SOURCE: “Sins of the Mother: Adultery, Lineage and Law in the Heptaméron,” in Heroic Virtue, Comic Infidelity: Reassessing Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron, edited by Dora E. Polachek, Hestia Press, 1993, pp. 51-9.

[In the following essay, Kem examines the diverse moral judgments regarding adultery made by the listeners in the Heptameron.]

At the end of “Novella 40” in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron (1559), the devisants discuss the role that class distinctions play in marriage. Saffredent asks why it is wrong for a simple gentleman to marry a woman of the high nobility to which Dagoucin responds:

Pour ce … que pour entretenir la chose publicque en paix, l'on ne regarde que les degrez des maisons, les aages des personnes et les ordonnances des loix, sans peser l'amour et les vertuz des hommes, afin de ne confondre poinct la monarchye. Et de là vient que les mariages qui sont faictz entre pareils, et selon le jugement des parens et des hommes, sont bien souvent si differens de cueur, de complexions et de conditions, que, en lieu de prendre ung estat pour mener à salut, ilz entrent aux faulxbourgs d'enfer.

(“40”: 280)¹

The “pareils” that Dagoucin refers to are social equals, and he makes a distinction between their social class and such natural attributes as beauty (“complexions”) and possibly age (“conditions”). Geburon replies that marriages between men and women of different classes can also end in disaster. Parlamente argues that if the couple has parental consent and lives virtuously under the laws of God and nature, their marriage will succeed.

Women and men in failed marriages often resort to adulterous unions, and in many of the twenty-six tales of adultery in the Heptaméron, the laws of man conflict with those of God and nature.² Approximately half of these tales are humorous.³ The humorous tales fall into four major categories: 1) those in which adultery is attempted without success (“13,” “25,” “27,” “59,” “69,” “71”); 2) those in which a wife mistakes another for her husband (“8,” “48”); 3) those in which a hypocritical adulteress is discovered (“14,” “43,” “49”); and 4) those in which the marriage represents disparities in age (“6,” “25,” “29”), physical appearance (“25,” “29”), or intelligence (“6,” “43,” “68”).⁴

Tales dealing with adulterous wives in unequal matches are presented as humorous only under certain conditions. As is often stated throughout the Heptaméron (“15,” “26,” passim.), “l'honneur des hommes et des femmes n'est pas semblable,” because adulterous wives may give birth to bastards and therefore cast doubt on their husbands' legitimate children, presenting a biological, social, and legal problem that does not arise in the case of adulterous husbands. If the wife's good name is lost, so is the descendants'. This is clearly demonstrated in a tale told by Oisille. In “Novella 70,” the duchess of Burgundy reminds her husband of the importance of her good name: “[dans] l'honneur de vostre femme … gist celluy de vostre maison et vos enfanz” (“70”: 404). He later echoes: “toucher à l'honneur de celle qui est la moictyé de moy [rend] ma maison et ma lignée infame à jamais” (“70”: 405). The comic qualities of tales depicting adulterous wives depend on three important factors: 1) the inequality of the match; 2) the social status of the cuckolded husband; and 3) the absence or presence of children. In novellas “6” “25,” and “29,” none of the cuckolded husbands are members of the aristocracy or higher nobility, and all the marriages depicted are childless and pose no problems of doubtful lineage.

All three deal with “tromperies” or “finesses.” “Novella 6” recounts a woman's “finesse” in cuckolding her one-eyed husband. In “Novella 25” announced as “poinct melencolicque,” not only does the wife deceive her husband, but the devisant promises to tell a tale in which the wife's partner in adultery, the prince, “trompa ceulx qui ont accoustumé de tromper tout le monde” (203). Finally, the narrator of “Novella 29” promises to tell of the “finesse” of an ignorant priest who can hardly read the Mass. In all three, the marriages are unequal matches in age; two portray adultery among the lower classes or the bourgeoisie, and in the third, the lover is of a much higher class than the bourgeois husband. In all three, it is either stated or implied that the women have no children and, further, that the elderly husbands are probably sterile.

According to James A. Brundage in Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, marriages between men and women sometimes thirty years younger were quite common in many late medieval cities where economic factors forced men to marry very late or not at all (495-96). Such marriages became a favorite target for farce. Novellas “6”and “29,” both recounted by Nomerfide, the youngest of the group of devisants, are two such popular farces.

