Surplus and Scarcity: two economic models Start Assignment

The Steward The Miller

The Steward’s Impoverished World View

We find out from the General Prologue portrait that the Steward (or Reeve) is the manager of a

large agricultural estate owned by a wealthy young aristocrat. He also is a trained carpenter, but

that is not his source of income. Instead, he makes money by managing the estate and helping

himself to more of its profits than he is supposed to. He even loans his master money that he had

stolen from him:

No bailiff, no shepherd, no servant doubted

His cunning, all were deeply aware of his theft.

But all were more afraid of him than of death

Itself. , . .Pleasing his master was a trick he’d long ago

Learned, giving and lending his lord what belonged

To his lord . . . (600-604, 609-610).

This skinny, scary man who easily swindles the young lord who employs him, has a chip on his

shoulder, and he takes offense when the Miller tells a tale about a carpenter who is “cuckolded”

by his wife, Alison. (A cuckold is a husband whose wife cheats on him.) This leads the Steward

to insist that he should tell a tale after the Miller in order to get back at him. He announces his

motives in his prologue on page 105:

“And if I cared to,” he said, “I’d pay it back,

And humble a cocksure miller’s bleary eyes,

If I had a taste for obscenities and lies.

But I’m too old, such things are not for me.

Grass time is done, dry winter food must be

My diet. This snowy hair proclaims my years;

My heart’s decayed, and so, alas, have my ears.

And here I am, molding on with age,

Rotting away, and worse each livelong day,

Headed, like garbage, for wasting in a pail.” (10-19)

On and on he goes, lamenting his lost youth and the infirmities and humiliations of old age until

the Host finally interrupts him: “Just tell your story, man, and save us time” (51). At which point

the Steward announces his story will “answer” the Miller:

“With your permission, this fellow will be repaid,

And I will use the vulgar words he has chosen.

I pray to God his neck might soon be broken!”

The Steward never explains why he takes the Miller’s tale so personally. Certainly, there is

nothing in the Miller’s prologue to suggest that he was trying to insult the Steward. The Miller

wanted to challenge the Knight and prove himself a better storyteller. The previous lecture on the

Miller suggests some ways in which he may well have succeeded. But the Steward is blind to all

this: he only sees the Miller’s tale as an insult which must be repaid. And his story thus becomes

a projection of all the anger and resentment he seems to be storing up inside.

While the Miller’s tale is certainly vulgar in many ways, it also presents a world in which

people’s motives tend to be more generous and benign than those of the characters in the

Steward’s Tale. Though Alison is unfaithful to John, she does so out of attraction to Nicolas and

not because she wants to injure her husband. The world of the fabliau is not a very moral one

(see the previous lecture for an explanation of the fabliau story). Young wives married to old

jealous men are supposed to cheat on their husbands, that’s the expectation in this type of story.

The Miller’s tale allows Alison to choose a younger, more appropriate sexual partner and not

suffer any consequences for it. The two young men, Nicolas and Absolom are the ones who end

up receiving a kind of punishment that results from pursuing a married woman. Likewise, her

foolish but good-natured old husband, John, ends up with a broken arm because he is stupid

enough to believe Nicolas’ story about a second Flood. There are some complexities here I’m

overlooking at the moment, but certainly, no one reads the Miller’s tale as originating in

bitterness and a sense of personal injury.

By contrast, the Steward’s tale features Simkin the miller: “and of course he was a thief of wheat

and meal,/ A sneaky scoundrel, well accustomed to stealing./ This hot and haughty fellow was

named Simkin” (19-21). Simkin and his wife, the illegitimate daughter of the local priest, act

pretentious and expect to be treated as though they belong to the nobility. Even the two scholars,

Allan and John, who think they can outwit Simkin and keep him from stealing their grain are not

especially attractive or charming. We only know that they like to amuse themselves more than to

study:

Headstrong youngsters, clever and fond of play,

Not truly concerned with college affairs, but able

To see all possibilities for amusement. (82-84)

What unfolds is a story of cheating and revenge as the two young men closely watch Simkin

grind their grain so he doesn’t cheat them. But they are not as clever as they think and when

Simkin lets their horse run off, they find they themselves have been tricked:

“They think they’re high and mighty, no one can cheat them.

But I know my business, I can easily beat them,

No matter what clever philosophers they’ve read.

The more cute tricks they try, the more bread

I’ll bake for myself, with the grain I’m going to steal.

I’ll fill their bag with husks and say it’s meal.

