SOURCE: “World of Many Loves: The Discussions,” in World of Many Loves: The Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, University of North Carolina Press, 1966, pp. 126-64.

[In the following essay, Gelernt describes the characters, issues and tone of the discussions following the stories of the Heptameron, and argues that Marguerite's conclusion considers wedlock “the best chance man has for happiness in this world.”]

At the root of Marguerite's investigation of love lies the assumption that love is in essence good and that it is the vagaries of human nature which can twist it to evil ends: in Saffredent's words, “tout ainsy que amour faict faire aux meschans des meschancetez, en ung cueur honneste faict faire choses dignes de louanges; car, amour, de soy, est bon, mais la malice du subgect luy faict souvent prendre ung nouveau surnom de fol, legier, cruel, ou villain.”¹ So much is tacitly agreed upon by all the interlocutors, none of whom disputes Nomerfide's assertion that “la personne qui ayme parfaictement d'un amour joinct au commandement de son Dieu, ne congnoist honte ni deshonneur … car la gloire de bien aymer ne congnoist nulle honte.”² Love is nowhere formally condemned, but on no other idea is there unanimity in the Heptameron, where each member of the group has his own notion of where honor stops and shame begins, and each has his own conception of what constitutes ‘bien aymer.’

Marguerite's own views are voiced by Parlamente, whose point of departure is the Neoplatonic doctrine that love is the creative force which draws man to God—a position implicit in her definition of perfect lovers cited in Chapter II.³ But her view is set against other very different evaluations, some of which are based on entirely different theories, some of which are the expression of deep-seated traditional prejudices, but all of which are colored by the personalities of the people who voice them. There is no judicious exposition of a theory in the manner of a Socratic dialogue but rather the living clash of ideas in the market place. The reader may be somewhat disoriented at first, but because the positions the various speakers advance are so many extensions of their respective characters, fairly consistent lines of argument emerge and it becomes an easy matter to grasp the spectrum of conflicting ideas. Besides, what the method loses in clarity of presentation, it gains in liveliness: Marguerite has taken the subject of countless abstract discussions and philosophical disquisitions and turned it into something that excites the minds and hearts of her conversationalists—as it should, since it is a subject which touches on the very fabric of life.

There are ten participants in the discussions of the Heptameron, five men and five women. The ladies range from the elderly Bible-reading Oisille to the young Nomerfide, ‘la plus folle’ as Parlamente calls her, whose youth makes her impatient with serious discussion. Between these two we find ‘la saige Parlamente,’ younger than Oisille and gayer in spirit, but equally imbued with a sense of the seriousness of life; Ennasuitte, a fierce feminist; and Longarine, a judicious widow who takes a skeptical view of men and their motives. The men are Geburon, older than his companions and more objectively detached in his opinions; Hircan, a great nobleman proud of his aristocratic prerogatives, sensual, bold, and intelligent; Simontault, a lesser version of Hircan, whose anti-feminism carries a note of petulancy prompted by sentimental self-indulgence; Saffredent, who bows to the new fashion in manners imported from Italy, yet whose assumption of courtly polish in no way alters his cynical view of women; and the gentle Dagoucin, inveterate champion of pure idealism, who, in Nomerfide's words, “est si saige, que, pour mourir ne diroit une follye.”⁴ The relationships linking these people are not altogether clear, for we are told only that Hircan is Parlamente's husband, and that Simontault and Dagoucin are both her suitors. Saffredent, we gather, is suitor to Longarine, and although it is mentioned that he is married, no wife is assigned to him. According to the identification of characters made by scholars,⁵ he should be the husband of Nomerfide, and Ennasuitte and Simontault should be spouses as well, but there is nothing in the text to bear out these theories. However, as the identity of Marguerite's models has no bearing on the substance of the discussions, we need not concern ourselves with the question, and it will suffice to keep in mind that the three ranking interlocutors, Oisille, Parlamente, and Hircan, stand for Louise de Savoie, Marguerite, and Henri d'Albret, and that consequently theirs are significant positions in the ideological battle waged in the conversations of the Heptameron.

Generally speaking, the battle lines are drawn between the sexes, with Hircan, Simontault, and Saffredent the champions of the cause of masculine aggressiveness and the ladies the defenders of the honor of women, a situation that recalls the usual pattern of the Querelle des femmes. That an echo of the conflict over the relative merits of either sex does intrude into the conversations of the Heptameron is inevitable, for any book which deals with love has as its subject the virtues and failings of the sexes.⁶ If the ladies extol chastity, the men decry hypocrisy or unnatural behavior, and if the men insist on the primacy of the natural drives, the ladies condemn lust and warn against dishonor—it is the age-old conflict between private passion and social restraint that animates their discussions. The aim, however, unlike that of the majority of literary treatises of love, is not the elaboration of an esthetically satisfying fantasy but the search for a resolution which will conciliate the contradictory dictates of desire, morality, and social decorum.

That love is a universal force operating within the context of a Christian universe is established not only by the interlocutors' habit of beginning each day with a reading from the Bible followed by attendance at mass, but also by repeated reference to the doctrine of grace. Marguerite places the thesis, developed at length in the third book of her Prisons, that man is nothing in the face of the absolute that is God, into the mouths of several of her conversationalists, who declare in one fashion or another that without God's help man is weak and prone to sin. Oisille, the champion of the private study of the Bible, is naturally the most consistent exponent of the doctrine, and as early as the second story she reminds her companions of their frailty by quoting a pronouncement she erroneously attributes to the Bible: “Ne nous resjouissons de nos vertuz, mais en ce que nous sommes escriptz au livre de Vie, duquel ne nous peult effacer Mort, Enfert ne Peché.”⁷ In a similar vein, commenting on a case of adultery, she expresses the wish to her friends that God might keep them all, for, as she says, “si sa bonté ne nous retient, il n'y a aucun d'entre nous qui ne puisse faire pis; mais ayant confiance en luy, il gardera celles qui confessent ne se pouvoir par elles-mesmes garder; et celles qui se confient en leurs forces sont en grand dangier d'estre tentées jusques à confesser leur infirmité.”⁸

Saffredent also declares that “se fault recommander à Dieu, car, s'il ne nous tient à force, nous prenons grand plaisir à tresbucher,”⁹ and Parlamente presents the maxim that “le premier pas que l'homme marche en la confiance de soy-mesmes, s'esloigne d'autant de la confiance de Dieu.”¹⁰ But Oisille goes even further when she insists that salvation can come only from God and rejects the idea of intermediaries between man and the deity. She echoes the spirit of the Reformation when she tells her listeners that she feels compelled to relate the “Twenty-Third Novella” in order that

l'ypocrisye de ceulx qui s'estiment plus religieux que les autres, ne vous enchante l'entendement, de sorte que vostre foy, divertye de son droict chemin, estime trouver salut en quelque autre creature que en Celluy qui n'a voulu avoir compaignon à nostre creation et redemption, lequel est tout puissant pour nous saulver en la vie eternelle, et, en ceste temporelle, nous consoler et deliverer de toutes noz tribulations.¹¹

This warning appears in the context of sharp criticism leveled at the clergy in the wake of the tale of Sister Marie Héroet's tribulations, but the caution against seeking salvation in another person rather than in God may also apply to the infatuated romantic lover. Love and nature are compelling masters, but the power they wield over human beings is placed there by God, and even Hircan, their stanch advocate, agrees that it is best not to struggle single-handedly against their force but “se retirer au vray Amy et luy dire avecq le Psalmiste: ‘Seigneur, je souffre force, respondez pour moy’.”¹² There are no atheists, then, or religious skeptics among the speakers of the Heptameron, only sinners of greater or lesser degree who accept the fact of God's rule even when they disobey it. Hircan's succinct admission that “le peché me desplaist bien, et je suis marry d'offenser Dieu, mais le peché me plaist tousjours”¹³ illustrates the dilemma of the man who chooses the law of his desires instead of the moral restraint demanded by God. And in the last analysis it is Geburon's conclusion that wishing for a more indulgent God will not bring him about, “parquoy fault obeyr à celluy que nous avons,”¹⁴ which prevails. The Christian order, therefore, remains unchallenged.¹⁵

The divine order, then, is unquestionably the ultimate reality towards which all human beings should strive, but the reality Marguerite focuses on in the Heptameron is that of the sublunar world and its lovers. The relationship between the two worlds, considered at length in the Prisons,¹⁶ is merely suggested, but never explored, in the discussions. The poem is therefore a helpful adjunct to the study of the Heptameron, for these two and the Comédie de Mont-de-Marsan are the product of the same ripened experience and mature feeling.

The form of autobiographical narrative which the Prisons assumes permits an explicit development of ideas to which the polemic dialogues of the other two do not lend themselves. It is especially useful in relation to Marguerite's appraisal of love, for in place of the contradictory positions espoused by the narrators of the Heptameron, we have the unified experience of one man who has run the gamut of the ladder of love from devoted courtly lover to lover of God. Marguerite's hero does not follow the facile rationalism of Castiglione's courtier by moving in smooth transition from the lady to the divine essence; his career is rather more akin to that of Dante, since his shattering disillusionment with idealistic love causes him to lose his way, to bend his energy to the pursuit of pleasure, ambition, and secular knowledge. It is the last of these that readies him for the final ascent to God. This ascent is no longer undertaken under the guidance of a donna angelicata but with the inspiration derived from the Bible—one more indication of Marguerite's evangelism, which far from rejecting the world, accepts it for what it is and seeks to trace the path that will lead through it to God.

