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PARTISAN REVIEW
seems to be anatomical (this is intercourse with a virgin), not the maiden's
refusal. In the deflowerment it is not clear who is in charge of the female
decision-making process. Nor is it clear whether, afterwards, the female
partner - rendered by male pronouns referring to the rosebud and "Bel
Accueil" (fair, or warm, welcome) - is angry with the Lover. The Rose
appears happy with the outcome, but the emphasis is on her (its) sweet–
ness rather than her satisfaction. Such problems
will
arise when male
characters in literature make love to allegorical flowers and shrines! The
Rose "herself," a symbol of the maiden's private parts, is an object, not a
subject, of desire; she cannot speak. Women again silenced by men? Yet
the Lover
is
on speaking terms with the Rose's major spokesperson, "Bel
Accueil," who possesses intentionality.
But the end of
The Romance
of
the Rose
raises a fundamental question:
just how important
was
consent in the Middle Ages? In modem literature,
love and desire are generally explained in terms of choice and personal
taste - plus chance. But the medieval period spoke of falling in love al–
most exclusively through metaphors of violence: 1) Attack: the god of
love shoots arrows through the eyes of the lover into his or her heart. 2)
Prison: a lover is the prisoner of Love. Lovers are locked up and someone
else has the key. 3) Illness: lovers come down with permanent fevers, and
suffer from chills and sweats, or they become lepers. 4) Madness: lovers
are irrational, mad. 5) Potions: lovers have swallowed fatal love-drinks
and poisons. Personal choice had nothing to do with any of these foun–
dational concepts about love, seen as a violent experience which
happened to you - entered or penetrated you, took possession of you,
corrupted your reason and imprisoned you, male or female - against your
will.
AI/love
was conceived, at least in part, as "rape" and "rapture," for
both men and women.
If this medieval view of all lovers as victims contrasts strongly with
most modem views, well, even today people get caught up in love affairs
against their better judgment; they become obsessed and are unable to
stop intoxicating but self-destructive behavior. Like Tristan and Iseult -
and a whole throng of medieval ancestors - they suffer the torments of
love against their will . Despite the fact that in medieval metaphorical
terms
no one
consented to love - despite this language of catastrophe: as–
sault, prison, poison, madness, and disease - medieval people do appear
often to have enjoyed loving and being in love. If they were in prison,
they didn 't want to be released. If they were sick, they didn't especially
want a doctor. Crazy, they came to prefer the madness of love to sanity.
My point is not - I trust it is obvious - that medieval women wanted to
or liked to be raped but rather that our radical modern dichotomy be-
