 Marie's heroines are often the instigators of events, but events that often end in suffering.The heroines in Marie's "Lais" are often imprisoned.This imprisonment may take the form of actual incarceration by elderly husbands, as in "Yonec", and in "Guigemar", where the lady who becomes Guigemar's lover is kept behind the walls of a castle which faces the sea, or "merely of close surveillance, as in "Laustic", where the husband, who keeps a close watch on his wife when he is present, has her watched equally closely when he is away from home."