This refusal to turn her back on the world of the living may explain Marguerite's qualms about courtly love, especially when it is at its purest. Despite the idealism which informs it, she recognizes its essentially narcissistic character: the total identification of the lover with his lady only leads him back to himself and keeps him imprisoned in a passion which “se peult dire ydolatre” (Prisons, p. 165). This love is natural to man, however, and Amateur, the old man who is instrumental in effecting the hero's salvation by introducing him to wisdom and the Bible, is an orthodox Renaissance Neoplatonist when he explains to his friend that his heart was drawn to desire the beauty sensed by his eyes.¹⁷ Not only is this love natural, prompted by the Dionian Venus,¹⁸ but it is virtuous since it contents itself with the pleasures of speech and sight,¹⁹ and it is this restraint which defines fin amor:

Aussi le vray amour a tel povoir
Que qui le peult parfaictement avoir
Et en remplir son cueur entierement,
De nul desir ny craincte n'a tourment;
Qui a desir de myeulx et de pis craincte
N'a jamais eu d'amour la vive attaincte. …(20)

Here this voluntary restraint leads to a state of emotional stasis rather than to the inner perturbations traditionally associated with passion, a movement which is also in keeping with the rationalist bias of Neoplatonic psychology: once the so-called lower instincts are brought under the control of reason, peace and harmony reign in the soul, whose progress is then guided by the intellect. But neither the prisoner of the poem nor Dagoucin, the exponent of this type of ideality in the Heptameron, takes the subsequent step on the Neoplatonic ladder of love, and their passion becomes an end in itself instead of leading to a higher degree of spiritual awareness. For Marguerite, the conclusion that courtly love imprisons rather than liberates is inevitable; such love must therefore ultimately be rejected, the prison ultimately broken.

The self-centered isolation from the world, and therefore from life, induced by the idealized love fantasy is aptly described by the hero of the Prisons when he tells his lady that

J'estoys donq roy, car j'aymoys si très fort
Qu'il n'y avoit fin en moy que la mort;
Et vous tenoys par amour aprouvée
Semblable à moy, vous ayant esprouvée.(21)

If not for the lady's inconstancy, he would have remained forever in the prison of love fashioned by his own desire; as Amateur subsequently explains to him,

… sans avoir du soleil la lumiere
Qui vous monstra muable et mensongere
Celle que tant teniez loyalle et ferme,
Jamais n'eussiez sailly hors de ce terme.(22)

From a superficial point of view the state the prisoner was in may be morally preferable to the active pursuit of sexual gratification he engages in afterwards, but neither way of life is satisfactory since both shut him off from God. For that matter the latter state may actually be the better, despite surface appearances to the contrary, in the same way that La Mondaine's dedication to worldly concerns is deemed superior to La Superstitieuse's narrow-mindedness in the Comédie de Mont-de-Marsan: just as the worldly lady's conduct is at least an affirmation of the physical foundations of life (an affirmation her superstitious sister does not make for her lack of generosity rejects God's gift of life and makes a mockery of divine love) so the prisoner's active participation in the life of the world is better than his self-willed incarceration in an illusory paradise of love. Reality, which first intrudes upon him in the guise of his lady's mutability, is painful because it shatters his cozy dream world and exposes the vanity of human ambition, but the disillusionment paves the way for the revelation of the divine order he encounters in God's resounding “I am that I am” in the Bible, a declaration which unlocks the secret of existence for him and leads him to salvation.²³ The Bible can be a guide through the maze of life to the supreme truth that is God only after man has subjected himself to the test of living and has garnered the bitter fruits of experience; otherwise his is a sterile existence.

The notion that the courtly relationship of pure love ultimately points to death is also present in the Heptameron. When the question of the goals of love arises, Dagoucin champions the view that love's sole aim should be to love perfectly, but his understanding of perfection differs markedly from that of Parlamente, with whom he is generally in agreement. Where, according to her, perfect lovers are those who seek in one another some ideal, the search for which eventually brings them to God, Dagoucin says that the passion aroused in the lover should content him so thoroughly that he need seek no further gratification. Parlamente at least bases her definition on the premise of a relationship between the lover and his lady, but her arch-idealistic friend refuses to admit such a relationship because he wishes to protect the idealization of love from the imperfections of human nature which might otherwise destroy his fantasy. He asserts that

si nostre amour est fondée sur la beaulté, bonne grace, amour et faveur d'une femme, et nostre fin soit plaisir, honneur ou proffict, l'amour ne peult longuement durer; car, si la chose sur quoy nous la fondons default, nostre amour s'envolle hors de nous. Mais je suis ferme à mon oppinion, que celluy qui ayme, n'ayant autre fin ne desir que bien aymer, laissera plus tost son ame par la mort, que ceste forte amour saille de son cueur.²⁴

He neatly circumvents the unfortunate experience of the lady's mutability which opened the prisoner's eyes in Les Prisons by divorcing passion from its object. To him, the only end of love is to love well. When Simontault challenges him, declaring that he can never have been in love, and accusing him of depicting “la chose publicque de Platon, qui s'escript et ne s'experimente poinct,”²⁵ Dagoucin explains further:

Si j'ay aymé, … j'ayme encores, et aymeray tant que je vivray. Mais j'ay si grand paour que la demonstration face tort à la perfection de mon amour, que je crainctz que celle de qui je debvrois desirer l'amityé semblable, l'entende; et mesmes je n'ose penser ma pensée, de paour que mes oeilz en revelent quelque chose; car, tant plus je tiens ce feu celé et couvert, et plus en joy croist le plaisir de sçavoir que j'ayme parfaictement.²⁶

Dagoucin has extended the call for secrecy in love to include the lady, for only by confining his passion to the secret recesses of his heart and mind can the lover be sure of safeguarding the inviolability of both his ideal and his feelings. Although he readily admits that to be loved would be deeply gratifying, he refuses to make it the goal of desire. He insists on sundering the complementary facets—loving and being loved—of the amatory relationship in order to preserve the ideal of true love in its uncompromising subjectivity: “Quant je seroys tant aymé que j'ayme,” he declares, “si n'en sçauroit croistre mon amour, comme elle ne sçauroit diminuer pour n'estre si très aymé que j'ayme fort.”²⁷ Such high-mindedness may have appealed to the idealistic Marguerite who had come under the influence of Pocque and Quintin,²⁸ but she recognized the life-denying quality of a fantasy which divests emotion of its tangible goals and immures the lover in the cloistered contemplation of his feelings. The point, made only once in the Heptameron, is never again picked up in the discussions, but its import is unmistakable. Parlamente, we are told, “soupsonnoit ceste fantaisye,”²⁹ and she consequently exclaims, “Donnez-vous garde, Dagoucin; car j'en ay veu d'aultres que vous, qui ont mieulx aymé mourir que parler.”³⁰ Her friend's reply that he deems such people extremely happy only lends weight to the suspicion that his ideal of true love tends to seek fulfillment in death. Unlike his masculine companions who find him terribly foolish, he fervently holds to the conviction that the death resulting from perfect love is the highest proof of the quality of one's passion, and as such is glorious. We may be sure that he would endorse whole heartedly Petrarch's well known “Che bel fin fa chi ben amando more.”³¹

Though courtly idealism does not inevitably lead to Christian Revelation, and may even, as in the case of Marguerite's prisoner, effectively isolate the lover from it, the two are nonetheless related in the Queen's mind, for she was too much of a Neoplatonist not to feel that all forms of love must ultimately stem from the principle of divine love which brought the world into being. As several passages in the Prisons indicate, she had in her later years adopted the Neoplatonic definition of the final goal of love as her own, for it was consistent with the fundamental Christian faith which saw in the Incarnation God's second great gift of love to mankind. In the Miroir de l'âme pécheresse she had succumbed to a mood of self-denigration, seeing herself mired in the pollution of the flesh from which only a rather cheerless divine grace could rescue her, but in the later poem Neoplatonism helps her resolve triumphantly the depressing Calvinist dichotomy as she perceives in man's humanity the divine spark which enables him to transcend the confines of the flesh and join himself to God in a true spiritual union only love makes possible. Love, as the hero proclaims, is

                                                                                          … le vray moyen
Que l'homme est homme et sans lequel n'est rien:
Celluy qui Est en cest amour je voy,
Il est qui Est, et a son estre en soy,
Bien qu'il soit filz du grant Dieu d'habundance,
Ayant pris chair subjecte à indigence;
Son povoir vient de la divinité
Et son tourment de nostre humanité,
Dont sort Amour, ce divin feu brullant,
Qui va tout autre amour anihilant.(32)

The somber mood of Marguerite's middle years has been transmuted into a glorious vision of human redemption. But while the older, wiser Marguerite of the Prisons and the Heptameron takes the Christian Platonists' conception of love for granted, she does not view the process of love in exactly the same light as theirs. From the point of view of doctrine the difference is perhaps no more than a change in emphasis, Marguerite lending greater weight to the Dionian principle, but the change is the logical consequence of a markedly different evaluation of human nature. Where Neoplatonism underlines the spiritual nature of man, a rational being who, guided by his intellect, may proceed in orderly fashion along the ascending scala d'amore, the Queen of Navarre keeps her gaze fixed firmly on his animal nature and perceives that his appetitive will, reinforced by his original fall from grace, presents a more formidable obstacle to spiritual growth than the Neoplatonists recognize. Her concern, after all, is not with the elaboration of a metaphysical system but with its application to everyday life, a concern which causes her to keep close contact with psychological reality. Hers is the more dramatic vision, even in the Prisons, for she sees man's spiritual progress as a struggle in which he tests, through trial and error, the various avenues to the fulfillment of desire the world opens to him; it is only when these have been exhausted without bringing him the peace he craves that he is ready for that leap into the Beyond which will reveal the Love that annihilates all other loves. In short, it is man's experience of life, far more than the independent operation of his intellect, which brings him to the point where he can comprehend the divine message contained in the Bible, and even then the final illumination comes, not as the product of rational deduction, but as a sudden shock of recognition under grace which shakes the very foundations of his being.

