The Romance of the Rose

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1230

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Themes

Misogyny and Gender Roles in Courtly Love

While many parts of The Romance of the Rose are intentionally satirical, the treatment of women in the piece—which alternates between unflattering stereotypes and idealization—reveals one of the primary themes: the importance of gender roles and the inherent misogyny in the courtly love literary tradition.

In the poem, many characters give wildly divergent speeches on the nature of women and their dealings with men. The Old Woman, who advises Fair Welcome, depicts courtly love as little more than a cynical and transactional game, which women can only gain by if they are willing to be cunning and manipulative in their treatment of men. Her speech draws upon many stereotypes associated with women in the popular literature of the period, dwelling upon a woman’s supposed propensity to use her looks to gain advantages over her lovers. Genius also echoes some of these stereotypes in his speech to Nature, wherein he criticizes women as duplicitous and impulsive. These invocations of popular stereotypes reinforce some of the gender rhetoric common at the time while also subtly interrogating such tropes: The Old Woman’s advice, for example, suggests that love is the one sphere in which women can exercise true power and agency.

The rose represents the beloved in courtly literature—a passive object that only gives consent through Fair Welcome and submits to whatever attention, sensual or sexual, the narrator has for it. While the female characters often take agency (such as Venus joining the battle or Jealousy building the castle), the rose is not allowed to do the same. It represents the “ideal” woman in a courtly love tale: passive and beautiful, without real depth or individuality. The narrator’s elevation of it, likewise, represents his required role in a courtly love tale: He falls in love with the rose from afar and pursues it without any concrete knowledge of it. At its core, then, The Romance of the Rose features a conventional courtly love dynamic even as many of the characters around it interrogate or undermine courtly conventions.

Additionally, while the women in the work are more independent than the rose, their portrayal still reflects the world women lived in. Most of the female characters—except for a few, such as Reason, Nature, and Venus—have a male companion and lover without whom they cannot exist. The narrator’s own quest to be united with the rose reinforces this emphasis on pairs: He must love the rose; he must pursue it, and he must possess it. His actions follow the standard pattern for courtly love tales, which in turn reflect the expected ideal of gender roles for the day. In this way, the text offers a variety of perspectives on courtly conventions and gender roles, with some characters embracing the courtly ethos sincerely and others satirizing it.

The Complications of Sexuality and Desire

Just as The Romance of the Rose uses the rose and female figures to explore female gender roles, the work’s overtly sexual metaphors and language interrogate the complications of sexuality and desire in the courtly tradition, with some characters upholding courtly conventions surrounding sexuality and desire and others rejecting them.

Many passages in the work not only discuss sex and desire but also attempt to interrogate the connection between the two, as well as the role of pleasure. Since arranged marriages were common in the period, sex and desire/love were not necessarily assumed to be inherently linked. Genius’s views represent the most traditional interpretation of the role of sex, with Genius asserting that sex should be confined to married spouses with the sole end of producing children. By contrast, the courtly love tradition proposed that, to manage the stifling nature of arranged marriages, people should pursue idealized extramarital relationships with attractive people of the opposite sex (usually young men pursuing married young women). In the courtly tradition, love and desire could exist outside of marital propriety, and sex could serve non-reproductive ends.

Many characters in the work give many different answers to the question of love, reflecting the work’s multifaceted exploration of love and desire. Some, such as Friend and the Old Woman, regard love as a power struggle between genders that can involve infidelity, deceit, and manipulation. Friend and the Old Woman do not regard such elements as immoral; they simply regard them as inherent to the nature of love and desire. Reason and Genius present an opposing view: Both stress the importance of restraint, with Genius advocating only for marital love and desire and Reason arguing that platonic friendship is the most rational and superior love.

The narrator must navigate these competing views of love as he pursues his union with the rose. Despite the various influences surrounding him, the narrator embraces the most straightforward and, in most respects, most stereotypically courtly attitude toward his sexuality and desire: He maintains a steadfast fealty to Love, rejecting both the admonishments of Reason and the more cynical worldliness of Friend, while consistently idealizing the rose and seeking to win it for himself. By ending the work with an explicit sexual metaphor, where the narrator handles and probes the rose sensually and passionately, the text presents an image of happy consummation. While the union of the narrator and the rose suggests that sexuality and love have become united in their bond, the poem offers a variety of competing perspectives to reflect multiple conceptions of love.

The Tensions Between Nobility and Poverty

Most of the characters in The Romance of the Rose are assumed to be nobility, as explained by their dress, power over others, or behavior. Nobility of rank was often equated with certain codes of morality and behavior in courtly literature, while those of the lower classes or the poor were regarded as lacking in refinement and virtue. The poem examines some of the tensions between nobility and poverty, with some characters adhering to a contemptuous view of poverty and others offering a more nuanced perspective on the nature of true nobility.

Some of the text’s figures suggest that wealth and the ideals of nobility have a complicated connection. When the narrator encounters the allegorical figure of Wealth, he attempts to persuade her to let him take the road she guards to get to the castle. The road is called Lavish Giving, and Wealth warns him that such a road will lead him straight into the clutches of Unrestrained Generosity and then Poverty. Wealth regards poverty as an evil to be avoided, and she chides the narrator as foolish when he attempts to take the road anyway. Since noble status was closely associated with largesse in the period, Wealth’s warning against spending too lavishly suggests that those who wish to avoid financial dangers must not get too carried away with courtly ideals of nobility, lest they ruin themselves through too much ostentation and generosity.

Reason, Nature, and Love present different views of nobility and wealth. Reason criticizes those who pursue wealth and materialism over virtue and genuine connections with others; she mocks the professional men, such as physicians and lawyers, who are motivated purely by their own greed and personal benefit, which suggests that nobility cannot be equated with wealth alone. Nature argues that true nobility has nothing to do with birth or social rank, arguing instead that nobility is a matter of virtue. She even asserts that outward nobility—such as ranks and titles—does not guarantee anything, as some people are born noble in status but are not noble in character. She also insists that she gives liberty to all men and that liberty is superior to hereditary nobility, which suggests that true nobility can be attained by anyone willing to cultivate the right moral and intellectual virtues, regardless of their wealth or socioeconomic background. Finally, Love goes so far as to claim that he prefers poor lovers to rich ones, as the poor lovers dare to swear fealty to him and pursue their desires despite their lack of wealth.

The Romance of the Rose thus presents both conventional and nonconventional views of nobility and poverty; some characters present poverty as inherently degrading and contemptible, while others challenge such conventions by emphasizing the worth of personal virtue over material goods and social rank, especially in matters of the heart.