In Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, when the people ask Walter to wed, they take care to

rhetorically reframe marriage. Whereas Walter’s objection equates servitude and matrimony—he enjoys the “libertee / That selde time is founde in mariage”—his subjects present a divergent interpretation (Chaucer 145-6). In their entreaty, they implore the marquis to “boweth youre nekke under that blisful yok / Of sovereinetee, noght of servise, / Which that men clepe spousaile or wedlock” (113-15). Beyond a persuasive impetus, however, this presentation of marriage introduces and motivates a unity between matrimony and governmental sovereignty, in which both institutions necessitate husband and ruler to submit. More so, it begins to clarify the function of the omnipresent third party in Walter’s marriage—the people—and marriage as a political microcosm. Yet, not until Griselda enters, a paragon of constancy, does Walter fall under scrutiny. His actions are judged in relation to Griselda: How does Walter violate the ethics of marriage and, thus, governance? Here, Griselda, more than a wife, becomes a paradigm; her victimhood and acquiescence serve as metrics for good rulership. Thus, Griselda becomes a political agent, whose passivity works to expound an ideal government based on mutual deference.

 

In his analysis, the Clerk deviates from the Petrarchan reading of the tale which

requisitions “every wight in his degree / Sholde be constant in adversitee, / As was Griselde” (1145-7). This model, the call for universal constancy, is repeated in different hierarchical structures—the religion, the marriage, the government—and presupposes that Walter assumes allegorical function as God. Like the disciples, who unquestionably submit to God’s will, so should Griselda and the people yield personal power to the husband and monarch, respectively. Thus, images of marriage and government are conflated and co-opted to impart Petrarchan tyranny. Griselda’s submission becomes didactic and exemplar; she is a discipline to be practiced. 

 

Yet, the Clerk’s rejection of this rendering—his God “ne tempteth no man that he

boghte,” unlike Walter’s insatiable desire to test Griselda—simultaneously propounds a different government formation (1153). He interjects the tale with criticism towards Walter’s excessive cruelty, denouncing how “wedded men ne knowe no mesure / Whan that they finde a pacient creature” (622-3). Here, marriage and wifehood, like in the Petrarchan metaphor, appropriate and reflect governmental structures. However, instead of perpetuating absolutist policies, the transgressions in matrimony—the disregard for and violation of the wife’s constancy—become analogous with breaches of political codes: hurt the wife, hurt the people. Walter’s domination over and manipulation of Griselda signals the destructive properties of tyranny. Therefore, by transposing the relationship between husband and wife onto ruler and ruled, the Clerk can imbue female passivity with political power.

 

The prioritization of the monarch’s desires defines Walter’s relationship with the people

pre-Griselda and elucidates the subtextual political agenda within their call for marriage.

According to the Clerk’s overview of Saluzzo and its marquis, citizens from all social classes are “obeisant, ay redy to [Walter’s] hand” (66). There exists, at least, a one-sided

subservience—whether this loyalty is partly unearned or disingenuous becomes more apparent using Griselda’s paradigm. However, the Clerk establishes two interdependent deficiencies of Walter: first, that “on his lust present was al his thoght,” and, second, he had staunchly determined to “wedde no wif” (80; 84). Together, these features of Walter’s ideology and rule outline the antithetical nature of marriage and freedom. If the marquis prizes his own desires and liberty, marriage works conversely to contain and challenge them. In the political sense, then, matrimony would ideally dismantle the monarch’s selfish impulses; the political order would no longer serve him. David Wallace’s “Humanism and Tyranny” in Chaucerian Polity demonstrates how this “encouragement for monarchs in their perennial struggle to address the needs of the bonum commune rather than to follow the logic of their own delit” is textually explored through marriage, which “provides both an entry into tyranny and a way out of it” (Wallace 295). Accordingly, in the tyrannical schema, complete domination over the wife exemplifies the absolutist state; in the Clerk’s model, the wife tempers and redirects the ruler's egotism. Therefore, when the people frame their entreaty with an acquiescence to Walter’s title and authority—“And ye, my lord, to doon right as you leste” —their deference rhetorically works to minimize and overturn Walter’s predisposition against marriage (Chaucer 105). By appealing to Walter’s “lust,” or desire, and convincing him to marry, the citizens of Saluzzo work textually to deconstruct the present political apparatus, one that places the ruler in primacy over the ruled.

