The Canterbury Tales: The Clerk's Tale Class Quotes

If Walter is "the gentilleste y-born of Lumbardye," that means he comes from the highest-ranking noble family in the region. This entitles him to rule the land.

Medieval people believed that like should marry like. Therefore, a nobleman like Walter ought to marry an equally "gentil" woman. This policy had the added advantage of allowing powerful families to cement their power through beneficial alliances.

Walter's sentiments here are an exact echo of the loathly lady's in the "Wife of Bath's Tale." The irony there, of course, was that she addressed them to a nobleman who had already proven his lack of gentility. You might argue that Walter does the same in this tale due to his horrendous treatment of Grisilde, who proves to be more "gentil" than he is.

This passage emphasizes the close proximity of poverty and powerlessness to absolute power and wealth. They literally live right next to each other. Here, we see the concerns of the nobility—Walter's nobles' plan for him to marry—contrasted with the poor people's more mundane day-to-day struggle to just survive.

The statement that God sometimes sends his grace into an ox's stall is an allusion to the Christian Nativity, in which God sent his son to be born in a manger. As the "grace" that has been sent to Janicula is Grisilde, this passage implicitly compares her to the Christ-child.

The suggestion here is that poor people are more likely than others to be virtuous. The lines that follow suggest that this virtue originates with the life of hard labor and austerity they endure out of necessity.

If this passage seems overly concerned with food and eating, it may reflect the medieval reality that a higher-class person was likely to have better nutrition, and thus to appear healthier and more attractive, than a lower-class person.

Walter portrays himself as a God-figure to Grisilde in the way he speaks of plucking her from poverty and raising her to nobility. The way he views his role in her life may even be a little prideful, appropriating powers that are rightfully God's. Do Walter's wealth and status entitle him to "play God"?

Although Walter is lying about the sentiment his nobles are expressing, it's not unlikely that they might secretly object to being ruled by a lower-class person. If they believed that God had ordained nobility to rule and lower-class people to be ruled (many medieval people did believe this), they would totally have some gripes about Grisilde's power over them.

Walter implies that Grisilde's innate goodness—her truth and obedience—have stood in for the lineage and dowry he should have sought in a wife. Medieval religious texts often compare virtue to worldly riches.

Grisilde's words seem submissive, but she could also be making the point that it was Walter, not she, who thought her worthy to be his wife. Her reference to being unworthy to serve as Walter's "chamberere" foreshadows her later stint as a palace servant.

Grisilde again draws attention to the fact that it is Walter, not her, who has made her a lady. In fact, if she had her way, Grisilde would be nothing but a servant.

Janicula is totally aware of the class difference between Walter and Grisilde. Rather than thanking Walter for "raising" her up, though, Janicula takes a cynical point of view: he thinks that Walter is pretty much just going to use Grisilde for sex.

Grisilde's apparent lack of recognition that she was ever raised to high estate supports her declaration to Walter that she truly never thought of herself as anything more than a servant.

The townspeople's belief that more pleasing fruit will fall from the marriage of Walter and this girl (because of this girl's higher lineage) than from the marriage of Walter and Grisilde is ironic because, of course, this girl is the fruit of the marriage of Walter and Grisilde.

Grisilde appears to hold the same belief as the narrator, that a poor person is more likely to have a strong character than a rich one. The girl's "tender" upbringing makes her unable to withstand adversity, or so Grisilde believes.