The Seneschal’s Wife: A Proto-Feminist

If I should love you

and satisfy your desire,

love wouldn’t be shared equally

between the two of us.

Because you’re a powerful king

and my husband is your vassal,

I’m sure you believe 

your rank entitles you to my love.

Love is worthless if it’s not mutual. (129-137)

The above passage is excerpted from Marie de France’s poem, “Equitan.” The poem tells the story of a king who falls in love with his seneschal's wife and claims lovesickness in order to get her to enter an affair with him. They eventually get caught and boiled alive in a bath that was meant to be a trap for her own husband. This particular poem, written by Marie de France, a prominent French poet who wrote in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, contains many Medieval themes including lovesickness and fin amor. Perhaps the most intriguing thing in the poem is the speech of the seneschal’s wife that offers a new take on the rules of love and creates an early idea of female autonomy and equality in relationships. 

In the aforementioned passage, the seneschal's wife is offering her rebuttal to the king’s proposal that they enter into an affair. After the king’s long and pitiful speech, the wife begins her own in which she suggests that the engagement would have too large of a power imbalance in the relationship. In doing so, she asserts her own ideas about a woman’s place in love and subverts Andreas Capellanus’ rules of love. Capellanus, who proposed a list of thirty-one rules on how to properly engage in love, suggests that good character alone allows a man to be worthy of love. He also suggests that no one can be denied love without a valuable reason. In the wife’s speech, we see her denying the king her love for no reason other than the power imbalance that is sure to be present in her relationship to the king. She goes as far as to say that “love wouldn’t be shared equally between us” (de France line 131). In using this seemingly modern language, the wife asserts herself as worthy of equality, positioning this as a sort of proto-feminist text. Writing around the same time as Capellanus, Marie de France uses the character of the wife, particularly in this speech, to undermine and contradict Capellanus’ rules of love. As the wife continues her speech, she suggests that a poor man is worth more than the love of a rich king, further subverting Capellanus’ ideas. She states that the king, who should be a man of character and adhering to the rules of chivalry, is not entitled or worthy of her love, pushing back on the idea that rank and wealth equal character, therefore making a man worthy of love. In her speech, the wife states that “love is worthless if it’s not mutual” (de France line 137). Again, this language surrounding equality is particularly important in this passage and allows the wife to be seen embodying early ideas of feminism. By using language centered on a woman’s autonomy and gender equity in a relationship, the wife employs proto-feminst ideas meant to provide an opposite to Cappellanus’ and the medieval sense of love.

 In most medieval texts, especially those written by men, the treatment of women in relationships is one of wild inequality. Women are often seen as the downfall of men, especially in romantic relationships. In “Equitain” we see a female author attempting to push back at these ideas. However, the poem ends with the wife of the seneschal engaging in the affair with the king which leads to both of their deaths. The ending of the text complicates the ideas presented in the wife’s first speech but as the text is examined further, readers can see that the ending does not necessarily undermine the wife’s character. Just before the passage excerpted above, the wife begins her speech by saying that if she engages in this affair with the king he will “soon get tired of [her] and [she’ll] be far worse off than before” (de France lines 127-128). I believe it is this self awareness that the wife has that accounts for her death. She, as a medieval woman with this awareness of her world, knows that once she has been found as an adulterer, her life will be reduced to near nothing. In jumping in the hot bath meant for her husband’s death, she chooses death over her “far worse” life mentioned in her speech towards the beginning of the text. I think that this could be seen as a sort of meta-narrative for Marie de France as well. As a female author with her empowering speech given by the wife, one would think that the whole poem would revolve around women’s equality, yet she ends it with the wife ultimately giving in to the king and choosing death. I believe that the wife’s self awareness in her speech is reflective of Marie de France’s own knowledge of her world. If she would have placed any more emphasis on the equity of women and their autonomy, she may not have been published at all. Her experience as a woman in the medieval era allows her to sneak in the wife’s speech, acknowledging a woman’s rights to gender equality, especially in regards to relationships, before ultimately slipping back into a more traditional narrative. In including this passage and the language she uses in it, Marie de France is able to establish the wife and herself as proto-feminists.

In the above passage, the seneschal’s wife gives a thought provoking speech as she begins to reject the king’s advances. Written by a woman, Marie de France sneaks in the ideas of female autonomy and mutual love in relationships in order to push back against popular writers at the time, including Capellanus, who wrote about the rules of love. In subverting these ideas, including modern language surrounding equality, and her consciousness as a woman, Marie de France is able to posit the wife of the seneschal, as well as herself, as a sort of feminist.