The Trials and Joys of Marriage

Salisbury, Eve. “The Trials and Joys of Women, Introduction,” The Trials and Joys of Marriage. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002. Print.

This article is one that I found on the TEAMS site when I was researching my first paper. I thought it provided a lot of information on the historical context of how marriage was viewed in the middle ages that brought a lot of understanding to my readings of Chaucer. I can see how a lot of these elements play into the tales, such as the medieval assumptions about marriages coming from classical and biblical sources - In The Knight's Tale, there is a large classical influence, and even in the tale about the woman who is separated from her husband but promises to remain loyal to him (but then tells a man that if he can remove all the rocks from a beach she'll marry him) (I'm completely blanking on the name here and I don't have my copy of CT with me) reminds me a lot of the Odyssey with Penelope and Odysseus and the suitors. I can also see the idea that in marriage women were expected to be completely subordinate to men as a theme running through the tales- the Tale with January and May is an example of this. This article was helpful because it provided me with some insight about how other medieval writers thought about the institution of marriage and showed the different ways marriage was portrayed in medieval writings.

Here's the main points:

-Introduction to a book that looks at the different portrayals of marriage in medieval society

-Medieval assumptions about marriage come from classical and biblical sources

-Sublimation of sexual desire into religious devotion encouraged

-Some Christian writers encouraged companion marriage (no sex)

-When marriage became church endorsed when it became a sacrament, two models of marriage, secular and ecclesiastical emerged. The ecclesiastical view of marriage demanded that consent take place between the two parties and that the nuptial vows be witnessed in a public place (normally the church door), rather than clandestinely.

-Canon law supported the traditional views of the subordinate status of women in relation to me, and placed women under the rod and in the power of their husbands, who had total power over their legal and domestic powers. However, it was expected that the male head of household would use reason in the fulfillment of his family duties.

-The church opposed the easy repudiation of spouses and made marital dissolution extremely difficult

-In medieval England ecclesiastical officials did their best to regulate in marriage practices what was theoretically proposed in romance literature

-The practices of courtly love were actually practiced in the private lives of public individuals and were written about by people like Chaucer

-Is there a “Marriage group” in Chaucer? Chaucer’s work is definitely infused with the idea of the complexities of marital relations

-When cataclysmic changes in the economic, social, and political conditions of society allow aggressive women to challenge authority, as does Chaucer's Wife of Bath, male anxieties about female chastity and cuckoldry, potency and paternity become magnified

-The English fabliau is marked by a tendency to put an end to illicit marriage behavior through the use of trickery

-Treatises and moral works address the more serious views of marriage