SOURCE: Black, Iris. “The Theatricality of Marriage in Two Late Medieval Narrative Texts.” Dalhousie French Studies 56 (fall 2001): 6-16.

[In this essay, Black compares the theatrical and misogynistic aspects of Deschamps's Le Miroir de mariage and the anonymous .XV. joies de Mariage.]

THE THEATRICALITY OF MARRIAGE IN TWO LATE MEDIEVAL NARRATIVE TEXTS

Written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century,¹ the two texts which we will examine in this article both feature scene-like vignettes of married life. The Miroir de mariage of Eustache Deschamps and the anonymous .XV. joies de mariage² provide satirical explorations of marriage in their era, based upon traditional misogynistic ideas and a more temporal misogamy, which often departs from its ascetic and philosophical antecedents in its attempts to dissuade would-be spouses from matrimony through example rather than authority (Wilson and Makowski 9-10).

Although both works are narrative rather than dramatic in form, they expose theatricality as an integral part of “real” marriage. Theatricality is not only present in the experiences of the protagonists; these texts also borrow devices from the theatre as structuring principles, so that the reader, medieval or modern, is able to enjoy the spectacle of marriage from a comfortable distance, in the company of the author and sometimes those of his characters who either claim superior knowledge of the institution (allegorical figures in Deschamps) or control its day-to-day realities (most often, the wife—in both texts).

What is meant by theatricality? At its most fundamental, it may be defined as “the theatrical quality of a dramatic work; conformity of this work to the characteristics and rules of theatrical art.” It may also be a quality of any work which “presents characteristics of the theatre”; in other words, which contains elements specifically “conceived to produce an effect on [a collective] public.”³

What, then, might such elements be? Josette Féral (289-300) has identified three characteristics which constitute the essential foundation of all performance:

1. the manipulation of the body;
2. the manipulation of space; and
3. the relation between artist and spectators, spectators and work, work and artist.

All three principles were certainly as evident in medieval theatre as they are in modern works.

Theatricality can also be a quality of works not intended for representation on stage. In Chaucerian Theatricality, John M. Ganim calls it “a governing sense of performance, an interplay among the author's voice, his fictional characters, and his immediate audience” (5) (another version of Féral's multi-faceted relation between work, artist and spectators). Any late medieval court offered a certain intrinsic theatricality. For Ganim, Chaucer's poetry is “part of a system of signs and gestures, decorations, clothing, and manners, all of which proclaim the unique character of the court's world” (7). Ganim further points out that theatricality can be a feature of “framed” narrative; that the frame, rather than being stable, independent and dominant, is in fact dynamic: stories can be framed or “reframed, reset, changed by process of presentation” (5).

The two texts to be explored here have many aspects that can be considered theatrical, according to the above notions. We will look at overall structure and the links it creates between author, “actors,” and “audience”; at the use of dialogue as imitation of life and at the same time normative force, turning individual experience into a multiperformance, inexorable script; at the pervasive presence of manipulation and deception. We will also examine the sense of spectacle that infuses both texts: costumes, food and drink, specific gestures. And finally we will consider how these texts seem to transplant performed works such as farce into “real life,” thus creating a kind of validation of farce—or perhaps confirming the farcical nature of life.

STRUCTURE

The MM [Miroir de mariage] is more explicitly “dramatic” in structure than the QJ [.XV. joies de mariage]; that is, it is entirely written as a kind of dialogue. It takes the form of an allegorical altercatio (Wilson and Makowski 123), weighing the arguments for and against marriage as presented by different personified abstractions to Franc Vouloir, depicted here as a young man who must decide whether or not to marry. The theatricality inherent in this form of presentation is simple and limited: as with much didactic allegory, Deschamps is using personifications to make the “invisible visible” and render ideas more accessible (Kay 13-14), but applied to the subject of marriage, this technique looks a little overwrought; it tends to add pomposity rather than profundity. Wilson and Makowski have called the MM a “psychomachia of reason and appetites” (150-51). There is no framing device, no solemnizing dream; the text begins with a meditation by Franc Vouloir on false and true friends, followed on cue by the appearance of four of the former, named (only in the rubric) as Desir, Folie, Servitute and Faintise. Their arguments are discredited before they have begun, by the nature implied by their names, and by Franc Vouloir's preamble (6:79-86). Similarly, Repertoire de Science's long letter against marriage is given a favourable edge by the name of the character, and by Franc Vouloir's high regard for him (37:1041 ff.). Thus the debate is skewed from the outset: wisdom and experience are against marriage.