Love, then, is to be tested by experience before it can effectively lead the lover to God. Dagoucin's ideal is not acceptable to Marguerite, for his concept of passion is completely self-contained, precluding contact with any objective reality, be it God or the world. None of the stories even illustrates this doctrine since it does not allow for an objective situation around which to build a plot; even Dagoucin's story designed to convince his audience that one can die for loving too well requires the frustration of unrequited love to bring about the lover's demise.³³ In spite of her very real interest in Neoplatonism, Marguerite never capitalizes on Dagoucin's avowed detachment from human entanglement to take him further along the ladder of love and provide her readers with an illustration of philosophic love. That she does not confirms our conviction of her interest in the relationship between the sexes rather than in the philosophical definition of love. Even Parlamente's Platonist declaration of faith is presented in the guise of a definition of perfect lovers, and the reciprocal nature of love is always affirmed: the lovers may ultimately be joined in God, but the relationship linking them together is never completely relinquished.³⁴

In the world of human desire, the stage for the Heptameron's stories, the central fact about man's amatory experience is his sensual nature with its overriding drive to satisfaction. Love begins as physical attraction—it has to, since the desire for physical union is naturally implanted in man to insure the perpetuation of the race. This view places love in the realm of the instincts and, in the Heptameron, provides the basis for Hircan's powerful advocacy of the naturalness of physical drives and their fulfillment. Parlamente's husband is not a Neoplatonist: unlike his friends Saffredent and Simontault, he is far from having absorbed either the doctrine or the manners that have come from Italy, and he remains essentially the grand seigneur, proud of his prowess as warrior and lover, for whom love is only an adventure designed to satisfy his desires. He has no use for the fearful, passive lover; true love is so powerful an inducement to action that nothing will make the lover stop short of success. He declares that “je ne me departiray de la forte opinion que j'ay, que oncques homme qui aymast parfaictement, ou qui fust aymé d'une dame, ne failloit d'en avoir bonne yssue, s'il a faict la poursuicte comme il appartient.”³⁵ His motto is that ‘faint heart never won fair lady’: the lover must use force, if necessary, to overcome the socially induced resistance of women. For, he argues, Nature has endowed women with the very same desires it has bestowed upon men. Only false pride and social convention cause them to refuse the demands of their suitors:

… car, si leur honneur n'en estoit non plus taché que le nostre, vous trouveriez, que Nature n'a rien oblyé en elles non plus que en nous; et, pour la contraincte que elles se font de n'oser prendre le plaisir qu'elles desirent, ont changé ce vice en ung plus grand qu'elles tiennent plus honneste. C'est une gloire et cruaulté, par qui elles esperent acquerir nom d'immortalité, et ainsy se gloriffians de resister au vice de la loy de Nature (si Nature est vicieuse), se font non seullement semblables aux bestes inhumaines et cruelles, mais aux diables, desquelz elles prennent l'orgueil et la malice.³⁶

It is by virtue of this ‘loy de Nature’ that Hircan justifies his assertion that the true end of love is not adoration, but possession of the lady. To deny this aim is unnatural and may lead to tragic consequences, and he adduces the incest of the thirtieth tale as a warning to “celles qui cuydent par leurs forces et vertu vaincre amour et nature avecq toutes les puissances que Dieu y a mises.”³⁷

While the notion of ‘natural law’ operating at the root of human desire is not inconsistent with Neoplatonic or Christian doctrine, Hircan's line of reasoning is. He thus finds himself in complete opposition to Dagoucin, whose view of human nature he cannot accept. When Dagoucin argues that the perfect lover is one who cherishes his lady's honor above all else and seeks only “une response honneste et gratieuse, telle que parfaicte et honneste amityé requiert,”³⁸ and insists on secrecy in one's love not only as a measure of the depth of passion³⁹ but also as a safeguard against the slander of those who cannot conceive of a virtuous attachment,⁴⁰ Hircan replies that he is being unrealistic: “Je vous asseure, Dagoucin, … que vous avez une si haulte philosophie, qu'il n'y a homme icy qui l'entende ne la croye; car vous nous vouldriez faire acroyre que les hommes sont anges, ou pierres, ou diables.”⁴¹ Dagoucin objects that some there are who would rather die than have a lady violate her conscience for their pleasure; Hircan declares that every man seeks possession in love and that anyone who disclaims such desire is just crying ‘sour grapes.’⁴² Similarly, when Dagoucin, rejecting Simontault's call for freedom to follow openly one's bent in affairs of the heart, declares that “ceulx qui aymeroient mieulx mourir, que leur volonté fust congneue, ne se pourroient accorder à vostre ordonnance,”⁴³ Hircan reiterates his deep-seated disbelief in the existence of such lovers: “Mourir! … encor est-il à naistre le bon chevalier qui pour telle chose publicque vouldroit mourir.”⁴⁴ In short, the fulfillment of love is to be found only in physical consummation, and the lover who cannot attain it with one lady had better seek gratification elsewhere—as far as he is concerned, says Hircan, “l'on ne me sçauroit faire si peu de mauvaise chere, que incontinant je ne laisse l'amour et la dame ensemble.”⁴⁵

Such a position is that of the aggressive male who insists on the primacy of his erotic drive. The masculine code of honor Hircan espouses requires the lover to banish all fear, to use force if necessary to achieve his end; it applies to love the principles of war. Hircan criticizes lovers who back down in the face of feminine resistance: Amadour, he says, would not have failed in his attack on Floride if he had been more of a lover and less of a coward,⁴⁶ and as for the would-be rapist of the fourth tale, “son cueur n'estoit pas tout plain d'amour, veu que la craincte de mort et de honte y trouva encores place.”⁴⁷ He has no use for the masochistic passitivy of the idealistic lover, and, he tells the assembled group, had he been the one trying to take the princess of Flanders by force, he would have felt dishonored at not having brought an attempted forcible conquest to a successful conclusion; he would therefore have killed the old lady-in-waiting who was helping her mistress defend herself and taken the princess.⁴⁸ In other words, the sexual prerogative of the male, his by virtue of his greater strength, is not to be denied.⁴⁹

If Hircan were merely the exponent of a rather primitive and facile sensualism, he would not deserve to be taken very seriously—the sensuality of human beings is a fact that both Neoplatonism and orthodox Christianity readily take in stride. But his view of love extends beyond the limited conception of the professional amorist who, like Saffredent, tends to see in it no more than an elaborate game of courtship having as its aim the conquest of the lady. Invoking the rule of Nature, he implicitly formulates a doctrine which is to serve as a rationale for human behavior and becomes no less a moralist than his chief opponent in debate, Parlamente. He, too, accepts original sin and, like the idealists, conceives of love as a universal force; but where they would found its action in the soul's desire for salvation, he sees it as a powerful agent of man's instinctual life and reminds his audience that it has been rooted in Nature by none other than God Himself.⁵⁰

What is ultimately at issue between Hircan and the idealists is whether the so-called higher or lower faculties direct the life of man. To Hircan the evidence of the senses is incontrovertible—the body through which he knows himself, the desires he feels, are far more tangibly real than the soul and its heavenly aspirations. To deny the appetitive basis of desire seems to him an exercise in nonsense or, worse, hypocrisy, and to refuse the body its due in love is the height of folly since it frustrates a desire inherently natural and transforms what should be a happy experience into something painful. Considering Poline and her lover mad, he refuses to join in their praise: “Si melencolie et desespoir sont louables, je diray que Poline et son serviteur sont bien dignes d'être louez.”⁵¹ The primary psychic order in man is derived from below (the body) and not from above (the soul) as the idealists would have it, and any attempt to invert this order distorts nature.

Hircan is by no means a facile sensualist; he merely insists that sexual gratification is an integral part of the love experience. For that matter, his sensualism is disciplined. The story he relates of the gentleman student who willingly controls his libidinous impulses under very trying circumstances to secure his lady's love and establish an emotionally rewarding relationship with her is told in praise of the lover.⁵² But all lovers worthy of the name desire nothing less than physical completeness. As human nature is one and the same regardless of sex, he rejects Parlamente's attempt to distinguish between the love of women, which, she says, is founded in God and honor and is therefore just and reasonable, and that of men, founded in pleasure: however much faces and clothes may differ in men and women, the will is the same.⁵³ Nor is this will particularly virtuous; man's nature inclines him to sin, and Hircan is even something of a Calvinist (however unwittingly) when he declares that “la nature des femmes et des hommes est de soy incline à tout vice, si elle n'est preservée de Celluy à qui l'honneur de toute victoire doibt estre rendu.”⁵⁴ Worldly-proud aristocrat that he is, though, Hircan uses such denigration of human nature not as a call to reform but as proof of the rightness of his call to sexuality. Man's libidinous drives may, in some ultimate sense, be sinful; but, he seems to be saying, that's how man is, and nothing anyone says can change him.

