If the word obedience conjures images of a slave-driving taskmaster or a yardstick-wielding nun, you’re in good company. That’s what most of us picture. My students, who still have their child-like respect for age and authority, immediately see obedience as a sign of servitude in an unequal relationship. So used are they to taking orders, it takes some time to unpack what obedience is really all about and how Chaucer wants us to understand it in his “Marriage Set.”
We begin by looking at a definition offered by the Venerable Fulton Sheen in his book, The World’s First Love (Ignatius Press, 2010).
Venerable Fulton Sheen
Obedience does not mean the execution of orders by a drill sergeant. It springs, rather, from the love of an order, and love of Him who gave it. The merit of obedience is less in the act than in the love; the submission, the devotion, and the service that obedience implies are not born of servitude but are rather effects that spring from and are unified by love. Obedience is servility only to those who have not understood the spontaneity of love” (103).
My class spends about half a period annotating the passage and practicing copia with it. Once we’ve gained a basic understanding of what Sheen is saying, then we test his definition first against the Bible stories described in the last post and then against Chaucer’s “Marriage Set.”
We do this as a discourse, which is another word for Socratic discussion. Though I write out scripted questions for each story, we often stray from them considerably. Our only real rule is that we have to talk about the stories themselves and not personal anecdotes or hypothetical scenarios. Otherwise, we would jump all over the place and not really accomplish much. I use the following script as a starting point.
Bible Story Discourse Questions
Adam and Eve—Breakdown of Obedience
Were Adam and Eve slaves to God? If not slaves, then what were they? How does free will factor into their relationship with Him? What definition of obedience did the Devil trick them into believing? How does this definition lead them (and us) astray?
Mary and Joseph—Restoration of Obedience
How about Mary and Joseph? Did God “order” them to mother and father His Son? Or did He will it, and were they freely in agreement? Do you think Joseph and Mary “bossed” Jesus around? How else might they have wielded their authority over Him? What do you think their family life looked like?
The Wedding at Cana—Fulfillment of Obedience
Do you think Mary loved having her Son perform His first miracle at the Wedding at Cana? What must have been hard for her? What must have made her will it so? How is this connected to Sheen’s definition of obedience?
“Marriage Set” Discourse Questions
The Wife of Bath’s Tale—Distortion of Obedience
What kind of relationship do her characters, the Knight and the Old Hag, demonstrate throughout the story? Is it one based on love? Is it based on something else—like what? Should the Knight have “obeyed” the Old Hag? What is his “obedience” based on? What definition of obedience emerges from the story? How is it similar to and different than Sheen’s?
The Clerk’s Tale—Distortion of Obedience
What kind of relationship do his characters, the Marquis and Griselda, demonstrate throughout the story? Is it one based on love? Is it based on something else—like what? Should Griselda have “obeyed” the Marquis? What is her “obedience” based on? What definition of obedience emerges from the story? How is it similar to and different than Sheen’s?
The Franklin’s Tale—Restoration of Obedience
What kind of relationship do his characters, Dorigen, Aurelius, and Arviragus, demonstrate throughout the story? Is it one based on love? Is it based on something else—like what? What constitutes a real promise? Should all promises be “obeyed” equally? What definition of obedience emerges from the story? How is it similar to and different than Sheen’s?
Conclusion
By the end of our discourse, the students have a very different understanding of obedience than what they started with. They generally believe Sheen’s definition is correct—true obedience is born of love for God and His will.
Children are called to obey their parents because their parents are called to obey God. Likewise, husbands and wives are called to obey one another because they are each called to obey God. As long as each individual is following God’s will, they will have a spiritual equality, even if their earthly status is disparate and their respective roles are different.
Thus, the challenge is to accept God’s will with love, just as Mary did. That is hard when it seems to conflict with what we want. For that reason, children and parents, husbands and wives mess up from time to time and fall into disharmony. But that does not mean we should become the caricatures of the Wife of Bath or the Clerk. We are called to something higher, something more akin to the Franklin but higher still. We are called to be part of the Holy Family.
