Another Medieval Marriage

Much of the work on my dissertation focuses on the romance Guy of Warwick. The work has provided me with yet another medieval model of marriage, but this time with a few more added questions.

As a young man, Guy falls in love with the king's daughter, Felice. He goes to her and tells her that he loves her, but she rebuffs him. She's a princess, he a mere retainer's son. When he seeks her attentions again, she tells him that she will accept his love only if he becomes the greatest knight in the world.

Guy spends the next seven years traveling in Continental Europe and the Middle East winning tournaments and defending good against evil. He finally returns as the most renowned and talented knight in the world. He marries Felice, the most beautiful and intelligent woman in the world. They are the perfect couple.

Up to this point, the romance perfectly captures my ideal for marriage. Guy's love for Felice forces him to be better, striving to earn her love. It isn't just that he's showing off. He can't just appear to be the best knight, but must become the best knight--with all the qualities of courtliness, moral strength, and chivalry that go with the title.

A subtle allegorical note makes the romance even more astute. Felice's name means "happiness." Medieval philosophers recognized happiness as the greatest good of human life. She's not only the perfect woman, but the greatest good which Guy can ever attain in this life. Who wouldn't love that image of marriage? Guy's marriage to Felice represents a man who has worked hard to become perfectly happy.

But that happiness isn't enough for the romance writer, or for Guy. Just two weeks after they marry, Guy walks alone along the parapet of his castle, staring at the stars. He suddenly realizes what a fool he has been, working all his life for the sake of Felice rather than for the sake of Christ. So he leaves Felice, simply packs up and walks out on a pilgrimage which will consume the rest of his life. He's gone to seek God--Felice and earthly happiness are left by the wayside.

Felice, left sobbing on her own in her husband's extended absence, struggling to do good on her own: the most terrifying image of marriage I can imagine. She's been tossed aside by a husband who goes to seek a greater good. Their marriage has been insufficient. It hasn't brought Guy any closer to God. What a nightmare!

So the romance left me wondering: how realistic is it to expect marriage to help me be better? Why are there so few married saints? Is it really that hard to be married and holy, so hard that Guy had to leave Felice?

Adam and I want to commit ourselves to a life of doing good and seeking God together. I can't imagine the pain it would cause both of us if either struck out on his own her own. We hope our felicity will lie in our marriage to each other and, in loving each other, we can grow closer to God.

Blogging: A Moral Question

A friend of mine asked me today whether I thought "the sudden and dramatic explosion" of blogs was "a good thing." His question tapped into a issue I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the past few days. What is the value of keeping a blog?

We all know that blogs come in all shapes and sizes. Some make us more aware of the world around us. Others are simply fun. And some are stream-of-consciousness journals, unedited accounts of those willing to bare their souls for the world to see. All of us are asserting ourselves in a vast, world-wide medium, competing for our moment on the LCD screen. What's one more drop in a pond that vast?

In the end, I guess I just like stories. I like to read them, to study them, to tell them, and to write them. Stories mean something. They gives us a vocabulary for understanding our own lives. Sometimes, just reading a story can liberate us, set us free to think about our selves and our experiences in ways we never thought possible. They help us to step outside ourselves, to see our actions in the stories' characters, helping us to understand who and what we are.

Stories, too, shape the narratives of the lives we lead. What teenage girl hasn't pined away for a great unrequited love just because that's what teenaged girls do in stories? Better yet, what child hasn't whispered "I think I can" to herself the first time she rides a bicycle? And what Dickens reader has read the final scene of A Tale of Two Cities without the instant to go and do some "far better thing" of his own?

Best of all, a story has its own, external existence. Romeo and Juliet is timeless because of what it shares with no many stories of tragic love, both real and fictional. Dante's Commedy remains relevant because a struggle with faith is a common human experience. Hundreds of stories get retold on paper and on the stage of the world around us every day. We share the narratives that run through our lives with billions of other people in human history. No two people share the same narrative threads, but those threads create a vast and intricate web connecting all of human history. That's why reading really can make us more human. We all have our own stories. But we are never truly alone because there is never a new story.

So ...and Enide is my attempt to tell my own story--a story I share with hundreds of other people, but told in a way that's uniquely my own. My blog is my quest to find others like me who share tales of prince-like lovers or of conquering their own personal monsters. It's my quest to shape my own engaged, and later, married life into the patterns of Enide, Jo March, or even my parents--patterns that work. And it's my quest to share my story with people still writing their own stories in the hope it will help them understand their own.

