Eighteen-year-old Alison is one of the main characters in “The Miller’s Tale”. She is married by arrangement to a much older man, a carpenter named John. Alison’s youth is displayed in her appearance and actions. She feels she is too young to be married to an older man and should be out having fun and enjoying her life. This causes her to be carefree and to present herself to other men in ways inappropriate coming from a married woman. Geoffrey Chauser describes her in the way of nature. The actions produced by Alison in “The Millers Tale” portrays her as an immature youth who is not adult enough to be involved in any relationship, let alone a marriage, although the way that Geoffrey Chauser describes her with nature is to be an innocent bystander in all that is going on around her.
In “The Millers Tale” Chauser refers to Alison as many forms of nature. Nature possibly represents the innocents that she wants to portray. Alison is considered to be a newly budded young pear tree signifying her youthful vibrancy and causing men to consider her desirable. “She was a primerole, a piggesnye, for any lord to leggen in his bedde,” pg 93, ln 160 tells us to have pity on her because she is young and should not be married to such an old man. She is a rose at its full bloom, and by being married so young to this much older man makes it seem that she loses this full bloom. He also defines her joyous singing as a swallow sitting on a shed singing it’s hearts desire. This says that she has no cares in the world and she feels free in her youth to do what she wants to do. By saying “Winsing she was as is a joly colt” pg 93, ln 155 shows is her immature, high-spirited excitement for life.
Alison’s husband considers her to be delicate and rarely lets her out on her own in fear that other men will go after her. When she does end up going to town she shows off her petit frame, wearing a girdle to make her waist look even smaller, she wears low cut shirts to show off her collarbone and keeps her forehead very shiny, plucking her eyebrows to high arches. She takes great pride in her looks and wears only the best silk fashions. She has boots that lace up to her thighs; all which are considered to be attractive to men. Her smile can melt the heart of any man.
As Alison is a married woman she is considered untouchable to men although they try, this is where courtly love is involved. Nicholas, a scholar who lives with Alison and John, and a man named Absolum are both in love with her. She has no desire to be with Absolum. Nicholas on the other hand is more Alison’s age. She teases him by calling out no when her actions are really saying yes. She allows his hands to wander wherever he wants them to but there is no kissing allowed. She is very afraid that her husband will find out and that he will have her killed because of it. Due to her youth and forced marriage Alison becomes promiscuous.
She proves to be very dishonest to John by lying and plotting with Nicholas ways that she could cheat on John. John is a very naïve man and believes anything that is told to him, especially if it involves God. Nicholas tells him that God is going to flood the earth just as he did with Noah, and that being a carpenter he should to go and make a boat for himself, Nicholas and Alison. Being the honorable husband that he is, he tells Alison what Nicholas told him and she puts on an act pretending to be frightened for her life and tells him to hurry off and keep her safe, and he does just that. This proves that she is very dishonest for lying to John. She feels no guilt knowing that her husband loves her and that she cheats on him. Even though she does all of these dishonest things, in the end, she is the only character in the tale that doesn’t have something bad happen to them.
If it were not for Geoffrey Chauser telling us that Alison is the innocent one in this poem, it would be very hard to realize this if we just based it on her actions. Though she is married, she is still young and still has much of her life to live. Being tied down just proves to be a big inconvenience to her and she dose not have to choice to love that she desires. Because she cannot help but be desirable to other men, all her actions are to be forgiven in the end.
