1. WOMEN IN FRENCH SOCIETY

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1. WOMEN IN FRENCH SOCIETY
Any investigation of the special position of women in French society needs to
be based on their situation from twelfth-century courtoisie to the eighteenth
century. Only a brief outline can be attempted here.
It is a truism to say that the special position of women in French society has
its origins in twelfth-century courtoisie. D. de Rougemont, for example, states:
En I'espace d'une vingtaine d'annees, naissance d'une vision de la femme entierement
contraire aux mceurs traditionnelles - la femme se voit elevee au-dessus de ['homme,
dont elle devient I'ideal nostalgique - et naissance d'une poesie a fonnes fixes, tres
compliquees et raffinees, sans precedent dans toute l' Antiquite ni dans les quelques
siec\es de culture romane qui succedent a la renaissance carolingienne.'
As regards the conception of love as an ideal, woman as a physical
representation of that ideal and the poetry of the Troubadours that expresses
that ideal, de Rougemont continues, citing A. Jeanroy in hisLa Poesie lyrique
des Troubadours (1934): 'tout Ie monde admet aujourd'hui que la poesie
provenc;ale et les conceptions de l'arnour qu'elle illustre, "loin de s'expliquer
par les conditions OU elle naquit, semble en contradiction absolue avec ces
conditions." ,
De Rougemont proceeds to quote leanroy, from his Introduction to the
Anthologie des Troubadours (1927): '11 est evident qu'elle [Ia poesie] ne
reflete aucunement la realite, la condition de la femme n'ayant pas ete, dans
les institutions feodales du Midi, moins humble et dependante que dans celles
du Nord.'2 The explanation for this de Rougemont finds in the Albigensian
heresy, the 'Church of Love', which venerated 'Marie, symbole de. pure
Lumiere salvatrice, Mere intacte (immaterielle) de Jesus, et semble-t-il, luge
plein de douceur des esprits delivres'. 3 In his view, 'de cette culture et de ses
doctrines fondamentales, nous sommes encore tributaires, au-dela de ce que
l'on imagine'. 4 As the religious ideas of a period affect the view taken oflove, so
also the vocabulary of love is influenced by that of religion.
In consequence, for de Rougemont,
c'est au cceur de cette situation inextricable (Ia contradiction entre les ideaux - euxmemes en conflit! - et la realite vecue, la psyche et la sensualite naturelles), c'est
comme une resultante de tant de confusions qui devaient s'y nouer, qu'apparait la
I D. de Rougemont, L 'Amour et ['occident (Paris, PIon, edition defmitive, 1972 [First edition:
Paris, PIon, 1939)), 55.
'Ibid.
) Ibid., 59.
'Ibid., 60.
11
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cortezia, 'religion' litteraire de I' Amour chaste, de Ja femme idealisee, avec sa 'piete'
particuliere, lajoy d'amors, ses 'rites' precis, la rhetorique des troubadours, sa morale
de I'hommage et du service, sa 'theologie' et ses 'croyants', Ie grand public cuitive ou
non, qui ecoute les troubadours et fait leur gioire mondaine dans toute I'Europe.'
Whether or not de Rougemont is correct in making the connection that he does
between the Albigensian heresy and the 'Courts of Love', through the
Troubadours, what seems of most importance in relation to the position of
women in French society is that women were freed for the first time from their
lowly and dependent position in feudal society to be considered in an idealized
way through the Courts of Love as recipients of homage and service owed to
them by men.
The chivalric code gives a special and elevated place to women throughout
the medieval and Renaissance periods. The Arthurian cycle depicts in literary
terms the ideal of the knight during the medieval period and this gives place to
Renaissance man and the courtier, typified in France as the ideal of the
honnete homme. Maclean comments that' honnetete is a secular ideal of social
conduct, combined in the case of women with dominant overtones of chastity,
piety and devoutness. It is an ideal peculiar to the Renaissance'.6
The development of the salon from Madame de Rambouillet onwards was a
social phenomenon that emphasized the position ofwomen. Picard states that
'Ies femmes ont joue un grand role dans les salons Iitteraires',7 which are
defined as places for conversation between people oflike mind who enjoy each
other's company. The importance of this salon society to the creation of La
Princessede Cleves (1678) by Madame de LaFayette is an important fact that
stresses the literary nature of the salon of the period.