The greatest clerical minds are the stupidest men.” (127-133)

Even in the Miller’s Tale, both Nicolas and Absolom seem to get some pleasure from the

possibility of fooling old John. Nicolas says to Alison “A cleric would surely have wasted his

studying time,/ If he couldn’t put a blindfold on a carpenter’s eyes” (109-110). In both tales, we

see the educated young men of the clerical class (those studying for church careers but not for

the priesthood) feeling a sense of superiority over the working class commoners in their

communities. The Steward inverts this hierarchy in this part of his tale, when he has Simkin get

the better of Allan and John, though they do get their revenge at the end. It is this revenge I’d

like to focus on.

In the Miller’s Tale, Absalom is humiliated when he asks Alison for a kiss in the dark and then

finds he is kissing her bottom and not her mouth. His response is to borrow a red hot colter from

local blacksmith so that he can get Alison back by burning her bottom after asking for a second

kiss. (A colter is the metal blade of a plow, so this would be quite a burn.) But the story doesn’t

let Alison suffer, instead it is Nicolas, who receives the hot colter on his rear end and this leads

to the story’s climax where Nicholas’ cries for “Help! Water, water! Help!” (613) which

awakens John the carpenter and leads him to think the flood has come. A kind of hilarious

pandemonium ensues and while poor John ends up with a broken arm, the Miller suggests all

three male characters get what they deserve:

“And everyone laughed at this silly, fussing strife.

Thus well and properly had was the carpenter’s wife,

Despite the cautions of his jealous life.

And Absalom had kissed her, right on the ass,

Where Nicolas was badly scalded, alas.

Which ends my tale. God send us all his grace!” (646-651)

The Miller presents these injuries not as a consequence of revenge but rather as inevitable

outcome of “silly, fussing strife”. The Miller’s final words, “God send us all his grace!” suggest

that he doesn’t want his audience to take the story very seriously and feels nothing but goodwill

towards them.

Contrast this ending with the Steward’s:

His wife had been screwed and so too had his daughter.

Ah, cheating millers are served with what they’ve ordered!

And that’s what this little proverb is all about:

“Evildoers are not rewarded, by God!”

Cheaters will end by being cheated themselves.

May God, who’s sitting in heaven high above us,

Save every pilgrim here, both noble and common!

And so I’ve repaid the Miller, that drunken man. (393-400)

There are two points I’d like to make about the differences between the two tale endings. One is

that though the Steward attempts to end his story in a similar way by wishing the pilgrims God’s

salvation (lines 398-99), his final line shows that what he really wants is to make sure everyone

knows he has gotten back at the Miller and that this is his primary reason for telling a story about

a cheating miller.

The Steward’s sense of justice—“Cheaters will end by being cheated themselves”—feels more

menacing and grim than the Miller’s more “karmic” justice where all three male characters end

up punished in ways that are central to the tale’s humor and that have nothing to do with the

Miller’s personal feelings.1 The Steward’s ending “moral” is also more ironic seeing as he

himself is a “cheater” who embezzles from his aristocratic employer (see his portrait in the GP).

Though Simkin is supposed to represent the Steward’s revenge on the Miller, it’s hard not to see

this arrogant, crooked miller as a projection of the Steward’s own personality and his own

cheating ways.

Furthermore, the Steward sets up the scholars’ revenge as involving more than just causing

physical harm to Simkin and getting their flour back. Central to their strategy is having sex with

1 Thanks to Andrew White (a student in this class) for using the term “karmic” in describing this ending scene.

Simkin’s daughter, Maylin, and his unnamed wife. Allan, the scholar who sleeps with Maylin,

frames his intentions as a form of repayment:

“I think I’ll try to have the girl in that bed.

Some higher recompense (payment) has been granted us,

For, John, there is a law providing thus:

A man who suffers, here, on this one side,

Must then at some other point be satisfied.

Our grain has been stolen, there’s no denying that . . .

And since what’s lost is gone for now and ever,

I have to find repayment, and find it wherever

I’m able. (256-265)

Allan frames the issue of repayment in terms of sex. And the question of whether Maylin wants

to have sex with him does not seem to enter his mind:

He rose and crept carefully toward the girl,

Who was lying flat on her back and fast asleep,

And then he got so close that, should she see him,

It would have been too late—and then there he was,

And doing what each in his place would have always done. (271-75)

This is essentially a description of nonconsensual sex, even though it is somewhat mitigated by

the fact that Maylin seems to have become fond of her attacker later in the story. Similarly, when

the second scholar, John, moves the cradle so that Simkin’s wife mistakenly comes to his bed

and not her husband’s, the language also suggests an attack:

But suddenly the scholar fairly leapt

Upon her and laid it on this wife so hot

She had a merry time, a pleasure not

Her usual fare. 306-309)

Here, too, the scholar starts having sex with a woman who is asleep. In the wife’s case, it’s not

clear she ever realizes that it’s not her husband who has started having sex with her. And, the

emphasis on her pleasure suggests some degree of eventual consent. Still, when you look back at

the Miller’s Tale where Alison’s consent is a central feature and she plays an important role in

the unfolding of the plot, you see that the Steward’s attitude towards the women in his story is

more starkly instrumental. Mother and daughter function primarily as the objects through which

