Marie de France’s narrative *Guigemar* surprises some readers by being much more morally ambiguous than they expect. If another reader of the poem expressed such a response to you, what might you say in reply?
ENGL 365 | Medieval Object Ecologies
Dr. Myra Seaman | Fall 2014
I would agree. Guigemar does seem to be morally ambiguous. His love interest is already married when he finds her, yet he sleeps with her in secret for quite some time and ultimately ends up with her. On the other hand, I doubt that the lady had much say in who she had married or who captured her or why her life was how it was. She was offered a small ray of happiness when Gugemar arrived and she took it. She even wore a girdle for years while he was away- now THAT is commitment (notice he only had a tied rope, and it wasn’t even around his man parts).
I don’t think that Guigemar was intended to be a story about morality. In my opinion, it reflected that people will ultimately chase what they think will make them happy. Marriage did not make the lady happy. Riches, servants, an ocean view- nothing but love made her happy. In Gugemar’s case, he’d won battles and fame and riches. He could have had anyone or anything that he wanted. The trouble was, he didn’t want what had been offered him. He wanted a lady, THIS lady, and nothing else would satisfy him. The ending seemed somewhat abrupt to me, but I think that’s what made the story great. Two people suffered and fought through obstacles for what they believed in- their love. Even following Christian morality- aren’t many Christians fighting and struggling and dying for their beliefs?
So tell me again how morally ambiguous this story is.
I agree that there are definitely some problems with painting Guigemar as a tale of morality. Particularly the part at the end when he starves everyone inside Meriaduc’s castle to get back his love. Pretty hard to justify, even under the circumstances. However, I do think there is a certain kind of morality at work here.
There is a certain emphasis on gift-giving at the beginning, when Guigemar becomes a knight. The king “giv[es] him luxurious armor, which was exactly what he desired” (48). Guigemar pledges his loyalty to the king and is rewarded. He becomes a gift giver himself two lines later. But this isn’t really about gifts, of course. It’s about reciprocity.
The work is rife with examples: Guigemar’s rebounding arrow that wounds both himself and the hind, the suffering of the hind which begets the suffering of Guigemar and his lady. The serving girl states clearly “This love would be suitable/ if both of you were constant:/ you’re handsome and she’s beautiful” (451-453). What could be more reciprocal than that?
On to Meriaduc. If he were a classy lord, he would have released his lovely captive to Guigemar as he requested. Especially since he sent for Guigemar to fight with him “as a special favor” (749) But he didn’t reciprocate. So, to a knight like Guigemar, even all that death at the end may be morally justifiable.
See, my opinion is already influenced by the recent class on women, gender and sex in the Medieval Times, so from an unbiased and purely historical objective, I would have disagreed that it is morally ambiguous. For the time, surely it was, but this was also a very common trope for the troubadours of that time: Courtly Love. It always had to do with some sort of seemingly (and otherwise realistically) unobtainable love, usually involving an upper class woman and her lover (not husband) knight. And it is not too far off historically that the husband would have kept his wife under lock and key.
All in all, not all Medieval scripture was chaste and had a high bar for the moral compass. There was, in fact, a lot of literature that involved this sort of fantastical affair that would otherwise be unobtainable for those reading it. To put it into perspective, no one in their right mind would respect a woman or man for putting two people romantically interested in them through a series of love-triangle-like trials, and yet that is what bookshelves are stocked to the brim with nowadays, because it’s a fantastical notion to have more than one person fight over a desired partner as if their lives revolved around him/her. It’s all about perspective and understanding the mindset of the culture at that time. This was their erotica, for lack of a better phrase.
I agree that it was definitely on the more morally ambiguous side.
Guigemar is introduced as a knight that revels in war and willingly surrenders himself to bloodshed and fighting his enemies in the war-torn Brittany. The fact that there’s such a pervasive willingness within his character to fight and kill, it leaves a questionable taste in one’s mouth concerning his character.
For the story’s primary focus (the love between the characters), while the lady is already married, she is also forced to live in a tower and is effectively imprisoned.