And that’s the hidden wisdom of Chaucer’s “Marriage Set.” While his jokes and needling seem anything but theological, they are actually grounded in beautiful Church teachings.
The picture of an ideal marriage that emerges from The Canterbury Tales is one based on mutual love and respect between husband and wife. My students are initially inclined to think that view the most progressive. After all, it was heralded by the Franklin, who stands out as a “modern” man. Likewise, it seems to correspond with contemporary views of equality between men and women.
But, a careful reading of Biblical marriage stories reveals this view to be ageless. Of course that does not mean it has always been practiced, but that is a different matter.
Adam and Eve
Our first Bible story about marriage comes from Adam and Eve. In Genesis 2:18-25, we learn that a husband and wife become “one flesh” when they get married, meaning they are united in a common purpose, and that purpose is to know, love, and obey God.
Herein lies a central point, God is the third Person in a marriage. This might make more sense if we conceptualize marriage as a triangle with God on the top and the husband and wife on the protruding angles. As the husband and wife grow closer to God, so too do they grow closer to one another. Likewise, the husband and wife are bound to one another as they are bound to God. If a husband must obey God, then he also must obey his wife. If a wife must obey God, then she must also obey her husband.
Adam and Eve, like so many of us, struggle on this front. As soon as they disobey God and eat of the forbidden fruit, they experience separation not only from God but from one another. Sure, their marriage union continues, but it is no longer perfect. In a sense, we have them to thank for the Wife of Bath’s tale and the Clerk’s tale, which depict such unequal marriage partnerships.
Mary and Joseph
Thank goodness for Mary and Joseph! They renew the meaning of marriage and reveal what it and, by extension, a model family should look like. In a word, it is all about obedience. Mary shows complete obedience to God’s will by accepting Christ as her Son. Likewise, Joseph shows complete obedience to God’s will by accepting Christ as his foster-son.
In their unique family, we can picture God Incarnate, who is Christ, at the top of the triangle with Mary and Joseph on either side. Here, husband and wife grow closer to Him and to one another in perfect harmony. Yet amazingly, Christ humbles Himself and shows obedience to his mother and foster-father. Certainly, if a child ever lived who did not need to obey his parents, it would be Jesus. After all, He is omnipotent and omniscient and thus not bound to obey anyone. Nevertheless, Christ made Himself a model of obedience to show us how to behave. This is one of the key take-aways for my students.
Thanks to the pure union of Mary and Joseph, we also have a model family with Christ as its Master and Servant. Thus, we learn that God wants marriages and family life to be based on serving one another, which comes from obedience first and foremost to God. Only in that way can any family member exercise authority.
Wedding at Cana
The Wedding at Cana (John 2:1-12) is perhaps the most famous wedding in the world. Its storyline is well known. Mary and Jesus attend a wedding together. Mary notices the wine is running low and does not want the host to suffer embarrassment. She asks Jesus to do something.
He hesitates, not because He is unsure of His power or contemplating disobeying his Mother. Rather, He wants to make sure Mary knows that she is asking Him to begin His public ministry which will result in His crucifixion. Mary knows, and out of love for all Humanity consents once again to the suffering tied to being the Mother of God. Jesus then turns water into wine and thereby performs His first miracle.
Hence we see Mary and Jesus serving the wedding party and its guests, even at great cost to themselves. Why do they do this? Of course it is out of love, but it is also out of obedience to God’s will. God asks them to take up the Cross, and they willingly obey.
Comparative Views
So while the “Marriage Set” focuses on the idea of who should rule, the Bible stories emphasize who should obey. In many regards, these ideas are two sides of the same coin, which we will look at more closely in the next post. For now, the quick answer is that husband and wife should rule together in obedience to one another. Maybe that sounds modern; maybe that sounds archaic. By the end of our study, the class generally agrees it sounds eternal.
Imagine going on a long journey with complete strangers. If you’re lucky, you’ll make a few friends along the way and manage to put up with everyone else. It’s likely that some number of your companions would get under your skin and perhaps even try to goad you into talking about sensitive subjects like religion and politics. Perhaps your self-control and courtesy would prevail, and you would manage to avoid getting drawn into anything too contentious.