At heart Hircan is a materialist for whom the ideal world is one in which God's will would be in harmony with man's desires.⁵⁵ But since such a world apparently is not possible, he is content to enjoy the pleasures attendant upon his state while leaving the rest to God—his business is with this world and not with the next. He differs radically from Parlamente and Oisille, both of whom refuse to see in the fall of man an excuse for burying the divine spark that animates him. Where Hircan sees life as a naturally enjoyable process—much in the spirit of Leo X's “Since God gave us the Papacy, now let's enjoy it!”—they perceive potentially tragic overtones in man's separation from God, and find the meaning of life in his endeavor to make his way back to the heaven he lost. Oisille, because of her age, is somewhat detached in her judgment of human beings; she has made her peace with the world, and more and more she turns to the Bible for consolation and inspiration. Parlamente, on the other hand, is still in the mainstream of life; it is she, therefore, who bears the brunt of the battle in opposition to her husband's doctrine.

We have seen that, although she may sympathize with the nobility of Dagoucin's ideal, Parlamente rejects it as sterile. What, then, does she propose as an alternative to Hircan's materialism? Her program is contained in her impassioned definition of perfect lovers: two people who, in their attachment for one another, seek an ideal above the materialism of life, an ideal which ultimately is God. Love is not, as Hircan would have it, merely an emanation of the senses, but a truly spiritual phenomenon, the source of which is to be found in the Creator. While Parlamente never denies the reality of the flesh and of what Hircan calls Nature, she knows that man is possessed of an immortal soul. Therefore, a proper evaluation of the human situation requires a recognition of that soul's desire to seek its Maker. She agrees that man is sinful by nature and needs God's help to overcome his weaknesses, but she believes that the soul, divine in origin, participates actively in the process of salvation during its pilgrimage on earth. Love makes this participation possible; however, as man is deeply mired in the flesh, love manifests itself first as desire for earthly objects, and only gradually can man reach the understanding that his desire is nothing other than his soul's yearning to return to its heavenly home. In short, she opposes to Hircan's spiritually restrictive notion of sexual drives the Neoplatonic vision of a transcendent force which links man to God—again, the only synthesizing answer available to Marguerite.

As I have already remarked, Parlamente's declaration of faith defines an ideal far more than it describes an actuality.⁵⁶ Her highly condensed presentation of the ladder of love, conveying, as it does, the essential rationale and spirit of the Neoplatonic ascent, suffers from the one defect characteristic of all such presentations: it fails to come to grips with the dynamics of a genuine interrelationship between two lovers. This omission is a necessary consequence of the Neoplatonic conception which sees in the beloved little more than an object of adoration that is merely the external occasion for the inner spiritual progress of the lover; once the lover has climbed beyond the first few rungs of the ladder, he loses sight of the beloved for she has no further function to perform in his life. Reciprocity of feeling is thus notoriously absent as a goal from the Neoplatonic love experience, a state of affairs rarely to be met with in life. We should therefore hardly expect the worldly-wise Queen of Navarre to advocate the Neoplatonic design as a blueprint for the vast majority of mankind; such a course would be both unrealistic and highly impractical. If, however, we think of Neoplatonism as a philosophic movement which seeks to define the ideal—and therefore, in the Platonic sense, true—pattern which underlies the realities of the sensually perceived world, we can see that Parlamente's declaration opens rather than closes her part of the debate on love. Just as Castiglione fashioned the portrait of the ideal courtier to serve as a goal for courtiers, so Marguerite depicts the perfect lovers as an illustration of the ideal which will help define a line of conduct for real lovers. In this sense Neoplatonism becomes the point of departure for Parlamente's discussion of love; it is the terminus a quo for her argument, not the terminus ad quem.

On the other hand, when Parlamente defines a pattern for the conduct of real lovers, she sets high but not unreasonable standards. Her problem is to conciliate the demands of passion with Christian doctrine and social decorum. She would like to see a love that is free from sin yet sufficiently real to provide the lovers with the emotional solace which is their right. She is sensible to the dangers of love, finding most dangerous the spiritual passion of the idealist tradition because its snares are less obvious than those of other forms of love;⁵⁷ but, unlike Longarine, who suggests it might be best to shun love altogether,⁵⁸ she is convinced of the necessity of love in life. She believes firmly that no one can love God without first loving another human being, yet, worthy sister of Marguerite's La Sage, she mistrusts passion because it can so easily lead man astray. Unlike the wise lady of the play, Parlamente is endowed with practical common sense and a sense of humor, but hers is a serious view of love which rejects both the narcissism of Dagoucin's idealism and the callousness of Hircan's materialism. Her program for practical living calls for neither the soaring flight of Platonic idealism nor the reduction of feeling to its physical roots; she would anchor human conduct in obedience to God, respect for one's self, and attention to the amenities of social living.

The passion-induced excesses set forth in the tales would be sufficient to make Parlamente doubtful of the value of romantic love, but the praise bestowed on it by some of her companions makes her all the more aware of the necessity for controlling so disturbing a force. For she needs to deal not only with Hircan and Dagoucin, but also with the far more common view of love which, combining idealism with masculine aggressiveness, stands mid-way between the two extremes: the troubadours' theory of mixed love. Its chief exponents are Simontault and Saffredent, although all the interlocutors of the Heptameron share its position to greater or lesser degrees.

Simontault is the romantic who dreams of an ideal woman, for the love of whom the world might well be lost: “Voylà qui me plaist bien,” he announces after hearing Longarine's tale of tragedy wrought by excessive love, “quant l'amour est si egalle, que, luy morant, l'autre ne vouloit plus vivre. Et si Dieu m'eust faict la grace d'en trouver une telle, je croy que jamais n'eust aymé plus parfaictement.”⁵⁹ One suspects that the Liebestod motif of the story appeals to him, especially since the death of the lovers is intimately connected with the sexual act, but it is the longing for the lady's reward which ennobles man and gives meaning to the ideal of chivalry; for, still according to Simontault, “s'il estoit … que les dames fussent sans mercy, nous pourrions bien faire reposer nos chevaulx et faire rouller noz harnoys jusques à la premiere guerre, et ne faire que penser du mesnaige”⁶⁰—a sentiment echoed by Dagoucin's declaration that “si nous pensions les dames sans amour, nous vouldrions estre sans vie. J'entends de ceux qui ne vivent que pour l'acquerir; et, encores qu'ilz n'y adviennent, l'esperance les soustient et leur faict faire mille choses honnorables. … Mais qui penseroit que les dames n'aymassent poinct, il fauldroit en lieu d'hommes d'armes, faire des marchans; et, en lieu d'acquerir honneur, ne penser que à amasser du bien.”⁶¹ Obviously, the troubadour doctrine linking love to the prowess of the professional knight was still popular in the sixteenth century if so pure an idealist as Dagoucin can voice it as a matter of course.

Marguerite's chief objection to Simontault's dream of an all-embracing passion, however, is that it is potentially destructive, for, whether it be ‘pure’ or ‘mixed,’ it deflects the soul from its proper goals. Oisille makes the point when she draws the moral of the châtelaine de Vergi's story: St. Paul, she says, would not allow this great passion even to married people because “d'autant que nostre cueur est affectionné à quelque chose terrienne, d'autant s'esloigne-il de l'affection celeste; et plus l'amour est honneste et vertueuse et plus difficille en est à rompre le lien.”⁶² Oisille, suggesting that this kind of passion is more properly addressed to God than to human beings, urges her friends “de demander à Dieu son Sainct Esperit, par lequel vostre amour soyt tant enflambée en l'amour de Dieu, que vous n'aiez poinct de peyne, à la mort, de laisser ce que vous aymez trop en ce monde.”⁶³

But Parlamente is skeptical of such idealism for other reasons, too. She replies to Simontault's outburst with the teasing suggestion that love would never cause him to neglect self-preservation, for the time is past when men forgot their lives for their ladies' sakes.⁶⁴ Romantic idealism, she is saying in effect, is more often than not a ‘line’ men use to seduce women to their desires, and foolish is the woman who is taken in by it. The courtly suitor may propose an idealistic romance, but his intention usually lies in the direction of amorous dalliance. Her prejudice is justified by Hircan's brutal admission that he has never loved a woman, with the exception of his wife, “à qui il ne desirast faire offenser Dieu bien lourdement,”⁶⁵ and Saffredent's boast that the terms of courtly love are merely a device whereby the lover gets a hearing. For who is the woman, he asks, who will turn a deaf ear when a man begins talking of honor and virtue? But, he continues, “nous couvrons nostre diable du plus bel ange que nous pouvons trouver. Et, soubz ceste couverture, avant que d'estre congneuz, recepvons beaucoup de bonnes cheres. Et peut-estre tirons les cueurs des dames si avant que, pensans aller droict à la vertu, quand elles congnoissent le vice, elles n'ont le moyen ne le loisir de retirer leurs pieds.”⁶⁶

