Community and Morality in
the Miller’s Tale and the Physician’s Tale

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales concern themselves, to a great extent, with the exploration of propriety. The pilgrim storytellers, along with the characters in their tales, are trapped in a social web which measures them against preordained standards of appropriateness. Even those who attempt to establish their own definitions for proper behavior must in some way reject the dominant moral paradigm by which they and their tales are judged. Such judgments had broad implications. Barbara Hanawalt, an historian of the period, explains that "The emphasis on ‘repute’ came about because late medieval society was still largely an oral culture, and the general ‘rumor’ about a person’s reputation would make or break his or her chances in society" (ix). It is interesting, then, in the fact that one of the most well known bodies of writing from the period records a phenomenon that took its power from the oral tradition. It is also interesting that little modern criticism of Chaucer has focused on the role of the community in the establishment of binding moral standards. The group of pilgrims is itself a crowd, and crowds occur in several of the Canterbury Tales. Some critics’ claims are even undermined when the importance of the community is fully considered. Paul Strohm, for example, has claimed that, "Undistracted by sources of revelation or standards of conduct set beyond their own desires, the characters of the Miller’s Tale seek to fulfill their desires in a world of present possibility" (Strohm 137). Other critics have simply misinterpreted the meaning of the crowd. Thus, Sheila Delaney has asserted that, "in The Physician’s Tale the people’s intervention is devoid of social motive, while their moral motive is unconvincing." (Delaney 52). I disagree with the contentions made by these scholars. In this paper, I will argue that in both tales it is the community that establishes the moral code and takes responsibility for punishing those who transgress it.

In both the Miller’s Tale and the Physician’s Tale, the moral code is upheld through the household, particularly through the household’s regulation of female sexuality. Given its prominence in both tales, female sexuality seems, at least here, to be one of the primary determinants of household honor. In late medieval England—as in much of Western culture up until today—women lived their lives within a symbolically defined physical and moral space different from that occupied by their husbands, brothers, and sons. Barbara Hanawalt asserts that women who failed to respect the limits of their space were suspect within the community: "When women stepped out of their physical space, they were carrying an additional connotation of marginality. In the best of circumstances…women could not depart from a defined physical space without arousing more suspicion than would men in similar circumstances" (Hanawalt 72). Women’s honor, then, could only be exercised within a certain socially constructed framework. If the Miller’s description of Alison is any indication, she has succeeded. The limits placed on Alison by her husband are even more restrictive than those placed on women generally. John the carpenter is described as a jealous man who "heeld hire narwe in cage, / For she was wylde and yong, and he was old / And demed hymself been lik a cokewold" (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 324-6). The restrictions placed on Alison are directly related to her sexuality. Even so, the description of Alison herself hardly reinforces her description here as ‘wylde.’ Instead, the portrayal of Alison focuses on her innocent youthfulness: "Fair was this yonge wyf, and therwithal / As any wezele her body gent and smal" (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3233-4). The use of natural, vernal imagery for Alison is consistent throughout the passages describing her. She is depicted as "ful moore blisful on to see / Than is the newe pere-jonette tree" (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3247-8). Although the bulk of her descriptors characterize her inherent qualities, the Miller also presents Alison in terms of her relationships with other people. He tells the other pilgrims "There nys no man so wys that koude thenche / So gay a popelote or swiche a wenche" (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3253-4). From the outset, the tone of her description suggests that Alison poses no threat to the dominant moral or social order.

In the Physician’s Tale, we encounter another young woman whose honor forms the center of action. Like Alison, Virginia is portrayed in terms of innocence and youthfulness. Virginia’s beauty, though, is not her own. The Physician describes it as a gift of beneficent nature: "Fair was this mayde in excellent beautee / Aboven every wight that man my see; / For Nature hath with sovereyn diligence / Yformed hire in so greet excellence" (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 7-10). At the surface, the Physician’s description of his heroine seems quite similar to the Miller’s description his. A close reading, however, confirms that Virginia’s virtues transcend those of Alison. She is "Shamefast…in maydens shamefastnesse, / Constante in herte, and evere in bisynesse / To dryve hire out of ydel slogardye" (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 54-6). The only child of the just knight Virginius, Virginia’s role within the household as a daughter is different from that of Alison as a wife. It is not surprising, then, that Virginia’s description concerns itself more with her chastity than does Alison’s. The Physicians describes her as "so prudent and so bountevous. / For which the fame out sprong on every syde, / Bothe of hir beautee and hir bountee wyde, / That thurgh that land they preised hire echone / That loved vertu" (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 110-14). Virginia’s chastity, like Alison’s joyfulness, is determined not by herself alone; its meaning grows out of the community’s consciousness of it. Because of this, the honor of the heroines in the Miller’s Tale and the Physician’s Tale has dual sources. It is at once inherent and relational. The women may possess the raw characteristics of virtue, but it is the community that ascribes meaning to those characteristics.

