“Social and Sexual Domination: AnalyzingCuckoldry in Medieval French Fabliaux”
Per Nykrog’s seminal study, Les Fabliaux, collected about
one hundred and sixty fabliaux from manuscripts penned
between 1200 and 1340.1 The size of Nykrog’s collection,
coupled with his belief that many more fabliaux were either
destroyed or never written down, attests to the popularity
of the genre2 during the later part of the thirteenth
century.3 These bawdy tales, which almost invariably feature
sexual or eschatological jokes at their core, were meant to
be performed for an audience rather than read alone,4 and
were typically composed by professional jongleurs.5 As Charles
Muscatine writes, “Perhaps just because of their
unpretentiousness and candor, the fabliaux can be trusted to
reveal genuine features of medieval sensibility that other
genres tend to conceal.”6 If Muscatine is right, the fabliaux
1 Nykrog, Per, Les Fabliaux (Genève, 1973).2 Cooke, Thomas D. The Old French and Chaucerian Fabliaux: A Study in Their Comic Climax. (London, 1978). p. 11.3 Muscatine, Charles. The Old French Fabliaux (London, 1986). p. 4.4 Cooke, p. 13.5 Muscatine, p. 5.6 Muscatine, p. 2.
1
are an excellent body of literature through which to
investigate medieval notions of gender and sexuality. In
fabliaux, one gender and sexuality theme stands out due to its
frequent occurrence, centrality to the narrative, and
comedic appeal: cuckolding. The prevalence of the cuckold
trope in fabliaux lends an interesting importance to the fear
of marital infidelity, which in turn suggests an interesting
link between cuckolding and hegemonic masculinity.
To understand the implications of cuckoldry in the
fabliaux, one must first understand medieval hegemonic
masculinity and how the cuckold runs counter to the ideal
medieval masculine identity. Medieval scholars believed that
men were superior to women in both intellect and morality.7
Not only were men superior, but they were also supposed to
be the opposite of all things ‘female’ or ‘feminine.’ Even
the Latin language reflected this belief: ‘man’ was vir
because men possessed vis (power), whereas ‘woman’ was mulier,
a term related to softness and gentleness.8 Because of the 7 Bullough, Vern. “On Being Male in the Middle Ages,” Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages. ed. Clare A. Lees (London, 1994). p. 31.8 Bullough, p. 32-33.
2
binary opposition of men to women and the supposed
superiority of men, it was seen as a man’s right, and even
duty, to dominate and control women, if only to help guide
and better them.9 This duty to dominate formed the backbone
of the ‘masculine triad,’ or the three defining
characteristics of the perfect medieval man: the ability to
impregnate women, to protect those dependent on him, and to
provide for a family.10
The reproductive expectations placed on a fertile man
were two-fold: in order to impregnate a woman, he must not
only have exclusive reproductive rights to said woman, but
also demonstrate a certain degree of sexual prowess. The
question of paternity so occupied by medieval mind because
female adultery “threatened [the] legitimate production of
9 Murray, Jacqueline, “Hiding Behind the Universal Man: MaleSexuality in the Middle Ages,” Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. ed. Vern L. Bullough & James A. Brundage (London, 1996). pp. 123-152. p. 126-127. It is worth noting, however, that this domination and control had a class dimension; that is to say that a peasantman would never presume to dominate a noblewoman. 10 Bullough, p. 34. For a broader discussion on this masculine triad, see Gilmore, David D., Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (London, 1990).
3
progeny and proper descent of property.”11 An illegitimate
child may mistakenly inherit a man’s property, or, lacking a
legitimate heir, a man may not be able to pass his property
down through his own bloodline. This was no trifling
anxiety; even the Masters of Theology at the University of
Paris faced questions about paternity, female adultery, and
how illegitimate children should be dealt with.12 In
addition, medieval thinkers believed that a man must perform
well sexually in order to impregnate his female partner.
Medical treatises of the Middle Ages, believing that men and
women’s sexual processes were the same but inverted, claimed
that it was not enough for a man to ejaculate during
intercourse; in order to release her own seed, the woman
needed to have an orgasm too. Without the female orgasm,
there could be no conception.13 If sexual exclusivity and
prowess are required to impregnate a woman, and in turn to 11 Dunn, Caroline. Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction, and Adultery, 1100-1500. (Cambridge, 2013). p. 120.12 For details on paternity questions in these quodlibets, see Wei, Ian P., Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and theUniversity, c. 1100-1330 (Cambridge, 2012). Cambridge Books Online, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511842108. accessed 26 March, 2013.13 Bullough, p. 39-40.