The tradition of the literary salon organized by a superior woman continued
into the eighteenth century. Madame de Lambert had frequented the salon of
Madame de Rambouillet; her salon cultivated not only literary interests but
also scientific and other intellectual interests to a greater extent than did the
celebrated salons of the previous century. Fontenelle, Montesquieu, the
mathematician Mairan, were habitues. Fontenelle himself stood midway
between literature and philosophy. This connection is so marked that it is not
possible to understand Marivaux without understanding Madame de Lambert,
who had written the essay on women De l'education desfilles (1737). Later,
Marivaux and other men of letters frequented the salon of Madame de Tencin,
who features, together with Madame de Lambert, as a character in La Vie de
'Ibid., 86.
61. Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610-1652 (Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1977), 124.
, R. Picard, Les Salons litteraires et la societefranraise, 1610-1789 (New York, Brentano's,
2nd edn, 1943), 12.
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Marianne (1731-41). The salon of Madame GeotTrin was less precious.
Madame du DetTand received Voltaire and particularly d' Alembert, so
philosophy was much discussed there, but Julie de Lespinasse received the
encyclopedistes in greater numbers. The same philosophical interest was
found in the salon of Madame Helvetius and thenin that of Madame Necker,
attended by Diderot and Grimm.
All these salons 'donnent aux femmes une veritable suprematie dans la
societe polie'.8 However, in spite of this undoubted 'suprematie', 'Ie feminisme
au sens moderne du mot, c'est-a-dire la revendication de I'egalite politi que et
economique des deux sexes et de I'acces a tous les emplois pour les femmes,
n'existait pas aux XVIIC siecle'.9 All the same, Picard adds a reservation:
'pourtant il n'en est pas completement absent'; and in support of this
qualification to his original statement, he mentions Mademoiselle de Gournay
and her Petit Traite de l'egalite des hommes et des femmes of 1622 and Frelin
and Poullin de la Barre and their L 'Ega lite des deux sexes: Discours moral et
physique ou l'on voit l'importance de se defaire des prejuges published in
1673. For the eighteenth-century period, we should mention in this connection,
not only the essay on women's education by Madame de Lambert, but also
Diderot's essay Sur les femmes (1772); the views of women expressed by
Marivaux, particularly in his novel La Vie de Marianne and repeatedly in his
theatre and his journalism; and later Laclos' essay Des Femmes et de leur
education (1783). The popularity of the feminist women novelists, Madame
de Grafigny and her Lettres d 'une peruvienne of 1747 and Madame Riccoboni
and her Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd of 1757, is a further indication of
interest in the question 9fthe situation of women. One conclusion on this topic
is that 'les idees si lumineusement exposees par Fenelon, dans son Education
desfilles (1687), n'ont pas ete beaucoup suivies. La femme n'a pas conquis
l'egalite economique et politique, mais il s'en faut qu'elle reste confinee dans
les servitudes domestiques.' 10
What, then, is the answer to this paradox about the situation of women in
French society before and during the eighteenth century? Does the idealization of women in the Courts of Love and in the chivalric ideal and in the salon
society correspond to the reality of the situation of women - at least of upperclass women - or is their alleged supremacy a myth? Laclos analyses this
very question through the feminine characters of his Liaisons dangereuses and
shows how the Marquise de Merteuil overcomes her disadvantages as a
woman through the use of her intelligence.
In the reality of eighteenth-century French life Madame de Pompadour is an
8
10
Ibid., 148.
Ibid., 155.
• Ibid., 154.