While the mutual experience of honor binds Alison and Virginia together, their roles are distinct. Alison’s playful sexuality is reflected by Virginia’s pious chastity. In discussions of the two women’s honor, this distinction is represented by assigning them vastly different levels of agency. The Miller’s description of Alison ties her directly to her ability effect changes on her environment. Her song, fore example, is "as loude and yerne / As any swalwe sittynge on a berne. / Therto she koude skippe and make game, / As any kyde or calf folwynge his dame" (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3258-60). Alison is an active player in her life generally. She also maintains direct control over her sexuality. When "Nicholas gan mercy for to crye, / And spak so faire, and profred him so faste," Alison is given the power to make the final decision (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3288-9). She exercises authority over the situation, and "she hir love hym graunted atte laste" (Chaucer, Miller’s ln. 3290). Later in the tale, Alison makes the decision that pushes the plot towards its conclusion, playing a practical joke on Absolom. In contrast, every part of Virginia’s description suggests that she is object, not subject. Alison’s pleasantness is the result of personified nature acting on her: "Far right as she [nature] kan peynte a lilie whit, / And reed a rose, right with swich peynture / She peynted hath this noble creature" (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 32-4). Furthermore, Allison does not exercise agency over her moral rectitude. The Physician implies that she is not responsible for her well established virtue, using it as he does to remind parents of their responsibilities: "Youre is the charge of al hir surveiaunce, / Whil that they been udner your governaunce" (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 95-6). Even the ‘bisynesse’ attributed to Alison is futile. It serves no productive purpose other than the maintenance of her honor, and her ability to exercise true control over that is questionable.

This brings us to the role of the community in the tales as an active player rather than a passive spectator. The conclusion of the Miller’s Tale is a prime example of its power. While Alison’s decision to present Absolom with her ‘ers’ to kiss begins the chain of events to bring the story to a close, it is the community’s entrance into the action and their reaction to the events which define the meaning of the final scene. When "The neighebores, bothe smale and grete / In ronen for to gauren on this man" they find John sprawled across the ground (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3827-8). While reader’s may pity John’s naïveté, his foolishness is not fully realized (or realizable) until the community’s laughter is directed at his misfortune: "The folk gan laughen at his fantasye; / Into the roof they kiken and they cape, / And turned al his harm unto a jape" (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3840-2). According to Paul Strohm, it is at this point that "John’s house and bedroom are finally transformed into semipublic space" (Strohm 137). At the same time Strohm maintains that "the congruence of the traits of the characters, their choices, and their fates" is clear throughout the Miller’s story (Strohm 135). This may be true, but it neglects to acknowlege the importance of the neighbors in determining how the characters and their choices affect their fates. Their role is easy to overlook because it is presented as a given. The neighbors make a joke of John’s misfortune (both in his fall from the ceiling and his inability to maintain the sexual integrity of his household) because it is absurd. What underlies this seemingly clearcut situation is the fact that the neighbors are responsible for defining John’s being cuckolded as unacceptable and laughable. They are the creators of social reality. Their active definition of the carpenter’s situation is reinforced several tims, "And every wight gan laughen at this stryf" (Chaucer, Miller’s ln. 3849). The community is no doubt aware of Alisons unfaithfulness. The neighbors, however, do not hold her responsible for it publicly. Her fate is implicitly juxtaposed against that of her husband: "Thus swyved was the carpenteris wyf, / For al his kepyng and his jalousye" (Chaucer, Miller’s lns. 3849-51). Her affair is his misfortune. The community holds him responsible for his wife’s sexual infidelity.

