Whats Really Being Tested in The Clerks Tale? :: Chaucer Canterbury Tales

By any contemporary standards of behavior, Griselda actions are lamentable not only does she relinquish altogether semblances of in-person volition, she deserts all duties of maternal guardianship as she forfeits her daughter and son to the--in so farthermost as she knows--murderous spirit of her husband. Regardless of what we think of her personal subservience to Walter, the surrendering of her children is a hard point to get around. Even the ever-testing Marquis himself, at his wifes unthaw of their second child produces he would have suspected her of malice and badness of her heart had he not known for sure that she loved her children (IV 687-95). It is bittie wonder our students, in whom we try to foster a sense of personal responsibility and human sensitivity, initially find Griselda an insipid and morally sorry wimp.   But we retrieve patient Griselda for them. Or at least we try. We say this tale is not approximately a real woman attend, it is in rhyme royal. That meant something special to Chaucer. The tales stanzaic form signals a tale of high moral, even off religious, sentence its flat characterization and formulaic epitaphs distance Griselda and Walter from real people. therefore bowing toward Petrarch and siding with the Clerk, we say this tale is not about wives duties to their husbands it is about the duty of the human soul to God. As Griselda was to the tests inflicted upon her by Walter, so should we be to the adversities visited upon us by God. And so is Griselda redeemed for real women. But is she--really?   If we look very carefully at the language used as Walter frames the rationales for his intent for testing Griselda, we find that it is not for the proving of her pre-married vow per se that he put up her thorough his series of contemptible and humiliating ordeals. True to its title, Petrarchs A novel of Wifely Obedience and Faith (De Obedientia ac Fide Uxoria Mythologia) clearly and consistantly pictures Walter te sting his wife for her fidelity and conjugal love promised before their marriage. Chaucers Walter, however, more often frames his designs as trials of sadnesse, corage, or, ultimately, wommanheede (IV 452, 787, 1075). The result is that in the Clerks tale, Griselda is tested not so much for her marital fidelity as she is for her womanly virtue. And the implications of this may be as stimulate as the thought of a mother adandoning her children to the hands of a murderer.