The General Prologue: The Miller
Estate – Commoners
Class – Lower Class
Addy: He’s strong and he likes to wrestle (the knight is also strong, but the battles he engages in
are higher-class. (lauren) Also, the knight fights for a higher cause (laura) – God and king; the
wrestler fights to show off, to prove his strength (lauren).
He’s boastful (CR); not modest like our knight (RS).
In the link, we see that he is drunk (CL); they say he’s a tavern-goer (MM).
He’s a cheat (RS) – Addy: He steals grain (he takes three times the money he should for his grain
(RS); (CL) his job is to process grain and sell it.
Chaucer calls him a wrangler and a buffon (RS). A wrangler = someone who gets into fights. A
buffoon = a funny idiot (CL).
Perhaps his interest in fighting is an attempt to gain admiration like knights receive for fighting
(class tension) (LT).
He’s barbaric (SG/CR) – red beard like a sow or a fox; a wart on his nose; wide black nostrils, a
big mighty mouth (wide as a furnace door) – this focus on the body shows that he is lower class.
(SG) We can compare him to Absalom who is called an ape (94).
(SG) We have a description of Allison that borders on a blazon; why does the Miller/Chaucer
avoid creating a true blazon? That’s up to you to decide (90) – (BP).
(LB) He compares her to common “villiage” things to illustrate her beauty: cherry blossoms,
milk, she plays like a little horse, her body is slender as a weasel (BP), her face is bright as
money (the miller, as we know, is interested in money) *LB
One of his themes: dishonesty will get you what you want (CR); Absalom went out to woo
Allison, but Nicolas was sly and waited to get her, and he got what he wanted. In the end, he
didn’t get in trouble (RS); besides his bum (SG).
The Miller says things a Knight would never use; his diction is grotesque (BP); this shows the
difference between high and low class diction (AH).
The Miller thinks that if a husband isn’t worthy of his wife (this woman was kept in a cage (her
sexuality, particularly), then the wife should be free to give herself to someone who deserves her
(SG) – he says “a man should marry someone like himself/ a man should pick an equal for
himself/ youth and old age are often in debate/ however, he had fallen in the snare/ and he had to
bear his cross as others bear” (89). This is not bad advice! (CL)
Running theme: Young women should not be stuck with old men.
(MM, SG, RS) Emily was obedient, and Allison was not (it seems that good noblewomen don’t
have nearly as much freedom as lower class women; noble women have more to lose; they seem
to conform without putting up a fight (Diana told Emily she couldn’t help her, and Emily had to
bend to Theseus’s decision about her future; she had to bend to the male’s desires)).
Allison is headstrong and does whatever she wants (RS, BP, SG); she has no modesty – she
stuck her bum out a window.
(CL) Lower class women don’t need as much wooing to win their hands as higher class women
do – to win Emily, it took a tournament. To win Allison it took someone asking her if she wanted
to…
Lower class women aren’t nearly as interested in preserving their purity as higher class women
are.
A similarity between the stories: both the Knight and the Miller focus on the physical beauty of
the women they write about; they don’t give their women personality. Men want her for her
beauty. All women really have is: beauty, modesty (or lack thereof), compassion (or lack
thereof). (BP)
Allison is mean; she thinks the whole cheating thing is funny, and she encourages the student to
fool her dumb husband (BP).
They don’t treat lower class women as though they are important; Emily was a prize to be won,
and she was compared to high class stuff; Allison was compared to tradesmen things (EB
(arrived just now).
Allison is more interesting and multi-dimensional than Emily; the lower class women are given a
chance to be something other than perfect; something other than an object.
They said Emily was an angel singing a heavenly song; Allison sings loudly and like a horse
(MM). Noble women are delicate; Allison is strong and lusty.
(CL) The Miller makes fun of religion – the carpenter was tricked by his religion; it wasn’t good
that he was so into his religion. The Knights, on the other hand, were supported and rewarded
by/in their faith.
Can we say that the lower classes have a different view of religion, or is this just the Miller?
(EB) The Miller disrespected religion; however, because Allison was in on all the jokes, it
seemed like their class was split (some lower class people are very devout, while others mock or
ignore religion on the whole); we can safely assume that almost all noble people take religion
seriously. (This doesn’t cross over to the clergy.)
(SG, RS, AH) When Nicolas asks Allison to have sex with him and she agrees, she then decides
to go to church. It seems she doesn’t take her religion seriously; she went and did it again.
(EB) Chaucer was making fun of the clergy because (throughout) Absalom is in love with her
and wants to sleep with her, and he pursues this, but this goes against his priestly duty.
It seems the Miller doesn’t take clergy seriously or religion.
(CR) The Miller throws in off color jokes – he says Absalon is not masculine by saying “he was
a little squeamish in the matter/ Of farting” (92).
(EB) Could this tale be intended as some sort of comic relief after the high and serious tone of
The Knight’s tale? The end is so over the top – branding his butt…
(SG) THESE STORIES ARE THE SAME STORY! The Miller is re-writing the love story to
make it fit his experience as a commoner (RS).
In the link NO ONE WANTS TO LISTEN TO THE MILLER. The Host wasn’t asking the
Miller to go next, and he tried to get him to back down. The Miller is not respected among the
company (CR).
The Knight kept apologizing for the length of his tale (he has manners); but the Miller butted in
on the order that was set up by the Host, and he wanted to keep talking and talking (AH).
Love in the Miller’s tale seems entirely physical (RS).
Absalon was suffering the consequences of unrequited love. He was jolly, but upon rejection he
is sad (CR).
Neither of these “love” stories have a believable or meaningful connection between the lovers –
it doesn’t seem like these people know each other well enough to be in love (LT) – perhaps this
is how love was then?