“Erec and Enide” was written by Chretien de Troys in the twelfth century. Although it was written so long ago, there are parts of the story that are surprisingly relevant to today.
The middle section of the story begins with the wedding of Erec and Enide, and then they go off and have adventures along the way. Erec’s reputation fluctuates with this. His reputation is very high when he is in love with Enide, but this quickly changes when they get married. Before they were married, everyone was jealous of Erec. All the knights wanted a maiden as beautiful as Enide for themselves, and were in awe of Erec for it. This is shown in the extravagant wedding. It lasted two weeks, many people of importance were in attendance, and they received a myriad of gifts. However, things quickly changed. Erec stopped his jousting and many of his knightly duties to spend time with Enide. He wanted nothing more than to just be with her, and he was intent on spending every last minute of his time with her. Other people in the court started noticing and getting annoyed at him for this. They were also beginning to feel resentful towards Enide, for “stealing” him away from what he was supposed to be doing. Enide knew that people were talking about them like this. She began to feel guilty and did not know what to do.
Enide has an immense amount of love for her husband, yet Erec sometimes doubts it. Her love is evident in many different occurrences. For example, Erec tells her not to warn him about any impending trouble and tells her that if she does, he may get so annoyed at her that he will then stop talking to her. Although of course she does not want this, she loves him so much that she feels she needs to warn him of a few events in order to keep him safe. If he gets mad at her, so be it; at least he will be alive and safe. Another example of her love is when the count wants to kill Erec. She knows Erec is in danger again, and stays up all night to make sure nothing happens to her love.
Despite this, he sometimes doubts her love. Erec demanded that Enide not tell him when he’s in danger, and she disobeys him. He gets mad at her for this. This happens a few times. One time in particular is with the incident involving the count. As they are leaving, Erec says “You have little esteem for me, since you despise my instructions. Nothing I say to you can correct your behaviour. But if God has mercy on me and I can escape, this will cost you very dearly – unless I have a change of heart” (81). These occuranes can be interpreted a few ways. On one hand, it seems that Erec doubts her love, because she keeps disobeying him. He obviously gets frustrated with this and it seems to hurt his ego that a woman could tell him better when he is in trouble than he can himself. On the other hand, he could be very confident of their love. Despite how many times he yells at her, she keeps coming back and he knows this. This seems to be the prevailing notion because of another thing that was said during the incident with the count. "Now Erec could see clear proof of his wife's loyalty to him. 'My lady,' he said, 'have our host get up and tell him to com here Treason began a long while ago!'" Because Enide did not choose to go with the count and chose to keep Erec safe, he knew definitively that his wife was loyal to him.
In the Middle Ages, husbands were to have complete control over their wives. The whole issue involving Enide warning Erec is evident of this; he does not like to be told what to do by his wife. Erec is the one in this relationship making every single decision – when they depart, what they decide to eat, and what needs to be said to one another. He wants complete control over his wife. Although Enide does battle this at times, he generally has control.
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