The Canterbury Tales: The Clerk's Tale Theme of Passivity

"I'm not your toy," says La Roux, but unfortunately, this song came about 600 years too late for our heroine Grisilde.

Grisilde is the ultimate figure of passive obedience in her absolute submission to Walter's will. At one point, she even claims to have left her own will in her father's hut with her old clothes. She portrays herself as little more than Walter's property, his "owene thyng" to be manipulated as he likes.

That said, there's something kind of off about Grisilde's submission. With the words "I swere," Grisilde actively chooses her passivity. In a sense, then, all of the moments in which Grisilde is passive are also moments in which she is acting upon herself. From this perspective, she's as much of an actor in the tale as Walter.

Try wrapping your brain around that. If the idea seems weird and complicated, that's probably because it comes from a complex tradition of stories about saints' lives. In this tradition, the saint's submission to torture becomes, paradoxically, her (or sometimes his) most active demonstration of her faith in God. The "Clerk's Tale's" imports this tradition of saintly passivity and turns it into a story about husbands and wives. 

1. How does Grisilde demonstrate her passivity in the tale?
2. Which characters besides Grisilde demonstrate passivity in the tale? How?
3. Do Walter's conditions on Grisilde require that she be passive in their relationship? Why or why not?
4. Does the "Clerk's Tale" make passivity seem like an admirable characteristic? Why or why not?
5. How does the "Clerk's Tale" make a connection between the expectation that wives be passive in their marriage and the statusof women as property?

The "Clerk's Tale" shows the connection between the expectation of wifely passivity and the status of wives as property by showing how a requirement of absolute obedience reduces a human person to a "thing."

Because of the fact that she has freely chosen her submission, the moments when Grisilde is most passive in the "Clerk's Tale" are also the moments when she is most active.