Throughout the text, as principal allegorical speakers take turns discoursing on different aspects of marriage, a very ordinary system of human interaction is turned into a verbal pageant. Human experience is normalized, as in a universal script that does not change. The theatricality of the presentation is a matter of overt artifice; there are no startling reversals or spectacular images at this level of the text.

As with many allegorical debates, then, the drama of the governing structure has a stop-and-go quality. It can sometimes be quite dynamic, as when Folie, in section XCII, peevishly blames Franc Vouloir for his “final” decision against marriage, in a 24-line speech that contrasts with some of the more encyclopedic digressions of the rest of the text (including Franc Vouloir's own thousand-line retort to Folie, in which he rehearses all the trouble she has caused from the Fall to recent political history). Sometimes, however, the allegorical level is all but forgotten as proofs and examples furnished by the abstraction take on a more immediate, vibrant life of their own. An early example of this occurs in section XI, when Franc Vouloir has allowed himself a fantasy about his ideal woman, full of wistful subjunctives and hypothetical futures, concluding, based on the experience of others, that such a woman is nowhere on earth. At this point the text is interrupted by a burst of direct discourse from a chorus of male voices collectively defined as “chascun,” who combine present-tense vigour and specificity with an interchangeable anonymity that will underline, in both the MM and the QJ, the generality of marriage woes:

L'un dit que sa femme le tume;
L'autre dit: «Ma femme est si male,
Que je ne puis aler en gale,
En esbatement n'en deduit!»
L'autre dit: «La mienne me nuit!»
L'autre dit: «Ma femme est jalouse,
Despiteuse, felle, ayrouse;
Avoir ne puis paix a l'ostel!»
[…]
L'autre dit: «Quant des poys demande,
On me fait feves ou poureaux;
Se harenz vueil, j'ay maquereaux;
Se je di: Gardez le mesnaige,
On me faint un pelerinaige:
Lors fault aler a Saint Denis!»

(29:785-809)

While the allegorical debate itself has no frame, its methodical unfolding helps create a smooth background against which such “real-life” intrusions stand out more strikingly. Experiential theatre is superimposed on pseudo-philosophical play.

The QJ takes its organisational principles not from allegorical debate, but from a prayer, the Quinze joies de Notre Dame, which existed in several versions from the thirteenth century onward (Rychner ix). Christine de Pizan's poem on the theme is an example: in four-line stanzas, it describes a series of scenes from the apocryphal life of Mary, conjuring her help in the name of each of these “joys.” It is worth noting here the connection between theatricality and liturgy, exemplified in this case by the cadential, oral nature of the prayer. The scenes from the life of Mary to which it alludes also received both dramatic and pictorial representation in the late middle ages.⁴ In the QJ, the same scenic structure is used, the author specifically acknowledging the source of his inspiration (Prologue 102-23) and sometimes, perhaps, slyly daring a direct parody of his model.⁵

However, where the compact form of the prayer allows only the briefest of evocations of each episode in the life of the Virgin, the prose of the QJ facilitates limitless expansion on the theme of misogamy. This expansion may be evident in the content of the scenes: the fifth joy, for instance, from a starting point of a classic misalliance, goes on to expose causal links between that and the wife's infidelity, her frigidity toward her husband when thinking of her lover, her feigned warmth toward him when she wants something, her intrigues to inveigle another rich gallant into providing what neither husband nor original lover will buy, her husband's doubts and jealousy, and her taunting and bullying response in which she reminds him of her powerful friends. Expansion may equally be a feature of the way in which the scenes are presented: situations are rarely closed, but instead made up of different alternatives, with present and future-tense verbs increasing the impression of generalisation. The start of the fourth joy is one of many examples:

La quarte joye de mariage si est quant celui qui est marié a esté en son mariage et y demoure.VI. ou.VII.,.IX. ou.X. ans, ou plus ou moins, et a cincq ou six enfants […].