 

Griselda’s steadfastness in both poverty and wealth aims to challenge the political dissonance that stems from Walter’s self-precedence over the people. If Walter signals and exacts his authority through titles and wealth, it is then fitting that he should marry the “povrest of hem alle”—a poverty that seemingly weilds no power (205). The contrast is clear: a “royal markis richeliche arrayed” coming to collect a “povre creature” (267; 232). Here, Walter possesses the most undisputed hierarchical dominance, a supremacy he repeatedly reinforces through clothing. When the royal attendants “clothed [Griselda] al newe” in jewelry, embroidered dresses, and a crown, she enters the aristocratic realm; when Walter restores her to poverty, she adamantly asserts that “naked moot I turne again” (378; 872). Whereas Walter’s view of political power rests in physical and hereditary signals—to lose royalty is as easy as changing clothes for those not “gentileste yborn”—Griselda's constancy in both poverty and wealth underlines her political influence (72). Unlike Walter, whose compulsions to tempt his wife in self-satisfaction reflects an abuse of his spousal and political power, Griselda cannot be induced to dismiss or corrupt her virtue. She remains steadfast in loyalty, naked or ornamented, a victim to Walter’s sadistic experiments who demands sympathy. Griselda’s status as both wife and impoverished then reflects a social passivity. Griselda cannot exert overt influence, so she assumes a servile role, a body to be acted upon, demonstrated when she charges that “I never heeld me lady ne maistresse, / But humble servant to [Walter’s] worthinesse” (823-4). Even with her royal union, she distances herself from patrician titles and establishes a strategic apolitical identity. Thus, this obligatory acquiescence to Walter’s wishes enables a covert condemnation of them. Although her words contain no explicit denouncement of Walter, Griselda’s consistent reaffirmation of her deference—her presumed apolitical nature—enacts her function as a political force. When Walter mistreats Griselda, a pauper and wife with no social power to defend herself, he symbolically performs the worst moral transgression: the monarch’s abuse of his people.

 

Feminine physicality and subjugation also work to record Walter’s offenses, textually rendering the pains of tyranny on the body. Griselda’s vow to Walter following his proposal circumscribes her loyalty within the bounds of mortality; she promises that “never willingly / In werk ne thought I nil you disobeye, / For to be deed” (362-5). She places both aspects of her existence—the body and mind—beneath Walter’s ward. Thus, when Griselda pledges physical and mental fidelity, her submission necessitates a reciprocal respect. Griselda has given herself to Walter, and he must, in turn, consider and treat this deference with courtesy. As a political gauge, Wallace summarizes the connection between the absolutist state and the body, describing how tyranny is “intimately connected with metaphors and flesh-and-blood practices of marriage” (Wallace 295). The tyrannical model would, then, metaphorically present itself as complete domination of the wife. Similarly, Walter asserts his authority over Griselda’s body. His tests, more than an assessment of patience, evaluate and sever her womanhood. By removing their children from Saluzzo, under the guise of murdering them, Walter attacks her motherhood. By remarrying, he offends the “maidenhede, / Which that [Griselda] broughte and noght again I bere” (Chaucer 883-4). His domain over these core markers of medieval female identity figuratively impart his tyrannical rule. Walter exploits and prohibits natural female expressions of wife and mother; thus, tyranny, as a governmental model, upholds the monarch’s desires and suppresses the people’s needs. Conversely, the reunion between wife and husband, mother and child—specifically, in the physical action of kissing—conveys the triumph of Griselda’s passivity over absolutism. When Walter reveals his machinations and releases Griselda from his tests, he “hire in armes took and gan hire kesse” (1057). Similarly, upon seeing her children alive, Griselda immediately “embraceth hem, / and tendrely kissinge / Ful like a moder” (1083-4). In this unity, the sanctity of the female body has been returned, the tyrant removed from his pedestal and deferential government restored.

