Who, if Anyone, Wears the Pants?
Love is a complicated emotion. In fact, try as they might, most people cannot give a solid definition as to what love is without falling into a stream of metaphors. The Lais by Marie de France holds twelve stories about people who experience love. However, not every story exhibits a true or healthy love. The acceptance of love is judged in this collection of stories by the interactions between the main lovers and the representation of women. To be considered an appropriate love, there are a few rules. The love must be the most important value to the lovers but cannot result in them harming those unfortunately involved or become a way to achieve a goal outside of love, the two genders must have equal standing in their relationship in terms of devotion and acting on their love, and both parties must be willing to sacrifice for love.
The story of “Guigemar” is about a man who comes across a ship that takes him to a foreign land where he falls in love with the queen who was locked up in a tower by her jealous husband. They spend over a year together before he must leave, whereupon she ties his shirt up in knots, he gives her a chastity belt, then two years later she leaves her husband by boat. She becomes hostage to a man named Meriaduc and thus Guigemar has to fight and destroy him to regain his lover. (pages 30-55) In this story, Guigemar and the queen have a true love. While she was married when they met, no malicious action was ever taken on the husband. When Meriaduc tried to prevent the love however, he met a tragic end as Marie de France, who is an active character in all her stories, points out that love is number one. While separate, Guigemar and the women remained faithful to each other through the chastity belt and the knotted shirt. Unlike her husband, Guigemar did not force the queen to live his way and so it was a mutual desire for their relationship to act out as it did. Both characters acted upon their love. Guigemar fought Meriaduc for her freedom while she actively refused other male attempts and escaped her husband for love.
Love is the driving force behind the actions in these stories, whether that love is purely physical or legitimate. In “Equitan”, the king falls in love with his seneschal’s wife because she is very beautiful. She refuses his advances until he gives her complete control in their relationship. She convinces him to kill her husband so that they can be together but their lust for each other overwhelms them so they ruin their own plan by having sex. They then die the way that they intended the seneschal to, a boiling bath. (pages 60-69) “Whoever wants to hear some sound advice can profit from this example: he who plans evil for another may have that evil rebound back on him.” (page 68, 307-310) This story illustrates that while love is considered very important, it must be a true love and there can be no intention of harm. The seneschal was described as very necessary, useful, and loyal to his king. He took care of a plethora of the affairs of the king’s possessions and so the decision to kill him was more unjustifiable than it was to begin with. The seneschal’s wife was obsessed with control and plotted against her husband after her power over the king became at risk. She also was not willing to make the appropriate sacrifice when it was revealed that the king needed a spouse. All of these observations reveal that the two lovers did not have a true love and thus deserved their end.
To show the correct course of action that the seneschal’s wife should have taken in “Equitan", the next story, “Le Fresne” is about twins who separate at birth and the one that gets abandoned is left at a church where Gurun meets and falls in love with her. They have an affair and live in Gurun’s house until he has to marry La Codre. She then dutifully acts as a servant in his household until it is revealed that she is the sister of La Codre so the marriage is annulled and Le Fresne is allowed to marry Gurun. (pages 73-87) La Fresne was willing to remain Gurun’s mistress when it was deemed that she not marriage material and did so without complaint. This example of self sacrifice shows the extent of her devotions. He gave a lot of money to the abbey that she lived at to receive “Lord’s Rights” to visit then take her home. It is even mentioned that she is the one he wanted to marry and while everyone loved her but they deemed that she was not marriageable and so he had to accept another’s hand. When the seneschal’s wife acted to preserve the power in the affair that they had, she died. When Le Fresne accepted her fate and still remained true to Gurun, she was able to get what she wanted. These stories were told in sequence so that it was easy to view them as “what not to do” and “what to do”.
