Moral Cupidity and Lettres de Cachet in Diderot’s Writings by Jennifer Vanderheyden

Abstract

Reviewed by: Moral Cupidity and Lettres de Cachet in Diderot’s Writings by Jennifer Vanderheyden Diane Fourny Vanderheyden, Jennifer. Moral Cupidity and Lettres de Cachet in Diderot’s Writings. Routledge, 2021. ISBN 978-1-032-09403-8. Pp. 152. This is Vanderheyden’s second book on Diderot and it offers an innovative reassessment of many elements of Diderot’s writings by way of a study of the historical, narrative, and fictional device permeating much of his work: the lettre de cachet. While La religieuse remains the primary focus here, several other important works are also treated in depth (notably Le père de famille, Jacques le fataliste, Sur les femmes, Est-il bon? Est-il méchant?). The theme of moral cupidity defines the lettre de cachet’s unique ambivalence as both authoritative censure of licentious actions (on the part of the accused/incarcerated) and expression of greed and power (on the part of the accuser or family and State). Chapter 1 provides a brief history of the use of the lettre under the Ancien Régime, traces its appearance throughout Diderot’s writings, and summarizes Diderot’s personal experience as a victim of it. Vanderheyden also sets up her case for the inclusion of or implied reference to the lettre de cachet in La religieuse since it is never clearly given in the novel. A second chapter introduces what becomes the central critical tool of this study, Julia Kristeva’s discussion of the sublimation of language as cultural perversion (the creation of terms, père-versité and mère-versité): a way to illustrate yet another dimension of the ambivalence of the lettre de cachet: the said and unsaid of the epistolary mode. Inappropriate sexual drive and/or perverse greed running rampant throughout La religieuse are richly and vicariously repressed and expressed from victim to agent to reader (Croismare or ourselves as readers) to author (Suzanne or Diderot). Vanderheyden enhances this chapter’s arguments by applying her critical apparatus onto two historical Ancien Régime cases of incarceration by lettre de cachet, that of Marguerite Delamarre (previously tied to La religieuse in the critical literature) and another fascinating case of “La Turquesse” or the Nogent Affair. Chapter 3, the most ambitious and rewarding, turns the ambivalence the lettre de cachet and the moral cupidity subtending it to point it in another direction, toward rebirth or reinvention of the victim, here through the nun’s rebellion against confinement and repression in her efforts to find freedom. Further, this reversal of fortunes is also importantly tied to agency and gender. Vanderheyden develops her thesis, again with the help of Kristeva, in a masterful reading of the latter’s work on Sainte Thérèse d’Avila. Vanderheyden follows the dialogue Kristeva establishes between herself and Diderot (La religieuse and Sur les femmes), and that of their respective nuns, resulting in a prescient analysis of these two thinkers on religion, faith, and female desire. As Vanderheyden concludes, at the heart of Diderot’s aesthetic creativity can be found that “mystery” of the female genius and/or loss of oneself within the voice and body of the other, expressed in and through his works of fiction and reflections on women. [End Page 207] Diane Fourny University of Kansas, emerita Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French