What happens in Chapter 10 of The Canterbury Tales?
The Clerk, an attentive scholar from Oxford, recounts the tale of Walter, the Marquis of Saluzzo, a nobleman who faces pressure from his people to marry. He selects Griselda, a simple peasant girl, but first demands a vow of total obedience from her before their wedding. Over time, Walter subjects Griselda to increasingly harsh trials, masked as tests: he has their infant daughter taken away under the pretense that she will be killed; he does the same with their son; and ultimately, he sends Griselda back to her father's cottage dressed only in her shift, declaring his intention to marry a new, noble bride. Griselda endures each challenge without a word of complaint, showing only gratitude and submission. When Walter's supposed new wife arrives—who turns out to be Griselda's own daughter—he reinstates Griselda, claiming the trials were tests of her loyalty. The story concludes with the Clerk delivering an ironic envoy, advising wives not to follow Griselda's example of patience and instead to stand up for themselves—a sharp tonal shift that reinterprets the whole story.
Analysis
Chaucer gives the Clerk a tale inspired by Petrarch's Latin version of Boccaccio, and this layered sourcing is important: the Clerk, a bookish man, recounts another bookish man's take on a folk story, which keeps the issues of authenticity and mediation alive. Walter is depicted with unsettling psychological clarity—his cruelty isn't just a product of convention; Chaucer allows the reader to grapple with the discomfort of a man who takes pleasure in testing others. The word "assay" (trial, test) echoes throughout the narrative, subtly involving the reader in Walter's voyeurism.
Griselda's passivity has sparked debate among critics for centuries, but Chaucer's skill lies in the tension between her words and her inner thoughts. She speaks very little; when she does, her language is formal and contractual, reflecting the oath Walter demanded. This choice makes her grief visible only in what she doesn't express—what she leaves unsaid carries the emotional weight of the story.
The tonal shift in the Envoy is the tale's masterstroke. The Clerk abandons his careful academic tone for a light, almost satirical address to wives, suggesting the Wife of Bath by implication. This sudden change is so jarring that it undermines the moral the tale appeared to be developing, compelling the reader to determine whether Griselda represents the Christian soul's obedience to God, critiques feudal power, or is simply a story that Chaucer won’t allow to settle into any single interpretation.
Key quotes from Chapter 10
“Noght oonly this, but I desire and preye / That ye assente to that I wol seye.”
Walter demands Griselda's unconditional consent before revealing what she is actually agreeing to—a moment that crystallises the tale's central power imbalance.
“I have, quod she, noght had no deel of thee / At my desport in this cas, ne never shal.”
Griselda, stripped of her fine clothes and returned to her father, quietly insists she never truly possessed the rank Walter gave her—her most piercing act of self-erasure.
“O stormy peple! Unsad and evere untrewe!”
The narrator's apostrophe to the fickle crowd who first demanded Walter marry and later celebrate his supposed new bride exposes the political volatility that frames Griselda's private suffering.