No, I don't think that "the sudden and dramatic explosion" of blogs is "a good thing." Or at least not necessarily. In fact, my blog--my story--may not mean what I would like it to mean to anyone else but me. Still, I do believe there is a value in people telling their stories in a medium free from the struggle to be profitable or trendy. And whether they are interesting or not, stories almost always have a value. I hope you, as a reader, continue to find some value in mine.

Honest Blog

As you may have noticed, I've been doing more and more reading at Wedding Bee. They've got a nice balance of bits-and-bobs posts about wedding planning and serious posts about "marriage planning," so to speak.

This post really spoke to me. The blogger's concern about how her own personal failings might affect her marriage seem really familiar.

Sometimes I just want a knight. I want to be saved. I want to be needed and wanted and adored. I want someone to think of me first. I want someone else to figure things out. I want to be cherished. I want someone to come to my rescue. Unfortunately, those times seem to be when my beloved wants all those things too...

I've posted about my favorite story of knighthood, Erec and Enide nore comprehensively before. Erec and Enide are lovers in a medieval French romance. Erec wins a tournament, defends Enide's honor, and they are both happily married. But, years later, Erec discovers that Enide doesn't think he's quite the man he once was. Together, they set out on a grand quest to prove Erec's prowess. Along the way, they learn many valuable lessons about themselves, and each other.

Adam really is my knight, my Erec. Like Enide, I've had to gradually learn to trust him. Like Enide, I've had to learn never to undermine his masculinity by doubting his willingness or ability to take care of me.

He's had to learn lessons, too. Like Erec, he's had to learn that simply being a masculine hero isn't enough. Like Erec, he's had to learn that I'm not just his lover--I'm his partner.

But perhaps the most important lesson is the one we've learned together: even though they have different needs and desires they don't always understand, Erec and Enide are always best when they're putting their lover ahead of themselves. We both want to be loved and cherished in our own special way. We'll be happiest when we do that for each other.

Another Medieval Wedding Night

Again, I hope I'm not scandalizing anyone. But I'm really struck by these beautiful, and often subtle, descriptions. The story of Havelock the Dane survives in an English Romance, Havelok the Dane, and a French lai, Lai d'Haveloc. Havelock is the rightful heir to the Danish throne. However, his father is murdered and he has to be secreted out of the country before he can be executed. Although he takes up a place as a scullion, he grows up to be a strong, honorable man--what else could he do, being of royal blood? And just to prove he is royal , every night when he goes to sleep, a flame rises from his mouth due to the "excess heat" of his body. In the French version, Havelock's kindness and willingness to please makes the unknown kitchen servant a laughing stock. A dishonest steward marries the heir to the English throne to him to embarass her. She's now the queen of the cooking pots, he says. I really love the description of their wedding night:

To disgrace and dishonour her, Edelsi [the steward] made her sleep with him that night. When they were both brought to bed, she felt greatly ashamed of him, and he much more so for her [i.e. "on her behalf," not ashamed of her]. He lay down and went to sleep; he did not want her to see the flame that issued from him.

The story goes on:

But later they trusted each other so much, from words and looks, that he loved her and lay with her, as he should have done with his wife.

In a genre largely regarded as sexist, dominated by domineering men, we have a poignant account of two shy people too embarrassed to consumate their marriage. Even though they're wed, they wait until their in love before they join each other as man and wife. He has to learn self-confidence; and she has to learn to like him for who he is. I think that's very beautiful.

I'm quoting from Judith Weiss's anthology, The Birth of Romance. You can also read more about Havelock in Middle English Verse Romances.

Medieval Wedding Nights

At the risk of sounding a bit risque, I've been struck by the beauty and discretion of a number of medieval romances and their accounts of a knight's first night with his lady. Erec and Enide itself has what I think is the most beautiful:

When they were left alone in the room, they paid homage to each member. The eyes, which channel love and send the message to the heart, renewed themselves with looking, for whatever they saw greatly pleased them. After the message from the eyes came the sweetness, worth far more, of the kisses that bring on love; they both sampled that sweetness and refreshed their hearts within, so that with great difficulty they drew apart. Kissing was their first game. The love between the two of them made the maiden more bold: she was not afraid of anything; she endured all, whatever the cost. Before she arose again, she had lost the name of maiden; in the morning she was a new lady.

The sweetest part of the Erec and Enide account is the emphasis on waiting and anticipation. The deferment has made the reward far greater.

I'll keep my eye out for similiarly nice passages. Many of them, obviously, are about illicit liasons with lovers--not quite what I'm going for in a blog about marriage.

I quote Erec and Enide from Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes, translated by Carleton W. Carroll.