And we must picture her as enveloped and overwhelmed by these conditions, so that they form for her the canopy of heaven, the very nature and ordinance of things, a set of laws so absolute that she could not so much as think beyond them in her wildest flights of fancy—if flights of fancy were possible to beings deprived of all that makes possible a vital human existence.[7]
Patient Griselda, as we know, was the model wife of the day, and the sentiment of the old story, in gradually attenuating strength, has ruled the ideals and conduct of men and women for weary centuries. Indeed, it remains even to this day as a sort of secret substratum to our current domestic sentimentalities. The ideal, in its original strength, produced a society the most degraded and miserable that the civilised world has ever seen.
It is impossible to conceive anything more hopeless than the condition of the whole population of the early Middle Ages. Where was rescue to come from? What could the most sanguine hope for except a very slow movement towards better things?
Yet that was not what happened.
Into this darkness the light of a new and beautiful ideal began to shine like a veritable ray from heaven!
The clouds seemed to part and the troubled, stupid world became illumined with a spiritual truth which to this hour is the source of the best that we have ever conceived in character and manners.
Suppose it had occurred to no one that to torture and insult a fallen foe was of all acts the most cowardly, that treachery was essentially base; that honour, loyalty, and fair play to friend and foe were the attributes of true knighthood and true manhood. Suppose that nobody had ever questioned the conduct of such ruffians as the husband of Griselda, or saw that Griselda's patience was in its essence mean-spirited rather than noble; suppose—but it is wiser to suppose no further, for the records of these old cities and castles and the dark stories that occur even among the gayest troubadour traditions, give hints that the mind dares not dwell upon.
It is impossible to state, much more to exaggerate, the profound and indeed creative influence of the new order, often sinned against indeed, but serving as a standard by which a man is instinctively judged, and by which, in his inmost heart, he judges himself. But to whom do we owe this enormous debt? That question has never received a convincing answer. Nothing could have appeared more wildly Utopian than to hope for the birth of such ideals at the time at which they actually arose. To lofty motives of magnanimity, of mercy and tenderness towards the weak, was added the most unaccountable innovation of all: respect for, worship of women; women whose "goodness" had a little while ago been inferior to man's badness. Suddenly this miserable sinner is exalted to the highest honours, set on a pedestal, served and protected and deferred to as a being who alone can inspire great achievements or shed a light and a charm on the path of life.
A knight, it was said, was "the champion of God and the ladies."
"I blush," Gibbon adds, "to unite such discordant names."