Or, you might be like the Wife of Bath, the Clerk, and the Franklin from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. On their pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket, they end up needling one another about what a good marriage looks like, and they simply can’t drop the subject. They end up telling stories to “prove” why their view is correct and the others’ are wrong. Put differently, their stories become a proxy for their argument, which ends up being pretty comical when one thinks about the characters as caricatures.
So what is a caricature in a literary sense? Much like the boardwalk picture version, it’s an exaggerated depiction of someone. But instead of making a pronounced nose downright humungous, Chaucer takes a notable character trait like bossiness and makes it tyrannical or patience and makes it pathetic. As such, his pilgrims are extreme versions of different “types” of people.
The Wife of Bath
The Wife of Bath is one of the most famous characters from the story, not least because Chaucer makes her so loud and dominating. Once we meet her, we simply can’t ignore her. She is an older lady of means and leisure, notably traveling without a male escort. Her independence of mind and spirit matches her financial independence, which was gained from having outlived five husbands. She touts her marriages as a sign of her experience and knowledge on the subject, no doubt upsetting some of the other pilgrims who feel she is really a shallow gold-digger.
Taking their sideways looks as envy rather than criticism, the Wife of Bath brazenly launches into a story entitled, “The Unknown Bride,” which unfolds as a critique of husbands and commendation of wives. We can only imagine how annoyed the other pilgrims are as she tells an absurd tale about a shameful Knight of King Arthur’s court who, in order to save himself from the death sentence, must find out what women want most in the world.
Just as the term of his search is about to expire, he meets an Old Hag who promises to tell him the answer if he will promise to grant her the first thing she asks when he is released from the death sentence. Desperate, the Knight agrees, and he learns the secret wish of all woman is to rule over their husbands. Queen Guinevere, who presides over the Knight’s case, acknowledges this to be true and therefore sets the Knight free.
But wait—the Old Hag marshals her claim on his life and demands that he marry her!
Utterly disgusted at the thought, the Knight nonetheless agrees, presumably both to keep his word and to save his life. On their wedding night, the Old Hag turns to her distraught husband and asks, “Would you rather have me old and poor and homely and come of common folk, but a faithful, loving wife; or, perchance, young and rich and handsome and of high birth, but careless of your love and maybe false to you?”
The Knight reluctantly accepts the wisdom of her words, contents himself in the match, and suddenly finds the Old Hag transformed into a fair damsel. Thus, they live happily ever after—albeit with the wife ruling over the husband.
The Wife of Bath emerges from the tale a complex caricature of many negative wifely traits that persist today. She’s a boss, a know-it-all, and a nag all in one. Though she thinks she is superior to men—even in wisdom and virtue—she is quite obviously self-centered and worldly.
The Clerk
The Clerk is among those pilgrims disgusted with the Wife of Bath. Much younger, not to mention poorer and inexperienced in love, he nonetheless feels himself her intellectual superior. After all, he is an Oxford student who would rather fill his mind with books than fill his tummy with food. Alas, he appears “as shy as a young wife” when asked to tell the next story. Really, however, he can’t wait to set the Wife of Bath straight by telling a better marriage story, one that he learned from no less than Francis Petrarch.
The Clerk’s tale is called, “The Patient Griselda,” and it directly contrasts the Wife of Bath’s tale. His leading lady, Griselda, is a humble woman who marries a powerful Marquis beloved by his people. Out of his intense devotion to their marriage, he deems it necessary to “test” Griselda’s commitment. Incidentally, the irony here is never lost on my students, and they immediately feel a healthy dose of righteous indignation.
“If he loves her, why doesn’t he trust her already?” they steam.
That feeling escalates as the cruelty of each test is revealed. In the first, he makes Griselda “prove” her love of him by handing over their newborn baby to be killed. He does the same with their second child. Next, he asks her to agree to a divorce. Finally, he invites her to prepare his castle for a new wife.
