"I DO, I DO": MEDIEVAL MODELS OF MARRIAGE AND CHOICE OF PARTNERS IN MARIE DE FRANCE'S "LE FRAISNE"

Romanic Review, Nov 2001 by Hurtig, Dolliann Margaret

without her having deserved it.]

While extramarital sex is rigorously condemned for a woman, for a bachelor to enjoy sexual pleasure outside the marriage bond is an accepted social practice. According to the lay model of marriage in the twelfth century, unmarried males had a right to female companionship or contubernium. The well-to-do landowner of our story, Gurun by name, therefore, freely chooses to take a mistress. To this end, he generously endows a nearby abbey with land in order to have access to it. He often sojourns there and woos the "niece" of the abbess whom he entreats to come live with him and be his love:

'Bele,' fet il, Ore est issi

de mei avez fet vostre ami.

Venez vus ent del tut od mei!' (287-289)

['Fair one, you have now made

of me your love. Come away

with me for good!']

The maid, whose name is Le Fraisne, freely accepts his offer; after all, it is not everyday that a girl abandoned under an ash-tree and brought up in a convent as the niece of the headmistress gets an invitation to live in a chateau:

Ensemble od lui en est alee,

a sun chastel l'en a menee. (301-301)

[She granted him his request

and went away with him:

he took her to his castle.]

Here the text illuminates the concept of the choice of partners. Gurun and Le Fraisne freely consent to enter into a love pact, l'union libre. Gurun is comfortably entrenched in the system and works it to his best advantage. Marriage to Le Fraisne would have been an impossibility, for their uneven social status rules out any possibility of union. Le Fraisne can bring nothing to Gurun as his spouse, for she has no dowry. Her sole possessions are a piece of rich cloth to which is fastened a bejewelled ring. While these outward signs give rise to speculation that Le Fraisne is of noble birth, the apparent reality is that she has no birthright, no identity, nothing to offer Gurun. She does not have the opportunity given to fair ladies of noble birth to make a suitable mariage de convenance.

In the ecclesiastical model of marriage, the interdiction against concubinage is clear: sex outside of marriage is fornication and is forbidden. Yet the Church does recognize a clandestine or private marriage; that is to say, if a couple makes love with mutual consent outside the bond of marriage, they are considered as married (Sheehan, Marriage, Family, and Law 40). James Brundage comments upon Gratian's perspective on concubinage:

Gratian ascribed to the concubinage relationship the quality of marital affection which the Roman jurists had reserved for marriage unions. As Gratian saw it, a concubine was a woman who united with a man in conjugal affection, but without legal formalities. Gratian, in other words, conceived of concubinage as an imperfect, informal marriage, a marriage which lacked legal formalities and full legal consequences, but which was nonetheless a true and valid marriage. ("Concubinage and Marriage" 3-4)

Thus, while in the ecclesiastical model of marriage Gurun and Le Fraisne may be considered as privately married, according to the secular model of the day, they are living openly as lovers, a feudal lord and his concubine.