Marie de France

Marie de France

Marie wrote in Norman French, and almost certainly lived in England during the 12^th Century.

Those of you who remember your history of England will remember what this means: she was part of the upper-class nobility who came in and took over England after the Norman Invasion in 1066, running the courts, schools, and legal system, while the English-speaking lower class did all the lower-class work.

Thus, she speaks Latin, French, and (since we are getting near 1200) English, but Norman French seems to be her mother tongue, and it is Norman French in which she writes her lais.

We know very little else about her, though much has been speculated – that she was an abbess, that she was of noble blood, that she was a member of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s Court.

What we do know about her is that she wrote and that she made famous and popular the lais (also known as the lays or lay).

The lais is a poetic form, a short rhymed tale, usually concerning romance and courtly love, often with supernatural or mythic elements.

So in Bisclavret, for instance, we see a werewolf – a supernatural element – and mythic elements (the one forbidden thing, the beautiful woman married to the beast); but we also have a romantic tale at the core, with a wicked wife who betrays her husband, though perhaps for a reason we can understand: she has married a man who is not what she expected. He is, after all, the Beast.

This is the Beauty and the Beast story. In most versions of this myth, the women transform the beast, because that is the job of women (at least according myth): women must, through the power of our love, take men (who myths see as monsters) and make them into humans. We have to wonder, or at least I have to wonder, who creates these myths.

Notice that in Marie de France’s tale, this myth is subverted. This is almost always the case with Marie de France. Her beautiful woman refuses any attempt to transform the beast. Rather, she finds a new man, one who isn’t a monster, and kicks the beast to the curb.

Well, this doesn’t end well. It develops that though her husband was, apparently, a beast, he is actually a gentleman.

We can tell this how? Because – as Confucius might have told her! – he has good manners. The fact that he wears clothes might have been her clue. That is the difference, after all, between a true beast and a gentleman. And her new man is a beast, which we know because he conspires with her to steal and deceive: this is very bad manners indeed.

Note how the King can tell that Bisclavret is not a beast, despite his looks: how he acts, his good manners. Notice how at Court, the werewolf won’t dress in front of others. Good manners!

The Beauty and the Beast story is, in effect, the true story of all relationships. We all marry a dream and discover a Beast. If we are adults, we grow up and accept reality: we come to love the Beast (which is what the myth is about). If we are children, we reject the Beast, find another dream, and marry that (and then reject him or her when he or she is also revealed to be a Beast).

Notice the Beast bites off the nose of the bad Wife – a punishment passed down to the women’s daughters. Your sins don’t just harm you.

Yonec 

Here, the wicked spouse is the husband, who is wicked for a reason that may not translate to the modern world.

In the Medieval World, old men often married young women – and by young, I mean very young. Men of fifty and sixty years of age would marry fourteen and fifteen year old girls, especially when those girls were heiresses, but sometimes just because their previous wives had died off (often in childbirth) and they wanted another woman.

Social disapproval of this behavior was high – no one actually thought this was correct behavior, is what I am saying – and yet no one stopped these men from marrying these very young girls. Because patriarchy, basically. 

Girls were property, and if these men had the money to buy them from their fathers, and their fathers wanted to sell them (and yes, this was how it worked) then it was no one’s business but the two men involved.

So here in Yonec, Marie is showing us the result of that transaction – an old man, who is not able to impregnate his wife (it is implied he is not able to do so because he is impotent due to his advanced age); unable to sexually satisfy his young wife; and yet who is insanely jealous, so much so that he locks his wife in a tower (with another woman to keep her there).

The woman-locked-in-a-tower is another mythic trope, obviously. Why a tower, you might ask?

               

If it’s longer than it’s wide, it’s a phallus;

                If it’s longer than it it’s wide, it’s a phallus;

                If it’s taller than it’s wide, then we lay it on its side:

                Now it’s longer than it’s wide and it’s a phallus.

Who gets her out of this tower? Well, as you’ll notice, in every mythic tale you can think of, including this one, it’s a fella.