In both tales, the couples belong to the lower classes. In “Novella 6,” the man is a “varlet de chambre,” and in tale “29” the husband is a laborer. In the discussion on class differences that follows “Novella 29,” Saffredent describes the lower classes as living in nature and able to enjoy their passions with no witness but birds and other animals. In fact, it is often stated throughout the Heptaméron that lower- and upper-class women's moral attitudes are quite different. For instance, in “Novella 5,” Geburon compares virtuous women of both classes and finds it much harder for lower-class women to remain chaste:

Je vous prie, mes dames, pensez, si ceste pauvre bastelliere a eu l'esperit de tromper l'esperit de deux si malitieux hommes, que doyvent faire celles qui ont tant leu et veu de beaulx exemples, quant il n'y auroit que la bonté des vertueuses dames qui ont passé devant leurs œilz, en la sorte que la vertu des femmes bien nourryes seroit autant appelée coustume que vertu? Mais de celles qui ne sçavent rien, qui n'oyent quasi en tout l'an deux bons sermons, qui n'ont le loisir que de penser à gaingner leurs pauvres vyes, et qui, si fort pressées, gardent soingneusement leur chasteté, c'est là où on congnoist la vertu qui est naïfvement dedans le cueur, car où le sens et la force de l'homme est estimée moindre, c'est où l'esperit de Dieu faict de plus grandes œuvres.

(“5”: 37)

The devisants judge lower-class women more leniently than aristocrats not only because they have fewer virtuous examples to follow, but also because they live closer to nature and have less to lose within society.

Although the devisants are more indulgent of the lower-class women who commit adultery, more often applauding their “finesse” than censuring them, the fact that Nomerfide partly blames their husbands for neglect may have some bearing on the reception of the tales. In “Novella 6,” the narrator states that the husband, “un viel varlet de chambre … lequel avoit perdu un œil,” ignores his much younger wife because of his work; Nomerfide implies that the wife has little to occupy her time, and no children are mentioned. Because of this, she falls in love with a younger man.

Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles (c. 1462) offers a quite different version of the tale. Novella 16 of that collection describes the one-eyed husband as “ung gentil chevalier, riche et puissant” whose body is also “bel et puissant,” and his wife as “une tresbelle dame et de hault lieu” (109). Marguerite has changed not only their social status but also the reason for the husband's absence. Instead of neglecting his wife for his duties as “varlet de chambre,” in the earlier version, the husband, described as “tresdevot et craignant Dieu,” is performing his religious duty by doing battle against the Saracens while his wife commits adultery with “un gentil escuier.” No children are mentioned and no excuses are presented for her behavior.

In “Novella 29,” the only one in the Heptaméron to describe a peasant couple (“ce païsant avecq sa païsante” (229), Nomerfide also clearly states that the unequal marital union is childless; the wife consoles herself for the lack of children by attending church, where she falls in love with a priest. Here the husband does not find out, and no harm is done. In both tales, Nomerfide subtly blames the husbands for their neglect and reproductive, perhaps even sexual, inadequacy.

In “Novella 25” recounted by Longarine, a rich lawyer's childless wife is as bored as the lower-class women in novellas “6” and “29” and, seeking solace and diversion with friends, she meets her aristocratic lover, identified by critics as Marguerite's brother Francis. In introducing the tale, Longarine exculpates the young prince. Young princes are not exempt from the power and tyranny of love (“subject à l'empire et tirannye d'Amour”), and because of this, “leur est non seullement permis mais mandé de mensonge, ypocrisie et fiction, qui sont les moyens de vaincre leurs ennemyes, selon la doctrine de maistre Jehan de Mehun” (203). She also excuses him because he is a prince: “Or, puis que, en tel acte, est louable à ung prince la condition qui en tous autres est à desestimer” (203). Upper-class men and women are subject to different sets of rules; while an upper-class woman is censured for committing adultery, an upper-class man can do so with impunity as long as he remains discreet. Again, in society, an adulterous woman has much more to lose than her male counterpart.

This novella has nonetheless incited considerable debate among critics because of its ambiguous and seemingly immoral message.⁵ Longarine, though, presents the adulterous couple in the best possible light; she calls the wife “belle” several times and refers to the prince as “jeune” and full of “grace.” She tells us that the wife was only eighteen or nineteen when she married her husband, whose body she describes as “vicieux,” a word that bears both descriptive and moral connotations (203). Thus, the love affair between the young wife and the prince is more equal and “natural.”