What if someone found out a horrible secret about their spouse and the news was so shocking that they became so repulsed that they decided to leave their spouse? Apparently, that is not acceptable behavior for in “Bisclavret” the wife does just that to her werewolf husband by bribing a knight that loves her into stealing her husband’s manhood. However, the wolf finds the king and wins his heart so that when the traitorous wife and knight come to visit, the king banishes them and the wolf becomes man once more. (pages 92-100) The Baron’s wife did not love the knight but rather used him because she was repulsed by her husband. Furthermore, before she knew the Baron’s secret, she loved him. Because of her frivolity in love, she and all of her daughters lived their lives without noses in exile. It was found in learning the truth that her devotions towards her husband were only skin-deep so she chose the knight as a new partner because he was easy to manipulate and fully man. The Baron’s wife did not love.
Marie de France mentions in “Lanval” that love over rules laws, social etiquette, and duty. Lanval was a great knight who was lonely because he was envied. He ended up meeting a maiden who promised him extreme riches and love as long as she was his secret. However, he ended up spilling his story after Guinevere, King Arthur’s wife, tried to seduce him. King Arthur was not amused and a trial was held, the verdict being release if he had proof but banishment if not. Even though the maiden was under no obligation to help Lanval after he broke his promise, because he broke it due to his love for her, she saved him and stole him away. (pages 105-123) Lanval chose to remain faithful to his lover rather than keeping her, showing that his love for his maiden was more than just physical or beneficial to him. This sacrifice in combination with his extreme honesty during the trial justifies their love as he does not try to cheat his way out of banishment but rather remains devoted.
Families always make love complicated. In “Les Deux Amanz”, the king refuses to allow his daughter to marry so he forms a plan where his daughter can only be married off if the suitor can achieve this great physical feat of climbing Pitre while holding his daughter. Unfortunately, a count’s son falls in love with her so he decides to brave the mountain. She gathers a potion that will give him strength during the climb but he refuses so when he reaches the top, he dies. She dies shortly after from sadness. (pages 126-133) The boy was in love with the girl. This was evident in his conviction to brave the mountain to have the right to marry her. However, he was prideful and wanted to be viewed as magnificent so he chose glory over his love. Her love for him was pure. She did not want to marry only because she did not want to take the risk. When he decided to brave the mountain, she starved herself to lessen his difficulty. After he died from climbing, her sadness was so severe that she also perished. In these regards, their love was not true love because while they both loved each other, he chose pride first.
When is justifiable to murder your husband when you love someone else? Apparently, they must be the cause of the lovers’ downfall. In “Yonec” a woman is locked up by her husband so she wishes for a lover and one appears. However, she lacked moderation in summoning him so they were discovered and he died. The woman made her husband forget the ordeal and gave birth to her bastard, Yonec. When he was grown, she told him the truth of his birth as she was told to by her lover’s prophecy then promptly died. Yonec beheaded his stepfather, becoming lord. (pages 137-152) The woman loved her knight but she forgot to be careful so she caused his death. In dying, he told her how his revenge would be brought about and it happened as he promised because their love was true. Yonec was willing to avenge the death of his true father because he realized, “…the pain and the grief that they suffered for love.” (page 152, 553-554) The knight sacrificed his life for the woman and she dutifully followed his words until she was finally able to join with him once more.
What does it mean to truly love someone? In “Laustic”, a man loves his neighbors’s wife and she feels the same. They would meet at the windows of their houses to talk, give each other gifts, and admire their physique. When the husband becomes irritable due to her constant presence at the window, he kills the nightingale whom he believes is the reason for her nightly absences. When she lost her reason to visit the window, she let her love know by giving him the dead bird and he kept it with him forever. (pages 155-159) The husband was the one stopping their love from becoming anything more or allowing it to continue. However, no action is taken on the husband for being an obstacle in their love because he never directly prevented it. This proves that their love was pure and that they were both willing to sacrifice the ability to be together to continue a greater devotion. When the man kept the bird in the end, it was his way of remaining faithful to a love he could never materialize.
