The reader should keep in mind that the idea in one tale is often told to repay another. Thus, because the Reeve is upset over the Miller’s tale about a carpenter, the Reeve tells a tale whereby a miller is ridiculed and repaid for his cheating.
Both tales deal with a seduction within the sanctity of the hearth (or household): In The Miller’s Tale, only the young wife is seduced. In The Reeve’s Tale, however, both the daughter and the wife are “swyved” (screwed) by the young students. As in The Miller’s Tale, a rough sort of poetic justice is meted out. The miller intends to cheat the students and ridicules their education when he tells them to try to make a hotel out of his small bedroom. During the course of the night, the students do, indeed, made a type of hotel (house of prostitution) out of his house. Furthermore, the tale includes wonderful medieval puns: John and Alan talk of the grinding of their meal in covertly sexual terms: “Grinding” or “grinding corn” was common fourteenth-century London slang for sexual intercourse (the Wife of Bath also talks of bread and grinding in the prologue to her tale).
The natures of The Miller’s Tale and The Reeve’s Tale again testify to the differences in their personalities. The Reeve, who in The Prologue is described as “old and choleric and thin,” tells a tale that reeks of bitterness and is less funny than The Miller’s Tale, partly because the Miller is a boisterous and jolly person.