(4: 1-4)

In such passages, flexibility of detail (number of years married, number of children) combined with inevitability of outcome (the man grown inured to his suffering, regardless of specifics) underline the universality of the woes of marriage. It is a living drama with different staging details, but the ending is always the same.

The QJ also employs a consistent framing device as a source of coherence. The image of marriage as a net into which fish swim, attracted by easy bait, never to escape, recurs frequently throughout the text, in the Prologue and then at the beginning and/or end of most of the joies. This is in fact the third of a series of images of self-inflicted confinement with which the author begins his text, the other two being of a harsh prison (4-17) and of a bottle-necked pit used to trap wild beasts (59-66). Thus the presentation of alternative, interchangeable details is as much present in the frame as in the scenes themselves. In both cases, there is a sense of a situation which repeats itself over and over again, regardless of variation in individual instances.

The author's frequent return to his main framing device keeps the collection of joys from ever becoming a simple sequence of narratives. After following each story with amusement, we are pulled back, as audience, to a vantage point from which to appreciate fully the husband's plight—and stupidity. The worst of it, repeats the author, is that the hapless man is unaware of his suffering, and therefore his earthly penitence and martyrdom will not even count toward a better reward in the afterlife.

The frame, then, enhances theatricality in three ways: by underlining the inexorable repetition of behaviour patterns in marriage; by creating a kind of metaphorical stage (the net, in which the young man first observes apparently happy peers who have been trapped by marriage, and in which we subsequently watch him “languishing” in perfect ignorance of his own fate) where these actions are played out; and by stressing the complicity between the author and audience, as we share in his ironic distance from marriage itself.

Within the scenes, there is often a further level of direction, not by author, but by character(s), and in particular, by women. In addition to the actual manipulation and deception in which they engage, we see their planning of it, and their sharing of their lore. This is more evident in the prose of the QJ than in the verse of the MM, the former permitting easier “stage-direction” style specification. Thus in the first joy we see the wife “choosing her moment”; she consciously organizes the conditions for the type of scene she desires:

Lors regarde lieu et temps et heure de parler de sa matere a son mary, et voulentiers elles devroient parler de leurs choses especialles la ou leurs mariz sont plus subgitz et doivent estre plus enclins pour octrier, c'est ou lit, ouquel le compaignon dont j'ay parlé vieult atendre a ses delitz et plaisirs et lui semble qu'il n'a aultre chouse a faire.

(1:37-43)

After she has given birth, in the third joy, it is the turn of the neighbours, who give her specific instruction on how to cow the new father, advice which she promptly puts into practice. But it is the chambermaid, in the fifth joy, who wins the prize for best director, as she engineers a mock-ravishing of her mistress by a new suitor (“mock” because the lady only feigns her resistance) telling both parties how to behave every step of the way, and where and when to make contact.

Powerful mothers-in-law also figure prominently in several of the scenes, meddling enthusiastically whenever they deem a particular outcome to be desirable.

In fact, if the man is the fish swimming in the net, the woman often seems the fisher, tightening and loosening her grasp on her catch as she considers how she will dispose of it on each successive occasion.

DIALOGUE

Both the MM and the QJ let us hear the voices of those involved in marriage in addition to the comments of those who judge it from the outside. But in the Deschamps text, these voices rarely achieve a sustained conversational tone. In fact, the MM only very rarely features dialogue between the two protagonists in marriage; an example is in sections XXXVIII and XXXIX when, having won her freedom to wander the town (and meet her lover), the wife feigns a quarrel and reconciliation with her husband, and then convinces him that their celebratory union has resulted in a pregnancy:

«Ha! sire, Dieux bon gré en ait!
Hui m'avez un enfant fait:
Certes, je croy que suys ensainte.
Louez soit le saint et la saincte
Ou j'ay tant esté pelerine
Amen! et saincte Katerine!»

