The Trials and Joys of Marriage

The disparate texts in this anthology, produced in England between the late thirteenth and the early sixteenth centuries, challenge, and in some cases parody and satirize, the institution of marriage. The texts bridge generic categories.

This edition collects twenty-four disparate Middle English texts, published between the late-thirteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, which all center around the theme of marriage. Eve Salisbury organizes them into three sections: satire and fabliaux, didactic prose and exempla, and secular lyrics. While a fabliau like Dame Sirith presents traditionally lusty lovers aided by trickery, others like A Talk of Ten Wives on Their Husbands’ Ware—in which a group of married women complain about their husbands’ lack of sexual skill—suggest more subversive viewpoints. Didactic texts enshrine orthodox, sometimes explicitly misogynist, attitudes about marriage; these include excerpts from the popular Gesta Romanorum, a Wycliffite sermon, and treatises on educating children. Secular lyrics move into the realm of comic and carnivalesque song, where conventional stereotypes of women and men could be overturned without threatening the status quo. Proto-feminist ideals such as consent between spouses, the value of domestic labor, and female sexuality are all explored throughout.