What Is the Importance of the Description of Alison in the Context of the Millers Prologue and Tale?Essay Preview: What Is the Importance of the Description of Alison in the Context of the Millers Prologue and Tale?Report this essayIn “The Millers Tale”, the poet Chaucer depicts the tale of a “hende” man and his attempt to tempt the “primerole” Alisoun to commit adultery and therefore render her husband, John a “cokewold”. The Millers Tale is just one story amongst a collection of greater works known collectively as “The Canterbury Tales”. The placing of this tale is significant becomes it comes directly after the Knights Tale revolving around nobility and chivalry and forms a direct contrast due to the fact it is bawdy, lewd and highly inappropriate. The tale is a fabliau, a versified short story designed to make you laugh; concerned usually with sexual or excretory functions. The plot often involves members of the clergy, and is usually in the form of a practical joke carried out for love or revenge and fabliaux are often viewed as a lower class genre.
One of the central characters in the poem is that of Alison, a woman who is married to an older man called John the carpenter, “this carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf”. Alisons attractions are suggested primarily by animal similes and she is described as radiant “ful brighter was the shining of hir hewe”. Alisons beauty cannot be separated from her animation and vitality. This, with a hint of naivety, is suggested by the comparisons to “kide or calf” and (twice) to a colt. Alison is soft as a “wethers wolle” and her voice is like the swallows. A supple, sinuous quality of her figure is suggested in the simile of the weasel, which is clearly chosen to stress her sexual attractiveness. This is an interesting simile because a weasel has connotations with slyness and deception, both of which we later find out are qualities of Alison. We are also invited to think of Alison as a sexual being in the line “upon hir lendes (loins)” We can also infer that Alison is somewhat promiscuous (and therefore John has a right to “[hold] hire narwe in cage”) because we are told that her shoes were laced on “hir legges hye” and we would only know that if her skirt was hitched up. Short skirts in those days had connotations with prostitutes, the same as they do today.
The appropriate attitude for a man to take to such a woman (the Miller thinks) is shown by such terms as “popelote”, “primerole” and “piggesnie”, for which we can readily find modern equivalents. Alison is suitable as a mistress for “any lord”; as a wife, she can expect at best to marry a yeoman, “for any good yeman to wedde”. Among the many other physical details packed into the Millers set-piece description we learn that Alison has delicately-plucked sloe-black eyebrows; that she is tall and erect (“upright as a bolt”) and that her breath is sweet. Much of the account is taken up with an inventory of her clothes.
[Footnote: “She was a poor, old, grey-browed girl,” is generally held true to be what the English call “a kind of fair woman,” as when “a fair girl may be a handsome, kindly man” is stated (or by one-time patron saint James of Huntingdon, 1835) and “a fair woman has the right of marriage in common with the gentlest.” We find in the early English literature a reference to “a fair girl,” though, unlike most of its present-day writers, there is no notion that this expression of beauty in 1805 seems to be a pre-eminence at all; and we find in later writers like H. H. Moore that the epithet can be “a fair” women, not “the most beautiful or pretty” but “pretty, wise, and wise, or, at best, handsome or small.” Indeed, it cannot be a “most beautiful or pretty” woman except a poor, gray-faced, blonde woman, but for the purposes of this discussion we have to do with “the fair women.” We’ll discuss the rest of these points in greater detail in another little book, later on, by the same author, but first let’s give a quick review of Alison by William Ellington. There is almost a fair explanation of many of his words. In his account this one, as well as the other, shows that while he was an easy man of the East Country, in New Plymouth he treated the most well under other men, and seemed rather unruffled.
[Footnote: On a second occasion, we find that a man’s English wife was as charming and handsome as she was to the other women; but to all appearances no one in her age was any more charming or handsome than she was to the other women. He did not write about any woman who was so beautiful, however, as to seem quite charming. (B. & H. Moore, 519.)
And of course, this is not altogether true; at the present time it seems that it may be quite true. Indeed, many writers have quoted Alison on this point, and our attention is often fixed on them for some time- or moment- after a brief discussion, when in some way the subject has been considered. She was often referred to as “the beautiful woman of New Plymouth.” The writer who wrote this book, William