The Anatomy of Melancholy

Sirach, chapter 7, verse 25, calls it “a weighty matter to perform”: to marry a daughter to a man of understanding at the proper time. “For maidens must be married in good season,” as Lemnius advises in book 1, chapter 6. Husbands must be found for them in time to prevent many diseases, which Rodrigo de Castro, On the Diseases of Women, book 2, chapter 3, and Luis Mercado, On Women’s Disorders, book 2, chapter 4, “On the Melancholy of Maidens and Widows,” have both discussed at length.

It is therefore good to find them husbands early, both to avoid these deadly maladies and to prevent other serious troubles—and for another reason that I know. “When the time and age for marriage have arrived,” as Chrysostom advises, let parents not postpone it: otherwise the young people may marry on their own, or do worse.

If the lawyer Nevizanus is not misleading us, they may do so as a matter of right. For, as he proves from Curtius and other civil lawyers in The Marriage Grove, book 2, number 30, a maiden over twenty-five may, against her parents’ wishes, marry a man unworthy of her and beneath her in rank; and her father must by law be compelled to give her a suitable dowry.

Meanwhile, do not misunderstand me or suppose that I am defending headstrong, unruly, shameless hussies. I approve what St Ambrose writes about Rebecca’s betrothal, in his commentary on Genesis 24:51: a woman should leave the choice of her husband to her parents, lest she be thought forward and wanton if she undertakes to choose for herself; for she should appear to be desired by a man rather than to desire a man herself.

I turn Curtius’s argument solely against those harsh parents who, neglectful and careless of the proper time and their daughters’ marriageable years, fail the more modest maidens on whose behalf I speak. For if the women wait longer, to tell the truth, they are past their time, and no one will consider them.

“A woman of twenty-four here in Italy,” says Aretine’s Lucretia, “is already old, past her best and of no account.” An old man, as Lysistrata admits in Aristophanes, “though grey-haired, may soon take a young maiden as his wife”; and it is nothing new for an old man to marry a young girl. But, as the passage continues, “A woman’s opportunity is brief; if she fails to seize it, no one wants to marry her, and she sits waiting.” Who cares for an old maid? She may sit there, and so on.

A maiden, as the poet holds—“a lively and playful young virgin”—is like a flower, a rose that suddenly withers.

The rose the bright morning star just saw being born, It saw grown old when it returned late in the evening.

She who was lately a maiden as fresh as May Is now an old crone: so time steals away.

Then let them seize their opportunity while they can, make the most of youth, and, as he instructs,

Gather roses, maiden, while the blossom and your youth are fresh, And remember that your own lifetime hastens in the same way.

Fair maidens, go and gather roses in their prime, And remember that time passes like a flower.

Let us all love, “while our strength and years allow,” while we are in the flower of youth, fit for love’s affairs, and while the opportunity lasts; for