Chivalry ≠Yvain
Even though throughout the whole story Yvain goes on and on about how much he loves Laudine the whole time before he marries her, he’s easily convinced to leave and go to some tournaments with Gawain after he’s married. Although she gives Yvain a whole year to be gone, he can’t make it back in time and he loses her love. He finally gets back into Laudine’s good graces by teaming up with Lunete and tricking Laudine into reconciling with Yvain before she knows who he is. Yvain, of course, is very exciting by this prospect, although Laudine isn’t too happy. It seems like Laudine’s love for Yvain is gone, but he doesn’t care as long as he’s happy.
This is what Laudine says on page 379 when she realizes she’s been tricked into reconciling with Yvain:
“So help me God Almighty, you’ve caught me neatly in your trap! In spite of myself you will make me love a man who doesn’t love or respect me. What a fine thing you’ve done! What a great way to serve me! I’d rather have put up with the storms and high winds all my life; and if it were not such an ugly and wicked thing to break one’s oath, this knight would find no peace with me no matter what his efforts. Every day of my life I would have harboured, as fire smoulders under the ashes, a pain it is no longer fitting to mention, since I must be reconciled to him.”
That doesn’t sound like a happy woman at all.
This story seems like the opposite of Eric and Enide. Enide gets to stay with Eric so long that she makes him go off adventuring to get his honor back. Yvain doesn’t have that period of marriage time with Laudine and goes off adventuring right away and doesn’t take her with him. These knights have to find a balance between home time and adventure time so they can have functional marriages.
Oh, and one more thing that made me not too thrilled with the character of Yvain is that after he gets the lion, his enemies make Yvain promise to keep the lion at bay. However, whenever the lion breaks out and starts mauling people, Yvain doesn’t really care that much. In summation: Chivalry, thy name is not Yvain.
cristinamabob wrote:
I think Yvain had a very hard time deciding whether or not the leave his lady-love to go off with King Arthur’s court to fight. It mentions in the story a remarkable number of times how much Yvain loves Gawain. He loved Gawain first, and will be much happier honoring Gawain over Laudine. He is not at all pleased with upsetting Laudine, and I think this reflects his inner turmoil about who comes first in his priority list. It reflects poorly on him, but I don’t think it makes him any less chivalrous. He does try to honor all of the promises that he has kept. Or maybe he tries to make up for his lack of chivalry in later situations (Lunete, the giant, etc.) I do agree with you on the control over the lion. I would think that the people watching the battles would think less of him because the lion helped him to win, but at the same time, lions are not rational or even controllable creatures. The story also states that he at least attempts to control the lion.
Posted 25 Sep 2007 at 10:51 pm ¶