4
fulfill one of the three ‘masculine requirements,’ what does
it say about a man’s masculinity when he does not have
sexual exclusivity to a woman (particularly his wife),
cannot perform well sexually, or both?
Medieval masculinity was far more complicated that
simply meeting the three ‘masculine requirements’ and
receiving one’s proverbial ‘man card.’ Masculine gender
identity, then as now, was multifaceted. Not all men could
reproduce, use physical violence to protect their
dependents, or be the head of a household. Accordingly, each
of the traditional Three Orders had different ways of
defining masculinity, particularly masculine sexuality.
It seems most fitting to open with the sexuality of the
clergy because they were supposed to be celibate. Although
clergy were meant to be celibate, the class fulfilled the
sexual aspect of the masculine triad through metaphorical
husbandry. A clergyman could consider himself married to the
Church,14 or devote himself to a female saint in a way that 14 Raverty, Aaron, “Are We Monks or Are We Men?: The Monastic Masculine Gender Model According to Saint Benedict,” Journal of Men’s Studies, 14:3 (Fall, 2006). pp. 269-291. p. 279.
5
reflected the female ‘bride of Christ’ concept. Despite
their vows and metaphorical husbandry, the clergy’s
suppressed sexuality was still a source of concern. If the
clergy could not obey their vows of chastity, it was feared
that they might take liberties with religious and secular
women alike. Although any man, religious or secular, might
take such liberties, the intimate access to women granted to
the clergy through their positions as confessors, preachers,
pastors, and advisors made them especially suspect.15 This
fear of priestly indiscretion appears to be quite common, as
it features prominently in two fabliaux examined below and
many others besides them. P.H. Cullum theorizes that, in
breaking their vows of celibacy, clerics sought to don the
mantle of secular masculinity in order to defend their own
manliness to secular society.16 Thus members of the clergy,
depending on their adherence to their vows and their
intentions in breaking them, may fall either into clerical
or secular sexual categories.15 Cullum, P.H., “Clergy, Masculinity and Transgression in Late Medieval England,” Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. Dawn M.Hadley (Harlow, 1999). pp. 178-196. pp. 190-196.16 Cullum, pp. 186.
6
Peasants were able to have sex freely within marriage,
but it was believed that their sexuality was base, and
perhaps without pleasure. Intercourse amongst peasants was
not expected to be enjoyable, but rather animalistic—when it
happened at all. Paul Freeman, in Images of the Medieval Peasant,
pieces together a distasteful view of male peasant sexuality
from fabliaux, treatises, and other contemporary documents.
If these works are any indication of medieval popular
opinion, peasants were seen as “unfit for the service of
love.”17 Andreas Capellanus, a twelfth century writer, says
that peasants, rather than ‘making love’ in a romantic or
spiritual sense, “are impelled to acts of love in the
natural way like a horse or a mule, just as nature’s
pressure directs them.”18 Capellanus adds that male peasants
very rarely have sexual urges, and are more content to work
their fields than to lay with their wives.19 This debasing
of peasant love and sexuality poses the question: was sex
17 Freedman, Paul. Images of the Medieval Peasant. (Stanford, 1999).p. 157.18 Capellanus, Andreas, Andreas Capellanus on Love. ed. and trans.P.G. Walsh (London, 1982). p. 223, 1:11.19 ibid
7
enough to make a man, or must there be something more to his
sexuality?
Sexually, knights had more expectations than other men
owing in part to the importance of lineage and the class-
based idea of courtly romance. From the eleventh century
onward, there was an increasing preoccupation with noble
lineage in an attempt to make knighthood, and the titles and
arms that came with it, more exclusive.20 When the concern
with lineage combined with the fear of dying heirless (more
specifically, dying without legitimate heirs), the sexual
demands on noblemen expanded and contracted: a nobleman
wanted to have many children to ensure that his line
continued and possessions stayed within the family, but
found himself restricted to intercourse with a noble wife if
he wanted his bloodline to retain its nobility and to have a
legitimate heir. In addition, noblemen and women were
expected to participate in the practice of courtly love,21 20 Keen, Maurice, Chivalry (London, 1984). pp. 143-144.21 Karras, Ruth Mazo. “Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy,” The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. ed. Mathew Kuefler. (London: University of Chicago Press, 2006).pp. 273-286.
8
both because it was seen as enjoyable and because it was a
sign of their class superiority. Peasants, after all, could
not love but in the manner of animals,22 while the ranks of
the nobility populated the great chivalric romances of the
twelfth century. Lovesickness, which was recognized as a
disease by medieval doctors, became exclusively linked with
the nobility,23 indirectly implying that peasants could not
love so deeply or profoundly as members of the nobility.