Though Saffredent may seem to be the cynic in this passage, he is merely voicing the evident truth that among civilized people love does not usually present itself in the form of unabashed sexual desire. Yet the poetry of romance nonetheless contains—masks, some would say—the very real presence of man's libidinous drives. Saffredent goes further, however, and steals the Neoplatonists' thunder by suggesting that ‘mixed’ love may not be so very sinful after all since it is the first step on the ladder which leads to love of God. Love is a ‘furieuse follye’—obviously an echo of Ficino's ‘furor’—not amenable to reason, no more than a venial sin which is easily forgiven. Furthermore, “Dieu ne se courrouce poinct de tel peché, veu que c'est ung degré pour monter à l'amour parfaicte de luy, où jamais nul ne monta, qu'il n'ait passé par l'eschelle de l'amour de ce monde”—Parlamente's very doctrine.⁶⁷ And he concludes his defense of courtly love with a paraphrase of St. John: “Comment aymerez-vous Dieu, que vous ne voyez poinct, si vous n'aymez celluy que vous voyez?”⁶⁸

Saffredent's apology may be no more than a cleverly impudent piece of sophistry—at least, so Oisille chooses to see it, as she cautions him against his all too facile borrowing from Holy Writ, but his argument deserves serious consideration. It voices a formidable defense of romantic passion, the strength and appeal of which reside in the fact that it accommodates the views of an Hircan, who would see in love the workings of ‘Nature,’ i.e., biological drives, with those of a Parlamente or Oisille, who would insist on the divine origin and import of love. Saffredent may be accused of confusing the spiritual and physical ‘furores’ of Ficino and combining them into his single ‘furieuse follye,’ but it is doubtful that the average literate courtier of his day kept the distinction in his mind and, what is more to the point, in his feelings. The conduct of love affairs remains unchanged; only the theory has been brought up to date with the inclusion of elements borrowed from Christian Neoplatonism. It is perhaps ironic that Saffredent should appropriate Parlamente's basic tenet that the path to God runs through the loves of this world, but his cleverness, together with his reference to the ladder of love, serves to buttress ‘mixed’ love against the attacks of orthodox Christianity and assuages in some measure the guilt attendant upon such affairs. Saffredent thus provides a rationale far more convincing than any to be found in Andreas.

Not only does the theory of ‘mixed’ love Saffredent develops dispose rather neatly of the problem of sin, but it also sets forth the lover's dual pattern of behavior in relation to his mistress. Inherent in the passive-aggressive polarity of the fantasy which underlies the theory, the double line of conduct requires the lover to assume respectful obedience towards his lady in public, but demands that in private he exercise the rights of masterful conquest which his masculine superiority and, hopefully, the lady's gift of herself bestow upon him. The clash between the two is illustrated by Oisille's outcry against Hircan's suggestion that it was Amadour's duty to use force, if necessary, to gain possession of Floride. “Quel debvoir?” she asks him indignantly. “Appellez-vous faire son debvoir à ung serviteur qui veult avoir par force sa maistresse, à laquelle il doibt toute reverence et obeissance?”⁶⁹ Saffredent resolves the issue by drawing again the distinction between the public and private encounters of lovers:

Ma dame, quant noz maistresses tiennent leur ranc en chambres ou en salles, assises à leur ayse comme noz juges, nous sommes à genoulx devant elles; nous les menons dancer en craincte; nous les servons si diligemment, que nous prevenons leurs demandes; nous semblons estre tant crainctifs de les offenser et tant desirants de les servir, que ceulx qui nous voient ont pitié de nous, et bien souvent nous estiment plus sotz que bestes, transportez d'entendement ou transiz, et donnent la gloire à noz dames, desquelles les contenances sont tant audatieuses et les parolles tant honnestes, qu'elles se font craindre, aymer et estimer de ceulx qui n'en veoient que le dehors. Mais, quant nous sommes à part, où amour seul est juge de noz contenances, nous sçavons très bien qu'elles sont femmes et nous hommes; et à l'heure le nom de maistresse est converti en amye, et le nom de serviteur en amy. … Elles ont l'honneur autant que les hommes, qui le leur peuvent donner et oster, … mais c'est raison aussy que nostre souffrance soit recompensée quand l'honneur ne peult estre blessé.⁷⁰

Saffredent exposes the theory that justifies worldly amours. He urges the ladies to understand and admit this distinction between public and private conduct so that they will not wax indignant, as Floride did, when their obedient suitors suddenly begin to press them closely. He thus confirms Parlamente's fears about the real intentions of so-called romantic lovers, but he also disposes of the vexing question of a woman's honor by insisting that it is equatable with reputation, and that consequently what is not known will not harm her. Lovers may please themselves freely without fear of offending either God or society, provided they abide by the rules of the game.

Saffredent's answer to social disapproval of illicit love touches on the very heart of the Querelle des femmes as it appears in the Heptameron, for in Marguerite's book the battle is joined around the issue of women's honor. The men, with the exception of Dagoucin and Geburon, repeatedly attribute the ladies' cruelty to false pride and hypocrisy, masked as honor, whereas the ladies insist that true honor consists in clean living, not reputation: it is the lovers who are hypocrites, they contend, masquerading as idealizing Platonists when their intention is really to suborn the conscience of their ladies.⁷¹ What is at issue is the meaning of the term ‘honor’; according to Saffredent, it is an invention designed to make women seem better than they are, and all it accomplishes is to stifle the innocence and spontaneity of natural feelings; it perverts the natural order by making virtue—i.e., love—appear sinful.⁷² Women are the villains of the piece because, with few exceptions, they will not see that “leur vray honneur gist à monstrer la pudicité du cueur, qui ne doibt vivre que d'amour et non poinct se honorer du vice de dissimullation.”⁷³ It is their vanity and pride which force lovers to dissemble, when they would approach women under the impulse of the natural desire to love, the first step towards God. Women are therefore responsible for making of love, that should be beautiful, something terribly complicated and deceitful.⁷⁴ But Hircan warns them not to be too sure of themselves; they may claim to be closer to God by reason of their honor, yet actually they are further from salvation than men because they are less honest about their real nature: “Entre nous hommes … sommes plus près de nostre salut, que vous autres, car, ne dissimullans poinct noz fruictz, congnoissons facillement nostre racine; mais, vous qui ne les osez mectre dehors et qui faictes tant de belles œuvres apparantes, à grand peyne congnoistrez-vous ceste racine d'orgueil, qui croist soubz si belle couverture.”⁷⁵

The charges levelled against women are as old as the battle of the sexes itself and boil down to the basic accusation that women are far more libidinous than men and that their highly prized virtue is only a monstrous conspiracy intended to earn them a glorious reputation. This view lies behind Hircan's ironic justification of the widow's choice, in the twentieth tale, of her seemingly repulsive stable groom's embraces over those of her highly presentable knightly suitor: “Helas! Madame,” he explains to Oisille, “si vous sçaviez la difference qu'il y a d'un gentil homme, qui toute sa vie a porté le harnoys et suivy la guerre, au pris d'un varlet bien nourry sans bouger d'un lieu, vous excuseriez ceste pauvre veuve.”⁷⁶ Behind the lady stands the whore, a point Simontault makes even more forcefully when he says that women play a double-dealing game, securing both their pleasure and their reputation:

… il y a des femmes qui veullent avoir des evangelistes pour prescher leur vertu et leur chasteté, et leur font la meilleure chere qu'il leur est possible et la plus privée, les asseurant que, si la conscience et honneur ne les retenoient, elles leur accorderoient leurs desirs. Et les pauvres sotz, quant en quelque compaignye parlent d'elles, jurent qu'ilz mectroient leur doigt au feu sans brusler, pour soustenir qu'elles sont femmes de bien; car ilz ont experimenté leur amour jusques au bout. Ainsi se font louer par les honnestes hommes, celles qui à leurs semblables se montrent telles qu'elles sont, et choisissent ceulx qui ne sçauroient avoir hardiesse de parler; et, s'ilz en parlent, pour leur vile et orde condition, ne seroyent pas creuz.⁷⁷

Even Geburon, who does not as a rule associate himself with his companions' misogyny, agrees that virtue in ladies often comes not from moral principle but as a result of their training and station in life, “en sorte que la vertu des femmes bien nourryes seroit autant appelée coustume que vertu.”⁷⁸ That a lady's honor is only skin deep fits in with the masculine point of view which prompts Saffredent to declare it is better to love a woman as a woman than to idolize several as if they were sacred images,⁷⁹ and, in another context, to assert that one can do a woman whom one desires no greater honor than to take her by force if she is not to be had by persuasion, bribery, or trickery.⁸⁰ But Geburon does concede the possibility of a native virtue of the heart, implanted by the spirit of God, and concludes that the honor of women ultimately resides in their chastity, whether they have the honor by virtue of training or of the grace of God. This point of view the ladies champion, all of them insisting, though, that theirs is a code of honor far different from men's because it is based on very different considerations.