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example of feminine success, but she remains dependent on the whim of the
highest personage in the land, so that in spite of her exalted position she can be
seen as a 'subjugated' woman. Carter develops a viewpoint in regard to Sade's
work in terms of the relationships of the sexes:
He creates, not an artificial paradise of gratified sexuality but a model of hell in which
the gratification of sexuality involves the infliction and tolerance of extreme pain. He
describes sexual relations in the context of an unfree society as the expression of pure
tyranny, usually by men upon women, sometimes by men upon men, sometimes by
women upon men and other women; the one constant to all Sade's monstrous orgies is
that the whip hand is always the hand with the real political power and the victim is a
person who has little or no power at all, or has had it stripped from him. In this schema,
male means tyrannous and female means martyrised, no matter what tht< official
genders of the male and female being are. II
This extreme attitude makes use of the term 'female' as always the subjugated
party in the 'context of an unfree society', that is France under the ancien
regime.
For Starobinski, there is an emphasis within the section that he entitles
Regne fictif de fa femme on the separation between the appearance and the
reality of the feminine condition:
la femme regne (on lui fait croire qu'elle regne). C'est autour d'elle que tlotte la
promesse du plaisir. Mais sa situation est ambigue. Pour quelques-unes qui sont
maitresses d'elles-memes, qui regnent sur les salons par leur esprit et leur science,
combien d'autres en revanche que l'on traite en objets: enfermees dans des couvents,
mariees contre leur gre, conquises par ruse. L'histoire nous apprend que la majorite
restent strictement confinees dans Ie menage OU elles exerceront leurs vertus
domestiques. Mais il en va autrement en ces terres d'election de la richesse, OU brille Ie
luxe et OU I'art se depense. La phraseologie du respect passionne fait accroire iI la
femme qu'un destin depend de ses faveurs: Ie soupirant n'a cependant point d'autre
ambition que d'avoir une femme de plus. Nulle surprise si bientot la femme se masque iI
son touret rivalise d'hypocrisie avec I'homme; Ie sentiment n'estplus guere quele point
d'honneur du desir. Les protestations tendres sont Ie langage chifTre de I'impatience
charnelle, Ie prelude intelligent aux defaites de la raison. /2
This statement by Starobinski and that of Picard denying the existence of
feminism in France in the eighteenth century can be reconciled depending on
the particular relationships in particular cases in high society, or indeed in
middle-class society. There is no statistical evidence to support one view
rather than the other and it may well be that both statements are true, in that a
woman may well be idealized in certain contexts and also considered inferior
II A. Carter, The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (London, Virago,
1979),24.
"J. Starobinski, L 'Invention de la liberte, 1700--1789 (Geneva, Skira, 1964),55.
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in another. Whether one can truly speak of pure tyranny in sexual relations
must remain open to question. There is no doubt, however, that the legal status
of women is very weak.
Abensour has stated that under the ancien regime women's emancipation is
seen as a danger to the family, to society and to herself 13 - a point picked up'
by Hoffmann who shows that French legal experts in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were unanimous in seeing women's legal status as
inferior, both in terms of the spirit of Roman law and of customary law.
Hoffmann, drawing on the opinions of Bodin, Domat and Pothier, shows that 'la
minorite juridique de la femme est une constante du droit'. 14 This may have
been because specialists in canon la~ continued to see woman, as a result of
original sin, not only as morally incapable but also as morally inferior to man.
Thus the strict legal position of women under the ancien regime is one of
inferiority under both civil law and canon law, as a consequence of the Roman
view of the paterfamilias and the attitude of the early Church towards women.
In particular, the situation of women is that they are seen by these authorities
as inferior by nature to men, but the position of daughters and wives is
especially dependent - in comparison with widows - because the law is seen
as strengthening the position of the head of the family, who could only be the
husband and father.