(124:3749-54)

(Of course, her real pilgrimages have been to her lover, and it is he who is the father of the child she is expecting.) Even in this sequence, the husband and wife are barely a private unit; the “chambriere engigneuse” sets up the husband's expectations and dictates his conduct.

Dialogue, in the Deschamps text, may feature snippets of realistic conversation, but these are largely taken from the public domain of marriage: people talk about it, rather than within it. We have already noted the complaints about wives as recalled early on by Franc Vouloir (784-809). A similar multiplicity of voices is invoked by Repertoire de Science as he reports the conversations of guests at lavish weddings (51:1466-78). On another occasion, the mother-in-law harangues the man for not letting her daughter go out more. The sharp tone of the lecture, recorded in the letter of Repertoire de Science (105-17:3139-3515), is periodically refreshed by other outside voices (111:3336-70). The words spoken therefore contribute to the stylized nature of theatricality in the MM; they are comparable to the lists that help portray the material conditions of married life. Marriage is a series of detailed, even cluttered tableaux, more to be casually observed than truly understood.

The QJ, with its much greater use of dialogue, does make convincing forays into the private world of husband, wife and family. Scholars have commented on the quality of natural speech achieved in the work; Rychner finds proof of this in late fourteenth-century French conversation manuals for foreigners, which offer the same use of alternative details and generalizing future-tense verbs. Both techniques, he notes, are contrary to those of straight narration (xxvii-xxix); in the QJ, they support the impression of a mise en scène of particular facets of marriage.

In the first joy, for instance, after the wife has set up the scene as she wishes, she goes on to manipulate her husband into purchasing the dress she desires. In this case, her manipulation is not noted by the author; it is conveyed purely through the words she chooses and her pacing of what turns into a series of encounters. First she feigns unwillingness to share her troubles; then she makes a first approach, comparing her poor appearance “a telle feste ou vous m'envoiastez, quene me plaisoit gueres” (7), with those of better-dressed women of similar rank. The husband counters with reminders of their practical obligations, including a lawsuit over some of the land she has brought to the marriage, and which has so far yielded little return. She replies bitterly that she knew he would respond by blaming her land; he attempts to pacify her; she carries on as the aggrieved party. If he does not have the money, she says, she cannot do anything about it, and anyway, as he well knows, she was courted by many richer men than he and chose him against the wishes of her father, and now she is the unhappiest woman alive, and so on. The quarrel, which she claims is not one, continues for several nights, and she further strengthens her position by withholding sex. The dialogue ends when he agrees to buy her the dress, though she has the last word: “Mon amy, ne dites pas une aultre foiz que je vous aye fait mettre vostre argent, car, par mon serment, je ne donne pas de robe qui soit au monde maille, mais que je soye chaudement” (208-12).

The narrator takes over to give the sorry end to this tale: the man goes into debt, and is ultimately excommunicated, and the wife has to cease all social involvement, for which she blames her husband bitterly, completely forgetting her part in the situation. The husband has to put up with the problem of the debt, but also with his wife's endless nagging, which is worse. A generic complaint by the wife, in direct speech, introduced with the phrase, “la dame va criant par la maison,” makes for a vivid illustration of her rhetoric, but it is no longer tied to the particular circumstances of the first joy.

It is the narrated conclusion that insists on the misery of the situation. The dialogue, on the other hand, has us chuckling out loud at the wife's ingenuity and the husband's gullibility. This is a scenario worthy of a modern situation comedy, and indeed the bedroom conversation, particularly at the beginning or end of a programme, is a feature of many such series. The theatricality (almost melodrama) of the wife's performance allows the audience to avoid any real sympathy for either character, and to enjoy instead the cynical message that a marriage is at the core no more than an exchange of goods and services. While the concentration on appearances is less overt here than in the Deschamps text, a true exploration of the emotional side of marriage is avoided.

Effective dialogue is not always limited to the context of such “intimate” conversation between husband and wife. The fourth joy, for example, ends with a kind of family battle in which the wife beats the husband's favourite child just to spite him, then defends her actions by claiming that the husband has no idea what she puts up with day and night. The eleventh joy features a lively exchange between a mother and her pregnant and unwed daughter, as a prelude to marrying her off to the first unsuspecting eligible suitor, certainly not the father. It all adds up to a series of glimpses of social norms of the time, never examined as serious concerns, merely displayed.

