Speaking Out No Matter the Cost: Chretien de Troyes' "Erec et Enide"

One of the most pivotal and mysterious parts of Chretien de Troyes’ Erec and Enide is the vow of silence. The vow of silence is the source not only of physical conflict—Enide’s breaking her vow introduces Erec’s fight scenes—but also moral and emotional conflict between the husband and wife.  As a plot device the vow illustrates the relationship between Erec and Enide in not only peaceful, but also dangerous circumstances. In this way the story Erec and Enide shows the conflict between true, self-sacrificing love and the expectations of fulfilling chivalric codes of honor.

There isn’t necessarily a premeditated reason for the vow of silence. However, investigating its possible functions is important in order to understand the plot as a whole. Although typical romance cycles are by nature cyclonical and disconnected, this Chretien de Troyes romance is atypical in that other parts of the story are interconnected with the vow of silence. Enide’s first words are what cause Erec’s anger, and her enforced vow of silence is a consequence of this action. 

Dialogue is significant to the story not only in the vow of silence, but in the events before that. Enide is noticeably silent during her meeting and courtship with Erec; indeed Erec doesn’t even discover his wife’s name until after they are married. When Enide at last warrants her own dialogue, it is a questioning of Erec’s ability to maintain his chivalrous reputation as a married man.  

Initially the silence that Enide exercises isn’t passive, but constructive. It is not an example of a misogynistic portrayal, but rather a testament of her words’ potency throughout the story. Enide’s beauty also has positive repercussions. As described to Erec by her father, Enide is beautiful, not only superficially, but her external beauty is an accurate indicator of her true nature. Although her silent beauty may be interpreted as an instance of medieval objectification of women, it is soon explained that Enide’s mere presence reveals to others who they really are; not only her words, but her appearance transforms Erec from a two-dimensional knight to a loving husband. 

To see the difference Enide causes in Erec, comparing his behavior before and after meeting her is very decisive. Before meeting Enide, Erec is a stereotypical knight who, like countless other heroes, is “very fair, brave, and courteous.” The story’s outset revolves around Erec and his quest to act according to chivalric codes. In a society where a man’s reputation and honor are of the utmost importance, this quest is as crucial to Erec as if the goal were to rescue a damsel in distress or find the Holy Grail. When he is disgraced, Erec’s quest for a spotless reputation becomes all the more vital, and he declares: “I shall yet avenge my disgrace, or increase it.” However, as soon as he meets and falls in love with Enide, Erec’s desire to pursue glory through battle wanes:

But Erec loved her with such a tender love that he cared no more for arms, not did he go to tournaments, not have any desire to joust; but he spent his time in cherishing his wife.….his friends grieved over this, and often regretted among themselves that he was so deep in love….All the knights said it was a great pity and misfortune that such a valiant man as he was wont to be should no longer wish to bear arms.

Enide is unhappy that her marriage has caused Erec’s reputation to suffered, yet Erec doesn’t know why Enide despairs. Misinterpreting her sadness as a superficial lament for his loss of esteem among his fellow knights, he immediately sets out on a quest to restore what Enide suggested he lost.  He brings Enide along as his squire, having her ride ahead of him with the charge not to speak unless she was spoken to first.

Erec’s motivation for imposing this vow on Enide isn’t clear, but despite his apparent severity with his wife every time she speaks—even if it saved his life—it’s explicit that he “has no desire to do her harm, for he realizes and knows full well that she loves him above all else, and he loves her, too, to the utmost.” Erec doesn’t just lose his temper with Enide, but makes her take the vow as some sort of test. What this test is supposed to prove, and how Enide is supposed to pass it, is also ambiguous. Yet if Enide’s words are the cause of this test, then it’s not unjustified to infer that Enide’s alleged preoccupation with “what everyone else thinks” is what makes Erec so angry.

The expectation of maintaining one’s chivalric reputation is one significant theme of conflict in Erec and Enide. Erec’s marriage causes him to give up fighting in tournaments, and his reputation suffers because of it. Enide, not obsessed with the customs and conventions of their society, instead blames herself as the cause of her husband’s suddenly pacifistic pattern of behavior. Later when Erec is believed dead, Enide takes accountability for her actions, saying: “I am the murderer of my lord, in having killed him by my speech. My lord would still be now alive, if I in my mad presumption had not spoken the word with engaged him in this adventure.”

If Enide’s first dialogue is the cause of the plot’s conflict, it is her speech which saves Erec’s life.  When she breaks her vow, it is to save Erec from assassins, even if he kills her for dishonorably breaking her silence: “What care I? May grief and sorrow always be mine as long as I lie, if my lord does not promptly escape from here without being delivered to a violent death.” She makes the conscious decision to break her vow of silence to save her husband’s life, even at the cost of her own.

Chretien de Troyes utilizes Enide’s vow of silence to satirize some principles of chivalry, which include keeping one’s word at all costs. Troyes puts Enide in a paradoxical situation, showing that the possibility of rules of self-sacrifice and loyalty come to an impasse with the rules of keeping promises. In this way, Troyes not only refers to romantic-cycle conventions by including the vow of silence in his story, but also reveals the weaknesses of those conventions by placing them in life-and-death situations.    

By breaking her silence, Enide shows that her love for her husband is greater than a lifetime of instilled devotion to chivalric codes of honor, reputation, and behavior. In the end, Enide’s failing the test of silence causes her to pass the ultimate test of her loyalty to Erec. In this way, de Troyes demonstrates that there is honor in dishonor. Erec and Enide illustrates that by staying true to the initial reasons for chivalry—that is, a love and respect for others—it is possible to break the rules of conduct in order to realize their true goal.