The Miller’s Tale is a short story written by Geoffrey Chaucer. This short story is part of the tales that are anticipated in The General Prologue. In short, this tale is about a carpenter named John whose young wife, Alison, cheats on him with an Oxford student named Nicholas. There is a lot to this story, but for the sake of this paper I will be focusing on one particular section and argument. In The Miller’s Tale, the animalistic descriptions of Alison create an unfavorable depiction of women. As I analyzed the passage I selected, my first thought was that the narrator was highly descriptive when describing the Miller’s wife. The wife, Alison, is first introduced in line 125 and is described much differently than the men in the tale. …show more content…
Especially considering the animals linked to her are not animals someone would want to be compared to. The narrator compares her body to a weasel’s, her song to a barn-swallow’s and her spirit to a young colt’s. I knew that there had to be more to the picture than just a comparison of an animal to a woman.
As the narrator continues to describe Alison, I noticed that there were more animalistic descriptions. “She was a primerole, a piggesnye, for any lord to leggen in his bedde.” (160-161). While analyzing this description, I thought that it could be connected with the sexual nature of animals. Animals are unable to control their sexual desires thus this is how Alison is being described. As a result, the main character trait of Alison ends up becoming her sexuality.
The narrator also implies that Alison is a lustful young lady. “And sikerly she hadde a likerous yë.” (136). Although this isn’t an overly wonderful description of a lady, it can definitely be judged as true. Alison strikes a deal with Nicholas rather quickly and aids in tricking her husband in order to sleep with Nicholas. This is an indication of her innate sensuality that she does not appear to be able to