She also draws attention away from the liaison by praising the prince's discretion. To hide his affair, the prince stops in a church before and after each love tryst, where the monks often discover him at prayer. The prince thus “deceives the deceivers” (“trompe les trompeurs”), the monks who praise his devotion as well as the lawyer who practices deceit. She ends the tale by stating its purpose:

à fin que vous congnoissiez, mes dames, qu'il n'y a malice d'advocat ne finesse de religieux (qui sont coutumiers de tromper tous autres), que Amour, en cas de necessité, ne decoive et face tromper par ceulx mesmes qui n'ont aultre experience que de bien aymer.

(206; emphasis added)

Longarine thus places the blame on both lawyers and priests, the traditional targets of medieval farces, rather than the adulterous couple. She further exculpates the prince's and the wife's actions by naming the real culprit, “Amour,” which she describes as a natural force impossible to resist.

After the tale, Geburon commends the prince's discretion, and even the devout Oisille adds “je vouldrois que tous les jeunes seigneurs y prinssent exemple, car le scandalle est souvent pire que le péché,” thus implying that society judges such “sins” more severely than God (207). Nomerfide adds a humorous comment: “Pensez … que les prieres qu'il faisoit au monastere où il passoit, estoient bien fondées” (207). Parlamente even suggests that the prince may have been truly repentant. The tale ends with a light-hearted discussion of repentance with Hircan offering comic asides, such as “je vouldrois que Dieu print aussi grand plaisir à mes plaisirs, comme je faictz, car je luy donnerois souvent matiere de se resjouir” (207). Geburon ends on an amusing and rather sacrilegious note: “Si ne ferez-vous pas ung Dieu nouveau … parquoy fault obeyr à celluy que nous avons. Laissons ces disputes aux theologiens …” (207). From the discussion it is clear that no one blames the prince for his actions nor does the wife suffer the usual moral censure.

The next novella, “26,” recounts a similar love story between “une dame de Pampelune” and the “sieur d'Avannes,” but this woman does not commit adultery. As in the preceding tale, the lady is married to a rich and much older man who does not and perhaps cannot have children. The husband adopts the young man, described as “fort gorgias” (210), and the “natural” attraction between the young people begins. The wife, “qui avoit Dieu et honneur devant les œilz” (209), hides her attraction and remains faithful to her virtuous husband, but the effort kills her. The tragic ending is a result of her superhuman efforts to fight nature (“la raison de nature”), remaining true to what she interprets as God's law. Hircan states that “Nature n'a rien oblyé” in virtuous women, and, by resisting “au vice de la loy de Nature (si Nature est vicieuse),” virtuous women trade one vice for another, the vice of pride (220). To this, his wife Parlamente responds that if pride is a vice, at least no third party suffers (221). The difference between this story and the preceding one is very clear. In “25” the wife gives in to her natural attraction, and in “26,” she doesn't, but with dire consequences. The woman in “Novella 26” is described as possessing an exceptional (heroic?) virtue, which, although it could not control her feelings, controlled her actions.

Marguerite and her devisants seem to agree that adulterous men are as culpable under God's laws as women, but man's laws treat women more severely, as the maxim in tale “15” indicates: “Et combien que la loy des hommes donne grand deshonneur aux femmes qui ayment autres que leurs mariz, si est-ce que la loy de Dieu n'exempte poinct les mariz qui ayment autres que leurs femmes” (123). According to Brundage, late medieval and early Renaissance canonists and theologians were divided on whether adulterous women or men should be more severely punished. Thomas Aquinas argued that women should bear the brunt because they might give birth to bastards conceived by their lovers and try to pass them off as their husbands', while others, such as Master Serlo, William of Pagula, and Hostiensis, felt that men should be punished more severely (Brundage 462). Laws of the time tended to agree with Aquinas and penalized women far more severely than men, even allowing husbands and sometimes other family members to slay women caught in the act (462-63). In fact, adultery litigation was comparatively rare at the time because a man who did not deal with an adulterous wife himself was considered a “vile cuckold” (513). While adulterous men were sometimes turned over to the court, adulterous women were almost always punished by their husbands (519).

Novellas “32” and “36” tell of “prudent” husbands who punish their adulterous wives in just such a manner. In 36, the husband hides the affair to avoid a public scandal that would harm his children. He tells his wife to feign innocence because, he says, “je ne veulx, pour vous, que ma maison soit deshonorée et les filles que j'ay eu de vous desavancées” (“36”: 262). The husband later kills his wife by feeding her poisonous herbs in a salad. Thus, Ennasuitte concludes, he saved the honor of his household. In the discussion that follows, Parlamente speaks of herbs that render “l'honneur à la lignée par la mort d'une folle mere” (264). Geburon also adds that if the husband had not murdered his wife, “ses filles et sa race eussent à jamais porté ceste notte,” again bringing up both issues of public shame and doubtful lineage (264).