Once regarded as a serious disease caused by an
inappropriate excess of love,24 lovesickness became
glorified. Take, for example, Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain,
wherein Yvain’s bout of madness at the loss of his wife’s
affections may be interpreted as a romantic, touching
gesture and proof of Yvain’s nobility.25
It is clear that not all medieval men were sexually 22 See n. 18.23 Wack, Mary Frances, “The Liber de heros morbo of Johannes Afflacius and Its Implications for Medieval Love Conventions,” Speculum, 62:2 (April, 1987). pp. 324-344.24 Afflacius, Johannes, Liber de heros morbo, trans. Mary Frances Wack, “The Liber de heros morbo of Johannes Afflacius and Its Implications for Medieval Love Conventions,” Speculum, 62:2 (April, 1987). pp. 326-329.25 de Troyes, Chrétien. “Yvain,” Arthurian Romances. trans. W.W. Comfort (London: Dent, 1975). pp. 180-269. pp. 216-217.
9
equal. The classed sexual characteristics above described
suggest a medieval sexual hierarchy, wherein knights possess
sexual hegemony because of their ability to make love rather
than rut like animals. Peasants, because their sexuality is
base and infrequent, occupy the lowest rung of the sexual
hierarchy. The clergy are effectively in limbo, both absent
from the sexual hierarchy because of their vows, and then
somewhere in the hierarchy when they transgress said vows.
These theoretical views of sexuality can only be refined
when seen in practice. One cannot peer back in time into
medieval bedrooms, and so sexual fabliaux are the next best
option.
In the anonymously written “The Tresses,”26 a knight is
cuckolded because his wife prefers another knight to him.
One night, he catches his wife’s lover sneaking into their
bed and chases him off. His wife, to spare herself from
punishment and allow the affair to continue, comes up with a
plan. She sends her friend to receive punishment in her
26 “The Tresses,” Cuckolds, Clerics, & Countrymen: Medieval French Fabliaux. trans. John DuVal. ed. Raymond Eichmann (Fayetteville, 1982). pp. 63-76.
10
stead; the friend is mistaken for the wife in the dark,
beaten severely, and has her hair lopped off. The wife
replaces the shorn locks with the tail of the knight’s most
prized horse as he sleeps. In the morning, the knight finds
that his wife is lying by his side, unmarked by the beating,
and in possession of all her hair. Through her trickery, the
wife is able to convince her husband that the whole incident
was a drunken nightmare. This cuckolded knight is left
lamenting the loss of his horse’s tail, feeling guilty for
having accused his wife, and ignorant to his wife’s
infidelity.
The knight’s masculinity is called into question not
because he cannot live up to class standards, but because
he cannot control his wife. In fact, the author is careful
to stress that this knight is noble, chivalric, and
dedicated to his own martial duties.27 (We do not know what
his rival is like, and thus cannot adequately compare them.)
Additionally, because control of his wife has slipped from
his grasp, he makes it possible for his wife to carry on an
27 “The Tresses,” p. 66-67, vrs. 1-14.
11
affair, fails to recognize her unfaithfulness, and,
ultimately, proves ignorant to the goings-on in his own
household. He does not bring his wife to rein, and therefore
fails to meet two ‘masculine requirements.’ When a wife
isn’t controlled, a husband may come to shame. There is no
mention, however, of the knight’s sexual capabilities, but
there is the subtle hint that, if he was sleeping with his
wife regularly, she would have no time for an affair: “This
story shows it isn’t right/To put a wife outside at night/If
she does folly with her flesh./It only gives her means
afresh/To load on shame and more distresses.”28 Since the
knight is bested by another knight, a social and sexual
equal, there is nothing to suggest that his wife’s
infidelity threatens his class status.
In Eustanche d’Amiens’ “The Butcher of Abbeville,”29 a
priest is made a cuckold, perhaps as punishment for breaking
his vow of celibacy. However, there must be more to the
28 “The Tresses,” p.. 76, vrs. 427-431.29 d’Amiens, Eustache. “The Butcher of Abbeville,” Cuckolds, Clerics, & Countrymen: Medieval French Fabliaux. trans. John DuVal. ed. Raymond Eichmann(Fayetteville, 1982). pp. 13-28.
