Love Requires How Much Wealth!?

Love Requires How Much Wealth!?

By Tyler Martin

 

In The Art of Courtly Love, it is hinted that a couple’s love cannot survive without some monetary involvement.  I find this both true and false and would like to use one of the readings, Lanbal, to help to elaborate this paradox.  In today’s society, money is used in an established system that it can be exchanged for goods and services.  For example, these goods, when looking in terms of a relationship standpoint, may include such things as gifts and gestures.  On Valentine’s Day, it is quite common to give some variety of sweets (such as chocolates), flowers of some sort (often chosen by either its beauty or what it represents), and/or a love letter/card (to put words to the symbolic gesture of love that is given).  However, the systematic concept of money is nothing modern.  Even in the texts that we have read so far, references are made towards wealth and value; which, thus, brings me to take my first side on the issue of whether monetary value is indeed a requirement for a relationship.  At the start of Lanbal, Lanbal is assessed to be in a troubled monetary situation, as he distributed his prior wealth to charities and the like prior to the King’s great gathering of all his vassals.  Here, the King provides tokens of gratitude to all the vassal’s but Lanbal.  With this, I will continue under the assumption that the saying ‘not a cent to his name’ applies to Lanbal.  Despite the fact that this is Lanbal’s predicament, Lanbal is seeked out and acknowledged by a suitor that does not look at his value in wealth, but his value of heart.  Thus, with ‘not a cent to his name’, Lanbal finds mutual love.  Thus, money is not needed for love to exist.

                However… though Lanbal is without any monetary value, his new love is not indicated to be poor in the slightest; rather, she is presented being quite wealthy.  Furthermore, she provides both he and his men with great attire and allows him to use her wealth (towards charities, etc.).  Thus money gets a foothold in their relationship.

                But this too is not a correct claim either; Lanbal gains greater respect and more acknowledgement, but to him all he needs is his love.  I presume the feeling is mutual, that Lanbal’s lover would be fine with wanting nothing more but Lanbal at her side.  The wealth that Lanbal had used towards charities and others had occurred before they had even meet and the wealth used towards these actions of good nature solely helped to demonstrate his respectable nature (he did not do it to be attractive or to gain attention… rather he did it because it felt right).

                However, when his lover provided him means that made him stand out more to others, he caught the Queen’s eye.  He remained faithful to both his lover and King, but in doing so, got himself in trouble by making the Queen upset.  All it took, in the end, was his lover’s presence to set him free and cleared him of all charges… but this too is not the case.  Her outclassing of wealth by appearance, made her viewed to be someone of equal standing to the King.  Had she been anything less and the King’s council may well have sentenced Lanbal as guilty and put him to death.  Only through her appearance, influenced through wealth, was Lanbal acquitted of his charges.  From this standpoint, monetary value is a necessity for love to exist.

                I rest my case on this matter with stating that monetary wealth and/or one’s wealth as a person are a requirement for love to exist.  Had Lanbal’s lover been simply a serf… she may still have seen his value from his generous nature and fallen in love with it/him and, perhaps, he would still have fallen in love with her, he would have not have been presented with better clothing and stood out to catch the Queen’s eye, and their livelihood may have been a constant struggle to just get by, but they would have had love without some variety of wealth as a requirement.  In this case, she would still fall in love with his person (one’s wealth as a person) and he would fall in love with her beauty and the way she carries herself (perhaps).  But without changing the story, monetary wealth provided Lanbal’s lover to better her loves’ looks (perhaps, so that others could see on the outside the value she saw in him on the inside, but could never have him… *Personal note: this seems to be a common theme amongst we as humans, we build up each other’s worth in order to build up our own worth (“I am friends with…“[Perhaps, Tim Allen] “and I expect you to respect me more based on this”)), which, in turn, created lust in another (the Queen), which, in turn, then required monetary wealth to better pronounce her own appearance in order to free him.  In a sense, once monetary wealth enters a relationship of love, it then becomes a requirement.  Keeping the readings as they are, Bisclavret provides a great counter-example of personal wealth as a requirement and with monetary wealth not being required.

                In Bisclavret, once Bisclavret’s wife learned that he was a werewolf, he lost all value to her as a person.  This resulted in her leaving (accepted the summons of another suitor), betraying (gave out his secret and used it against him), and cheating him (married and, eventually, had children with her new love).  Through doing this, she lost all value to him as well (because she was unfaithful in secret-keeping and in love) and thus their relationship did not last.

                To finish this blog post off, I direct this question to you, the reader of this post, as a means of connecting back to modern times:  I claim that monetary wealth (regardless of how much) and/or the wealth that one lover sees in the other as a person (is a)/are requirement(s) throughout a lasting, loving relationship… based on your personal experiences, am I wrong?