It set vielles lightly tinkling and lutes twanging, but it also took possession of great hearts and minds and ruled them for a lifetime. Love was sometimes a "lord of terrible aspect," as Dante has represented him. As women developed personality and individual qualities in their new freedom, the grande passion became for the first time really possible. And their mental and spiritual development tended to promote the growth of the character of men in the same direction.
There seemed a sort of expectation running through the society of that time that a new source of joy had been found, a force that was to redeem and beautify life.
The author of "The Women of the Renaissance" represents the men of this later age—which, however, was still inspired by the chivalric outburst—asking themselves what was the good of learning, money, labour, or even semblances of joy if their hearts were empty.
"The heart," they complain, "makes itself felt above the claims of work, above the intellect, demanding for life a recompense, a goal. We perish for lack of something to love; out of mere self-pity we ought to bestow on ourselves the alms of life, which is love. All is vanity save this vanity, for before our birth, until our death, throughout our whole existence it bears in front of us the torch of life."
Looking back from this point to the Griselda-epoch, we have travelled far indeed!
With such aspirations, such ideas in the air (whether or not they were expressed in a definite way), marriage, which carried Griselda-associations with it, was naturally looked upon as altogether outside the realm of romance or happiness.
"To mingle it with love, the absolute, great enthusiasms of heart or intellect, was to lay up for oneself disasters, or at least certain disappointment," says M. de Maulde de La Clavière, and he instances as the object of ridicule in that era a lady who speaks with a sigh of the "unaccustomed pleasure" of loving the man she married. He defines the Renaissance view of wedlock as "the modest squat suburban villa in which you eat and sleep: passion is a church spire piercing the sky...."
That being the general consensus of opinion on the subject, it is not surprising that nearly all the love-stories of that day are entirely disconnected with the idea of marriage. The holy estate itself was defined as "the suburbs of hell." Marriages were "unions of policy and position." And almost without exception they were arranged by the parents, in accordance with material considerations, the old feudal idea lingering on in this department of life and the daughter being handed over by the father to a suitable (or unsuitable) husband, without his ever dreaming of consulting her views in the matter. She was generally too inexperienced to have any views of importance, and even had she been consulted probably would not, at that time, have been able to make a much better choice than her father made for her.
But clearly if that was the order of things, love and romance must establish their kingdom outside of marriage, and this was exactly what occurred.
"Since love is, by the nature of things, free and spontaneous, rebellion and revolution were inevitable unless womankind were to become something else than human."