Griselda, a “true” and “devoted” wife consents to every wish of her husband and thereby “proves” her love for him. Overjoyed that he can really “trust” his wife, he reveals that he had merely been testing her all the time. Their children are really alive; there is no other woman; and they can now live happily ever after together—albeit with the wife totally submissive to the husband.
No doubt, the Clerk feels thoroughly satisfied with his story, and we can picture him smugly stealing glances at the Wife of Bath as if to say, “Griselda is an ideal wife; not the Old Hag! Women can’t be trusted! They need a man to rule over them!”
Much like the Wife of Bath, the Clerk believes himself full of wisdom and virtue. Ironically, he (and the Marquis) emerge as a caricature of a controlling and even an abusive husband. Conversely, Griselda appears a pathetic, down-trodden wife. Notably, my students are equally frustrated with her for being so complicit in her suffering. This story, though full of satire, is virtually devoid of humor when put in these stark terms.
The Franklin
Another name for the Franklin is the Country Gentleman. The former implies his freedom in society, meaning that he is self-made and no one can lay claim to his wealth. The latter connotes his social status. Though he is not a nobleman by birth, he has risen up through the ranks to gain respect. This makes him a “modern” man, so to speak. If follows, then, that his ideas are a little more progressive than the Wife of Bath’s or the Clerk’s, and he can’t resist “politely” pointing out their errors.
The Franklin’s story, “The Promise of Dorigen,” ends up being the most appealing of the three. At the outset, we learn of a knight named Arviragus who falls in love with a lady named Dorigen. They promise to love and serve one another, which means their relationship will be built on equality. Sadly, Arviragus is called away to war, and Dorigen is left to pine away until he returns.
Enter Aurelius, a love-sick philanderer who makes open advances at Dorigen despite her steadfast loyalty to her husband. Frustrated that he won’t leave her alone, she finally says, “Go and gaze upon those black and jagged rocks that have sent so many a good ship to her destruction and that threaten the safety of my dear husband, and know that when every one of those rocks has vanished, I will leave my Arviragus for you, and never before.”
Rather than realizing he has been soundly rejected yet again, Aurelius takes Dorigen’s words as a literal promise. He then seeks out and finds a Magician who makes the rocks disappear. Having succeeded in this venture, he expects Dorigen’s hand.
She is now caught between the promise to her husband, who has newly returned from war, and the “promise” to Aurelius. It goes without saying that one promise is true and the other is empty, but the Franklin puts them on equal terms to reveal the stupidity of the situation. What’s more, he has Arviragus release Dorigen from her marriage vows so that she can stay true to her word to Aurelius and thus retain her purity. This act is so respected by Aurelius that he in turn releases Dorigen as well. She is therefore free to return to her husband, her true love. Man and wife then live happily ever after.
What, then, of Aurelius?
He owes a large sum of money to the Magician who made the rocks disappear and is unable to pay it. The Magician, being a gentleman himself, releases Aurelius from his debt. Here the Franklin makes a subtle dig at the Clerk by referring to the Magician in his story by the synonymous name of “Clerk.” His message is clear: the Clerk pilgrim needs to pipe down, even if the Wife of Bath owes him an apology.
The Franklin’s caricature is much more likeable than the other pilgrims. He is a peacemaker in the feud between the Wife of Bath and the Clerk. Likewise, he is the level-headed representative of true love, forged on mutual love and respect between husband and wife.
Please note: My summaries are primarily based on The Chaucer Story Book by Eva March Tappan. I draw from various translations of the original text as well, but Tappan’s is what I read with my students.
The Canterbury Tales is considered the most important poem written in the Middle Ages. That is not only because of its historical significance and literary genius, but also because of its timeless depiction of human nature. His characters, which we will meet in the next post, are both medieval and modern at the same time, making them profoundly human even if apparently ridiculous. Through them, Chaucer reveals countless universal Truths that apply as much today as they did back then.
Story Framework
The premise of the book—and explanation of the title—revolves around a group of travelers on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury. At the suggestion of an amiable, profit-seeking inn-keeper they meet along the way, each traveler agrees to compete in a story-telling contest. Whoever tells the best story will win a free meal on Harry on the return trip, which is a pretty good business strategy on his part!
