Part of the Merchant’s hatred for his wife is reflected in January’s blindness to marital responsibility. Januarie’s blindness as the physical counterpart of the ignorance of marriage and of women he has shown all along. It prevents him to the end from seeing the tree in the garden and the knowledge of evil which it represents. And the regaining of his sight wipes out even the alertness to danger, which accompanied the blindness. The audience can interpret that whether or not January’s physical ability of sight is restored, his mental perception cannot be. Like January, the Merchant never truly knows what marriage is because he is blinded by his anger.
January is not blinded by anger, but by the deception of his wife. The real irony exists in January’s statement to May when he invites her into his garden: "No spot of thee ne knew I al my lyf". The contrast between his ugly passion and the romantic imagery...matches the irony of his being as unconscious of the physical spot he is even then touching as he will later be of the moral spot--adultery--when he is looking at it with miraculously unblinded eyes. January’s mental blindness to the reality of marriage parallels his later temporary physical blinding.
The Merchant’s blindness leads to the negative attitudes he develops about marriage and contributes to his bitterness.
The Merchant, in his disillusionment, does not advocate romantic sentiment. Instead, he makes it his sole purpose to reduce it, and plans to do so by telling a tale that will portray all wives as deceitful. The effect of Januarie’s blindness is to feed ‘the fyr of jalousie’ in his heart, exasperating his determination to cling, even beyond his own life-time, to his rights of possession. In turn, any husbands who may be listening will become jealous, and if the Merchant is successful, they will also reject romantic sentiment as he does. He is purposefully limiting the audience again by presenting a one-sided example, which continues to be a problem.
The problem with Chaucer’s Merchant is that he may be a bit reticent; by not offering enough details of his own experience with marriage, the Merchant is less believable and may appear to be more deceptive. So therefore the Merchant’s habitual refusal to tell us what we need to know in order to follow his bewildering shifts among genres, tones, directions of sympathy and antipathy, and to follow also his display of an allusiveness is so brilliant that it seems designed to go right over any audience’s head. The Merchant appears to be "selling" his tale without being able to endorse it himself.
An example of the Merchant’s reticence occurs during the pear-tree episode with May and Damyan in his refusal to elaborate on its outcome. Just as May had an insatiable lust for a pear, the audience hungers to know if Damyan was able to complete the sexual act and if so, is May pregnant with his child? The Merchant never tells.
However the Merchant may be perceived, critics agree that his voice, actions, and statements cannot be altered to prove that his wife makes a cuckold of him. The Merchant can’t see a good marriage. The Merchant becomes a misogynist because of his own emotional blindness, and eventually translates his hatred of women into a self-hatred. It is through Januarie, who acts as an envoy for the Merchant, that I arrive at this conclusion.
Januarie serves as a vehicle for the Merchant, whose attitudes, opinions, and perceptions of women classify him undoubtedly as a motley-clad misogynist. Characteristically, he is a fool. Januarie is developed as a vehicle through the connection of teller to tale, textual implications of misogyny, and the limited sight (faulty or deliberate) experienced by key characters.
The Merchant is blind, January is blind, and in some ways, May is blind; however, the audience is not. The Merchant is an active participant in Januarie’s blindness because his own perceptions are the basis for the creation of January’s. May’s blindness is a result of the limiting of her character by Chaucer--the tale focuses on Januarie; therefore, May’s opinions are only expressed in her speech. Her perceptions are textually inaccessible to the audience. The Merchant does not realize that through his participation, he is revealing his own blindness to the true experience of marriage and opening the audience’s eyes to it. The Merchant "participates in the blindness of his creature January in not realizing the extent to which he is talking of his own sore in the tale. However, the Merchant has made sure to alert the audience that his tale is not autobiographical: ‘of myn owene soore, For soory herte, I telle may namoore" (ll. 1243-4). It is his declaration that the tale is not about his own experience that leads the audience to believe that it, indeed, is. It is also the Merchant’s admittance of his marital difficulties that provoke the audience to connote Januarie’s marriage to May as the Merchant’s original idea of matrimony.
The Merchant’s misogyny is a product of his marital disillusionment. His misery and resulting hatred could be likened to purchasing a faulty product, or falling victim to false advertisement. One could assume, in a manner of speaking, that he bought more than he bargained for when he entered into marriage. The tale, then, is the story of an old man who thinks of his marriage in terms of possession, and suffers from his outlook. This outlook would confirm that Januarie operates as a surrogate for the Merchant, who perhaps bought his wife as a possession, and then crashed into the reality of marriage as a partnership. The audience’s ability to see the faults of each character leads it to question how the text reflects the substitution of Januarie for the Merchant.