Their adulterous relationship is, by definition, at least a little morally ambiguous, though it’s hard to determine the right course of action. This, however, isn’t my biggest problem with the morality of the story.
After the lovers are reunited, Meriaduc refuses to let the lady go with Guigemar. Yes, Meriaduc is kind of a jerk and needs to get a grip, but Guigemar takes it about a hundred steps further, abandoning his “friend” over the lady, shifting his alignment to that of his enemies, and then forcefully starves his entire town through war and siege before killing him at the end. Innocent people are dead and suffering, a ruler (though a jerk) is dead, and for what? So that Guigemar could be with his lady that he could hardly remember after two years of not seeing one another.
In the Prologue Marie writes that she toyed with the idea of writing morally didactic stories but put that aside because “too many others have done it” (line 32). Instead she decides to preserve the lais she has heard by putting them “into word and rhyme” (41). Morally didactic stories are supposed to help whoever reads it “guard himself from vice” (23). Though Marie writes that she has abandoned this course in favor of preserving adventures, the story’s focus on repression and loyalty tends sometimes towards moral commentary. Guigemar’s abstinence is described at the beginning as being somewhat distasteful since it means he is not fully initiated into chivalry. His abstinence after leaving the lady is another matter because it is within the chivalric tradition. This seems odd because in christian terms the first abstinence would be the more moral of the two, whereas in the second abstinence he is longing for another man’s wife. Guigemar’s besieging of Meriaduc’s castle does not seem nearly as morally ambiguous because Meriaduc does not have any moral or legal hold on the lady justifying his withholding of her. In besieging the castle Guigemar simply appears to be justly fighting to save a lady, and the civilian casualties do not seem to be relevant to the justness of his fight.
Morally ambiguous, yes, but only to the extent that you consider the social constructs of morality and by what terms you then define that morality. For instance…there is a very pagan, like you said Emily, reciprocal quality to the knights curse. The purity of the white hind, in its ability to reverse the arrow, and curse Guigemar with love-sickness. Also, the image of Venus in the chapel, the mention of the grove–all very pagan allusions. On the other hand, we have the Christian constraint of true happiness, which keeps the lady captive physically, and spiritually. The pagan aspects seem to promote self preservation and the achievement of happiness and preaches love over morality. Christianity and the patriarchal quality of the foreign city promote self-sacrifice, even when that sacrifice makes you unhappy. Marie, to me, seems to undermine Christian morality and promote earthly happiness over unattainable moral values.
The problem encountered on generic moral grounds is the coveting of another mans wife. Or, should we instead be more critical of the kings intense jealousy and brutish attitude towards marriage? Is Guigemar’s unchecked passion and desires the true vice, a sort of greed, lust or gluttony? The wife however, is pent up, feminine and sexually depraved; is her temptation or self-indulgence, her indiscretion in her marriage, the ultimate flaw?
As always, morality is constructed. To Marie, there is a True love which supersedes the quality of lust or adultery or lechery and in which personal happiness is the ruling and resolute moral.
I do believe that, by today’s standards, Guigemar is morally ambiguous but I do not think the ambiguity lies in the forbidden love between a married woman and a knight. Guigemar was uninterested in love from the beginning of the story in his natural state. He possessed no desire to take a woman suitor until he realized, selfishly, that he would die from the curse that the deer placed on his thigh wound if he did not take one. When he arrives in the ancient land, he decides to fall in love with the first woman who appears to him. Guigemar is already morally ambiguous because his love for his suitor is bred out of selfish desire and self preservation. This flaw by itself is not enough to discount the moral stature of Guigemar but this is paired with his unnatural desire to take a love who is already married. The curse allows Guigemar tochoose any maiden to love and he chooses the first one he sees who happens to be married.
I do understand that courtly love and the trope of a married women taking her young knights as a lover is popular in medieval culture so the standards of morality that I understand are not perfectly applicable in this instance, but I do believe that the love between Guigemar and the Queen was born out of selfish desire on Guigemar’s part, who took advantage of a woman who was living in a terrible and unfortunate situation. Though the story takes a turn and the love between Guigemar and the queen becomes more complicated I do not think that this changes the fact that the beginning of the tale is morally ambiguous.