Male Sexual Desire In Long Butthole Berengier

This Fabliaux portrays male sexual desire as necessary even by the means of adultery. This is because the priest needs to overcome the wife, whose insatiable sexuality made her a worthy adversary. This is what helped tolerate adultery. (Clark 64) The priest gets the drunken husband to lay on the floor and then the wife on top of him. The priest then sets out to complete what he came there to do: “Then, as a favour to the woman, lifts her skirts/ and over those two he inverts/ her, and between her thighs goes in, the hole below her abdomen.” (130-134) Things like wives having affairs were things that they should not do, but they did anyways. (Clark 6) This is because these things were tolerated in a sense. Everyone submitted to them, everyone …show more content…
However, he is then caught by his wife, and forced to pay the price. In this tale, the wife is not very interested in the habits of her husband: “The lady very quickly gleans/ her husband's merit is so slim/ there's never been one worse than him/ when it comes to the use of arms./ He'd much sooner sleep in the barn than ever wield a lance or sword.” (48-53) She is disinterested in him, and wants him to be a virtuous knight. The husband, who is eager to prove his bravery, sets out off into the woods to forge a plan: “The knight came back home from the wood,/ his shield all full of holes and pounded,/ but he himself not at all wounded/ and on his hauberk not a scratch.” (142-44) The husband is cheating his wife by making it seem like he had actually fought in battle. When he is out to do it again, his wife dresses as a knight and follows him to find out what he has been doing: “The knight is shaking in his shoes./ He's filled with cowardice and fright;/ he says he certainly won't fight.” (230-232) Her husband has been caught lying to her for when he goes out, and for some reason this triggers the wife to get revenge in a way the husband has to accept. Men were not always around to satisfy their wives, so the risk of adultery was always there. (Berkowitz 139) Everyone had sexual desires, and the wife in feeling betrayed by her husband needed some release that she knew would be tolerated: “She then sent for a knight to come over/ whom she held dear, to be her lover, and to her room, where they'll be snug,/ she takes him, and they kiss and hug.” (263-66) Courtly love provided a threat to Catholic teachings, which exalted the love of a young unmarried man for a married women, which in this case promoted adultery. (Richards 33) His wife commits adultery and when he arrives to find out, she says: “For all I hold you in disdain,/ you've fully earned