If the reader trusts the tale, the fact that the Merchant hates women can be textually supported. Whether or not Januarie represents him can still be questioned. However, Chaucer creates an original artistic vehicle...to express the cynicism of the Merchant-narrator, whose consciousness of the difference between words and reality would perhaps be all the keener for a man who, while in debt, was sownynge alwey th’encrees of his wynnyng". It makes sense that the Merchant would fall victim to Chaucerian irony, because as a merchant, he should know well the difference between an object’s appearance and its actual worth.
The previously cited passage in which January is seeking a bride is significant because it plays on the theme of sight and reinforces the connection of the Merchant to January. In the passage, January "shops" for his bride by scouring the market-place, much like a merchant would comparison-shop to evaluate his options before purchasing a specific item. January is relying solely on his sight to select his bride. The mirror that he sets up in the market-place can only reflect the physical appearance of the women who pass it, not their intelligence, opinions, or personality. The connection of teller to tale is reinforced again; a merchant would obviously purchase an attractive item rather than a disheveled one.
Januarie is searching for what a wife can bring him in return in terms of personal gain. The bride he eventually selects, "fresshe May", is much younger than January, but serves two purposes for him. In the tale, January states that he wishes to be married because it is God’s gift. His view of women at this point in the tale is that they are "Goddes yifte verraily" (l.1311). This view, however, is not the only reason he seeks a wife; January’s selection of a younger bride in his old age reveals his desire for an heir. January realizes that his time to find a wife and to sire an heir to his property is limited, and this forces him to seek marriage.
The theme of sight is important when we consider January’s desire for marriage and the effects of the outcome that marriage will have on him. It can be interpreted that the only danger January foresees is that so much felicity in marriage will ruin his chance of a blissful afterlife: "Yet is ther so parfit felicitee/ And so greet ese and lust in mariage.....That I shal have myn hevene in erthe heere. How should I thanne, that lyve in swich plesaunce.....Come to the blisse ther Crist eterne on lyve ys?" (ll.1642-52). January’s lust blinds him to reality.
January and May’s marriage is an institution; she is his property. January will never be able to see May’s adultery because he has never been able to perceive her as anything other than his possession. This perception of a wife as property for the owner’s pleasure directly links the Merchant to January. "Where January moneys imagination or ‘fantasye’ only for his sensual pleasure, the Merchant moneys imagination out of spite and envy.
And so it is that the Merchant tries to stamp the wills of his audience, to impose his stamp upon them, so that they will become coins of his "fantasye": if they become such coins, he can spend them, use them, to validate and valuate his poisoned view of human
sexuality and, indeed, of human creativity itself. If the pilgrims agree with him, he has limited their vision as he has limited their opinion of Januarie. Januarie is right, May is wrong and it is all her fault.
May does not necessarily represent the Merchant’s wife, but she does represent his hatred of her and for adulterous women. Early in the tale, the Merchant quotes Theofrastus’ Golden Book on Marriage, a direct attack on matrimony:
"Ne take no wyf," quod he, "for housbondrye,
As for to spare in houshold thy dispence.
A trewe servant dooth moore diligence
Thy good to kepe than thyn owene wyf,
For she wol clayme half part al hir lyf" (ll. 1296-1300).
If the Merchant has been reading Theofraste, it can be assumed that he had adopted some ideas of antifeminism. By reading a book that overtly attacks the sacrament of marriage, the Merchant identifies himself with those who embrace misogynistic ideas and promote them. Also, the Merchant is characteristically concerned with property, and how the taking of a wife will diminish it. The Merchant’s furious indignation at his wife only exacerbates his desire for property. Because his private property has betrayed him -one gathers that his wife was something more than wax- he desires more property all the more vehemently, property which, because he owns it, will reinforce his sense of self.
Perhaps the best way to support the continuing theme blindness as it relates to January and the Merchant is to examine a statement that January makes before taking May to the garden: "A man may do no synne with his wyf,/ Ne hurte hymselven with his owene knyf" (ll. 1839-40). Each man has convinced himself that his disillusionment is truth. Because both men rely on their own perception and only outside sources that confirm their pre-established beliefs, their vision can never be truly clear nor open to correction. The Merchant's refusal to allow his perceptions to be changed is a character flaw that prevents him from having true marital bliss. Both the Merchant and January are given opportunities to adjust their visions (January through his discussions with Justinius and Placebo, and the Merchant through his profession and his studies) but both refuse them. In effect, the Merchant refuses correction for them both because it is he who fashions January’s perceptions. The Merchant’s self-blindness is an unconscious choice, and because of his inability to recognize it, he will remain blind. The pilgrims will never be able to fully evaluate the Merchant’s character because their vision is limited as well; how is his character fully developed when he purposefully leaves out details of his own marriage? January’s inability to analyze May’s deceit is essentially his refusal to accept it, making him the perfect surrogate for Chaucer’s misogynist Merchant.
It remains a key point of interest that we can’t fully distinguish between the Merchant and Chaucer. But by deciding to have a narrator he asks the reader to challenge the authorship and how does the narrator distort the tale.