MASCULINITY GONE TO SHIT

As you may have noticed there is a rather “shitty” theme that runs throughout Chaucer’s A Miller’s Tale. The subject first comes up as we are introduced to Absolon, the rather effeminate parish clerk from the local church. Chaucer gives a long description of his appearance and musical abilities. Then he decides to wrap things up by telling us this:

Later, poor Absolon is tricked into kissing the ass of Alison, the woman he loves. He is outraged and angrily returns with a hot iron to get his revenge. This time, Alison’s lover Nicholas, who has just stolen her from her husband sticks his ass out the window hoping to fart in Absolon’s face before receiving a kiss of his own. Instead Absolon thrusts the red-hot piece of metal upward burning Nicholas’ rear end.

These passages reminded me of the husband from The Long-Assed Berenger who is forced to kiss his own wife’s ass right after she has had sex with another man. There seems to be some sort of connection between fecal matter, gas, assholes, and masculinity, or rather, the lack thereof. According to Morrison’s Excrement in the Late Middle Ages, “Excrement was a relic of ‘gay matter,’ ‘an intermediate between the living body and dead disintegrating matter that is being transformed into earth, into manure. The living body returns to the earth its excrement, which fertilizes the earth as does the body of the dead’” (2008, p. 6). She goes on to explain how excrement played an interesting dual role, representing both abundance and humiliation, medicine and corruption, as well as renewal and death. Through this duality we see how shit can be related to both the male and female body fluids with the male being controlled and pure and the female being uncontrolled and polluting.

Through this understanding we see how Alison and Nicholas use their asses and farts to humiliate Absolon. In the story, the two lovers hold all the control, they just tricked Alison’s husband into humiliating himself by building a bunch of crazy boats. Then, they trick Absolon into kissing their butts and fart in his face. On their end, the use of “shit” is powerful because it is controlled. Absolon on the other hand is not in control of the shit and therefore embodies the feminine position. It is interesting to note again, that Absolon is “squeamish about farting.” Perhaps this is because he is already insecure in his masculinity, as indicated by his description.

Interestingly, Absolon is not the only man in the story who ends up with a damaged masculinity. The carpenter, who embodies the physical aspects of masculinity and is described only as old and ugly, has his wife taken and is humiliated in front of the other town. Nicholas, who embodies the mental aspects of masculinity as an intelligent scholar gets a hot iron up his ass. In the end, these men’s pursuit of a beautiful woman leads to their ultimate downfall.