12
fabliaux than simply punishing moral indiscretions. (After
all, if fabliaux punished every immoral character, few would
escape unscathed!) In this tale, David, a butcher, seeks
lodging with the priest, but is rejected because he is
neither an important nor rich man. In revenge, David steals
the priest’s fattest sheep and offers it to the priest in
exchange for lodging. The priest, not recognizing his own
sheep, greedily accepts. But David does not stop there. He
offers the sheep’s fleece to both the priest’s maid and
mistress in exchange for sex. After taking pleasure in the
two women of the house, David sells the fleece to the priest
and takes his leave. In the end, the whole household fights
over the fleece, and the priest sees how he has been
deceived and shamed.
While it is true that the priest is being punished for
breaking his vows of celibacy and rejecting his obligation
to be hospitable, the priest’s masculinity has also been
damaged by David’s trickery. After all, as Cullum suggests,
if the priest has broken his vows by taking a mistress (and
13
even having children by her30), he has crossed into the
realm of secular masculinity, and can thereby be judged by
his adherence to literal (secular) rather than metaphorical
(clerical) masculine tropes. As a result, the priest loses
face since he is unable to control the women he is supposed
to oversee. The priest’s sexual masculine honor is not
totally lost, however. Unlike the lover in “The Tresses,”
David the butcher does not seem to enchant either of his
partners. Neither the maid nor the mistress seem to be
impressed with his performance, and are ultimately more
concerned with the fleece than with sexual pleasure. The
failure of the butcher to impress his sexual partners, and
perhaps even to pleasure them, is characteristic of his
class stereotype, and suggests that he is still at a sexual
disadvantage when compared with a sexually active priest.
Social and sexual interactions become much more
complicated when it is a peasant that is cuckolded. There
are no better tales to demonstrate these complications than 30 d’Amiens hints that the priest and his mistress have children together, but it seems likely that these bastard children are not kept in the priest’s home (p. 24, vrs. 375-377).
14
Guerin’s “Bérangier of the Long Ass”31 and “The Priest Who
Peeked.”32 The peasant in “Bérangier” occupies an
interesting social position: his father is wealthy, and
arranges to have him married to the daughter of an earl who
has fallen upon hard times. As part of his wedding present
from his new father-in-law, the peasant is knighted.33 This
peasant-knight must now fulfill the knightly obligations to
chivalry and reputation, but keeps the qualities ascribed to
the peasant class: laziness, gluttony, cowardice, and a
disregard for noble virtues.34 When he makes the mistake of
mocking his wife’s noble ancestors, she points out that he
has no valiant deeds to his name. To prove his worth, the
peasant-knight rides out into the forest in full regalia,
beats his weaponry against the trees, and claims to have
been in a fight. His wife sees through his rouse and, to
31 Guerin, “Bérangier of the Long Ass,” Cuckolds, Clerics, & Countrymen: Medieval French Fabliaux. trans. John DuVal. ed. Raymond Eichmann (Fayetteville, 1982). pp. 47-58.32 Guerin, “The Priest Who Peeked,” Cuckolds, Clerics, & Countrymen: Medieval French Fabliaux. trans. John DuVal. ed. Raymond Eichmann (Fayetteville, 1982). pp. 43-46.33 “Bérangier,” p. 52, vrs. 37-40.34 “Bérangier,” p. 52, vrs. 43-53.
15
teach him a lesson, rides out after him in full armor one
day. The peasant-knight is terrified to see a ‘real knight’
and throws himself at her mercy. In return for sparing her
husband’s life, the lady has him kiss her backside. The lady
returns home triumphantly, brings her knightly lover to her
bed so that her husband will see them together, and, when
her husband returns home, reveals to him her trick. In that
instant, the peasant-knight is doubly shamed. He is revealed
to be a blemish on chivalry, a coward, and a man incapable
of controlling or, it seems, pleasing his wife.
Here we have an obvious comparison of the peasant-
knight to his wife’s lover. The peasant-knight is lazy and
cowardly, and there is no mention of him either coming to
his wife’s bed or pleasing her sexually. That he did not
realize that the ‘long ass’ presented to him by the fake
knight was both a rump and labia suggests that he may never
have seen a naked women, or at least paid very little
attention to his own wife’s body.35 Despite being made a
knight, he still retains all the literary class
35 “Bérangier,” p. 57, vrs. 245-248.
16
characteristics of a peasant, and those characteristics led
to his cuckolding. The wife’s knightly lover, whom she
“[holds] above/All others in esteem and love,”36 although he
is barely described, has several advantages over the
peasant-knight. First, he is a real knight, and not just one
who married into the class. Second, he seems to be capable
of pleasing the lady in a way the peasant-knight will never
be. The peasant-knight’s sexuality is defeated by that of
his social superior. There is also the none-too-subtle
suggested that cuckolding the peasant-knight is beneficial
to the class; with a lover occupying his wife’s bed, he is
prevented from ‘polluting’ his wife’s bloodline with his low
blood.