Allan and John seek “repayment” for their stolen flour.2 This repayment/revenge continues

when Maylin tells Allan where her father has hidden the stolen flour and when the wife

accidentally hits Simkin on the head with a staff: “she swung as hard as she could,/ And hit the

miller right on his shining bald skull” (381-82). Simkin is certainly getting what he deserves in

this scene, but his wife is the unwitting instrument of justice here. Unlike Alison, who has

autonomy and the ability to make choices in the Miller’s Tale , the wife here is no more than an

extension of the Steward’s desire to punish the Miller within the plot of his story. She and her

daughter function as fictional tools to assist the Steward’s desire to “pay back” the Miller (“and

so I’ve repaid the Miller” line 400).

Some final conclusions:

There are some fundamental similarities between the Miller and the Steward both in their social

identities and in their stories. Both narrators tell a fabliau that contains sex and slapstick humor

as is typical for this kind of story. In these fabliaux, John the carpenter and Simkin the miller are

both wealthy working class men who are looked down upon by the educated clerics in the two

stories (Nicolas, Absalom, Allan, and John). Note that clerics in the 14th Century were kind of

like IT specialists or techies in our own times. They’re way smarter and more educated than most

of the commoners in these stories and they use their knowledge and ambition to their own

advantage. None of these clerics seems at all worried about sleeping with the wives of these two

successful yet lower class characters. Even though the clerics are not themselves noble, they see

their educations as giving them a higher status and therefore the right to mess around with lower

class married women. In these two stories wealth does not confer elevated social status (even

though Simkin thinks it does). In this respect, both the Miller’s and the Steward’s tales show the

educated classes looking down upon peasants and working-class folk and you can see the tension

between these two groups in various parts of both stories, particularly given that the Miller and

the Steward are themselves working-class and not educated.

But these similarities also allow us to see some fundamental differences in the way that these two

pilgrims view the world. In your Canvas assignment for this week, I describe some of the

differences between the Miller and the Steward’s Tales as involving contrasting principles of

surplus and scarcity. I realize these terms may seem confusing because both stories have

characters who have a surplus of material wealth (John the carpenter and Simkin) as well as

characters who could use more money (all 4 clerics). But I think it is more useful to think of

surplus and scarcity as referring to the attitudes and imaginative capacity of the Miller and the

Steward. As you read in the previous lecture, the Miller fills his story with surplus details such as

the long and beautiful description of Alison in the early part of his tale. He also describes Nicolas

and Absalom in some detail and they come across as attractive young men (okay, Absalom is

also kind of ridiculous). The Steward’s tale does not have nearly as much description; the one

longer portrait we get is of Simkin. There what is emphasized his violence and pride and bad

temper. Even the description of his daughter Maylin, is short and emphasizes her defects and not

her attractiveness. The Steward’s plot is much simpler and the scholars achieve their revenge

2 For a closer analysis of the Steward’s tale and attitudes towards sexual assault in the Middle Ages (as well as now) see the following article: https://rachelemoss.com/2014/09/11/chaucers-funny-rape-addressing-a-taboo-in-medieval-

studies/ The original story is called the Reeve’s Tale and this is how it is referred to.

Warning: there is some graphic language in the article.

through sex and violence with very little imagination. Nicolas, by contrast, cooks up an

incredibly elaborate ruse which involves Alison’s involvement and a very long story in order for

them to sleep together. And the description of their sex scene is remarkably tasteful:

And what a party they had, long into

The night, lying together in pleasing pleasure,

Taking their time and making love at leisure,

Until the bells of morning prayer were ringing,

And friars in church and chancel had started singing. 454-583

The Miller’s emphasis here is on mutual pleasure and the vision of Alison and Nicolas lying in

bed listening to the morning church bells is a very sweet one; there is no talk of revenge or

repayment, and this is most definitely consensual sex: they’re in bed because they’re young and

attracted to one another. This scene embodies the difference between the two stories. The

Steward thinks of sex in terms of rewards and punishments, debts and repayments. This results in

a kind of imaginative and psychological “scarsity” or lack in his story and this is ultimately why

the Steward has to end his story with a last dig at the Miller which I’ll quote in Chaucer’s Middle

English:

“Thus have I quit [paid back] the Miller in my tale”

Notice Chaucer’s original has no reference to drunkenness. The emphasis on revenge, on getting

back at an adversary, is all we’re left with in the Steward’s last line.

A reeve overseeing peasants in the fields

3 Chaucer’s original Middle English is even prettier:

“There was the revel and the melody,

And there lie Alison and Nicholas

In the business of mirth and solas . . .