Book Review: Les Quinze Joies de Mariage by Anon

This book offers a critical edition of Les Quinze Joies de Mariage (The Fifteen Joys of Marriage; c. early fifteenth century) with a translation into modern/contemporary French. It is prefaced by a sixty-page comprehensive introduction by the editor, Jean Rychner, and a thoughtful second introduction, subtitled “Pourquoi et comment lire les Quinze joies de mariage aujourd’hui?” [Why and How to Read the Fifteen Joys of Marriage Today?] by the translator, Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, who makes a convincing case for its timelessness. The edition also accommodates extensive endnotes, a glossary, and an index of proper names. The full text is prose, not poetry. Its depictions of conflicts in marital life are remarkably realistic; such complaints and concerns can easily be recognized in today’s advice columns. For those of us who struggle with “old” French, this modern translation is extremely valuable. The book is arranged so that the modern edition faces the requisite pages of the earlier critical edition, so for specialists (as well as intrigued non-specialist readers) it is easy to evaluate and compare both texts. The annotated critical edition itself is based on the careful study of four extant manuscripts (Rouen, Chantilly, Leningrad [once again St. Petersberg], and Phillipps), plus three printed editions (two from the late fifteenth century and the 1734 edition Le Duchat). The modernized text reads like a novel; in fact, it is a thoroughly entertaining read. As a historian who has worked for decades retrieving texts from the French debates on both sides of the so-called woman question, my primary interest is in the contents of the text, though it has to be said that Rychner has done a splendid job of summarizing scholarly efforts to date it, place it in locale (western France), and sleuth out the identity of the author (no consensus has been reached on this point), as well as to determine who might have read it (in manuscript). As it turns out, Christine de Pizan—who in 1405 was the first woman writer to defend the honor of French women against the misogynistic insults of two earlier writers—Jean de Meung and Matheolus —apparently had not read Les Quinze Joies de Mariage when she penned her Book of the City of Ladies in response to the other two writers. By the end of the fifteenth century, though, the manuscript of Les Quinze Joies was among the earliest published texts and was reprinted from time to time over the next few centuries. It has always fascinated and troubled me to find that misogynous and simply antifeminist tracts seemed to command more attention from publishers than those that either defended women from insults or advocated their emancipation. Les Quinze Joies de Mariage is not, strictly speaking, misogynist. I would call it misanthropic, insofar as its still-anonymous French author seems to be equally critical of the stupidity of men who willingly give up their liberty to dive into the “trap” (la nasse) of marriage, and of wives, usually younger, who continually try to outwit the husbands, to defy their subordination through ruse and other perverse and malign behaviors. Some of the dialogue attributed to these women Book Reviews