The issue is joined when Hircan enunciates his belief that women's so-called honor merely substitutes the vice of pride for the more natural vice of seeking after pleasure, and Nomerfide, expressing regret that so virtuous a wife as Parlamente should be wasted on one who makes out virtue to be vice, challenges him. The exchange which follows takes us to the heart of the controversy:

—Je suis bien ayse, dist Hircan, d'avoir une femme qui n'est poinct scandaleuse, comme aussi je ne veulx poinct estre scandaleux; mais, quant à la chasteté de cueur, je croy qu'elle et moy sommes enfans d'Adam et d'Eve; parquoy, en bien nous mirant, n'aurons besoing de couvrir nostre nudité de feuilles, mais plustost confesser nostre fragilité.—Je sçay bien, ce dist Parlamente, que nous avons tous besoing de la grace de Dieu, pour ce que nous sommes tous encloz en peché; si est-ce que noz tentations ne sont pareilles aux vostres, et si nous pechons par orgueil, nul tiers n'en a dommage ny nostre corps et noz mains n'en demeurent souillées. Mais vostre plaisir gist à deshonorer les femmes, et vostre honneur à tuer les hommes en guerre: qui sont deux poincts formellement contraires à la loy de Dieu.—Je vous confesse, ce dist Geburon, ce que vous dictes, mais Dieu qui a dict: “Quiconques regarde par concupiscence est deja adultere en son cueur, et quiconques hayt son prochain est homicide.” A vostre advis, les femmes en sont-elles exemptes plus que nous?—Dieu, qui juge le cueur, dist Longarine en donnera sa sentence; mais c'est beaucoup que les hommes ne nous puissent accuser, … et [Dieu] congnoist si bien la fragilité de noz cueurs, que encores nous aymera-il de ne l'avoir poinct mise à execution.⁸¹

Hircan and Geburon base their arguments on women's feelings, which they say are no better than men's; Parlamente and Longarine, on the other hand, argue on the basis of women's conduct, which, they say, shows a marked superiority over men's since women do not disobey God's commands. Whatever impulses may lurk in the secret recesses of their hearts as a result of the fallen state of man, they, at least, do not dignify them by founding their honor upon them. Quite to the contrary, their honor, according to Parlamente, is based on something very different—gentleness, patience, and chastity.⁸² In other words, where men would let the aggressiveness of their desires run riot, women stand for a higher morality more likely to insure peace and order in the world. The moral order they represent does not preclude the presence of love—“sans charité et amour,” says Parlamente, “ne fault-il pas qu'elles soient”;⁸³ but women must beware the special pleading of courtly lovers, for, strictly speaking, “mercy est accorder la grace que l'on demande, et l'on sçait bien celle que les hommes desirent.”⁸⁴

The confrontation of masculine and feminine ideals is illuminating for it brings into relief the problem posed by the conflict between the fact of man's emotional and sensual desires and the requirements of Christian morality. Both make strong claims on man's psyche, and the resolution must in some way accommodate them. The first step in Marguerite's proposed solution is to open the eyes of her contemporaries to the idea that the meaning of love is to be found not in a series of amorous adventures but in a stable emotional relationship between two people. “Si l'amour reciprocque,” proclaims Parlamente, “ne contente le cueur, tout aultre chose ne le peult contenter.”⁸⁵ The second step is to place this relationship in marriage—“je ne lairray pas … desirer que chascun se contantast de son mary, comme je faictz du mien.”⁸⁶

Now there is nothing novel in viewing marriage as the institution within which the sexes may properly come together; the principle was formulated for Christianity by St. Paul's famous dictum that for those who cannot contain themselves it is better to marry than to burn (I Cor. vii: 9), a dictum which lay at the root of the evangelical writers' theory of marriage as the divinely ordained remedy for those not graced with the gift of continence.⁸⁷ Their conception of the Christian marriage involved more than an alternative to fornication, however, and Screech has shown how a liberal interpretation of St. Paul allied to Old Testament views on marriage led to the idea of matrimony as an honorable state endowed with spiritual as well as physical meaning.⁸⁸ Within its confines a man should, ideally, be able to satisfy his need for companionship and his desire for offspring; it should thus provide him a basis for an orderly life under the guidance of Christian ethics.

Not only did the evangelists combat the traditional theological view which dispraised marriage in favor of celibacy—their main intent, to be sure; they also provided an alternative to the separation between love and marriage effected by the literature of romantic love. The fantasy embodied in the code of courtly love was designed, in part, at least, to compensate for the failure of marriage to provide a satisfactory outlet for the emotional needs of the individual. But if this outlet were to be incorporated into the matrimonial state, there should be no need for the split between a man's emotional and family life. It is no wonder then that the idealistic and profoundly religious Queen of Navarre, deeply disturbed by this split and its consequences in society, should have espoused the evangelical view of the Christian marriage in her treatise of love. For it is nothing less than the revitalization of what had come to be more a social institution than a personal relationship that she proposes in the Heptameron, and she would establish within marriage a relationship akin to that sought by her perfect lovers. In this sense hers is a true work of propaganda: she would found her humanism in the mutual love of spouses, just as Rabelais sought to found his in the moral freedom of the individual.⁸⁹

Marguerite's actual discussion of marriage offers nothing revolutionary. Dagoucin formulates—and criticizes—the rationale which determines the selection of a mate. Since marriage is a social and economic institution, marriages are made to maintain order and therefore lead more often than not to hell—figuratively and literally—instead of salvation:

… 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.⁹⁰

Geburon disputes the validity of this criticism, reminding Dagoucin that love matches may also end disastrously, just because reason was thrown to the wind and passion was allowed to determine the marriage choice; for, he explains, “ceste grande amityé indiscrete tourne souvent à jalousie et en fureur.”⁹¹ It is at this point that Parlamente introduces what is undoubtedly Marguerite's conception of the ideal marital state: personal desire should match the dictates of social and economic prudence. Neither private choice nor social consideration is a praiseworthy foundation for marriage, says she; what is best is that

les personnes qui se submectent à la volunté de Dieu ne regardent ny à la gloire, ni à l'avarice, ny à la volupté, mais par une amour vertueuse et du consentement des parens, desirent de vivre en l'estat de mariage, comme Dieu et Nature l'ordonnent. Et combien que nul estat n'est sans tribulation, si ay-je veu ceulx-là vivre sans repentance; et nous ne sommes pas si malheureux en ceste compaignie, que nul de tous les mariez ne soyt de ce nombre-là.⁹²

In other words, while wisdom and experience dictate that men and women should adhere to the forms of social convention, what really matters is the spirit with which one enters matrimony, and the right spirit means a willing participation in what God and Nature have ordained as best for man. A marriage so entered into is not a perfect state, but it is the best one can hope for. It has the distinct advantage of satisfying man's natural and spiritual needs.

What makes marriage meaningful, then, is its satisfaction of moral and natural requirements; interestingly enough, Hircan shares this view, a view which he defines according to his bias when he explains that there is nothing remarkable about a husband's keeping himself chaste out of love for his wife, since God orders it so, his oath binds him to it, and “Nature qui est soulle, n'est poinct subjecte à tentation ou desir, comme la necessité.”⁹³ But Hircan does distinguish between marital love and “l'amour libre que l'on porte à s'amye,”⁹⁴ thus reflecting the mores of the times, illustrated in several tales, whereby a man divides his allegiance between a wife and a courtly mistress. Parlamente, however, allows no such hedging: love belongs in marriage rather than outside of it, and while she can praise the husband who turns down a night out with the girls because of his affection for his wife and his love for his Platonic mistress, she holds that “il eust mieulx aymé sa femme, si ce eut esté pour l'amour d'elle seulle.”⁹⁵ Ideally, then, marriage should satisfy not only the sexual, social, and moral requisites of the partners, but their emotional needs as well.

Parlamente is never very clear about the nature of this conjugal love. Haziness on this subject is due perhaps to Marguerite's awareness that her ideal combination of love and social necessity is rarely found among the aristocracy to whom her book is addressed; when, for instance, Parlamente comes to the end of the definition of a good marriage cited above, Marguerite disposes of her appeal to personal experience by closing the discussion on a note of sadly touching irony: “Hircan, Geburon, Simontault et Saffredent jurerent qu'ilz s'estoient mariez en pareille intention et que jamais ilz ne s'en estoient repentiz mais quoy qu'il en fust de la verité, celles à qui il touchoit en furent si contantes, que, ne povans ouyr ung meilleur propos à leur gré, se leverent pour en aller randre graces à Dieu.”⁹⁶

Still, despite this touch of pessimism, an outline of Marguerite's conception of a happy marriage emerges from the discussions. One ingredient of a successful marriage must be mutual affection based on respect for the partner's integrity as a person. Thus, when Parlamente comments on Mme. de Loué's infinite patience with her husband's infidelity (“Novella 37”), she explains why such patience would be impossible for her:

Quant à moy, il ne me seroit possible d'avoir si longue patience, car, combien que en tous estatz patience soit une belle vertu, j'ay oppinion que en mariage admene enfin inimitié, pour ce que, en souffrant injure de son semable, on est contrainct de s'en separer le plus que l'on peult, et, de ceste estrangeté-là, vient ung despris de la faulte du desloyal; et, en ce despris, peu à peu l'amour diminue, car, d'autant ayme-l'on la chose, que l'on estime la valleur.⁹⁷

Conjugal infidelity is insidious because it corrodes the emotional bonds which link husband and wife, the insult to the partner's feelings making estrangement inevitable. One may imagine that here Marguerite speaks of her own bitter disillusionment, which she voices further when she has Parlamente add that “une femme de bien ne seroit poinct si marrie d'estre battue par collere, que d'estre desprisée pour une qui ne la vault pas”;⁹⁸ but in any case it is clear that she does not believe love can survive the prolonged humiliation to which extensive philandering subjects a wife, and she concludes her commentary by saying that the lady in the tale saved her husband from his disreputable love affair out of consideration for their children, and not out of concern for him.