That is, at least until we reach the 21^st century, the woman-locked-in-a-tower never rescues herself: she must be rescued by a penis a man.

This time, in this tale, the man who rescues her is also a shapeshifter.

It’s interesting to notice the shapes he takes – he’s a bird at first; but then he is a woman. Her, specifically. But even so, this is interesting, since men don’t usually become women, and certainly not as casually and without comment as this man does.

Notice too how casually and with comment our young woman’s adultery is presented to us. We are not expected to disapprove of her relationship with the shape-shifting king, or of her ultimate deception of her husband – quite the contrary. This is, in part, Marie de France subverting the trope; in part, it is another trope, that of Courtly Love.

In the end, when her son (the fruit of her relationship with the shape-shifter) kills her husband, the man that (for all he has ever known) has been his father, this is presented as a good outcome.

What’s Marie telling us with this tale? What’s the message, in other words, about women who have been married, against their will, to old men? What ought they to do? What should we (as a society) encourage them to do? (This is an especially interesting tale, I have to say, if she was, in fact, an Abbess.)

What is Courtly Love? It’s an idea of love invented in the Royal Court of Eleanor of Aquitaine during the 12^th century. We get our notion of romantic love directly from Courtly Love – previous to this, the concept that people who were in relationships together would behave in the way we do now, courting one another (“courting” comes straight from courtly love!) and feeling passionately for one another and giving each other presents and so on would have seemed very odd indeed.

In Courtly Love, as it was originally conceived, a high ranking married woman is courted by lower ranking younger man. The difference in rank and age is imported, because this leaves the choice in the hands of the woman, and that is essential to Courtly Love. (This is another concept we have borrowed from Courtly Love: that a woman has the right to consent.)

The younger man courts his lady, bringing gifts, writing poems, doing deeds of bravery, and doing whatever he can to prove to her that he is indeed a worthy lover. She might respond with small tokens of her affection – a glove, a scarf, a flower. Nothing very pricey, though, and no sex!

Their love must be secret. (Because she’s married, but also because this makes the love more exciting.)

Lots of drama. He dies a dozen times a day from being apart from her, and so does she. Swoon, swoon. They are both sick from love. One or two events (filled with drama) where he thinks she’s been unfaithful to him or she thinks he has. But love makes them both better people – he’s a better knight, slaughtering dozens of people in battle and doing good to the poor in town, she’s a better lady, more beautiful and wise than ever, etc, etc.

This goes on for months. Maybe years.

Finally (maybe) sex.

Then – more drama – they are torn apart. Either he dies, or she is taken away by her husband, or something else happens. But the introduction of sex always foreshadows the end of the relationship.

You can see here, in Yonec, how Marie de France is using Courtly Love as well as subverting it. There is very little drama previous to the sex; and there is a lot of sex. The sex does not lead to the end of the relationship. It is the husband’s jealousy which destroys their happiness, as well as his own life.

Her message is not that sex is bad, and that therefore people should avoid it. It is (perhaps) that jealousy is bad; or perhaps that old men should not marry young women; that doom will follow if they do.

Le Fresne

This is an odd tale. Twin sons are born to one woman, who is mocked (why?) by another woman. Notice that one of these sons is given away. (Why?) Notice that even though the husband knows the woman is loyal, she still kept practically imprisoned. (Why?) What is Marie’s point with this prologue.

Then – this isn’t even the tale. The tale is the next part: two more children, girls, are born: and!

So – What’s the story (or Marie) trying to tell us about women? About marriage?

For instance – Little Ash grows up and the prince comes courting.

 (1) Why doesn’t he marry her straight off?

(2) Since he won’t marry her straight off, why does she go with him?

(3) Since she does go with him and agree to be his concubine, why then does the story give us the happy ending? Show us that it’s a good thing for her to do this? 

What sort of ethos is this for Marie to be promoting, IOW? Is there something about Ash that we should admire?

(4) What is up with the prince bringing the twin sister Hazel in as a bride? And Ash being okay with that? And the mother – who wanted to murder little Ash as an infant, now recognizing her daughter via the ring and the blanket, being, more or less, the hero here?