Les Quinze Joies de mariage

Quinze Joies de mariage, Les (late 14th / early 15th c.). This anonymous treatise—perhaps the work of a provincial cleric or lawyer—is structured around the devout Quinze Joies de Nostre Dame, and purports to warn the young man against the nasse (net) of marriage. He may experience a short-lived happiness, but soon his wife's demands will lead to financial difficulties and domestic strife, ‘et finera miserablement ses jours’.

The work thus fits into a long tradition of medieval misogyny, but with a discretion and lightness of touch which attach it rather to the short story than to the dour diatribes of St Jerome or Eustache Deschamps. Paradoxically, the writer's prime target is the sheer stupidity of the husband, his invincible gullibility and good nature. The Joies trace a ‘typical’ marriage via ‘typical’ husband and wife (the writer insists that both are representative)—courtship, the birth of the first child, the wife's inevitable infidelities, the husband's eventual abjection—to an extent which might suggest the history of a particular marriage. Each joie dramatizes a particular confrontation between husband and wife, couched in lively dialogue and set in a detailed mise en scène which relates the message to everyday preoccupations. Yet the writer accepts that he will be ignored—and indeed his epilogue invites the reader to see the Quinze Joies as merely ludic: he could write another treatise detailing the ‘griefz et oppressions que les hommes font aux femmes’.

[Jane Taylor]