Medieval Marriages

The BBC documentary about medieval marriages allowed me to get a further understanding of how the nineteenth century dealt with issues of courtly love. Helen Castor, the narrator in the documentary revealed that it was actually pretty easy to get married. You could get married anywhere at anytime. However, as we started to get into the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church began to control medieval marriages. According to the Church, marriage was a way to control the troubling issue of lust and sex, but as Helen Cantor stated, “it was not easy to impose rules into place on the most unpredictable human emotions of love and lust”. Thanks to Marie de France, we are able to gain further insight into the topic of courtly love during this era.

What was great about Marie’s work was that we were finally able to get a women’s perspective on the issues of medieval marriages. With most of Marie’s works incorporating a strong female lead, she had a more realistic twist to the classic courtly love stories. An example of her ironic twist of classic medieval marriages was Le Fresne. Typically those in the nineteenth century who were considered nobles were known to be loyal, of good wealth and selfless. In the story of Le Fresne, the mother was the exact opposite of what it means to be a noble. She was selfish and cowardly. Le Fresne on the other hand did not grow up as a noble even though she actually was one. She grew up in poverty and learned to become selfless and kind, just as a noble should be. We see these characteristics of a noble in the documentary on medieval marriages. Marie de France just puts her classic ironic twist onto the plot, making it more realistic.