In contrast to “36,” the devout Oisille tells in “Novella 32” of a young woman who receives a punishment “worse than death” from her husband, “un gentil-homme,” for committing adultery. Her head shaved, forced to drink from a cup made from her dead lover's skull, the adulterous wife suffers, but her husband suffers as well. Bernage, after hearing the woman's regrets, takes the husband aside and tells him:

… veu la grande repentance de vostre pauvre femme, que vous luy debvez user de misericorde; et aussy, vous estes jeune, et n'avez nulz enfans; et seroit grand dommage de perdre une si belle maison que la vostre, et que ceulx qui ne vous ayment peut-estre poinct, en fussent heritiers.

(244-45)

The narrator tells us that after a long penance, “pour le desir qu'il avoit d'avoir enfans,” he takes pity on his wife and takes her back (245). The tale ends with the words: “… et en eut depuis beaucoup de beaulx enfans” (245). It is suggested that the period of repentance was long enough to silence any doubts that the woman's children would be the product of the adulterous affair.

Questions of marital inequality, class distinction, and lineage determine the devisants' different responses to these tales of adultery. Although the devisants in the Heptaméron express divergent opinions on adultery, and some are more concerned with the laws of man and society than they are with those of God and nature, Marguerite retains her authorial voice.⁶ Through her use of humor, the discussions of the devisants, where no one is given an authoritative position, and parallels drawn between similar tales with different outcomes, Marguerite defends adulterous women, who were disadvantaged in the social and legal setting of the sixteenth century, and clearly questions prevailing views of the moral, social, and legal problem of adultery. She proves quite indulgent in cases of adulterous women in unequal and unnatural, childless unions, if no third party is harmed through public shame. The childless and often neglected wife is naturally inclined to look elsewhere to occupy her time and find a more equal partner. However, when questions of lineage and inheritable property are involved, as would be the case with upper-class more so than with lower-class women, the equation changes. In those cases, for Marguerite, adultery was no laughing matter.

Notes

1. Quotations from the Heptaméron are taken from the François edition (Garnier) and are indicated by number of tale followed by the page number.

2. According to Raymond Lebègue, there are approximately ten portraits of adulterous men and twenty of adulterous women in the Heptaméron (425).

3. For a discussion of “contes à rire” in the Heptaméron, see Nicole Cazauran (109-26).

4. Although the marriage in novella 14 is an unequal match (“vue la mauvaise grace que son mary avoit et la grande beaulté d'elle” [110]), the tale focuses on the lady's hypocrisy and her treatment of two lovers rather than her relationship with her husband.

5. Lucien Febvre sees the passage as “étonnant” and “singulier” in that Marguerite seems to condone her brother's immoral conduct and false piety, but he suggests that the monks probably did not know who Francis was, and he therefore could not benefit from an enhanced reputation for piety (35, 279-83). John D. Bernard shares Febvre's confusion over Marguerite's “easy indulgence of her brother's amatory prowess,” but he explains it as an indication of Francis's superior secular authority over ecclesiastical authority (263-64).

6. For opposing views on Marguerite's authorial voice and manipulation of the reader, see Colette Winn and Mary J. Baker.

Works Cited

Baker, Mary J. “The Role of the Reader in the Heptaméron.” French Studies 53 (1989): 271-78.

Bernard, John D. “Sexual Oppression and Social Justice in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 19.2 (Fall 1989): 251-81.

Brundage, James A. Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.

Cazauran, Nicole. L'Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre. Paris: Société d'Édition d'Enseignement Supérieur, 1976.

Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles. Ed. Franklin P. Sweetser. Geneva: Droz, 1966.

Febvre, Lucien. Autour de l'Heptaméron: Amour sacré, amour profane. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.

Lebègue, Raymond. “La Fidélité conjugale dans l'Heptaméron.” La Nouvelle française à la Renaissance. Ed. Lionello Sozzi. Geneva: Slatkine, 1981. 425-33.

Marguerite de Navarre. L'Heptaméron. Ed. Michel François. Paris: Garnier, 1967.

Winn, Colette H. “An Instance of Narrative Seduction: The Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre.” Symposium (Fall 1985): 217-26.