In the Merchant’s prologue and tale, Chaucer presents a world dominated by money and possessions, to what extent do you agree?
... depth and you can interpret meanings differently. When the Merchant says one thing, it is easy to interpret what he is saying into what he is thinking, for example we see that Januarie is born in “Pavie” which has a reputation for whore houses, and we also here that the knight, Januarie is into his girls “on women, ther as was his appetite”. Once you understand Januarie it isn’t hard to think what he does with his lonely self In such an area with reputation like that, Chaucer leaves it up to us to decide. The Merchant has very strong opinionated views on women and marriage, he feels that marriage is a type of house hold possession “Thanne is a wyf the fruit of his tresor”, this idea would seem very appropriate for a Merchant because that is what they do, they look after and sell possessions. Chaucer plays on the idea of women being compared to fruit, this creates an image of women symbolising the temptress in ‘the fall from Grace Genesis’. Januarie is seen as Adam and his past wife, and future wife is seen as Eve and the temptress. I believe Chaucer has done this deliberately so that the readers get an insight of what May is actually like, because we do not actually get into her mind until the end half of the tale. Moving onto the idea about the...