Love is very patient in “Milun”. In the story, a knight falls in love with the daughter of a nobel man. She gets pregnant, the child is given to her sister, the knight leaves for fame, she gets married off, and then he returns to find out that they are now neighbors. They spend twenty years sending secret messages to each other through a swan until there is a rival for the knight’s abilities in tournaments, ‘The Peerless One’. The knight goes off to fight him and discovers that he is the knight’s son. They decide to kill the woman’s husband so that they can be reunited as a family only to discover his death upon their return. (pages 162-177) The knight and the woman are both really dedicated to each other as is shown by their long term devotion. The decision to kill the husband so that they could be reunited as a family is not considered negatory in this circumstance because his death was not caused by them nor was it to be done with malice or for the purpose of ‘winning’. If the knight was malicious enough to force their love to elope then he would have used his skills and done so long ago instead of waiting until he found his son.
Just like Penelope from The Odyssey, some women cannot make up their minds regarding love. “Chaitevel” is a story about a woman who cannot decide who she loves more out of her four suitors. Because she is unwilling to make a decision, three of them die and the last becomes gravely injured during a tournament. She lost all of them because she could not choose just one. (pages 181-188) The men that were fighting for her were dedicated and sacrificed their time for her love. However, since she had all the power to choose who to have, their love was mocked unintentionally. She never made a choice or sacrificed the opportunity to have the others for just one of them and that gamble was too high for her inability to resolve this situation made it so that it had to resolve itself.
“Chevrefoil” is very similar to “Laustic” in that the main character does not get the woman because the timing and the other characters made it so. Tristam loves the king’s wife so he is banished but when she travels to attend a feast, he makes himself known to her on a hazel branch. They have a short conversation about how Tristam can win the affections of the king again but it ends with them parting ways. (pages 190-193) The love that Tristam and the queen have is bittersweet. Their love is true but their circumstances fail to allow fruition because neither of them have the opportunity to act upon that love. In this way, their love is not the most important value to either of them and this is shown more clearly when they reunited because they spent their time discussing how to win the king’s favor instead of rejoicing in their love.
As long as everyone accepts a sin made through love then it does not matter that the sin was made. This lesson was in “Eliduc” whereupon a man is slandered and thus banished so he goes on a trip to a foreign land and falls in love with a woman even though he promised his wife that he would not. The woman, Guilliadun, loves him too but she does not know that he is married. They pursue a courtly love and after a year he returns home because the king needs his services. He decides to go back and retrieve Guilliadun but on the way home she learns of his marriage and faints dead. His wife, Guideluec, learns of his lover and witnesses resurrecting weasels so she revives Guilliadun. Eliduc learns of his love’s awakening and rejoices. Guideluec sees his love for the girl and decides to join a covent as a nun so that they can be wed. After several years of marriage, Eliduc and Guilliadun join the church as well. (pages 196-229) Guilliadun and Guideluec both had true love for Eliduc. Guilliadun showed her devotion but allowed Eliduc to not act upon it during their year together. When she learned of his betrayal, she died. Guideluec sacrificed her rights to her husband when she learned of his love of another. She viewed love as such an important part of life that when she was no longer the love of her husband’s life, she let him go. Eliduc on the other hand, followed the example of “Chaitevel” a little too strongly. He spent a year trying to decide if he loved his mistress or his wife more. After he lost his mistress, he decided that he loved her more but it was too late. If it was not for the graces of his wife, he would have had a melancholy existence. However, his love for Guilliadun was indeed true even if it did take him a while to realize so their lives were happy. Also the conflicts revolving around their Christianity for engaging in this behavior was further relieved when they eventually turned away from human love to God, which in Marie de France’s opinion, resolved all conflicts.
Everyone experiences love in a different way with different people. Sometimes this love is purely physical, other times platonic. Love is not limited to circumstances, distance, or law. Marie de France emphasized the importance of all kinds of love and the roles that they contribute in society in The Lais. While there are many different ways of representing love, a healthy love, a true love, a justifiable love must be mutual, be devoid of hate, have acts of devotion, and must rise above the circumstances that it is limited in. The twelves lais written in this piece of literature show examples of loves that fail, but more importantly, of love that succeeds.
Works Cited
De France, Marie. The Lais of Marie De France. Trans. Robert W. Hanning and Joan M. Ferrante. New York: Dutton, 1978. Print.
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