In deifying supplication, the knightly spirit elevated the beautiful sex to the heavens, raised woman far above man, and placed man far beneath woman. The knight sacrificed himself for the mistress of his heart, subjected himself to her judgment before the cours d’amour (courts of love), and in the lists. He became the slave of love and of the beloved woman; he wore her fetters, he obeyed her slightest nod, he endured chastisement and pain for her sake. But was this all reality? Was it not rather pure imagination? There was, indeed, as Johannes Scherr says, a worm at the heart of all this romanticism. The ideal deification of woman did not affect a corresponding elevation in her true social position; minne was but too often a mere “pose,” and was often associated with unbridled sexual licence in relation to women of lower degrees.
The domination of the imaginative element characterized the aberrations of minne, debasing itself for the honour of the beloved. The masochistic element concealed in all love was here for the first time elevated into a system. We shall return to this subject in the chapter on “Masochism.”
And yet there is another side to the matter, and by the spirit of chivalry there was aroused a nobler view of woman’s nature.
“The cause and the secret of this dominance (of women) is this, that woman, with her complete, noble womanliness, entered wholly and fully into life; that she controlled a kingdom which was hers by right, the world of feeling and emotion, but controlled this kingdom and no more. As mistress of feeling, as guardian of feeling, she brought poetry into life; and into art she brought that lofty impetus, the above-described fanciful ideal or feminine tendency, which, when observed and perceived, reacts on the emotional mood of the observer.”[139]
To this time also belongs the development of the conventional in the amatory relations of the sexes, which came to be governed by definite rules; since that time, for example, it has been regarded as improper and scandalous for an unmarried woman to remain for any considerable time alone with a man, a view which has persisted to the present day. The social intercourse of the sexes was based upon “gallantry” or “courtesy,” upon a refined behaviour towards “ladies,” regulated by the laws of beauty, propriety, and social tact. In the sequel there developed out of this that exaggerated modern gallantry, characterized by little real delicacy of feeling, because it exhibits an undertone of contempt which makes woman feel only too clearly that she is the representative of a “weaker,” inferior sex, and is in no way the possessor of any proper individual, personal value. Intelligent, eminent women have always protested against this modern gallantry. Mantegazza, in his “Physiology of Woman,” p. 442 (Jena, 1893), ably describes the hypocrisy underlying this evil form of gallantry.
The first intimation of modern individual love is to be found in Shakespeare, to whom love was in general, indeed, only a “superhuman” passion, something lying beyond good and evil, which seized hold of man against his will; but none the less he embodies in his work the romantic ideal life of his time in feminine characters possessing the fullest individuality—as, for example, Ophelia, Miranda, Juliet, Desdemona, Virginia, Imogen, and Cordelia, whilst in Cleopatra he has described the daimonic-bacchantic traits of the love of woman. In Juliet, who sees in “true love acted simple modesty,” we observe the passionate emotion of the primordial natural impulse, and the first awakening of woman as a personality.
False gallantry, in association with conventional propriety, both of which were developed to the fullest degree at the Courts of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., subordinated love to rules, and was very well compatible with the most frivolous and epicurean sensual life. And this occurred at the expense of deeply-felt natural sentiment, the place of which was taken by mere flirtation and coquetry. Here, also, the contempt of woman clearly shows itself. Especially in regard to this period, the opinion has been maintained that the modern Frenchman has never suspected, understood, recognized the divine in woman’s nature. Still, the general truth of this assertion is belied by the amatory life of the celebrated heroines of the salons, such as Du Deffand, Lespinasse, Du Chatelet, Quinault, and above all of the celebrated Ninon de l’Enclos[140]; and the Abbé Prévost, in his immortal “Manon Lescaut,” proved that even in that period the indestructible belief in woman persisted, at least as an ideal.
It was, in fact, in France that the higher individual love underwent a new spiritual enrichment; Rousseau’s “Julie” appeared on the horizon of Love’s heaven. And in the background was disclosed the German “Werther,” a book strangely influenced by that of Rousseau. The nature-sense on the one hand, sentimentality on the other, are the new elements in the love of the period of Héloïse and Werther.
In Rousseau’s “New Héloïse,” passionate love and a complete self-surrender were described without the artificiality, and also without the coquetry and wantonness, of which the literature of the time was full. It was love in a grander style than people were then accustomed to see. For this reason, the book constituted a turning-point in literature. That love is an earnest thing, that it can become “la grande affaire de notre vie,” has perhaps never been more deeply and thoroughly depicted than in the character of “Julie.” In maintaining the essential purity of the love relationship, when the voice of Nature is really expressed therein, Rousseau speaks of the principal theme of his own life.
“Is not true love,” asks Julie, “the chastest of all bonds?... Is not love in itself the purest as well as the most magnificent impulse of our nature? Does it not despise low and crawling souls, in order to inspire only grand and strong souls? And does it not ennoble all feeling, does it not double our being and elevate us above ourselves? In contrast to social inequalities, the love relationship points to a higher law, before which all are equal.”[141]