Parlamente's negative comments presuppose the existence of a positive relationship based on mutual trust, and it is evident that she does not restrict the relationship between husband and wife to that of master and obedient servant. She agrees that it is reasonable for the husband to be master in his house, but, she adds, “non pas qu'il nous habandonne ou traicte mal,”⁹⁹ and to Oisille's statement, in another discussion, that the wife's duty to her husband is the same as the Church's to Christ—a commonplace of orthodox and evangelical thought—she retorts that this entails an equal responsibility on the husband's part: “Il fauldroit doncques … que noz mariz fussent envers nous, comme Christ et son Eglise.”¹⁰⁰ Thus far, however, her ideas form no more than an abstraction which needs to be translated into concrete terms if the question of what marriage ought to be is to be answered. The impulsive Nomerfide effects the translation when, discussing the clandestine marriage of the fortieth tale, she defends the heroine's action on the ground of the great joy her love-match brought her. The lady, says Nomerfide, had the pleasure of seeing and speaking with one she loved more than herself, and finally “en eut la joissance par mariage, sans scrupule de conscience.”¹⁰¹ Granted it is not the way of the world for a lady of so high rank to marry a suitor of lower rank for love, yet “le plaisir … est … d'autant plus grand qu'il a pour son contraire l'oppinion de tous les saiges hommes, et pour son ayde le contentement d'un cueur plain d'amour et le repos de l'ame, veu que Dieu n'y est poinct offensé.”¹⁰² In other words, it is fin amor which bound the lovers; but their passion, instead of descending to ‘mixed’ love, sought its consummation in the morally acceptable state of matrimony, thus providing them the happiness “qui se peult seulle nommer en ce monde felicité.”¹⁰³ And, she concludes, since the tragic outcome of the tale stems from circumstances external to the love, it in no way detracts from the happiness achieved by the lovers. Nomerfide's defense suggests the idea that when the passionate dream of romantic love is sanctified by the sacrament of marriage, lovers will have found the only true happiness attainable in this world. The ‘virtuous love’ which, according to Parlamente, finds its fulfillment in wedlock turns out to be none other than romantic love directed to an attainable and morally viable goal.

Attainable and morally viable, the goal is still socially questionable. Nothing illustrates Marguerite's deep-seated conservatism better than Parlamente's unwillingness to endorse Nomerfide's espousal of marriages based on romantic love. True to herself, the Queen's spokesman retains her kinship to the cautiously wise lady of the Comédie de Mont-de-Marsan who would have no commerce with the enraptured shepherdess. The choice of a mate, Parlamente feels, is too important a step to be left exclusively to the heart's inclination—a view she expresses when, after the conclusion of the tale, she admonishes the ladies to take its example to heart: “… que nul de vous ayt envye de soy marier, pour son plaisir, sans le consentement de ceulx à qui on doibt porter obeissance; car mariage est ung estat de si longue durée, qu'il ne doibt estre commencé legierement ne sans l'opinion de noz meilleurs amys et parens.”¹⁰⁴ Focusing on the lifelong nature of the marital commitment, she urges that reason govern the heart in so serious a matter and emphasizes the need for sympathetic help in making a rational choice. That Marguerite, bred to subjugate her private wishes to political necessity, should distrust undisciplined emotion as a guide to life is not surprising; fully cognizant of the social reality into which man is born, she could not go along with Nomerfide's easy dismissal of the worldly interests which structure so much of man's life. Therefore, Parlamente hedges: she wants love in marriage, but she also wants marriages to have the approval custom and mores dictate.¹⁰⁵

An even stronger case for discipline is made by Oisille, who is dogmatic where Parlamente is hortatory: “si fault-il,” she declares, “que nous recognoissions l'obeissance paternelle, et, par desfault d'icelle, avoir recours aux autres parens.”¹⁰⁶ She bases her argument on the immaturity of teen-agers whose free choices will only lead to unhappiness; the wisdom of judicious parents, she feels, is a safer guide than the impulsiveness of youth, and although it might be objected that unhappy love-matches do not necessarily prove the superiority of equally unsatisfactory arranged marriages, Oisille takes a rigorously uncompromising stand against following one's feelings in such matters. Her inflexibility is all the more remarkable in that it comes as part of the discussion of the story of Jacques and Françoise, the two young lovers whose affair leads to a happy marriage¹⁰⁷—even Longarine, who is usually unbending on matters of morality and decorum, objects only to the premarital seduction, which she finds inexcusable, though she joins in Nomerfide's praise of Jacques for doing the right thing in marrying Françoise. It is the degree of freedom granted the lovers which shocks Oisille, who cannot agree with Saffredent's tolerant view of the case. He, on the other hand, puts his finger on the real issue when, disputing her charge of rape, he contrasts marriages based on love with those based on social and economic considerations. “Est-il meilleur mariage que cestuy-là qui se fait ainsi d'amourettes?” he asks. “C'est pourquoy on dict, en proverbe, que les mariages se font au ciel.” But, he continues, “cela ne s'entend pas des mariages forcez, ny qui se font à prix d'argent, et qui sont tenuz pour très approuvez, depuis que le pere et la mere y ont donné consentement.”¹⁰⁸ On the one side we have the romantic tradition which now says that marriages are made in heaven; on the other, the political view which sees them as social and economic contracts. It is still the age-old conflict between subjective desire and objective social reality that is at issue.

Does Marguerite ever resolve this conflict? Parlamente is strangely non-committal in this discussion, her one contribution being a comment about the mother's simple-mindedness in allowing her daughter to be so easily seduced. We should not, however, look to Parlamente for a final solution; the discussions, after all, define issues far more than they resolve controversies, and the positions on this issue have already been clearly set forth. It is to the stories themselves that we must turn for evidence,¹⁰⁹ and there we find that the one consistent note is that love is a perfectly appropriate foundation for marriage, provided that the match does not violate important tenets of social propriety. Where a real breach of the social code does occur, the results can be only unhappy: Rolandine's secret marriage, unconsummated because she obviously accepts the rules which disapprove of clandestine unions, is an empty shell, while her aunt's equally secret marriage is brought to a tragic end because of the deliberate violation of these same rules. But in the case of Jacques and Françoise, the emotional choice is also socially reasonable, and theirs is a successful union. It may be true that the happy ending is due to the fact that this story expresses the values of middle-class life, and therefore belongs to the so-called realistic tradition, whereas the tragic endings of the other two tales derive from the conventions of courtly literature, but Marguerite has clearly announced that her tales are not to be viewed as manifestations of literary convention. They are to be taken as true, and if they are, Jacques and Françoise present what is without doubt the happiest reconciliation of all those aspects any view of marriage must consider.

Marguerite's considered conclusion seems to be, then, that marriage is still the best human arrangement available wherein the contradictory requirements of man's erotic and social nature may be reasonably satisfied. If it is going to fulfill this promise, however, it must be rooted in love, the universal bond, and keep faith with Christian ethics. Wedlock is not a perfect state and holds its share of tribulation, as Parlamente realizes; it is nonetheless the best chance man has for true happiness in this world.

Notes

1. Novella 25, disc., p. 207.

2. Novella 40, disc., p. 279.

3. See above, pp. 60-61.

4. Novella 11, disc., p. 89.

5. See above, p. 32, n. 55.

6. On the Querelle in the Heptameron see Telle, op. cit.

7. Novella 2, disc., p. 21. The Apocalypse several times mentions the names of the elect inscribed in the Book of Life, but nowhere does the quotation appear as cited by Marguerite.

8. Novella 32, disc., p. 245.

9. Novella 30, disc., p. 234.

10. Ibid., p. 233.

11. Novella 22, disc., p. 186.

12. Novella 30, disc., p. 233. The quotation is actually from Isaiah, 38: 14.

13. Novella 25, disc., p. 207.

14. Ibid., p. 207.

15. We should expect no less from a disciple of Lefèvre d'Etaples and Briçonnet. Besides, Febvre, in Le Problème de l'incroyance au XVIe siècle, has shown that this is generally true of sixteenth-century humanist thought in France.

16. See above, p. 25, n. 30.

17. “Vos jeunes yeulx ont vostre cueur tiré
    A la beaulté, puys il a desiré
    De ce bien là, dont avoit congnoissance,
    Par ung plaisir en avoir jouyssance,
    A quoy bien fort l'a poulsé la nature
    Que Dieu a myse en toute creature:
    C'est un vouloir de se perpetuer.”

    (Prisons, p. 164)

18. See above, Chapter II, p. 44.

19. “… le parler et le regard des yeulx / … De soy, sans plus, vostre cueur contanta” (Prisons, pp. 164-165).

20. Ibid., p. 165.

21. Ibid. p. 127.

22. Ibid., p. 165.

23. Ibid., pp. 212-213: “Je suys qui suys fin et commencement. …”

24. Novella 8, disc., p. 48.

25. Ibid., p. 48.

26. Ibid., p. 48.

27. Ibid., p. 48.

28. See above, Chapter I, pp. 24 ff.

29. Novella 8, disc., p. 48.

30. Ibid., p. 48.

31. In Vita, CXL.

32. Prisons, pp. 216-217.

33. Novella 9. See above, Chapter III, pp. 74-77.

34. Novella 19, the story of Poline and her lover (see above, Chapter III, pp. 70-71), is a case in point. The lovers, thwarted by the worldliness of their masters, retire from the world, but even the monastic life fails to destroy the spiritual bond between them: “Ce serviteur religieux … luy fortiffia son oppinion le plus qu'il luy fut possible, luy disant que, puis qu'il ne povoit plus avoir d'elle au monde autre chose que la parolle, il se tenoit bien heureux d'estre en lieu où il auroit toujours moyen de la recouvrer, et qu'elle seroit telle, que l'un et l'aultre n'en pourroit que mieulx valloir, vivans en ung estat d'un amour, d'un cueur et d'un esperit tirez et conduictz de la bonté de Dieu, lequel il supplioit les tenir en sa main, en laquelle nul ne peut perir.” Novella 19, p. 150.

