Madame de Maintenon: une femme de lettres éd. par Christine Mongenot, Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval

Abstract

Reviews 227 “perfect conjugation of woman and writer through visual emphasis on her domestic fealty”[82]); of the disjunction between the women’s press and mainstream media; of the efforts to make the “chères lectrices” feel like collaborators rather than observers; and especially of the “interactive, almost symbiotic relationship” (27) between the magazines and popular women’s novels such as Marcelle Tinayre’s La rebelle and Louise Marie Compain’s L’un vers l’autre, both “feminist fables” (131) from which a rather paradoxical feminism emerges. Just how expertly Mesch navigates the “contradictory ideological terrain” of Belle Époque literary feminism, where a selfdeclared feminist can call her partner “master” if doing so might reconcile love, marriage, feminism, and femininity without requiring a choice between them (138) cannot be over-emphasized. In her conclusion Mesch grapples with a sobering reality: changes that seemed so nigh during the magazines’ heyday (suffrage, a more equal legal definition of marriage, the“academization”of women) would not be achieved for decades. But she argues convincingly for the significance of the magazines’“dreaming” and the momentous ideological shift it represents (187). Femina and La Vie Heureuse stand, in the final analysis, as potent reminders of the need to“look beyond traditional historical markers of change [...] in order to recognize other kinds of signs of social progress” (187). Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, Having it All is also remarkably timely: as the magazines beckoning from grocery check-out stands demonstrate, we still worship celebrities, just as we continue to debate whether women can be both“feminine”and“feminist”and to strive for a work-life balance—that“holy grail of achieving women to this day”(28) that first became a possibility thanks to the magazines showcased here. University of Arkansas Hope Christiansen Mongenot, Christine, et Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval, éd. Madame de Maintenon: une femme de lettres. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2012. ISBN 978-2-75352100 -1. Pp. 322. 17 a. A new era in critical studies on Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon (1635–1719), is evidenced in this collection of eighteen articles by critics who, in large part, have availed themselves of the first ever complete and reliable edition of Maintenon’s correspondence in seven volumes by Champion. While the majority of studies to date on Maintenon have focused on her life and educational writings, the articles in this collection analyze her epistolary rhetoric and transnational reception. Part one examines the diversity of Maintenon’s epistolary style and her adept use of the lettre d’amitié to contemporaries such as Mme de Caylus and Mme de Dangeau (Marianne Charrier-Vozel), and the letter of compliment to Mme des Ursins (Philippe Hourcade), as well as the lettre d’affaires in the administration of her property of Maintenon (Dominique Picco). Religious inflection is never far given the ascetic dimension of her letters, their sobriety and simplicity, which Yolanda Viñas del Palacio links to Maintenon’s ethos of contrariété, the need for self-sacrifice as a form of expiation for the king’s favor and of self-protection against ever-present calumny. Indeed, the two central notions underlying Maintenon’s epistolary lexicon are those of droiture of mind, soul, and body, and verticalité expressed through absolute obedience and submission to earthly authorities (Stéphanie Miech). Further contributions on Maintenon’s epistolary rhetoric explore her tense relations with church figures such as Fénélon (Hans Bots, Pauline Chaduc) and the Cardinal de Noailles (André Blanc); Maintenon walked a tightrope in trying to assert her influence and protect her reputation , playing with these powerful figures a‘game of cat and mouse’(André Blanc). The second part examines the reception and provenance of Maintenon’s letters, beginning with how her letters came into the possession of La Beaumelle who published three editions in the 1750s (Claudette Fortuny and Claude Lauriol).While some eighteenthand nineteenth-century anthologies and academic textbooks containing a selection of Maintenon’s letters privilege her ‘style simple’ and moralizing nature (Jean-Noël Pascal),others repeat the acerbic criticisms of La Beaumelle and the Duc de Saint-Simon concerning Maintenon’s ‘negative’ influence on Louis XIV and his court (Béatrice Bomel...