The story of Pierre Abelard, captured in his autobiography “The Story of My Troubles”, is not only a classic monument of the history of world literature but also one of the most touching love stories ever embodied in words. The literary language of Abelard captures the suffering that he had to endure as a result of his passion for Heloise, the daughter of a French canon. In order to preserve his prosperous career as a priest, Abelard was forced to take Elouise to a monastery, passing her off as a nun. However, their love affair was revealed, which caused a lot of misunderstanding and false interpretations that were characteristic of the parameters of the morality of that time. The eleventh and twelfth centuries are the time of the early Middle Ages when fundamentalism was the basis of hierarchical relations between the sexes and women were essentially powerless to influence their lives in terms of choosing a career path or marital happiness with a desired partner (Nehring 2005). The system of relations between a woman and a man was emphatically strict and subordinate, and a woman found herself in this system, although in important but necessarily in secondary roles.
Eloise, beloved of Pierre Abelard, however, differed from the stereotypical portrait of a medieval woman, as she was distinguished by a broad cultural outlook and direct curiosity. Eloise’s personality was strong enough and therefore, it should not be surprising that the intellectual monk Abelard fell in love with her, given not only her outstanding beauty but also her real intellectual abilities combined with high erudition. The character of Eloise is, in fact, one of the first female representatives of the suffragette movement, which appeared in the 19th century and advocated giving women equal rights to political voting with men. Eloise perceives the prevailing idea of women in the medieval early Catholic system of relations as false and repellent to her, which certainly represents an extremely interesting sociological perspective if viewed in the light of the emancipatory mores of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The relationship between Ptierre and Eloise clearly goes beyond the normative framework set by the fundamentalist parameters of religiosity of the time. At the same time, Abelard and his beloved were forced to lead a double life, since it was important for Eloise to maintain a relationship with him, and for Pierre to maintain the promising status of a priest. At the same time, it is important to note that in his letters, Pierre emphasizes his desire to legitimize these relations, but he is constantly pulled back by his chosen life partner. Eloise, in her letters, opposes the idea of marriage and periodically emphasizes that she has rational grounds for this. Eloise really has a very high level of culture and erudition, inaccessible to most young girls of that time. This largely provides the complexity and depth of her relationship with Abelard, as it gives them many common themes and even languages of saying, since both of them can speak both Greek and Latin.
Eloise strongly opposes marriage, believing that this agreement is an extremely heme and materialistic act that has very little to do with true love. Her position is sincere and purely romantic, because she looks beyond the official settings for expressing emotions and seeking closeness between people, considering these standards to be false, harmful and useless. Moreover, Eloise considers marriage to be a rather strong form of hypocrisy and even a manifestation of self-interest. Speaking of women who marry rich husbands and prefer them to poor ones, she claims that they deserve “pay, but not love.” (Letters of Abelard and Heloise 1932) This expresses the deep spirituality of her nature and the essence of her understanding of love. Real emotions and love attraction between two people, in her opinion, are only vulgarized by entering into a marriage bond. Eloise also believes that this can destroy the real intimacy already established between the two lovers, and that is why she wants to be his “mistress or whore” rather than his wife.
The romantic dimension in which the love of Eloise and Pierre exists in the collective representation should be corrected by taking into account the civil and love position of Eloise. Indeed, he does not want to bind himself in any way, but at the same time she is madly in love with Pierre. She is ready to skimp on her freedom herself and pretend to be a nun, essentially offending the God-given natural order of things and the distribution of classes and occupations: “I was more pleased with possessing your heart than with any other happiness” (Letters of Abelard and Heloise 1932). However, Eloise’s love at the same time has a power that goes beyond the usual rationality, and her progressiveness is thus combined with deep martyrdom, the desire to sacrifice herself completely by giving herself to her partner and lover. There is unclear evidence that the correspondence is half-legendary and fabricated, and that Abelard did not really feel any empathy for Eloise and exiled her to a monastery only to see her no more, being indifferent to her suffering (Newman 2016). However, it is important to remember that, most of all, these characters are symbols of a new type of relationship that is not limited by the standards of conventional legitimization of a love affair.
In addition, Eloise’s erudition and undertaking impressed the researchers so much that they had real reasons to think that not a single woman in the Middle Ages was capable of writing such important and forward-thinking statements, in many respects superior to the thoughts of male authors. No less shocking to the average reader will be her apparent reluctance to have children, whom she considers incompatible with religious writings and philosophical fabrications. Eloise, according to the researchers, was delighted with the idea of having a child, but was so devoted to Abelard that she convinced him of the need to abandon children in the name of moving him up the career ladder. Probably, it is precisely such absolute devotion and submissiveness of Eloise in relation to Abelard that makes one think that the letters were subsequently fabricated by the author seeking to justify the unfair treatment of the unfortunate girl sent by him to the monastery by deceit. However, the texts that appeared as a result of this mysterious and exciting love story show the heroine at the same time self-sacrificing and extremely brave and free in her views on true love and marriage. She does not accept and considers traditional values and attitudes so false that she wants to belong to her lover without any conventions. Convention prevents her from giving herself to love without reservation, and this is what she strives to do despite the fact that her lover probably does not have the same passion for her.
References
Letters of Abelard and Heloise. 1932. London: Osborne and Griffin.
Nehring, C. 2005. “Heloise & Abelard: Love Hurts.” The New York Times, Web.
Newman, B. 2016. Making love in the twelfth century. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press