…but he’s certainly fallen on some hard times recently. These are a lot of misconceptions about chivalry, how to go about it, what it means to people, and especially what to expect from it. So let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Chivalry, a form of “courtly love” or fin amour, was really the beginning of taking the conceptualism of love away from the church and its morality and bringing it to the commoners and their immoral status as seen by the aristocrats. Chivalry was about knights and mistrels, the knights would dedicate themselves to the love of one lady, for whome they promised great deeds, and from whom they hoped for great love; the minstrels sang of it and expressed similar actions at a lower level. The unfortunate underlying factor in chivalry was that the lady to whom you were pitching woo - was generally unavailable to you. In many cases, they were married, and chivalry was merely a form of respecting a lady. In many cases, there was hope of marriage, which was usually unavailable because the family would not accept it. The ladies were owned by their fathers / brothers / husbands and were, of course, OWNED. Marriage in chivalry’s time was rarely an expression of love, it was a collaboration between families.

So where are we today? “Chivalry” now refers to having to show the same level of praise and worship of the ladies, and sadly still has the same amount of return for the gentlemen. Every woman likes to be praised and “treated like a princess” (I believe that’s been the term for way too long) and of course never wants to commit to those who pitch her woo. She’s often owned by her boyfriend, or the situation falls under the same category of a princess being praised by a minstrel - she won’t lower herself to your level, guys. So it’s true that most chivalrous men simply don’t have money or power or fame. Chivalry is about being “the nice guy”, and we’re used to finishing last. So ladies, if you catch a guy doing things like opening a door for you, offering to pay for dinner, and writing songs for you and singing them for you on his lute or fife, you may be in the presence of chivalry. Don’t screw it up, because there’s few of us left out there willing to put our necks on the line because we actually admire and respect you. Stop going for the guy who has money, power and fame who doesn’t respect you or admire you.

The choice is up to you, ladies. Be treated and praised like a princess - or get locked in a tower trying to become one.

Chivalry has always been a way of saying “I may not have a lot in this world, but I’d like to think the world of you.”

If only so many women simply didn’t want the world.

Aaron Samuels wrote this on April 28th, 2005 and filed it under Dating, Single Life |