'The Miller's Tale' - Geoffrey Chaucer - Character Analysis - Alison

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Joanna Lowe        Page         Mrs Edwards

English Literature‘The Miller’s Tale’ – Geoffrey Chaucer

Character Analysis – Alison

The portrait of Alison is built up with touches of fine detail and vivid colour in her introduction to the reader. Her picture is developed by a succession of striking images that are unusual in their homeliness and exciting too in their appropriateness – the blossom in spring “the newe pere-jonette tree”, a newly minted gold coin “noble yforged newe”, a “wezele”, a “kide”, a “calf” and young “joly colt”. The use of such imagery creates the portrait of a lovely young girl, both attractively and richly dressed in black and white, and through her description she is made to live and move with a warm sensuality.

Chaucer introduces Alison, the “yonge wyf” of the carpenter, through her physical attributes and clothing, withholding her name so that she becomes an object of femininity for the reader.  He describes her as having a supple and sinuous figure by likening her body to that of a weasel’s, emphasising her sexual attractiveness. The comparison of Alison to a weasel hints at the plot of the story, implying that she has a sly nature, which Nicholas later exploits. After the use of the simile of the weasel, Chaucer goes on to describe Alison’s clothing, depicting her girdle that is made of silk and likens the colour of it to that of “morne milk”. Chaucer says that her skirt is “broiden al bifoore” and that also on her collar there is embroidery “withinne and eek withoute.”  The strings of the white cap on her head are like her collar, made of black silk and embroidered, and along with “hir filet brood of silk”, Alison’s clothing implies that she is from an affluent background. The reader is aware of that fact that Alison being able to afford such clothing is probably down to her marriage to the carpenter, and so hints that her reasoning for marrying an elderly man was for his wealth.

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After describing her clothes, Chaucer focuses on her physical attributes, claiming that she had a “likerous ye”, that her eyebrows were “ful smale ypulled” and “were bent and blake as any sloo” and that her skin is softer than the “wolle of a wether.” The descriptions of Alison’s eyes, eyebrows and softness of skin stress her sexuality, along with the fact that her fillet that was worn “ful hye”. Among the many other physical details packed into Alison’s physical description, her mouth was described as being “as sweet as bragot…or hoord of apples leyd in hey,” creating an image ...

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