The Lais of Marie de France

The women portrayed in the lays written by Marie are much stronger, independent and passionate than the official powers of that era would like us to believe. This female strength meant that men were not always as strong and dominant over women as those same official powers would have it.

As Marie writes in "Guigemar," one knight's love for his woman (who was herself married to the "lord who ruled over the city") put him in a position of subjugation to her: "The knight remained alone, mournful and downcast . . . He knew that, if he were not cured by the lady, his death would be assured. 'Alas,' he said, 'what shall I do? I shall go and ask her to have mercy and pity on this forlorn wretch. If she refuses my request, or is arrogant or harsh, then I must die of grief and languish forever from this ill'" (Marie 48).

Marie in a number of her lays is careful, however, to include the proposition that adultery is permissible according to her unorthodox moral code only if the lovers believe in God. There are also instances in which the male domination over women is portrayed, but the woman invariably frees herself from this imprisonment, by conventional or unconventional means. Both of these

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akness of the individual. Aquinas writes that the "influence of passion" works in such a way that the individuals "reason is wholly bound, so that he has not the use of reason: as happens in those who, through violent anger or concupiscence [spontaneous, uncontrolled desires], becomes mad or insane, just as they may from some other bodily disorder . . . Of such men the same is to be said or irrational animals, which follow of necessity the impulse of their passions . . ." (qtd. in Perry 254). Aquinas, then, would see the women (as well as the male lovers) in Marie's lays as equal to animals who follow not their reason or will, but their passions, and are therefor sick sinners who need the rationality of philosophy and the salvation of Christianity. Marie's only nod to such moral restrictions is to have her women acknowledge the need for the belief in God to make their love possible and acceptable. Though Cercamon, in "Troubador Love Song," describes a chaste love, he nevertheless, in contradiction to the moral code expressed by Charlemagne and Aquinas, "expresses the erotic tensions openly": " . . . Nothing can console me/ but death, for evil tongues/ (may God curse them)/ have made us part./ And alas, I so desired her/ th
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Approximate Word count = 1674
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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