Unfaithful Love
The Heptameron and The Miller’s Tales have both similarities and differences between them. In both of these, it tells of a cuckold. A cuckold defined is a married man whose wife has been unfaithful to him; where the wife has many partners. In “Story Eight” of The Heptameron, the husband was unaware of allowing his wife to sleep with his friend. And in The Miller’s Tales, the wife of the carpenter also cheats on her husband with another guy living in the same place, Nicholas. There are several differences separating these two stories about unfaithful love. One difference is the way each of the husbands acted towards their wives and another difference is there living environments and how it pertained to their situations.
First, the husbands acted differently towards their wives. In The Miller’s Tale, the carpenter had recently become married to his wife. She was young and he was in love with her. “He tried to keep her close as in a cage” (Chaucer 2070). The situation was destined to be a story of cuckold. She had also mentioned to Nicholas that her husband was very jealous of her. The wife also tried to deny him trying to make love with her at first and then in the end gave in and made an effort to get with him.
In “Story Eight” of The Heptameron, the husband loved his wife, but did not realize the opportunity he had left open for his friend to sleep with his wife. His wife did not sleep with another man intentionally. The room was dark and she was unaware of who she was with. Also, by the end of the night, he ended up with her ring which is how her husband figured out that he had slept with her.
Another difference between the two stories is their living environments and where the affairs took place. In The Miller’s Tale, the story took place in the rich husband’s house in Oxford. Nicholas lived with the husband as a student and decided to take advantage of his wife there in his own home. In the end a plan was mastered between the wife...