More has been said about the role of the community in the Physician’s Tale. That is hardly surprising when one considers that—instead of simply mocking—the crowd exerts its power over two government officials. The Physician presents his tale as the retelling of a Roman story. Sheila Delaney has compared the Physician’s Tale to its historical antecedents and criticized Chaucer for failing to communicate the community’s role properly. According to Delaney’s analysis, the sources of the Physician’s Tale are about the struggle of the lower class (the Roman plebs) to assert their rights in the face of a corrupt local government. Chaucer, she argues, destroys the realism of that struggle by elevating Virginius’s status. The knight, according to the Physician, is "stronge of freendes, and of greet richesse" (Chaucer, Physician’s ln. 4). His separation from the common people renders their uprising implausable, Delaney claims: "how likely is it that the people would intervene to save a knight, motivated only for ‘routhe and for pitee’, or, moreover, depose their district governor…without perceiving this crisis as an opportunity to present demands in their own behalf?" (Delaney 52). Delaney also questions the necessity of Virginia’s death in the face of clear popular support. She argues that "Virginius could raise a popular revolt against Appius…Clearly this is the best chance to save Virginia, and if the population can be aroused after the murder, surely they could be moved to prevent it" (Delaney 54). Delaney dictates that Chaucer’s failure to explore possibilities besides the death of Virginia further undermines the legitimacy of the crowd’s role in the tale. The people who rise up "are agents of justice and moral retribution, but must not be shown to act in their own legitimate interest, must not be allowed to ‘go too far,’ above all must not emerge from the story as a genuinely sympathetic model for social action" (Delaney 57). What Delaney neglects to consider, unfortunately, is that the Physician’s Tale is not simply a Chaucerian regurgitation of his source material. Delaney is clearly aware of Chaucer’s frequent meddling in the social and moral aspects of his tales. At one point, she points out that "Chaucer augments or reduces the social dimension of his source" in any given tale "to polarize moral issues more intensely than the source does" (Delaney 59). She cannot, however, accept that Chaucer could be manipulating the social dimensions of the story of Virginius and Apius to mold it to any moral end other than the commoner’s rights-oriented focus of its predecessors.

Chaucer appears to be doing just that in the Physician’s Tale; the uprising of the people is not a collective demand for enfranchisement. They come, rather, to the defense of Virginius’s right, as a householder, to maintain the honor of his household. The Physician storyteller asserts the knight’s duty to do so explicitly, and the injustice of Apius’s behavior demands that Virginius act on his responsibility: "whan this worhty knyght Virginius / Thurgh sentence of this justice Apius / Moste by force his dere doghter yiven / Unto the juge, in lecherie to lyven" (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 203-6). Virginius regrets that he must choose between the death of his daughter and the dishonor of his household. As his only child, Virginia’s death would also represent the death of the family. Virginius, however, decides that death—whether of Virginia or of the family—is preferrable to abandoning his daughter’s honor, which he understands would be decimated by Apius’s ‘lecherie’. He condemns his daughter to death, reassuring her to "Take thou thy deeth, for this is my sentence. / For love, and nat for hate, thou most be deed; / My pitous hand moot smyten of thyn heed" (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 224-6). Why does the community not rush to Virginius’s aid to protest Apius’s injustice? Delaney argues that such pre-emptive action could have saved the life of the virtuous, guiltless Virginia. According to Delaney’s other arguments, though, the community should have no interest in the injustice forces on Virginius. In the tale, on the other hand, the people remain silent because it is not their responsibility to defend the honor of Virginius’s household. They leave him to do his duty. What the community cannot tolerate, however, is that he should be punished for fulfilling his role as protector of household honor. In response to Virginia’s death, Apius "bad to take hym [Virginius] and anhange hym faste; / But right anon a thousand peple in thraste, / To save the knyght, for routhe and for pitee, / For knowen was the false iniquitee." (Chaucer, Physician’s lns. 259-62). The most egregious injustice in Chaucer’s version of the story is not Apius’s claim on Virginia, but his attempt to punish Virginius under the law when the knight had behaved in concert with a principle defined by the community as transcending legality. Delaney claims that Chaucer "fails to encounter the sources on their own terrain" for the Physician’s Tale (Delaney 55). In reality, however, it is Delaney who fails to encounter Chaucer’s tale on its own terms, focused as she is with the tale’s antecedents. The Physician’s Tale is not, as she would like it to be, a story of sociopolitical uprising; it is the story of communal preservation of a socially-defined theory of household honor.

The Miller’s Tale and the Physician’s Tale provide excellent examples of the role of crowds in regulating morality. In both tales, the focus on female sexuality provides the structure for Chaucer’s exploration of community as an agent of change. In doing do, Chaucer gives his narratives validity through their reflection of what his original audience would have experienced as a social reality. While many critics would contend that the primary question relating to communal power over the regulation of honor in the Canterbury Tales is whether is exists, the two tales discussed here suggest that the real question is how it manifests itself. This is not an insubstantial shift.