MANIPULATION AND DECEPTION

Both texts are full of examples of manipulation and deception, which are after all quintessential aspects of the theatre itself. We, the audience, are voluntarily manipulated. What we understand of the performance depends on illusion.

The MM actually presents a slightly more balanced view of who deceives whom within marriage; that is, the man, too, is encouraged to play a role. In offering advice on how to deal with a wife who is ugly, beautiful, rich or poor (all of which present special problems), Repertoire de Science urges:

Quelque chiere que femme face,
Il te fault encliner sa face.
Soit belle, laide ou difformée,
Fain qu'elle soit de toy amée.

(61:1761-64)

Only if you do this will your wife be willing to have sex! (The same idea reappears in the QJ, but with even less blame applied to the husband; lies are virtually necessary to restore peace:

Aprés convient que la chouse se repaise et convient que le bon homme commence la paix et la flete, car femme vieult tourjours estre flatee ne il n'est si grant mensonge, tant soit elle estrange, que elle ne croye tantoust, mes que ce soit a sa louenge.

[6:212-17])

However, the vast majority of role-playing is done by women—wives and others. In the MM, it begins before the marriage, when the wife pretends to be something she is not:

Qui prandra femme, cilz l'ara
Toute tele qu'il la prandra,
Soit juene, vieille, salle ou nette,
Sotte, boiteuse ou contrefette,
Humble, courtoise ou gracieuse,
Belle ou borgne ou malicieuse,
Car par devant se couverra;
Mais ses meurs après ouverra,
Et de près les fera sentir
A tel qui en sera martir;
Lors fera apparoir ses vices.

(53:1538-49)

Later, she employs a ruse to be allowed to go on a pilgrimage: she deliberately makes her children cry, and when her husband tells her to shut them up, she claims that she cannot; they are sick and she must go on a pilgrimage to restore them to health (100:2973-79). The pilgrimage itself is a sham; she is really going to meet her lover, who will eventually make her pregnant.

This crude scenario receives a more sophisticated treatment in the eighth joy of the QJ; nonetheless, pilgrimage is linked to hollow display. It takes a preliminary set of performances to get the wife onto one. Convinced by her friends of the need to make a spring outing (37-40), she comes home looking distressed, the simple turn of phrase “fait mauvese chiere” (56; my italics) aiding the impression that she has purposely chosen her expression. “Sire, fait elle, je suy corrocee car l'enfant est trop malade [it is, in fact, perfectly healthy]. Il est, fait elle, si chault que c'est merveille et m'a dit la nourrice qu'il a deux jours qu'il ne print la mamelle, mais elle ne l'osoit dire” (58-63). Thus she invents, in rapid succession, an illness, its symptoms, and a reason for the nurse's silence about it. The softhearted husband believes her. But she waits till they are in bed before adding the pilgimage angle: the child, she says, is sick because she has not yet fulfilled the vow she made to visit Notre Dame du Puy and de Rocamadour, at the time of his difficult birth. The husband assures her that God is aware of their good intentions, but she insists that she will make the trip, despite its hardships: “Je ameroye mieulx le souffretage d'ailleur.” In reality, of course, all the suffering, financial and physical, will be borne by the man (8:37-84).

Throughout the QJ, there are explicit references to women playing a part. In the second joy, the young wife eager to get out more may perhaps need a dress or jewels “pour jouer bien le personnage,” that is, to attract more attention at the public event she will attend. When she is sure she can go, she pretends not to want to (2:32-48). In the third joy, the neighbours “joueront bien le personnage” in order to domineer the already overwhelmed husband until he is as meek as a shepherd (3:252-58). In the fifth joy, where the principal subject is adultery, deception is everywhere, as, for example, when the woman wakes in a sweat from a dream of her lover and pretends she is sick. The husband covers her gently as she laughs to herself. In the sixth, she again feigns illness so as not to entertain her husband's colleagues. In the seventh, she re-enacts the Potiphar's wife story, creating enmity between her husband and a loyal friend who has informed him of a flirtation in which she is engaged. In the eleventh, the mother instructs her daughter on how to look, talk and listen in order to capture the suitor who will save her honour. The girl continues to play her assigned role, more or less well, up to and including the wedding night:

La nuit vient et sachez que la mere a bien introduite la fille et enseignee qu'elle lui donne de grans estorses et qu'elle guische en maintes manieres ainxin que une pucelle doit faire, et lui a bien aprins la dame que, quant elle sentira faulser la piece, qu'elle giete ung cry d'alaine suppireux auxi come une personne qui se met a coup tout nu en l'eaue froide jusques aux mamelles et ne l'a pas acoustumé. Ainxin le fait et joue tres bien son personnage, quaril n'est rien si sachant come est femme en ce qu'elle vieult faire touchant la matiere secrete.

(11:236-47)

Each time the idea of dissimulation is woven into a scene, its theatricality comes sharply into focus.

SPECTACLE AND GESTURE

Though both texts provide examples of each, the MM furnishes more in the way of static tableaux, while the QJ lays emphasis on precise action, especially to complete the games of deception noted above.

Deschamps's fondness for comprehensive lists is already evident in the first arguments of the four false friends for marriage. He expands on Paul's exhortations to matrimony with some fifty lines detailing birds and beasts who all choose a mate. But later, his lists use an abundance of material goods to create an image of marriage itself. In section XV he sets out the items required to fulfil a woman's needs and maintain a household, from clothing to tapestries to servants to furniture to utensils to food to spices to specially engineered accessories and underwear. In the process, he creates all the visual images we require to imagine a real ménage of the time, and to counteract some of the straight didactic rhetoric that can take over the text elsewhere. Later (XXII), he treats the requirements (expenses) of children in the same way, and still later (XXIX) details the bizarre cravings of a pregnant woman (who, of course, is pregnant by someone other than her spouse):

Or veult manger cendre ou charbon;
Or veult frommaige, or veult letue;
Or veult que son mari li tue
Un pourcel pour manger la rate
[…]
Or ne veult vir femme ne homme;
Or veult aler en compaignie;
Or chante, or rit, or s'esbanie;
Or veult plourer, or faire dueil;
Du fenoil veult et du serfeuil […].

(126:3784-3802; the passage continues to 3856)

Here we have real observations taken to theatrical levels of augmentation. Even the rhetoric underlines theatricality, with the repetition of “or” suggesting oral recitation.

The pilgrimage scene in the QJ offers some similar specific detail; it is one of the most lively medieval presentations of religion as tourism. We see the man struggle to obtain and sustain horses, help his wife over rough ground, fight the crowds in order to touch her belt to the sacred relics and holy images, fork out for expensive souvenirs (8:127-30). As the man returns exhausted, his wife returns raving about the sights and experiences and complaining about his uselessness.

The eighth joy, at the halfway point of the work, represents a rare excursion. Generally, the action happens in a domestic space—house or community—and it has an individual specificity that can be as exact as any stage direction.

In the first joy, we are in the very close quarters of the bedroom, and movements underline the game of cat and mouse being played by the woman. Sometimes the action is indicated in narrative, sometimes through dialogue. The wife turns away to continue her bitter complaint; the husband tries to reclaim her sympathy:

—Tournez vous vers moy et je feroy ce que vous vouldrés. -Pour Dieu, fait elle, lessés moy ester, car, par ma foy, il ne m'en tient point […].

(129-32)

Later in the same scene (but the next night) the physical game continues:

Puis vendra l'autre nuit, qu'elle se couchera; et apres qu'elle sera couchee, le proudomme escoutera si elle dort et avisera se elle a les braz bien couvers et la couvrera s'il est mestier. Lors fera semblant de s'esvoillier […].

(156-61)

His sincere tenderness contrasts with her cunning, but both are evident in gestures. After he has yielded to her wishes, he is physically restless, and she, malicious:

Lors se retourne souvent et se destort d'un couste et d'aultre ne ja n'y dormira de toute la nuit de somme qui bien lui face. Et aucune fois avient que la dame est si rusee que elle cognoist bien son fait et s'en rit tout par elle soubz les draps.