A “Quiet Traveler” who is already at the inn oversees and takes interest in Harry’s proposition. Though not a pilgrim, he decides to join the group and record everyone’s stories. Hence, he becomes the narrator and thereby represents Chaucer’s alter-ego.
This type of structure is called a framed narrative, which is a story within a story. On one level, The Canterbury Tales is all about the Quiet Traveler observing, critiquing, and recording everything that happens. We might call this the outsidestory. On another more obvious level, The Canterbury Tales is all about what the pilgrims have to say in their stories. Collectively, we might call their tales the inside story.
Through this interplay of narrative perspectives, Chaucer weaves a colorful tapestry of social dynamics. “Clicks” form among the pilgrims; arguments ensue between them; and their stories serve as the battleground for their ideas.
The “Marriage Set” reflects the divergent views of the Wife of Bath, the Clerk, and the Franklin. We’ll look at them in detail in the next post. Suffice it to say for now that each of these pilgrims is very opinionated about what constitutes an ideal marriage, and Chaucer pokes fun at each of them in turn to show the weaknesses in their respective positions.
Motifs
Another way to conceptualize the story structure is to think about the framed narrative in terms of motifs or themes.
The motif of the outside story is pilgrimage. This common purpose is what “holds” the travelers together because it’s the reason for their interaction in the first place. After all, the Wife of Bath, a wealthy older woman, would normally have nothing to do with the Clerk, a poor scholar. She may, however, begrudgingly condescend to socialize with the Franklin, a wealthy, self-made country gentleman, out of “respect” for his money.
Nonetheless, their social stations are too disparate to come together under ordinary circumstances. In the context of a religious pilgrimage, with all its “sacredness” and “brotherly love” and “humility” (note the irony), these three pilgrims are obliged to put up with each other.
The motif of the inside story varies depending on which pilgrim is being represented, but for our focus it’s marriage. Each of the aforementioned pilgrims tells stories that revolve around the question of who should “rule” in a marriage: the husband or the wife. Their stories are so full of absurdities they hardly resemble real life. To use the modern vernacular, the marriages they showcase are completely “dysfunctional.”
Chaucer contrives them not only to entertain with silliness, but also to warn against common pitfalls and push readers toward a true understanding of what marriage is all about. We’ll get to Chaucer’s views in the final post. As the “framer” of everything, it’s his view that will prevail in the end.
Looking to Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th century satirical writer, for marriage advice sounds about as ridiculous as picking up the comic section of the Sunday newspaper to gain insight into true love. Laden with jokes and humor as they are, how could they possibly reveal wisdom about anything?
Yet, when we stop to think about the likes of Charles Shultz, the cartoonist of the beloved Peanuts comic strip, it becomes clear that wisdom does in fact speak through playfulness and even foolishness at times. Consider, for example, Linus’s famous testimony on the meaning of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Likewise, pick up just about any Calvin and Hobbes comic strip by Bill Waterson and you’ll find his cartoon characters engaged in rather profound dialogue.
Sometimes, we need to hear something a little differently, perhaps with childlike simplicity or humor, to really get it.
Chaucer understood this, too. In The Canterbury Tales, he uses satire, which is a type of ridiculously exaggerated humor, to reveal Truth. Ironically, it can be easier to see Truth when intentionally and skillfully “openly-hidden” in falsehood. It becomes a game of sorts to unpack. We know something is off. Once we pinpoint what it is, we instinctively try to figure out the way it really should be.
Chaucer challenges readers to play his “satire game” over and over again, forcing them to look deeply at a wide range of enduring topics from income inequality, to education, to Church authority, and more. The unit I teach my middle school students revolves around Chaucer’s “Marriage Set.”
Yes, that does seem like somewhat of a distant topic for my age group, but it is nonetheless very enjoyable, formative, and even applicable. Students end up reflecting on the marriages of their parents and other adult models, but we take the topic much further to look at family life in general. After all, the bond between a husband and wife mirrors many relationships, most importantly that of us between God.
In this series, I am going to share my classical approach to teaching the “Marriage Set.” Here is the outline I will follow.
