Middle English Literature

Marriage
Three principal bodies of texts discussed marriage in late medieval Europe:
theology, law, and literature. Theologians focused on marriage not only as a
socially sanctioned state of mutual love between a man and a woman, but also
as many possible relationships among the individual, the Church, and Christ.
Hence, earthly marriage, and particularly the wife, ranked lower on a scale
below other possible marriages, the married woman less favored than a
virgin bride of Christ. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 set the prohibition
against marriage between first cousins, but this tells us little of the reality of
people’s abilities and desires to choose. The same council, however, accepted
the idea that free consent was necessary, but in England in the later Middle
Ages the king and lords frequently imposed a marriage tax on tenants who
married people out of their feudal property or who simply wanted freely to
choose their own partners. The legal implications of the marriage bond were
different for men and women. In general marriage was a disadvantage for a
woman, who became a feme covert; without special provisions, she was legally
“covered” by her spouse, who gained control over land and goods.
Geoffrey de la Tour Landry, a knight from the province of Maine-et-
Loire, composed his Book for his daughters in 1371–2. Geoffrey states in
his prologue that, having composed a book of instruction (now lost) for his
sons, he decided to make his book for his daughters because he still remem-
bers his wife who died some twenty years before, he has seen his fellow
courtiers deceiving women with their words and deeds, and he wishes his
daughters to “turne to good and worshipe above all ertheli thinges.” He
states that he employed two of his priests and clerks to compile tales of
good and evil women for his daughters” instruction from the Bible, histo-
ries of kings, and chronicles; he adds examples from his own life as well as
commentary. Over twenty French manuscripts of the book survive. Two
English translations remain: a mid-fifteenth century manuscript and Caxton’s
translation from 1483–4 (from which the following excerpt and that in
“Sumptuary,” p. 215, are taken). Geoffrey’s Book is a frequently transfixing
misogynist text of moral prescription and exempla.
Dives and Pauper consists of a fictionalized dialogue between the wealthy
and learned Dives and the authorial poor wandering preacher Pauper. It is
a long didactic treatise on the ten commandments written by an unknown
friar in the first quarter of the fifteenth century and survives as a whole or in