(189-94)

The fifth joy goes so far as to describe sexual response (or lack thereof) in some physical detail. The woman feigns coldness, which pleases the man, since it is proof that she will remain faithful to him and that she is not plagued with the wicked appetites that plague others of her sex. He goes on with the act all the same … she “se tient pesantement et ne se aide point ne ne se hobe ne que une pierre” and later, as he continues, “[elle] tourne ung pou la chiere a couste” (180-84).

Bedroom scenes are not the only instances of gestural detail. More public aspects of marriage also feature, as, for example, in the beating of children (4) and the crocodile tears and fierce aggression of the mother-in-law (15:279).

In each case, the reported actions are a demonstration or expression of guile, resentment, frustration or anger. The author manipulates the body to fit and amplify the idea, just as characters manipulate each other and their environment in order to impose their will.

FARCE AND FATRAS

In his discussion of the conjugal farce, Alan Knight identifies three types of farce wife: deceitful, domineering and malicious (145-47). Clearly, the women (not just wives) in the MM and the QJ display one or more of these traits, often all three at once.

Deception, as we have seen above, is virtually an instinct of all women, according to these treatises. A domineering nature, on the other hand, is most openly present in the mother, who in the MM overpowers the text of Repertoire de Science, subverting his voice with her own “wisdom” based on etiquette and observation for nearly 400 lines, and concludes by overcoming her son-in-law's resistance to her daughter's desire for freedom. In the QJ, she lies, intimidates and threatens for the sake of her daughter. Where any woman is not aggressive enough, she receives advice from her peers: the young wife coming to grips with motherhood in the third joy is told how easy and necessary it is for a woman to control her man.

The few women who are not domineering are either imaginary (MM XI) or die young (QJ 14). In the latter case, the deceased is fairly swiftly replaced by an opposite but far more typical character:

[…] et le marient a une aultre, qui a toutes condicions a la premiere contraires; et a aultrefoiz esté mariee et n'est pas d'icelles belles jeunes, mais est entre deux aages et est femme qui sceit moult de chouses, car elle a aprins avecques son mari premier comment elle se doit gouverner avecques le second. Elle considere et avise ses condicions sagement et est ung grant temps sans monstrer sa malice, mais quant elle voit qu'il est homme franc et debonnaire et qu'elle le cognoist et sa condicion, elle desplee et descouvre le venin qui est en sa boueste.

(33-44)

Malice, specifically identified here, is a regular feature of the woman's conduct.

The farce husband, as described by Knight, is generally deficient in physical strength and domestic authority. In addition, he often shows some degree of mental and moral weakness. Intellectually, he may be naïve, simple or foolish. Morally, he has a significant lack, whether of will, courage, or authority; perhaps he also possesses an actively negative characteristic, such as jealousy (154-62).

The men in the MM are not quite such weaklings on the whole, especially as they may not actually be married. Franc Vouloir, as an allegorical image of a young man urged to marry, rehearses many arguments against marriage “en son cuer” (X-XII), even before he hears from Repertoire de Science. Free will and marriage are certainly enemies, and in the last lines of the unfinished text, the former appears to be rejecting matrimony—and indeed all other folly—quite convincingly. On the other hand, the example of the “real” husband persuaded to let his wife gad about town shows the latter easily duped by both lady and chambermaid.

However, it is in the QJ that the man most consistently takes the role of farce husband. Inept inside and outside the household—he burns soup and loses wealth—he is of a naïveté that the author finds exasperating, since he holds all his torments to be joys. When he does fly into a jealous rage, he is ultimately defeated, either through his own simplicity, when others convince him that he must have imagined finding his wife and her lover in flagrante (15) or because he loses control and beats his wife:

Pour ce chiet en la rage de la jeleusie, en laquelle ne se doit bouter nulz sages homs, car s'il sceit une foiz le mal de sa femme, james par nul medecin ne guerira. Et lors il la batra et empirera sa besoingne, car el ne s'en chastiera jamés, et en la batant il ne fera que alumer le feu de folle amour d'elle et de son amy, et lui eust il coupé les membres. Dont avient qu'il pert son chatel et en devient tout abesté et se met tout en non chaloir, ne jamés, puis que ainxin est, elle ne le amera, si ce n'est pour passer temps et pour lui faire umbre.