 

After wedding Walter, Griselda quickly earns the people’s reverence as a mediator, a

conciliatory role she also performs in marriage, helping to link and overlay the private and public domains of matrimony and government. How Griselda responds to Walter directly references her relationship with the people. Despite her lowly lineage, the citizens of Saluzzo come to venerate Griselda’s virtue “that ech hir loved that looked on hir face” (413). Yet, more than a detached worship of idealistic propriety, Griselda interacts with the people to resolve conflicts and promote public harmony:

Noght only this Grisildis thurgh hir wit

Coude al the fet of wifly humblenesse,

But eek whan that the cas required it,

The commune profit coude she redresse:

Ther nas discord, rancour, ne hevinesse

In al that land that she ne coude apese,

And wisely bringe hem alle in reste and ese. (428-434)

In this same stanza, the Clerk exalts both Griselda’s expertise in “wifely humbleness” and her diplomacy, structurally conveying the power of the wife as peacemaker. One imitates the other; her deference to Walter mirrors her deference to the people, a political appeasement that does not consider her desires. In fact, Walter bolsters the credibility and futility of his own requests, filicide and remarriage, by scapegoating the people. He transposes his machinations onto Saluzzo, claiming that each perverted behest reflects “as my peple leste” (490). To deny Walter would be to deny the people and incite discord between ruler and ruled. Thus, if Griselda upholds the “commune profit” and works to maintain monarch-subject accord, her acquiescence to Walter simultaneously appeases the people and inspires “reste and ese.” Even in the private domain of marriage, Griselda prioritizes the public good, which further arraigns Walter’s removal from and infraction of the commons. Just as he misrepresents Saluzzo’s demands, Walter also violates the explicit reason for the marriage—to prevent a “straunge successour” from succeeding the throne and displacing his lineage—by ordering the murder of his children (138). Driven by his “lust,” Walter becomes blind to the people; he rules “from an elevated position of sublime isolation,” according to Wallace, a position that only a wife can absolve (Wallace 295). Therefore, beyond a model of deferential governance, Griselda bridges the monarch and people, as she encourages the ruler to both see his subjects and respond to their needs.

 

The Clerk’s Tale constitutes one contribution within an in-text conversation, started by the Wife of Bath, focused on exegesis—and how these interpretative authorities define, delineate, and direct womanhood. If the Petrarchan model upholds tyranny, and its metaphorical appropriation of and control over the wife, then its Biblical reference reflects similar hierarchical frameworks between God and man, husband and wife: the former is the active power, the latter passive. However, both the Clerk’s rejection of Petrarchan politics and Griselda as a political agent against absolutism inform his own Biblical interpretation. The differing exegeses of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, whose matrimonial schema places both wife and husband in deferential positions, demonstrates this divergence: “The wife hath not power of her own body: but the husband. And in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body: but the wife” (“Douay-Rheims” 1 Corinthians 7). Whereas the Wife of Bath, in opposition to St. Jerome’s exegesis, avows the mastery of woman in marriage—and, the Clerk appeases her in his Envoy, encouraging “noble wives” to “take on you the governaile” (Chaucer 1183; 1192)—the Clerk considers the verse in its totality. He closes his renunciation of the Petrarchan reading with a universal call for patience: “Lat us thanne live in vertuous suffraunce” (1162). If disorder stems from dominance and egotism, then order emerges from mutual deference. It rests on each participant—the wife and husband, the ruler and ruled—to submit, inaugurating an interdependent system that uses responsibility to the other to circumscribe the self.

 

In sum, when Walter prioritizes his own pleasures, he disregards the needs of the people,

a dismissal metaphorically exacted on Griselda. With each perversion and mistreatment, Walter loses sight of his political obligation as monarch. Through Griselda’s passivity—her image as both apolitical victim and unwavering devotee—does Walter’s malfeasance transform from abstract transgression to condemnable immorality. She provides the social impotence and body to violate, and then textually render. Thus, by politicizing Griselda, the Clerk criticizes the absolutist state and champions mutual deference, infusing the passive with moral and political power.