35. Novella 10, disc., p. 83.

36. Novella 26, disc., p.220.

37. Novella 30, disc., p. 233.

38. Novella 12, disc., p. 95.

39. “on dit que l'amour la plus secrete est la plus louable.” Novella 42, disc., p. 295.

40. “… fault aussy bien cacher quant l'amour est vertueuse, que si elle estoit au contraire, pour ne tomber au mauvais jugement de ceulx qui ne peuvent croire que ung homme puisse aymer une dame par honneur.” Novella 53, disc., p. 341.

41. Ibid., p. 341.

42. “… ilz font semblant de n'aymer poinct les raisins quand ilz sont si haults, qu'ilz ne les peuvent cueillir.” Ibid., p. 341.

43. Novella 14, disc., p. 115.

44. Ibid., p. 115.

45. Novella 15, disc., p. 128.

46. His words are “plus amoureux que crainctif.” Novella 10, disc., p. 83.

47. Novella 4, disc., p. 34.

48. Ibid., p. 34.

49. The point is illustrated in several tales; see above, Chapter III, pp. 86-87, 89-91.

50. See above, p. 139.

51. Novella 19, disc., p. 151; see above, Chapter III, pp. 70 ff.

52. Novella 18; see above, Chapter III, pp. 115-117.

53. “… si croy-je que les voluntez sont toutes pareilles.” Novella 21, disc., p. 175.

54. Novella 34, disc., p. 254.

55. Cf. the passage in which he expresses the wish that his pleasure would please God as much as it pleases him, Novella 25, disc., p. 207.

56. See above, Chapter II, p. 61.

57. “… l'exemple … alleguée servira à celles qui cuydent que l'amour spirituelle ne soit poinct dangereuse. Mais il me semble qu'elle l'est plus que toutes les aultres … [car] … il n'est rien plus sot, ne plus aysé à tromper, que une femme qui n'a jamais aymé. Car amour de soy est une passion qui a plus tost saisy le cueur que l'on ne s'en advise; et est ceste passion si plaisante, que, si elle se peut ayder de la vertu, pour luy servir de manteau, à grand peyne sera-elle congneue, qu'il n'en vienne quelque inconvenient.” Novella 35, disc., p. 260. The statement that spiritual love is more dangerous than all other forms may not be Parlamente's, for the editor precedes it with a dash (which usually indicates a new speaker) although he gives no name for that possible interlocutor. The remainder of the passage quoted here, appearing as a reply to a subsequent interruption, is explicitly attributed to Parlamente. The context, however, strongly suggests that even the passage in doubt is Parlamente's.

58. Novella 70, disc., p. 418.

59. Novella 50, disc., p. 325. On the story, see above, Chapter III, pp. 111-113.

60. Novella 56, disc., p. 352.

61. Novella 70, disc., p. 419.

62. Ibid., p. 418.

63. Ibid., p. 418.

64. Novella 50, disc., p. 325. Parlamente is contrasting him with the hero of the tale, who bled to death because, in the heat of passion, the bandage covering his wound came undone. See above, Chapter III, pp. 111-113.

65. Novella 12, disc., p. 96.

66. Ibid., p. 96.

67. Novella 36, disc., p. 265. Cf. Parlamente's declaration that man will never love God perfectly unless he first loves someone perfectly in this world (cited above, Chapter II, p. 60).

68. Ibid., p. 265. The quotation is based on i John 4:20: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”

69. Novella 10, disc., p. 83.

70. Ibid., pp. 83-84.

71. E.g. Ennasuitte's statement, Novella 12, disc., pp. 95-96: “Toutesfois, … si est-ce tousjours la fin de voz oraisons, qui commencent par l'honneur et finissent par le contraire.”

72. “… au commencement que la malice n'estoit trop grande entre les hommes, l'amour y estoit si naifve et forte que nulle dissimullation n'y avoit lieu. … Mais, quant l'avarice et le peché vindrent saisir le cueur et l'honneur, ilz en chasserent dehors Dieu et l'amour; et, en leur lieu, prindrent amour d'eulxmesmes, hypocrisie et fiction.” Novella 42, disc., p. 294.

73. Ibid., p. 295.

74. “… celles qui ne povoient avoir en elles ceste honorable amour, disoient que l'honneur le leur deffendoit, et en ont faict une si cruelle loy, que mesmes celles qui ayment parfaictement, dissimullent, estimant vertu estre vice”. Ibid., p. 295.

75. Novella 34, disc., p. 254.

76. Novella 20, disc., p. 155. Cf. Geburon, Novella 5, disc., p. 37: “Longarine, … celles qui n'ont poinct accoustumé d'avoir de tels serviteurs que vous, ne tiennent poinct fascheux les Cordeliers; car ilz sont hommes aussy beaulx, aussi fortz et plus reposez que nous autres, qui sommes tous cassez du harnoys.”

77. Novella 20, disc., p. 155.

78. Novella 5, disc., p. 37.

79. Novella 12, disc., p. 96.

80. Novella 18, disc., p. 142.

81. Novella 26, disc., pp. 220-221.

82. “l'honneur des femmes a autre fondement: c'est doulceur, patience et chasteté.” Novella 43, disc., p. 301.

83. Novella 56, disc., p. 352.

84. Ibid., p. 353.

85. Novella 45, disc., p. 308.

86. Novella 35, disc., p. 261.

87. See Screech, pp. 36, 69-71.

88. Screech, pp. 66-83.

89. Actually, both followed the liberal theology of their day, and Rabelais would generally be on Marguerite's side in the debate on marriage. The significant difference between their attitudes is that Rabelais does not focus exclusively on the emotional relationship marriage entails, and has his hero, Pantagruel, maintain a certain emotional detachment in relation to the marital bond. See Screech, Chapter VII, “The authority of St. Paul, the wisdom of indifference and the Folly of the Gospels,” pp. 104-125. Also cf.: “Yet in his day there were very few who could envisage marriage, as Margaret of Navarre did in her optimistic moments, as an ideal of greyish whiteness.” Screech, p. 131.

90. Novella 40, disc., p. 280.

91. Ibid., p. 280.

92. Ibid., p. 280.

93. Novella 63, disc., pp. 381-382.

94. Ibid., p. 382.

95. Ibid., p. 381. See above, Chapter III. pp. 143-144.

96. Novella 40, dic., p. 280. The italics are mine.

97. Novella 37, disc., p. 268. Parlamente's declaration denies Screech's assertion that “for Margaret … the wise wife affected not to notice her husband's infidelity, and tried to win him back by a sort of aggressive resignation” (Screech, p. 79). Such conduct may be a practical solution, as the 37th tale suggests, but Marguerite would agree with Rabelais' view (Screech, pp. 78-79) that the wife's duty is to mirror the character of her husband, and “if she does not conform to her husband's moral requisites, the fault must lie with himself.” Cf. Novella 15, discussed above, Chapter III, pp. 111-112.

98. Ibid., p. 268.

99. Ibid., p. 269.

100. Novella 54, disc., p. 344.

101. Novella 40, disc., p. 277. See above, Chapter III, pp. 115-116.

102. Ibid., p. 278.

103. Ibid., p. 278.

104. Ibid., p. 277.

105. Marguerite's opposition to clandestine marriages is in line with the attitude of the aristocracy and the Evangelicals of her day. See Screech, pp. 44-54.

106. Appendix II, disc., pp. 437-438.

107. Appendix II. See above, Chapter III, pp. 155-157.

108. Appendix II, disc., p. 437.

109. The three novellas concerned with love matches are the stories of Rolandine, of her aunt, and of the young Parisian lovers, nos. 21, 40, and Appendix II. See above, Chapter III, pp. 113-118.

Works Cited

Febvre, Lucien. Le Problème de l'incroyance au XVIe siècle. La religion de Rabelais. Paris: Albin Michel, 1942.

Marguerite de Navarre. Les Dernières poésies de Marguerite de Navarre, Abel Lefranc, ed. Paris: Armand Colin, 1896.

———.L'Heptaméron, Michel François ed. Nouvelle édition revue et corrigée. Paris: Garnier, n. d.

———.Letters de Marguerite d'Angoulême, F. Génin, ed. Paris: Jules Renouard, 1841.

———.Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses, F. Frank, ed. 4 vols. Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1873.

———.Nouvelles lettres de Marguerite d'Angoulême, F. Génin, ed. Paris: Jules Renouard, 1842.

———.Théâtre profane, Verdun L. Saulnier, ed. Paris: Droz, 1958.

Screech, M. A. The Rabelaisian Marriage. London: Edward Arnold, 1958.

Telle, Emile V. L'Oeuvre de Marguerite d'Angoulême, Reine de Navarre, et la Querelle des Femmes. Toulouse: Privat, 1937.