, not a girl. “Call me Albert instead of Alison” (Bechdel 113). Whenever her brothers were looking at a naked women calendar Alison had the curiosity and need to look at it. That may have helped her realize that she was actually interested in women, not men. When she left for college she started to experience and putting in place her sexual orientation. She got a girlfriend which actually supported her during hard times in her life like her father’s
Seichek was on break and not "on the clock", that he (Holloday) should not and
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According to the authors of “Enhancing Care and Advocacy for Sexual Assault Survivors on Canadian Campuses”, “Sexual assault has immediate and long-term health consequences for victims including suicide, HIV infection, depression, and social isolation,” (Quinlan, Clarke, and Miller). Another common side effect these victims face is post-traumatic stress disorder. Someone experiencing PTSD may have random outburst of anger, have trouble concentrating on day to day tasks, or may even have flashbacks of their attack. These consequences make it hard for victims to get back into the normal routine of everyday life (“Effects of Sexual Assault”). In a case at Amherst College a young women named Angie Epifano faced many of these consequences after she was raped by an acquaintance in one of the college’s dormitories. While immediately choosing to ignore what had happened to her Epifano soon became an emotional wreck. Before the attack Epifano had believed herself to be an extremely strong and independent individual. In an article done on Epifano’s story she stated “Everything I had believed myself to be was gone in 30 minutes,” (Epifano). Sexual assault takes away a piece of someone. With their hopes and dreams clouded by the tragedy they have endured, victims face a lifetime of
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Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are filled with many entertaining tales from a variety of characters of different social classes and background. The first two tales told, by the knight and the miller, articulate very different perspectives of medieval life. Primarily, The tales of both the knight and the miller bring strikingly different views on the idea of female agency, and as we will discover, Chaucer himself leaves hints that he supports the more involved, independent Alison, over the paper-thin character of Emily.
...within her household. Within her own household, Alison was uncomfortable of being herself; in fact, at times she felt that she almost had no say in the selecting items such as clothes. This was also quite complex when it came to her subjectivity as well. Instances such as the time Bruce wanted Alison to wear a particular dress to a wedding, or when he insisted for her to were a particular set of pearls, would play a pivotal role in her sexual self development. Other factors such as her relationship with her girlfriend and the news she would find out following her fathers death seemed to also play an important part. Alison Bechdel’s battle in her sexual self-development was one full of anguish and pain because of all of its complexities but she now presents the confidence in herself and her sexuality to present in her eloquent and impactful graphic novel, Fun Home.
When it comes to sexual assault on college campuses there is also the question of what can colleges do to decrease the amount of sexual assaults. Bradford Richardson and Jon A Shields wondered the same thing, so they conducted an ...
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