Jansenism in Diderot's La Religieuse

Abstract

Jansenism in Diderot's La Religieuse HUGUETTE COHEN It is a well-known fact that, for Diderot, the realms of imagination and real-life experience are not mutually exclusive in his writing of fiction. In his Discours sur la poesie dramatique (1758), he defines illusion as a skill­ ful blend of "circonstances extraordinaires" and "circonstances com­ munes,"1 and in the "Postface" to Les Deux Amis de Bourbonne (1770), he states the secret of success for the novelist: "etre en meme temps historien et poete, veridique et menteur."2 Nowhere is Diderot's dual formula for achieving illusion better shown at work than in La Religieuse. Diderot's own hesitations betray his ambivalence: he alternately refers to his novel as memoires, lettres, histoire, roman, and conte, achieving in successive revisions a progressive distanciation through a subtle injection of fiction.3 Offering the final version of the novel to Meister for publication in the Correspondance litteraire in 1780, Diderot stresses his vacillation be­ tween "faire beau" and "faire vrai"; he points out with pride that his work is filled with "tableaux pathetiques" and is "une effroyable satire des couvents ."4 A great deal of ambivalence between fiction and reality actually existed in the circumstances surrounding the writing of La Religieuse, since the story of the young nun originated as a piece of pure fantasy de­ signed to stir the compassion of the very real Marquis de Croismare.5 In spite of this ambivalence, many critics and readers would like to think that Diderot's critical picture of convent life in La Religieuse is highly fanciful. The novel is viewed by some as Gothic, because of its in­ roads into secluded spheres of perversion and cruelty. Diderot's delight in luring his reader into a venture of profanation is well known,6 and a novel about convent life was the ideal setting for sprinkling Gothic contriv­ ances.7 However, this delight in the supernatural is so contrary to the 75 76 / COHEN basic tenets of the Enlightenment that there is no basis to consider it as anything more than a brief excursion in La Religieuse. Nor is there any valid reason to look at the scenes of eroticism as belonging to the tradi­ tion of libertine fiction, which presupposes the exploitation of the con­ vent setting for a mingling of sexuality and rationality.8 The three con­ vents of La Religieuse are not used merely as convenient backdrops for titillating erotic scenes as was the case, for instance, for Venus dans le cloitre, one of the best-known specimens of the genre in the eighteenth century.9 There existed a blatant longing for scandal on the part of au­ thors of books bearing titles like Les Nones galantes, Le Moine incestueux , L'Abbaye des damnees.10 This intent certainly does not apply to Diderot who waited twenty years for the publication of his novel in the Correspondance litteraire, a journal with a highly restricted circulation, and Georges May argues quite convincingly that Diderot's depiction of homosexuality was without precedent in literature in 1760 for its scientific and sympathetic approach.11 We may be closer to Diderot's intent if we recall that the cloister theme had some important affinities with the philosophical and ethical ideas of the Enlightenment.12 One of the most fundamental tenets of the philosophes , and Diderot in particular, is that 'Thomme est ne pour la societe" (OR, p. 342). Rather than a titillating roman noir, La Religieuse seems to stand as a document reflecting a social program, a direct outcome of Di­ derot's position on the theater, and like his plays, utilitarian and aiming at social edification through the dissemination of Enlightenment propa­ ganda. Suzanne Simonin is an abstraction, the mirror in which are re­ flected the multiple ills of conventual life seen from different perspectives. If we discount the importance of literary influences, the next logical step is to search for Diderot's real-life models. Georges May has shown that the story of Marguerite Delamarre, whose celebrated lawsuit from 1755 to 1758 involved a futile attempt to revoke her monastic vows, trig­ gered the mystification which was the origin of the novel in early...