There was a different view of women, as held by certain of the philosophes,
and Hoffmann does not neglect this aspect: 'ce ne sont ni Domat ni Pothier qui
ont suscite la reflexion phiIosophique au XVIII e siecle, mais les theoriciens du
droit nature\. Et parmi ceux-ci les plus grands seulement.' 15
Supposed equality, as far as Rousseau is concerned, did not include women,
as can easily be seen from L 'Emile (1762) and other works, where he sees
women as fit only to look after men; but the views of Montesquieu, Diderot,
Condorcet, Helvetius and d'Holbach - some basing themselves on the
sensationalism of Locke, others concerned to promote principles of equality
between men and women as well as between men - are in contradiction with
the legal position of women as it existed in eighteenth-century· France. 16
This is a development of Feminism on a philosophical level and will be
illustrated through literature by writers such as Duclos, Diderot and Laclos;
but on another level, Woman, from the early eighteenth century onwards in
\J L. Abensour, La Femme et Ie jeminisme avant la Revolution (Paris, Editions Leroux,
1923).
14 HotTmann, La Femme dans la pensee des Lumieres, 242.
Il Ibid., 244.
"See E. J. Gardner, 'The philosophes and women: Sensationalism and sentiment', in
E. Jacobs et al. (eds.), Woman and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: Essays in Honourof
John Stephenson Spink (London, ALhlone Press, 1979), 19-27.
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France, exemplifies pleasure as part of that happiness which is the ideal of the
period. The idealization of Woman is not, then, a reflection of their actual
status in French society but part of the myth in which they represent pleasure
and relief from ennui.
Mauzi, in L'Idee du bonheur dans la litterature et la penseejran~aise au
XVIII e sieele, refers to Boudier de Villemert and his Apologie de lajrivolite
of 1750. Mauzi emphasizes the importance given to frivolity, as much as to
virtue and pleasure. As to the importance of pleasure, it is a refuge against
ennui, and happiness itself is defined by Maupertuis, in his Essai de
philosophie morale, quoted by Mauzi, as 'la somme des moments de plaisir'.1'
So pleasure is quantified, moment by momel)t, the succession of pleasurable
moments leading to happiness, the opposite of vacuity and boredom. And it is
also associated with love, the ideal of the period being the capacity to reconcile
idealized love with the pleasure of possession.
As an illustration ofthis association oflove as an obsession and a pleasure,
giving happiness obtained through a succession of women, Mauzi recounts
briefly the story of the Marquis de Lassay given in de Lassay's autobiographical work, Recueil de difjerentes choses, which contains a collection of
love-letters that express the obsession of his life, albeit in varying tones, but
always with the same total involvement. At seventy years of age, de Lassay
enjoys his final love-affair with a woman of thirty and is happy with her until
her premature death, when he fmds himself alone at seventy-two. Mauzi
comments on this case-history of an eighteenth-century nobleman: 'quant it
Lassay, il poursuit une quete amoureuse dont l'objet importe peu, ou du moins
n'est pas irremplac;:able. Mais il s'exalte au point de reconstruire une
mythologie, en pretant it I'etre aime la valeur qu'il n'accorde en realire qu'a
l'amour.'18 The notion of libertinage, in its element of multiplicity, constant
change, finds in this memoir of a life an example that the libertin novelists
will record without exaggeration in their fictional works.
What evidence have we of the actual behaviour of women of the period in
France? Lough quotes Mercier and his Tableau de Paris, where he points out
that the unmarried girls of the nobility and haute bourgeoisie were kept in
convents, and young girls in general were under the eye of their mothers until
marriage. 19 It would seem that the attentions of the prospective lover would
have to be directed not at unmarried girls but rather at married women and
widows. In his chapter entitled 'Maris', Mercier describes how in many
17 R. Mauzi, L Uee du bonheur dans la litterature et la pensee franfaise au XVIII e siecie
(Paris, Armand Colin, 1960), 388.
II Ibid., 463.
19 J. Lough, 'Women in Mercier's Tableau de Paris', in Jacobs et al. (eds.), Woman and
Society in Eighteenth-Century France, 110-22.