(2:85-96)

That jealousy and violence are a formula for self-destruction is a surprisingly profound observation amid the broader satire of the QJ.

On the whole, however, characters and situations in the QJ are not linked to such an anguished view of the human condition. Rather, they are types imported from the “fallen world” of farce, where the clever rule the foolish and the strong the weak (Knight 168-69):

Farce is a mimesis of the fallen world where time neither expiates nor brings to fruition, where it has neither past nor future, and where the characters, as a consequence, are condemned to an endless repetition of the same errors.

(Knight 169)

In the MM and the QJ, the “endless repetition” that farce makes explicit is set back into life, and life is thus confirmed as a kind of performance.

CONCLUSION

Both the QJ and the MM are often celebrated for their realism of spoken language and of material detail. But we need to accept that this “realism” is filtered through theatricality; the scenarios presented are artificial and artifice-filled interpretations of life. The exaggeration, hyperbole and generalization with which the theme of misogamy is treated are key to understanding that these are not actually portraits of married life as it was at the turn of the fifteenth century. Rather, they are amusing comments on the inevitable struggle between the sexes, in which the winner is unclear, since women, scapegoats for all the misery of marriage, ultimately triumph, but through deviousness; whereas men, putative victims, participate willingly, and even enthusiastically in the institution, and it is a male narrator who is ultimately both its judge and its metteur en scène.

Notes

1. For discussions on exact dates of the works, see Rychner xvi-xix, xxxviii-xlvi; and Wilson and Makowski 143.

2. The Miroir de mariage will hereafter be abbreviated as MM, the .XV. joies de mariage as QJ. All references to the MM will be given by page and line number; all references to the QJ will be given by “joy” and line number.

3. All definitions in this paragraph are translated from the Trésor de la langue française.

4. The theme was popular throughout Northern Europe, as is evident in works as diverse as the Mary Play from the N-town cycle and the tapestry still displayed in the cathedral of Beaune.

5. For instance, the first joy of Mary—her realization that she is to be the mother of God—is paralleled by the first “joy” of marriage, in which the innocent young man accepts the permanent yoke of domestic servitude; the second joy of Mary—the Visitation to Elizabeth—with the second joy of marriage, featuring the young wife's eagerness to go gadding about town for festivals, assemblies and pigrimages; the third joy of Mary, in which the virgin thrills to feel the son of God move in her belly, with the third joy of marriage in which the husband copes with his wife's pregnancy, including an account of her perverse appetites and his clumsy struggles to take care of her. (Indeed, the belly is a leitmotiv in this joy, which depicts the wife's cravings, the consumption of food and especially drink by the neighbours, nurses and midwives who attend the birth and are still appearing daily “XV” days later, the tired man's personal preparation of chicken broth for his wife and his own meal of cold, old left-over leftovers afterwards, the neighbours who return yet again to eat and drink all the man's wealth …). Other connections are less clear, though we could speculate that the fourth joy of marriage, an account of the troubles of providing for children, is an ironic response to the Virgin's unadulterated delight at giving birth, and so on.

Works Cited

Deschamps, Eustache. Le miroir de mariage. Œuvres complètes d'Eustache Deschamps. Eds. Queux de Saint-Hilaire and Gaston Raynaud. Société des anciens textes français. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1878-1903. Vol. IX.

Féral, Josette. “Performance and Theatricality.” Mimesis, Masochism and Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought. Ed. T. Murray. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1997.

Ganim, John M. Chaucerian Theatricality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Kay, Sarah. The Romance of the Rose. Critical Guides to French Literature. London: Grant and Cutler, 1995.

Knight, Alan. Aspects of Genre in Late Medieval French Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983.

Les quinze joies de mariage. Ed. Jean Rychner. Geneva: Droz, 1967.

Wilson, Katharina M., and Elizabeth M. Makowski. Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage: Misogamous Literature from Juvenal to Chaucer. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990.