Excerpts from the Bel Ami’s speech in the Romance of the Rose (13^th c.)

Bel Ami paraphrases a husband:

He who wants to take a poor wife must undertake to feed her, clothe her, and put shoes on her feet. And if he thinks that he can improve his situation by taking a very rich wife, he will find her so proud and haughty, so overweening and arrogant, that he will again have great torment to endure her. And if, in addition, she is beautiful, everybody will run after her, pursue her and do her honor; they will come to blows, will work, struggle, battle, and exert themselves to serve her; and they all will surround her, beg her, try to get her favor, covet her, and carryon until in the end they will have her, for a tower beseiged on all sides can hardly escape being taken.

If, on the other hand, she is ugly, she wants to please everybody; and how could anyone guard something that everyone makes war against or who wants all those who see her? If he takes up war against the whole world, he cannot live on earth. (8579-99; cp. WB Prol 248-66)

Again, those who marry have a very dangerous custom, one so ill-arranged that it occurs to me as a very great wonder. I don't know where this folly comes from, except from raging lunacy. I see that a man who buys a horse is never so foolish as to put up any money if he does not see the horse unclothed, no matter how well it may have been covered. He looks the horse over everywhere and tries it out. But he takes a wife without trying her out, and she is never unclothed, not on account of gain or loss, solace or discomfort, but for no other reason than that she may not be displeasing before she is married. Then, when she sees things accomplished, she shows her malice for the first time; then appears every vice that she has; and then, when it will do him no good to repent, she makes the fool aware of her ways. I know quite certainly that, no matter how prudently his wife acts, there is no man, unless he is a fool, who does not repent when he feels himself married. (8661-86; cp.WB Prol 283-92)

from Guilluame de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg (Princeton, 1983)