The Carpenter’s Wife

During the telling of “The Miller's Tale” within The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer goes to great lengths to describe the character of Alison, the carpenter's wife. This is done not only so readers will have a detailed physical portrayal of her in their minds, but also so they can make inferences as to her character by the way she chooses to presents herself. The vivid depiction of Alison implies that she has very little value except as an object to be used for sexual gain by men. Furthermore, the lengthy, highly descriptive examination of her character when weighed against the almost nonexistent description of her husband creates such a contrast that the reader feels as if it is wrong for the two to be together.

Chaucer begins by very briefly detailing the aspects of herself that she has no control over: she is 18 years old, fair, slender, and delicate. He follows this with a description of each article of clothing she wears. It quickly becomes clear to the reader that Alison is fully aware of how physically attractive she is, and she dresses to show off her finer attributes. She wears highly decorative clothing of embroidered silk rather than a more practical linen or wool. Even her purse, an object that only has to carry belongings, is decorated with silk tassels and “perled with latoun” (line 143). The apron she wears at first suggests some sense of practicality, as she does not want to dirty the clothes beneath it, but it is described as “whit as morne milk” (line 128), which shows the opposite: that this is another ornamental object that is as unsoiled as the rest of her clothing. The unstained white of her apron and undergarments give her the outward appearance of purity, while the reader knows that internally she is far from pure.

Following the account of Alison's clothing comes a brief personality description. Rather