Western Notions of Love

Scholars have spent a good deal of time and energy in trying to trace the source of romantic love to Islamic lyric poetry, to Greek Platonism, to Ovid, to heretical Christian Cathars—apparently all contributing factors—but extremely influential in the period was the rise of the female patron of literature and arts. Literature is molded by the type of audience it has. In much of the past the audience that counted most was male. It was the men who had the money to hire poets to sing their praises and to recount the epic stories of war as well as the successful conquests of females. When prose developed it was men who were usually literate since so many obstacles were put into the path of women who wanted to be educated. During the Middle Ages, when the most literate group was the clergy, women and love had very little place in their literature. Nonetheless, women could be patrons of literature and it was this patronage that some, including the present authors, believe was a major factor in the development of romantic love.

Sidney Painter speculated in the 1940s upon a scenario in which a hungry minstrel who was wandering about the duchy of Aquitaine came to a castle where he hoped that his tales of battles and his tumbling tricks would earn him a good dinner. The lord of the castle, however, was absent, and the lady who acted as his hostess found his endless stories of battles rather tiring and boring and his tumbling unattractive. It somehow occurred to the poet that his stay in the castle would not be very long nor would his meals be particularly enjoyable unless he managed to gain her attention. Being very inventive he composed a song in praise of the lady's beauty and virtue and described their effect on him in rather glowing terms. This pleased the lady, who rewarded him with a better bed and more ample food. He and others got the message.

On this scene came William IX (1071–1127), count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine, who thought such romantic songs might prove a pleasant accompaniment to his numerous triumphs over feminine virtue. The duke's accounts of his amorous adventures proved as interesting to his friends as his stories of battle, and with the example of a powerful prince who ruled one-third of France to spur it on, the fashion grew and expanded. One of the great patrons of chivalric love literature was Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204), the granddaughter and heir of the duke and later the queen of England. Her role of patroness was continued by her daughters, Marie, countess of Champagne, and Alix, countess of Blois, as well as other women. A few women contributed to the love literature on their own, as did Heloise in her love letters to Abelard in the twelfth century. Marie de France wrote more traditional chivalric love literature in the late twelfth century, but she did not differ significantly from her male poets in their description. The love literature penned by Christine de Pizan (c. 1365–c. 1430), on the other hand, has led to her being described as an early feminist.

Romantic love was originally associated with knighthood and chivalry, and in poems and stories love was pictured as a despairing and tragic emotion that drove the lover to accomplish great deeds of daring to perform for his beloved as well as for the Christian God. In theory true love was unattainable love, that is, it was not to be consummated by sexual intercourse; in fact, the female object of the love was usually married to a man other than her beloved, and the theory reflected the real situation of the noble ladies who acted as patrons. Adultery probably occurred in some cases, but unattainable love was the dominant theme. The medieval romantic love espoused by the French poets spread and was profoundly embraced throughout Europe in a way that reached directly into daily life. The concept erected impassable barriers between us and the classical past or the Oriental present.

As the theme of romantic love developed, modifications in the ideal took place, and sexual intercourse and ultimately marriage became an integral and sometimes necessary part of the conception of love. How often either took place in the past is debatable. Clearly until recently romantic love remained separate from marriage. Marriage was a contractual obligation while love was entirely voluntary. True love might well become adulterous but it need not end up that way. Romantic love, however, became an ideal and it became a major theme of song, poetry, and literature of Western culture.

Protestantism with its emphasis on marriage and hostility to celibacy gave companionate marriage a theological stamp of approval. Henry Smith, an English Puritan preacher, wrote in his 1591 Preparative to Marriage: "the mate must be fit: it is not enough to be virtuous, but to be suitable … So shall the man be pleased which finds a wife according to his own heart, whether he be rich or poor … like a pair of glove, or a pair of hose are like; so man and wife should be like, because they are a pair of friends."

Catholicism, even though it placed renewed emphasis on abstinence and celibacy, never quite lost the idea of romantic love embedded in the literary tradition. Both Catholic and Protestant countries saw an increase of love literature, especially of references to romantic love in guides to proper manners and mores, magazines and newspapers, often accompanied by warnings to young women not to be persuaded into giving up their virtue to sweet-tongued suitors.

The eighteenth century saw the popularization of love with a steady increase of love literature in the New World and the Old. Even in an arranged marriage such as that in Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 play, She Stoops to Conquer, a parental choice in mates is sold to the daughter, Kate Hardcastle, in romantic terms. By the nineteenth century in England and America, romantic writers, according to Peter Gay, saw it as their historic mission to re-enchant the world with love. Love was not only a reinvigoration of ancient and medieval traditions but the triumph of impulse over pragmatism. The Romantics, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and Lord Byron (1788–1824), lived as they wrote. By reunifying physical and spiritual love, they believed they established a harmony between the body and mind.

As arranged marriages declined, and the ability of individuals able to make their own decisions concerning a marriage partner increased, romantic love was increasingly seen as the basis for marriage. The work of English novelists such as John Galsworthy (1867–1933) and the real-life experience of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819–1880) demonstrated that despite romantic love's strong pull, reality often intervened. Still, the ideal persisted. With the twentieth century, and the world of new inventions and institutions such as the automobile, motion pictures, and public coeducational high schools, romantic love received renewed vigor. If Clara Bow could go from being a Brooklyn waif to a Hollywood starlet, and if she could play a department store clerk who marries a millionaire in the movies, then young women everywhere wanted to emulate her. Romantic love had crossed all class barriers.

Inhibiting full-blown romantic love, however, were always the consequences, namely the fear of pregnancy. With the development of the birth control pill and the widespread dissemination of contraceptive information, romantic passion could be verified or rejected by sexual experience with few qualms. Was romantic love different from simple sexual impulse? After centuries of literary and philosophical explanations, love became a major research field for the emerging social sciences.