This carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf                                                      
Which that he loved more than his lyf;
Of eightene yeer she was of age.
Jalous he was, and heeld hire narwe in cage,
For she was wilde and yong, and he was old
And demed himself ben lyk a cokewold.
He knew nat Catoun, for his wit was rude,
That bad man sholde wedde his similitude.
Men sholde wedden after hire estaat,
For youthe and elde is often at debaat. 
But sith that he was fallen in the snare, 
He moste endure, as other folk, his care. 
Fair was this yonge wyf, and therwithal
As any wesele hir body gent and smal.
A ceynt she werede barred al of silk;
A barmclooth eek as whyt as morne milk
Upon hir lendes, ful of many a gore. 
Whyt was hir smoke, and broyden al bifore
And eek bihinde, on hir coler aboute, 
Of col-blak silk, withinne and eek withoute.
The tapes of hir whyte voluper 
Were of the same suyte of hir coler 
Hir filet brood of silk and set ful hye.
And sikerly she hadde a likerous yë.

Geoffrey Chaucer, 'The Miller's Tale' in The Canterbury Tales, ed. by V.A Kolve and Glending Olson (Third Norton Critical Edition, 2018), ll. 3221-324

This passage comes from the beginning of ‘The Miller’s Tale’ and features a description of John and Alisoun as a married couple, focusing on John’s temperament and part of Alisoun’s appearance. The passage highlights the precarious nature of their marriage because of its unorthodoxy and introduces the themes of lust and infidelity, foreshadowing John’s misfortune at the climax of the tale. 

Chaucer opens the passage with the binary opposition of youth and old age and the image of false imprisonment, introducing the theme of conflict and the medieval notion of quiting central to the tale. Chaucer, narrating the tale through the Miller, alerts us to John’s role:

This carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf

Which that he loved more than his lyf;

Of eightene yeer she was of age.

Jalous he was, and heeld hir nawe in cage,

For she was wilde and yong, and he was old

And demed himself ben lyk a cokewold.

While John is introduced as loving Alisoun “more than his lyf”, the nature of this love and the extent to which it can truly be called ‘love’ is quickly problematised by John’s jealousy. The likening of John’s confinement of Alisoun to their house to keeping her in a cage undercuts the assumption of an innocent love, instead characterising John’s love as possessive and perhaps violent, suggested by the animalism of the cage. As the reasoning for this metaphorical caging is because of John’s fear of being cuckolded, Chaucer thus frames the outdoors and a young woman’s public existence as synonymous with sexual treachery in John’s mind, which is emphasised by the adjective “wilde” directly following the statement of her confinement. This is of course ironic as Alisoun eventually cuckolds him within the cage he has created for her and in failing to maintain his dignity through the subjugation of his wife,  John’s masculinity is undermined, highlighting his impotence as her old husband. In the section of the passage describing John, love is subordinated to jealousy, implying that John’s desire to control Alisoun precedes and surpasses any romantic feelings towards her. Through this conflict between healthy and possessive love, Chaucer sets up the tale’s exploration of relationships and introduces the tale’s overarching sense that the dignity of love is not exempt from corruption by baser emotions such as jealousy and lust. 

The description of Alisoun, predominantly focused on her clothing, begins to suggest that she is not an entirely straightforward character before the reveal of her lustfulness in the passage’s final line. Chaucer demonstrates this by juxtaposing the idea of respectability and decency, shown through imagery of domesticity, with suggestions of an immodest proclivity for luxury reflected in the micro details of her items of clothing. Alisoun is described as wearing a “barmclooth eek as whyt as morne milk”, a “whyt… smok” and a “whyt voluper”. The simplicity of these images — an apron, a dress and a kerchief — projects an image of unadulterated domesticity which is reinforced by the repetition of “whyt”, a colour traditionally symbolic of purity and virtue. Through the simile “as whyt as morne milke”, denoting cow milking, Chaucer also associates Alisoun with agriculture and fertility, adding to this innocence and her already established youthfulness. The combination of Alisoun’s domesticity and the whiteness of her clothing not only constructs her as the archetypal housewife, but also portrays her as exceedingly harmless in nature.

However, the notion that Alisoun’s domesticity is voluntary is undermined by the fact that prior to this description we are alerted to John’s imprisonment of her indoors. The involuntariness of her introversion compounds Chaucer’s characterisation of Alisoun as wanton, which he begins to depict symbolically in the finer details of her clothes. While Alisoun’s dress is white, it is not plain but rather “broyden al bifore/ And eek behinde”, indicating an appreciation for ornament that belies her projected plainness. This is exacerbated by the embroidery also being present at the front of her dress as opposed to solely hidden at its back. This visually represents the partiality for fineries as at the fore of Alisoun’s personality, making her conservatism (the aspect of her which is immediately apparent) a projection of John’s desires for her more than the reality of who she is.

Additionally, both her headband and the belt she wears heavily contain silk which through its status as an expensive material implies vanity and a love of decadence biblically associated with female sexual immorality. This conflict between the innocent and the sensual is emphasised by Chaucer’s rhyming of “silk” with “milke” as this juxtaposes the natural with the material, associated in this context with intense sexuality. By interlacing small details indicative of indulgence within the wider portrait of Alisoun’s unremarkable clothing, Chaucer begins to construct Alisoun as pleasure-seeking, demonstrating the incongruity of her desires and John’s wishes for her. Chaucer portrays Alisoun as beautiful and overwhelmingly plain in manner, but with a predilection for worldly pleasures which introduces the idea of her promiscuity, giving credence to John’s fear of cuckoldry.

In his brief introduction of the couple, Chaucer establishes John and Alisoun’s marital home as a site of instability and strife, subverting the expectation of marital harmony before the text’s conflict. That the source of this instability is John’s own jealous and possessive nature and Alisoun’s lecherousness indicates to the reader that the ensuing trouble of the tale will partly come from within the home. By beginning the tale in this way — with a husband’s desperation to subdue his wife and his wife’s resistance to the attempt to stifle her sexuality — Chaucer emphasises the narrating Miller’s impropriety, and highlights the Miller’s Tale as a ribald response to, or quiting of the grandiose chivalry of the Knight’s Tale which it follows.