“The Priest Who Peeked” is a simple story about a
priest who, lusting for a peasant’s wife, interrupts the
couple at dinner claiming that they appear to be having
ruckus carnal relations when they are viewed through a
keyhole. When the peasant does not believe him, the priest
insists that the peasant look through the keyhole. The
36 “Bérangier,” p. 57, vrs. 265-266.
17
peasant goes outside to look in through the keyhole, and the
priest gleefully takes the peasant’s place at the dinner
table. The priest uses this chance to partake of the wife
and the gullible peasant, believing the priest when he says
he is simply sitting at the table, decides the keyhole must
be bewitched.
The poor peasant in this tale has a few strikes against
his sexual masculinity. First, he does not fulfill his
sexual obligations to his wife: “The priest indignantly
observed/The way the peasant led his life,/Taking no
pleasure of his wife.”37 This is not meant to be surprising,
since it is part of the peasant’s literary class identity.
The peasant’s sexual failings are only exacerbated, however,
by the fact that the priest, a man who is supposed to be
celibate, could please his wife more than him. The priest is
passionate in his assault on the wife, and is described as
“[doing] of all good deeds the one/That women everywhere
want done.”38 Second, Guerin’s peasant also does not have
control of his household. Unlike the other cuckolds featured37 “The Priest Who Peeked,” p. 45, vrs. 26-28.38 “The Priest Who Peeked,” p. 46, vrs. 56-58.
18
in this study, it is not because the peasant’s wife is out
of control but because the peasant does not properly guard
what is his. He is so careless with those things in his
charge that another man walks into his home, quite
literally, and has his way with his wife.
While all the cuckolds above described are used to
comedic effect, they are also objects of scorn. No man would
want to find himself in their positions, and the subtle
moral is that men should take great pains to make sure they
do not end up cuckolds. Not all cuckolds are equal in the
shame and the scorn allotted to them, however. Without
question, the two peasant cuckolds here described are met
with the brunt of sexual masculine criticism, but this
criticism is part of a medieval Catch-22. Medieval peasants
are criticized for not meeting sexual expectations, but at
the same time they will always be sexually inferior because
nature has given them characteristics—laziness, stupidity,
lack of virtue, and sexual mediocrity—which play a part in
their cuckolding. Even David the butcher cannot disentangle
himself from his peasant ‘nature’; although he is the hero
19
and victor of “The Butcher of Abbeville,” he still is not a
sexually impressive man. The natural qualities ascribed to
peasants that make them unsuited for love and even sexual
activity in general mean that the peasant, even if he was to
sleep with a noblewoman, could never come out on top of the
sexual hierarchy. He cannot sexually dominate because he is
a peasant.
Knights, on the other hand, even when they are
cuckolded, still occupy a position of sexual dominance over
the other classes. The knight in “The Tresses,” although
perhaps away from his bed too frequently, is not explicitly
called a bad lover nor a bad knight. Rather, he is
celebrated for his chivalry.39 Although he may have been
sexually bested, the knightly lover in “Bérangier” suggests
that “The Tresses” knight will always be sexually superior
to someone. After all, no noblewoman would prefer the
peasant-knight of “Bérangier” because he lacks all of the
noble characteristics the even cuckolded knight possesses,
and he has no sexual prowess of which to speak.
39 “The Tresses,” p. 66, vrs. 1-3.
20
Fabliaux, in effect, reinforce the sexual hierarchy that
has been suggested by general class sexual theory. The
peasant will always be at the bottom of the proverbial
sexual pyramid, because he cannot escape his nature. The
knight, also because of his nature, will always possess
sexual hegemony. The clergy still pose certain complications
for the sexual hierarchy. If they abstain from sex,
clergymen have effectively removed themselves from a sexual
hierarchy, but not a masculine one. If they break their
vows, however, they earn a place in the sexual hierarchy.
That place, “The Butcher of Abbeville” suggests, is between
peasants and knights, because, despite his trickery, David
the butcher is still less of a lover than the priest.
What, then, does this sexual hierarchy say about
medieval masculinity? In truth, it is hard to say. Medieval
masculinity is a far more complicated topic than can be
tackled in one study alone. However, if art does indeed
imitate life, the sexual domination of priests and knights
over peasants in fabliaux seems to suggest that sexuality is
part of the hegemonic masculinity wielded by the upper
21
classes, and that that sexual prowess in some way
contributes to, in the very least, keeping the lower class
in its place.
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22
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23
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24
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