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17
households husband and wife went their separate ways while keeping up
appearances. In the absence of divorce, instituted by the Legislative Assembly
only at the end of the century in 1792, judicial separation was the only legal
procedure and in practice recourse was had quite commonly to a voluntary
separation. In 1788, Mercier adopts a more sarcastic tone on the subject and
deplores the legislation that forbids divorce and permits separation, so that two
people are rendered - in his view - useless to the State and encouraged
towards libertinage. Thus, if this view of marriage among upper-class couples
of the period is correct, girls forced into marriage by their parents emancipated
themselves once married and led separate lives from their husbands - a life of
.libertinage.
We know that woman was seen as the necessary object of the happiness,
love and pleasure sought through her. Starobinski describes a complex system
of attentions paid to women with the purpose of achieving their seduction: 'Ce
langage ratline est donc un masque, une "gaze" dont personne ne s'abuse,
rna is auxquels on ne cesse de recourir parce que les deguisements et les faux
obstacles tiennent en haleine Ie caprice. '20
For Starobinski, all this leads to disguise as a way of life; the mask is worn
with the intention of unmasking, but the face unmasked is insincere. This, in
other words, is the defmition of leading a double life: 'Ie riche a femme et
maitresses, maisons de ville et "petites maisons". A peine clandestin, Ie plaisir
requiert cependant un domaine consacre, des Iieux separes, un territoire
propice: l'actrice, virtuose de dedoublement, en sera I'habitante predestinee.'
Consequently, the queen of pleasure is thefille d 'Opera , and other womeneven those from la bonne societe - model themselves on her behaviour, since
la realite se laissera decrire comme une comedie. Avant que Ie siecle n'eprouve la
nostalgie des sentiments vrais, il s'est abandonne, avec delices, a toutes les varietes du
dedoublement. Allegories, transpositions, antiphrases, doubles ententes, allusions:
autant d'experiences mentales de l'ecart, de I'obliquite, qu'allegent et rendent
plaisantes des vies dont I'agitation reste emprisonnee dans les circuits du monde
elegant: la cour, la ville, les salons .. ,2l
Happiness as the ideal of French society in the eighteenth century makes
women an essential part of that ideal. The expression of sensuality through the
plastic arts and of sexuality both through the way of life of the libertine and
through its written depiction by authors of the libertine genre are in contrast
with the depiction ofsentiment by other writers of the period; but the genres are
not watertight and both sensuality and sexuality are to be found in novels of
sentiment, openly or beneath the surface, as will be seen from the novels
20
21
Starobinski, L 1nvenlion de fa fiberte, 55.
Ibid., 56.
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selected for study. These do reflect the development of feminism, with which
the paternalistic view of women's place in society is in contrast. The theme of
illegitimacy, so important in a society obsessed with the rights of property of
the head of the family, is exploited by many novelists. This paternalistic view
gives way to the concept of the family unit, the philosopher's view of the happilymarried couple, as expressed by Locke and Rousseau. There is a conflict
between this latter conception of married bliss based on equatity - which in
practice entailed the wife's subservience to her husband - and the view of war
between the sexes, as exemplified by libertinage, which left a place for the
equality - and even superiority - of women. In this conflict there also exists a
difference of attitude between the aristocratic class, with which certain
novelists concern themselves exclusively, and the bourgeoisie, particularly
the artisan class, which is strongly reflected by the views of Rousseau.
It is my intention to elucidate the situation of women in eighteenth-century
French society by reference to the novel. The works selected are at once
original and representative and have been generally acknowledged as offering
a penetrating analysis of contemporary psychology. The examination of the
role and function of the women characters in the structure of these central
novels - as distinct from a general study - has proved rewarding and throws a
special light on the question of the development of feminism in the wake of the
Enlightenment and the nature of French society on the eve of the French
Revolution, even if my conclusions are confmed to the French aristocracy.
Great works are of course original, but they have their roots in the times in .
which they have been written and great writers - as, for instance, Rousseau have sharp antennae that sense the wind of change and lead unwary critics to
suggest either remarkable originality or prescience of future developments.
Sensibility and romanticism existed long before their literary manifestations
and it is this fact that no doubt explains the immediate success of works such as
La Nouvelle Heloise.