Yonec - Marie de France
This piece by Marie de France was very interesting and entertaining. It kept me engaged and wanting to continue until the end. Being locked away in a tower for seven years is unimaginable. It would be miserable and make people suicidal. I would definitely go crazy if I was trapped from the outside world for seven years. That is torture, and that is exactly what the lord did to his wife. He kept her locked away for seven years, hiding her from the public, other men, so that she would be only his, causing her to lose her beauty and become unhappy.
Seven years is a very long time to be locked in a single place. The lord's wife completely changned after being locked away. She lost her beauty, her personality; she became depressed and hated her life, the one she was literally trapped in. She was so unhappy and miserable that she saw death as her only escape to freedom: "For herself, the best wish she could make her was for swift death to come soon and take her." She is going crazy and sees no other options, "'This tower is a prison for me, and only death will set me free.'" She will do whatever possible to escape. She is going mad and crazy.
"It entered her room flying -- Jesses on its feet -- a hawk it seemed, moulted five or six times in its life. It settled there, in front of the wife. After it had rested a minute, and she'd closely inspected it, it became a knight, handsome, gentle."
She has been locked away for so long, it seems as if she is going insane. She seems to be living in an dream. A knight who truly loves her has come to her window to rescue her. It is her escape from her dreadful reality. He loves her, he cares for her and now that she has prayed for her husband's death and of an escape, he has come to rescue her. This knight is her escape. It seems as if she is in a dreamworld, showing the life she truly wants to live. She wants to be loved and cared for by a man, treated the way the knight treats her, not the way her husband does. She longs for a life where she is free, can love freely and have a family. The knight acts as her escape and allows her to forget about her pain and suffering, making her numb to reality.
This knight made her so happy that her husband noticed the change in her dress and personality. She was happy again which made the king skeptical. She was not fully in reality and not fully in her "dreamworld" of true love with the knight. He made the old woman spy of her and found out about the knight. He was angry and put iron spits on the window to injure the knight next time he tried to fly to the tower. That is exactly what happened the next time he came to visit. "'My sweet love, my friend, your love's brought my life to its end. I told you it would happen thus: your form and face have slain us.'" He leaves her to die at home with his people, but she jumps out the window to go with him. This also makes me question reality because she survived a twenty foot leap from the window to the ground, but people will do crazy things for the ones they love. She is pregnant with his son, Yonec, and he will learn the truth about his father, the knight. After his death and the birth of their son, fate brings the woman back to him. They show up at a ceremony for him at which she tells the truth about her son to her husband and son, that the man was the son's father and he was killed by the son's stepfather. His mother dies happily at her lovers side so to speak. Yonec gets revenge by beheading the king who killed his father using his father's sword. Because of this act, the people made Yonec their new lord.
The woman fainting is a reoccurring event in this piece. It makes me question if she is dreaming, in limbo, or dying. A thought that crossed my mind is that this might be similar to the madness and dreams in Lanval - she is trapped and cannot fully recover and return to reality from this dreamworld she falls into when she faints. She was locked away in a tower for seven years - she has to be going crazy and insane. This is just a thought that crossed my mind that would make me look at this lai differently.
