South Circular 2017/18

South Circular

against men for their own personal gain in the ‘battle of life’. His hatred of his wife is key to this, exhibited in his Prologue where he complains of his ‘shrewe’ of a wife, the ‘worste that may be’. This hatred seems to corrupt the Merchant as he portrays May, and thus all women, as sullied like Eve, for example when she reads the letter ‘in the privee’. Unlike Chaucer, the Merchant is unsympathetic towards May’s treatment as a woman, hence he portrays her sitting ‘in the privee’ because she herself is tainted. He also displays her use of deception for self-preservation when she ‘caste’ the letter into the ‘privee’, hiding her affair with Damyan so that she may still live in Januarie’s ‘palys hoom’. As Helen Cooper comments, with this action, ‘all attempts at inviting pity’ for May by the Merchant are ‘abandoned’. Chaucer’s purpose is different: whilst he doesn’t necessarily present deception as a means for good, more as a means of empowerment for May, he wishes to mock the antifeminist literature of the time that is represented in the cynical figure of the Merchant. As Jay Schleusner convincingly argues, the Merchant is presented as someone who ‘[taints] everything – every marriage, every human character, every situation’ with his cynicism, this because he believes he is an authority on marriage. Chaucer thus exhibits self-deception to be a dangerous and self-defeating ‘weapon’ in the ‘battle of life’. Whilst Goldsmith, in a sense, praises the use of deception, Chaucer is wary of its self-destructive nature. The Merchant, meanwhile, despises deception, for it is something he views is inherent in women – given to them by Proserpina – to be used for their self-preservation. For the Merchant, it should therefore be condemned. s ‘weapons’ can be used for both good and bad, so can deception and disguise, according to She Stoops to Conquer and The Merchant’s Tale . Kate Hardcastle uses these ‘weapons’ to improve her marriage by increasing her own authority and the confidence of Marlow. May, meanwhile, uses deception also to gain power, despite the futility of this, whilst Chaucer himself uses deception as a means of ridiculing cynical antifeminist literature like that of Deschamps. It seems for both Chaucer and Goldsmith, the ‘battle of life’ is against the traditional patriarchal society, hence deception can be a ‘weapon’ ultimately for good. This ‘battle’ continues to the modern day, hence why the works of both writers still resonate. A

35

Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker