Buffyverse Dialogue Database - Ain't Love Grand? Spike & Courtly Love

"Ain't love grand?"† Spike bitterly and sarcastically remarks (Into the Woods) alluding to the extent to which he has been a "fool for love" (or if you prefer, "love's bitch"†). But ironically, the development of Spike's passion for Buffy during season 5 has illustrated that the love that has possessed him truly is "grand" in the sense that it has transformed him into something better than he was before. The metamorphosis that Spike undergoes and the stages of that process bear a striking resemblance to the set of medieval romantic conventions commonly referred to as Courtly Love. The echoes of old stories of lovelorn Knights and of the fair ladies to which they devote their lives and their swords add depth and weight to the story of Spike's love of Buffy.

The term "Courtly Love" is used to describe a certain kind of relationship common in romantic medieval literature. The Knight/Lover finds himself desperately and piteously enamored of a divinely beautiful but unobtainable woman. After a period of distressed introspection, he offers himself as her faithful servant and goes forth to perform brave deeds in her honor. His desire to impress her and to be found worthy of her gradually transforms and ennobles him; his sufferings -- inner turmoil, doubts as to the lady's care of him, as well as physical travails -- ultimately lends him wisdom, patience, and virtue and his acts themselves worldly renown. Sound familiar? Like any intricate allusion, references to the various pertinent aspects of the mythos (which itself has no definitive version) are woven subtly throughout without heavy-handed complete correspondence. Spike and Buffy are after all modern characters and as such must retain the psychological depth lacking in medieval stock characters, and thus their story is not informed solely by the Courtly Love tradition. The correspondence, ironic and teasing at times, straight-forward at others, is however quite fascinating and worth further examination.

In the late twelfth century, Andreas Capellanus ("Art of Courtly Love" *) described love as:

This clearly describes Spike's state throughout the season. That he indulges in "excessive meditation" is spectacularly illustrated by the gradual growth of the Buffy shrine and other stalker-boyisms* and explicitly stated in Crush:

And of course the desire for "embraces of the other" part of Capellanus' description on Spike's part goes nearly without saying *. Witness Spike's revelatory dream† in Out of My Mind, the tense moments† in the Bronze alley in Fool for Love, the ecstatic sweater sniffing†, the ragged "like I give a bloody damn"† breath in Into the Woods, various Harmony daydreams/sex-games† and of course the supreme proof: the BuffyBot†. *

In the Courtly Love tradition, the love engendered by this excessive meditation and supreme desire does not put the Lover in an immediate state of bliss. Rather:

Turning to 5th season, we see again a correspondence. Even before consciously realizing that he's in love, Spike says of Buffy:

and when he *does* realize*, it's not a happy moment. Spike immediately perceives that this is not good news for him, waking with a horrified gasp and letting lose:

In these and subsequent scenes (such as the "Out For A Walk Bitch"† scene, run-away apology practice in Triangle†, and yelling fit† in Crush) Spike clearly suffers "emotional disturbance" and other "symptoms" of that "certain inborn suffering" we call Courtly Love. He explicitly mentions sleeplessness in Crush ("I lie awake every night!"†) and we've seen the weeping (after his rejections in Fool for Love† and in Crush†) and as for "self questioning" and "reflections on his own wretched state", that much is implicit especially throughout the beginning stages where we see Spikes old "kill-Buffy" instincts at war with his new "help-Buffy" ones. * He also clearly exhibits another key symptom of Courtly Love (jealousy) when he says to Riley:

His jealousy and the pain it causes him are also evident when he watches Buffy and Ben together in Crush† and Spiral†.

Why does Courtly Love insist on identifying love with suffering? Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that the object of all this affection is by definition an unobtainable or nearly unobtainable woman. By reason of a higher social status or previous marriage, she is literally out of reach, but also her virtue and goodness puts her above the lover, who is a flawed mortal, and a professional soldier (predisposing him to be rough, violent, uncivilized, etc) to boot. She is out of his reach* and he knows it, and yet his ruminations on love all bring him back to a helpless state of abject love. So even before she has had a chance to reject him, the lover is already suffering from the mere contemplation of the inappropriateness and futility of his love. And then of course when he *does* declare himself, the lady in question is expected to be -- required to be -- hard-hearted and aloof (at least initially *). But ironically, her refusal of his advances only increases his ardor * As Capellanus' 14th rule states:

Clearly Buffy ranks pretty much at the top of the list for unobtainable women for Spike. If there's one thing that everyone in the Buffy-verse agrees on, it's that a Spike/Buffy romance is out of the question. Xander's fit of uncontrollable laughter and refusal to take "one of Spike's fevered daydreams that's not gonna happen"† seriously says it all. But in case that wasn't enough, we have Riley's "If you touched her... you know I'd kill you for real"†, Dawn's "you know she'd never touch anything from you anyway"†, Joyce's advice that Buffy "nip this in the bud"†, Giles' "There is no way to Buffy... move the hell on"†, the normally mild Tara's "She's nuts!"† when BuffyBot's mistaken for Buffy, and of course Buffy herself contributes the unequivocal: "The only chance you had with me was when I was unconscious."† Willow gives the following bit of advice:

Perhaps a natural reaction, but actually very unlikely to have the desired effect, especially with someone whom we know was already 100 years previously philosophically inclined to agree that difficulty of attainment makes something prized. During a heated confrontation with Angelus, Spike says:

Even without love in the equation, we see that for Spike there is a certain glory and exaltation to be had in facing desperate odds with nothing but your own personal resources standing between you and defeat. So that when the following exchange occurs between Riley and Spike in "Into the Woods", we cannot be surprised at Spike's perspective:

That is to say, that despite not knowing if (and in fact rather doubting that) he has any chance of success, being disdainful of those restricting themselves to fights they know they're going to win, he's bound to try.

So what's a poor love sick fool, uh, I mean knight, to do? How does he go about "doing what he can" in the face of overwhelming odds? He does what his experience as a soldier tells him to do of course: he enlists. The Courtly Love relationship is frequently likened (and thought to be modeled on) the vassal relationship between a knight and his lord:

As successful performance in battle could advance him in the eyes of his noble lord, our lover hopes to advance in the regard of his lady by doing what he does best: fight things. In the chivalric tradition, success in battle was proof positive that God was satisfied of your virtue and worth, and thus embarking on a quest or some other war-like feat (slaying a dragon, destroying an evil knight, etc) was the perfect way to demonstrate that one was indeed worthy of affection. The metaphor of Lady as Liege Lord works especially well in the case of Spike and Buffy, since unlike the courtly lady who must after all remain at home attending to domestic duties, Buffy actually *is* the commander of the fighting unit which Spike gradually becomes a fully participating member of * The key word is "gradually" however. Like any neophyte, it takes time and effort to establish his credibility and value to the cause.

Being the typical impatient lover, Spike thus embarks on several perhaps premature attempts to "draw attention to his worth" and to promote the value of his aid to a decidedly unreceptive Buffy:

And of course, in explicit bid to prove his love, he sets out to kill Drusilla* for Buffy:

Reading this turn of events by the light of the Courtly Love tradition, we see one of the lines of reasoning behind this plan: In killing Drusilla, an agent of evil, he proves that he is good *, and thus worthy of love on that account. Of course Spike's motives here are much more complex than that, and we can say with fair certainty that *had* he killed Drusilla, he would have been doing the right thing (killing something evil) for the wrong reason (to impress Buffy), that is to say without an innate desire to do good but rather with a selfish desire for personal gain. This scene however continues to reference the mythos of Courtly Love when, like our legions of love sick medieval knights, Spike begs his lady for some sign that his sacrifices and pains are not to go on rewarded forever:

So that we see the Chaucer's 14th century lover, begging to be granted some drop of "grace", without which he will have neither "blis" nor "hope" is every bit as abject as our modern lover, Spike.

One might find all this groveling about and dashing off to do good in pursuit of a reward morally questionable at best, but the key point to Courtly Love literature lies in revealing the power of love to ennoble the lover, to elevate him to a higher moral plane. He may start out with purely selfish motives and physical desires, but eventually, by serving loyally and undergoing great trials in her service, the virtue of the woman he loves comes to spiritually enrich and ennoble him* and lead him to a higher, purer love.

Because in loving the lady, he worships also her virtues, the Courtly lover comes to incorporate them into his own self, leading him gradually up the "steps on a ladder"* from his beginning base nature up through true moral goodness.

And in fact, we see in moments of rebellion, Spike does protest that Buffy is somehow invading and changing him:

Seeing Spike's long-standing identification with Evil (note the continued insistence on referring to himself as "Big Bad"† despite evidence to the contrary) what he is actually saying here is that this invasive Buffy-force is rooting out ("drowning") the Evil within him ("everything that was me") and relentlessly replacing it with her own innate goodness.

Outright rebellion against the lady's influence such as Spike demonstrates here is not quite the courtly lover's style, but he does conceive of her beauty and/or existence as wounding * him in a way similar to Spike's accusations that Buffy is "destroying", "drowning" and "torturing" him. The Knight/lover may plaintively protest this torture early on, but at last he comes to a final state of ennobled fatalistic calm, where his humility is such that he is willing to continue toiling for her despite his pain, without hope of reward:

And of course, this part of the tradition ties in perfectly with the evolution of Spike's love of Buffy, starting with the turning point of his resistance under Glory's torture in Intervention:

In these three exchanges, we certainly see the sentiments of the ennobled courtly lover, who has resigned himself to "expect nothing from [my loyal service] but death, since I ask for love in such a lofty place". The "loyal service" itself has become a sufficient motivating factor.

Interestingly, early on Buffy is willing to accept responsibility for the effect she has on Spike:

But rather than being flattered that "something about [her]" made Spike want to "turn his back on the whole evil thing"† she is quite upset and disgusted. In essence she is blind (willfully or no) to her role as the inspiring courtly Lady; later however, her tacit acceptance of Spike's humbly offered tribute to her treatment of him ("like a man", that is to say like a *good* man) she seems willing to stand above him on the stairs and assume this elevated role:

Here Spike acknowledges that she has elevated him from his basic nature ("monster") to a level above ("a man"). He also accepts that his hopes of reciprocal love are futile, but by trailing off indicates that that point is no longer of such great moment. What is important is the change she has wrought upon him, and what he is now calmly willing to do for her: "go down fighting". Later, when Doc questions Spike's motivation, we see that this has indeed progressed beyond the question of reward (in terms of the satisfaction of physical desires) to a question purely of devotion and honor:

To be bound by one's word is one of the key injunctions of chivalry, the hall-mark of the noble Knight, and thus referring to Buffy as a "lady" here has a certain significance. Spike is now someone whose word of honor means something, thanks to the civilizing influence of his idol, which stands in lieu of the soul he does not have.

And thus we see how the progress of Spike's love for Buffy during the course of 5th season works remarkably well within the generic principles of Courtly Love. Von Lubeck sums the power of this set of romantic conventions in this way:

Indeed I think we can say that in antitheses lies the success of this particular story arc. To von Lubeck's list of antithesis inherent in the Courtly love tradition, we can of course add the conflict between vampire and vampire slayer, the question of Good vs. Evil, the long history of being "mortal enemies" versus the possibility of forgiveness, the simultaneous existence of intense love and intense hatred, etc. The liberal use of the Courtly Love mythos int he development of this story arc has been a tremendously satisfying at least in part because tension between strong opposing forces has always been a big part Spike's character.

From his debut in School Hard†, we were presented with an arrogant, violent villain with a wicked tongue. And yet as the season and subsequent ones drew on, it was the ongoing diametric contrast of his humanity with his evilness that kept the character interesting: his doting tenderness towards Drusilla††† and immediate humility after having snapped at her††, his perfectly understandable jealousy and hatred towards Angelus†††, his maudlin depression at losing Drusilla†††, his frustration and despair at the impotency wrought by the initiative chip†††. Willow's attempts to comfort him when he found he could not bite her† and later to prevent him from staking† himself perfectly expresses the way in which Spike's very human qualities at times completely overwhelmed our ability to register his evilness, even before there was any reason to question that evilness. As Willow says, "we know him"†, that is to say, we know his human side, and as such have a certain sympathy for him despite the evil.

And this is I think why the Courtly Love tradition works so well here. After all, the courtly lover does indeed -- put in the most unflattering terms -- start out a depressed loser with a penchant for violence and an illicit lust for someone else's girl. But the Lover evolves, becomes something better, as his lust is transmuted to love and that love leads him into nobility. Love as catalyst for change for Spike is quite fitting given that most of his more human side has been revealed through love (his love of Drusilla). Thus we find in Spike's new found devotion to Buffy a perfect vehicle for moving him from one side of the Good vs Evil conflict to the other all the while staying true to the character developed throughout the last several years. And of course, most importantly, it was great fun to be along for the ride, and tremendously satisfying to see our favorite Big Bad reinvented.

The season 6 semi-addendum

Why the "semi" in "semi-addendum", you ask? Well to be completely honest, it's because I still find myself rather bemused by the ambiguity of the season 6 Spike-soul endgame, to such a degree that I don't think I'll really be comfortable writing the "real" season 6 addendum until I get a chance to see how things get explained Season 7. But I've promised many, *many*, different people that I'd add an update to this essay this summer, and with a mere 2 months left before the airing of the much-anticipated episode 123, I think I've reached my procrastination threshold. So, some subject-to-future-revision thoughts to hold you until the fateful day when I'm once again ready to pretend I've got this all figured out...

First off, I have to say that I don't believe the Courtly Love allusion was much in evidence season 6, except perhaps at the end, depending on what actually happened (more on that later.)

Most obviously, Season 6 Buffy doesn't have a legitimate relationship with someone else, and Xander notwithstanding, the barriers between them seem rather more of the internal ("And the barriers are all self-made/That's so retrograde" †) variety and less the external societal pressures associated with Courtly Love.* Though this is somewhat mitigated by the secrecy of the affair, the aura of "Transgression" with a capital T, to me this was more "Heathcliff and Catherine" than "Guinevere & Lancelot".

More importantly, Season Six presents us with a heroine who has lost her personal direction. Detached & depressed, she isn't inspiring *anyone* -- not Dawn, not Willow ("Please!… you hate it here as much as I do"†), and certainly not Spike -- to aspire to righteousness, to sacrifice themselves for some altruistic good *. She may be dutifully "going through the motions"† but half-hearted endeavors do not the heroic inspirational figurehead make -- a point emphasized by the fact that she has nothing to do with saving the world from yet another end-of-season apocalypse in Grave. Meanwhile, we're constantly reminded of how much she and Spike have in common, that they are "birds of a bloody feather"†: both having died, both having dug their way out of their graves, both being incapable of living normal human lives, both having money problems, both feeling responsible for Dawn's safety, both enjoying rambunctious sex, etc. And when Spike learns that he can fight her just as he did pre-chip, we see them finally on equal footing physically (Randy is, after all, a super hero too! †), furthering the mental rapprochement. Our courtly lady has definitely stepped off her pedestal; not necessarily a bad thing -- witness their charming period of friendship at the beginning of the season -- but incompatible with the Courtly Love ideal of virtuous woman who floats just as serenely above the comfortable comradery of equals as she does above the muck of everyday life. The courtly lover's lady is not his best friend, and she is by definition not his equal.

That Buffy is "above" Spike, though still basically true, is not the cut and dried issue it once was.

Excluding that pesky problematic ending, Season 6 shows us some very uneven moral progression for our erstwhile Courtly Lover, Spike. We may be loathe to think of him as "dirt", but he's certainly not a romantic hero either. Whereas season 5 was a fairly steady progression from self-interested evil to noble self-sacrifice, season 6 Spike's development has been nowhere near linear. To steal a line from AtS' Lindsey: "He's up, he's down, he's a whole barrel of monkeys". But (as I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere on BAPS, but can't find the specific spot again) in many ways, this season's B/S interactions where more about Buffy than they were about Spike, whereas season 5, the reverse was true. In order to show Buffy struggling with her inner demons, the writers had to make sure Spike didn't make her moral quandary too easy by being either too good or too evil. Tales of Courtly Love are tales about the lover, not about the lady love. Season 5's s/b interactions were all about what being in love with Buffy was doing to Spike, namely making his unlife very unpleasant, and then finally inspiring him to give up on the "whole evil thing". Other than a little nausea, Buffy wasn't very emotionally effected or changed by being the object of Spike's affections. Season 6 brings us the story from Buffy's point of view, exploring what being involved with Spike does to *her* ("the only time that I ever feel anything is when..."† "It's killing me"†) more than what effect it has on him.

Of course, this is not to say that there aren't lingering traces of the Courtly Love mindset in season 6. Spike is after all very much still suffering from "the sight of and excessive meditation" upon Buffy, and a desire for her embraces. And Buffy's "ice queen" † routine certainly does smack of the lady's aloofness. As in season 5, Spike *does* point out his worth as a warrior in her service when he reminds her that she needs him as part of the team † in Wrecked. But by fighting with the Scoobies over the summer (and in Tabula Rasa when his memory is blanked), his continued assistance after Buffy's return can no longer be exclusively attributed to a desire to prove himself to her* ; something of that ennobling warrior-in-love trend from last season must have stuck. Which we might interpret as saying it's not so much that the courtly love mythos has vanished from season 6, as that it's been transcended, raising the question: what happens *after* Courtly Love reaches its ecstatic height? If the unobtainable becomes attainable? Can it remain static, perfect, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" style? Or is the perfection of the moment doomed to an inevitable decline as time marches on and reality intrudes? Can the Courtly Love model be tempered to a more livable, human ideal? How many more of these vague pseudo-philosophical questions can I come up with? Have I managed to distract you from the fact that I don't have any answers?

At any rate, if you believe Spike's African sojourn was a deliberate attempt on his part to acquire a soul, then that certainly fits in with the Courtly Love idea that one can attain true moral goodness by striving to gain the love of a virtuous woman, by following those "steps on a ladder" to a comprehensive morality independent of that initial, worldly love. If that is indeed the case, then we can definitely see that despite suggestions to the contrary this season (various moral wobblings, culminating with his attempted rape), Spike's love for Buffy still holds the possibility of acting as a catalyst for an improvement in his morality, for his redemption.

But therein we reach the crux of the problem... What really was going on there? There's a wonderful mini-essay that neatly sums up nearly all the points I would make on this subject, make haste and read it at Paper Cup before proceeding. To these comments, I will add a few less coherent ramblings of my own...

Based on what we've seen of Spike this season, I could easily accept that Spike *subconsciously* went to the Spooky Cave of Doom in pursuit of a soul and/or that during the course of his trip there (assuming time was moving differently in Sunnydale) or as he fought, or perhaps even in some ultra-dramatic way at the penultimate moment, he would have realized that to be a dechipped "free range evil" vampire wouldn't solve any of his emotional problems. But what I *saw* was a man poised to make a very big mistake that he would shortly regret, just as Willow "Darth" Rosenburg will most certainly be baking enough metaphorical guilt-assuaging cookies† to feed a small army next season. Like Willow, there was a horrible feeling inside him that he wanted to escape, and the obvious quick-fix solution was to become evil*, to return to that state Angel describes in season 1 as being "an easy way to live"†. For Spike, everything went wrong with that "little trip to the vet" † (symbolically referred to as a castration from day one); the chip & Buffy are inextricably linked in his mind (just have a look at the Spike's defanging arc). What more natural than that when reaching for "something, anything to make this feeling stop."† (the feelings of guilt over having nearly raped Buffy as well as the pain of being rejected by her, and of existential angst over being neither man nor monster†) he would seek to have the chip removed? JM himself seems to have believed that this was the case, which would account for the vehemence he applies when Spike refers to Buffy as a bitch† --which doesn't make much sense if he's done blaming her and, taking the responsibility for their failed relationship onto himself, wants to acquire a soul to be worthy of her.

But then we have these most curious mid-summer avowals from the writers * that what Spike wanted all along was to be re-ensouled. In a recent interview, JM answered:

I say "curious", because to me, releasing this information at this point just doesn't make a lot of sense anyway you look at it. If this was supposed to be the big twist (pre-meditated during the writing of season 6 or decided after the fact, as I think more likely, whatever the writers may be saying) that shocks us at the beginning of season 7, when we receive clarifying narration that causes us to re-evaluate everything we've previously seen (à la Usual Suspects or Sixth Sense) then why ruin the surprise by officially revealing the twist over the summer? JM talks about Joss leaving himself room to change his mind by equivocally wording those cave scenes, but I would counter that I don't really see *that* much wiggle room in light of the first conversation in Villians†, though there is a very little, if you squint real hard. *Real* hard.

The biggest opening I see is in "Bitch thinks she's better than me", (ignoring the whole aforementioned "bitch" thing) since removing the chip will not make him a better, stronger fighter, and he can already hurt her physically despite the chip (because of the whole back-from-the-dead loophole†) you could possibly say that what he's hoping to rectify is her moral superiority, hence his need for a soul*. But the very next sentence is "Ever since I got this bleeding chip in my head, things aint been right", followed by his agreement to the demon's assertion that he "want[s] to return to [his] former self" which seems to me to pretty clearly indicate that to return to the pre-chip state, when things were "right", is what he's said he wants, regardless of whatever unseen smirk may be lurking on the demon's hidden face. Also, note that the demon says:

If the "restoration" he's asking for is his soul, then the "castration" must be Drusilla's vamping of him, which deprived him of that soul. Except that he certainly wasn't a "legendary dark warrior" before Dru! Thus "restoration" here clearly seems to mean "back to legendary dark warrior", that is to say de-chipped (or maybe just delusted††, if the "castration" in question is falling in love with Buffy). Of course I think most people would agree that simply having the chip out will *not* stop his feelings for Buffy from plaguing him (if you believe Dru-in-South-America†, the seeds were sown long before he was captured by the Initiative); the question is, does Spike realize this? To me, this whole scene reeks of Spike being "at the end of [his] bleeding tether"†, angry and frustrated and not really knowing what he wants, but clinging like grim death to his last hope, the notion that having the chip out will make everything better. And thus I read this scene as showing him expressing to the demon that he wants to be a "legendary dark warrior" again, wants a chance to prove that he's not a "pathetic excuse for a demon", that he's still the big bad vampire that had Giles seriously unnerved back in season 2†. That it's the stinking rotten luck† of an exterior circumstance (the initiative chip) and not his own inherent weakness (the legacy of William's sentimental heart) that prompted his fall from the height of "badass vampire"† to "beyond pathetic"†. That he can still beat anything that comes at him, from inside or out.

And hence I have a difficult time processing that anyone who watched the same scenes I did, without outside information such as the writers' interviews, could come to the conclusion that he was asking for a soul the whole time, could fail to see the demon's final words as the classic ironic "monkey's paw" wish-granting "hah, hah, hah, you should have been more specific!"... And the whole "vampire with a soul" (since the request was to "make [him] what [he] was"† and last time he had a soul, he was human) is so perplexing that I won't even hazard another sentence on it. Something's going to have to be added to make the "asking-for-a-soul-all-along" interpretation fly, and I'm enormously thankful that it's not *my* job to come up with something that doesn't badly contradict what we've already seen.

So I've come to the conclusion that there are 2 possible options: (1) the somewhat unlikely conspiracy theory that this is all actually a deliberate campaign of misinformation designed to keep all us psychotic fans busy ruminating about the show all summer, and hence extra hyped for Sep 24 -- as if *that* was necessary! hey, already there! (2) a little ret-conning, possibly very convincing ret-conning, possibly not, is in store for us come season 7, and the official statement is meant to pave the way for those of us who might be more inclined to skepticism. Either way, I'm counting the days till episode 123 as assiduously as Spike counted those 147 days Buffy was dead last summer†.

And now at long last, I return to my original point, which is that without knowing for sure what the deal was, there's no real way to evaluate any possible Courtly Love overtones. All this rambly incoherent text to tell you *that*, sorry! Just had to get this whole Spike/Soul thing off my chest! I do however have one comment in particular that reached me since I posted this essay last summer that I'd like to re-post here.

I had completely forgotten about that line, not having AtS nearly as well memorized as BtVS, and my thanks to Christie for pointing it out! This scene certainly illustrates the playful way in which the Courtly Love mythos is used; the romantic and stylized notion of the "wisest and bravest knight" quickly quashed with a counter-description of "first drooling idiot that comes along", leaving us to ponder: well, which is it? Or is it both simultaneously?

Notes & Comments

The fact that this revelation comes to Spike in a dream is quite fitting, given that dream-visions are prevalent in the medieval literature of Courtly Love. See for example Chaucer's Book of the Duchess or the Roman de la Rose (Guillaume de Lorris & Jean Clopinel).

Ain't Love Grand?Spike & Courtly Love

The season 6 semi-addendum

Notes & Comments

Sources & Outside Links

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Additional links of interest

About me & this essay

Ain't Love Grand?
Spike & Courtly Love