Chaucer and George Eliot

I was interested to read David Ball\u27s article on Triangular Patterns in Middlemarch (Review No. 19, 1988) with its reference to farcical triangle situations. I have been wondering about similarities and connections between Chaucer and George Eliot - Middlemarch (and Daniel Deronda) as almost Eliot\u27s answer to Chaucer\u27s \u27\u27Marriage Group of tales. The most concentrated and specific link seemed to be between the Merchant\u27s Tale and the Casaubon-Dorothea - Will triangle. Given Eliot\u27s interest in Chaucer (there are four Chaucer epigraphs in Middlemarch, three from comic contexts including one from the Wife\u27s Prologue (ch.lxv) and one from the climax of the Miller\u27s Tale (xii» it\u27s hardly possible that she wasn\u27t aware of the similarity, if only at a submerged level. The beautiful young bride - the rich, physically unattractive older man, whose incongruity as her husband is revolting! y obvious though not to him - the garden in which much of the action occurs and in which (in Middlemarch) the young man - the husband\u27s dependent - is first glimpsed. The way both January and Casaubon are reduced by physical disability Oanuary losing his sight) to far greater dependence and no longer take their wives for granted. Each one\u27s appeal to his wife\u27s loyalty, January offering May all his heritage, toun and tour , all to be signed to-morwe er sonne reste ; Casaubon more sinisterly altering his will just in case. Of course a vast distance separates Casaubon from January (and the same for the other characters) but some of the differences are piquant. For one thing the cuckolding is displaced from the sexual to the intellectual sphere. Casaubon\u27s immediate and visceral emotions of desire and jealousy centre on his Key to all Mythologies, whilst he goes to the sixteenth-century sonneteers for advice on what his sexual emotions should be (Then he thinks of the sonneteers urging him to leave behind a copy of himself, his next thought is that he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of his mythological key ch. xxix) But also the differences often take the form of comic contrast, parody by opposites. January and Casaubon are both impatient to be married - the latter because of the hindrance which courtship occasioned to the progress of his great work . January is eager to clear the house of wedding guests and set about May: Casaubon is keen to take Cella along on the honeymoon as company for Dorothea, and proves incapable even of the kisses and caresses of fatherly affection. May\u27s clothes impede January\u27s advances: He wolde of hir , he seyde, han som plesaunce, And seyde hir clothes dide him encombraunce. (1959 f.) Casaubon\u27s clothes by their formality repel Dorothea\u27s affectionate caresses: Having made his clerical toilette with due care in the morning, he was prepared only for those amenities of life which were suited to the well-adjusted stiff cravat of the period ... Chaucer interestingly anticipates George Eliot\u27s use of distorting metaphors through which characters look forward to marriage. Readers of Middlemarch need no reminders of Dorothea\u27s view of Mr. Casaubon\u27s mind as an ungauged reservoir , and the way she experiences from a pamphlet he has annotated the scent of a fresh bouquet after a dry, hot, dreary walk . And Gwendolen Harleth looks forward to marriage with Grandcourt: she wished to mount the chariot and drive the plunging horses herself, with a spouse at her side who would fold his arms and give her his countenance without looking ridiculous