Female Intimacies in Seventeenth-Century French Literature

Marianne Legault

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317136026
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literaturkritik

Examining literary discourses on female friendship and intimacy in seventeenth-century France, this study takes as its premise the view that, unlike men, women have been denied for centuries the possibility of same sex friendship. The author explores the effect of this homosocial and homopriviledged heritage on the deployment and constructions of female friendship and homoerotic relationships as thematic narratives in works by male and female writers in seventeenth-century France. The book consists of three parts: the first surveys the history of male thinkers' denial of female friendship, concluding with a synopsis of the cultural representations of female same-sex practices. The second analyzes female intimacy and homoerotism as imagined, appropriated and finally repudiated by Honoré d'Urfé's pastoral novel, L'Astrée, and Isaac de Benserade's seemingly lesbian-friendly comedy, Iphis et Iante. The third turns to unprecedented depictions of female intimate and homoerotic bonds in Madeleine de Scudéry's novel Mathilde and Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force's fairy tale Plus Belle que Fée. This study reveals a female literary genealogy of intimacies between women in seventeenth-century France, and adds to the research in lesbian and queer studies, fields in which pre-eighteenth-century French literary texts are rare.

Chapter 1
Historical Overview: The Refusal of Female Intimacy

I spoke these words to God in my lament and a great deal more for a very long time in sad reflection, and in my folly I considered myself most unfortunate because God had made me inhabit a female body in this world.

—Christine de Pisan, The Book of the City of Ladies 5

It is certainly reasonable to affirm that for many women, Christine de Pisan’s famous lament contains something that is very moving, but that is also all too true. What woman has not, at some point in her life, decried the limits that society attempts, even today, to impose on her? What woman, across the centuries, has not suffered even the slightest from lost opportunities, stolen dreams, and (female) realities deformed or even destroyed by society, all because of being born a woman? Female friendship is one of those realities that has been ignored or eradicated by patriarchal society.

The silence surrounding friendship and intimacy between women can be added to a long list of women-centred truths and experiences that have been obliterated by history’s phallocentric tradition. If, as Jack Zipes suggests, “[n]on history is history” (Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion 1), then, tragically, the expression of friendship between women is located precisely within this lack, this literary and historical emptiness, this omission or socio-historical erasure. The lack of a history and of a literary genealogy of female friendship makes it imperative for us to attempt to retrace it and give it renewed life. However, any study focusing on an analysis of female intimacy and its representation in literary texts of the Ancien Régime must first consider, even briefly, the philosophical and moralistic texts of Classical Antiquity that left their mark on friendship in the seventeenth century. It would be beyond the scope of this book to follow the evolution (or from a woman’s perspective, the lack of evolution) of all the dominant discourses on friendship. Hence our analysis will be confined to the three Classical philosophers whose writings on friendship had perhaps the greatest influence on Western thought and literature: Plato, Aristotle and Cicero—a somewhat arbitrary, but necessary choice.¹ The theme of friendship, as will be seen, is central for these ancient philosophers. Their discourse on friendship is a homosocial dialogue that glorifies male intimacy and promotes the superiority of relationships between men. As will be discussed later on in this chapter, the absence of women in the Greco-Roman’s vision of friendship and the exclusivity of its male-centred discourse will profoundly influence French moralistic texts of the Ancien Régime. From Greco-Roman antiquity, we will move on to medieval male discourse and the philosophy of Pierre de Blois, whose treatise, On Christian Friendship, on the Love of God and of one’s Neighbour (De l’amitié chrétienne et de l’amour de Dieu et du prochain), is representative of the period. We will then turn to the sixteenth century, and to what is undoubtedly one of the most highly regarded texts on friendship during the Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne’s essay “On Friendship” (“De l’amitié”). As we will see, this text is particularly problematic from the perspective of any study of female friendship. Our survey of significant texts on friendship will continue with François duc de La Rochefoucauld and Jean de La Bruyère, two moralists from the Ancien Régime who were drawn to the question of friendship, but who, contrary to their predecessors, included friendship between women in their writings. This brief survey on the history of the tradition of friendship, an exclusively male story from Antiquity to the Renaissance, will allow us to better contextualize the various philosophical, moralistic, and literary discourses of the seventeenth century on friendship and intimacy between women. Did the seventeenth-century inclusion of women into the (male) realm of intimate bonds signify that the Grand Siècle was to be more recognizing and accepting of female intimacy than had been its predecessors? Hardly. It seems that the concept of female friendship is allowed to surface only to be mocked and ultimately negated. To conclude this brief review, we will examine Early Modern cultural constructions of the most intimate (and threatening) form of relationships between women, the lesbian relationship. The dangerous French tribade (or lesbian) appears in a variety of Early Modern dictionaries, chronicles, and treatises. Tracing a rapid genealogy of her textual representations will provide a useful cultural framework for the literary analysis of female intimacy and homoerotic practices that will be the focus of Chapters 2 and 3.

From Philia to Amicitia: the Ideal of Antiquity

Why has so little been said about female friendship? Why is there a lack of exemplary female couples in French literature preceding the seventeenth century, and a lack of models of female friendship that are representative of intimate and passionate bonds between women?² Why is it that the first voice in praise of the intensity of women’s relationships, that of Sappho, has been obliterated through the centuries and how are we to explain this literary and socio-historical omission? There can be no single answer to such questions. Indeed, the cause for this absence in literature does not solely reside in the lack of representations of intimate relationships between women, nor in the faulty representations that have been made, which will be discussed in the following chapter. In fact, the main reason for this omission is rooted in Antiquity, for, in the history of philosophical discourse and of moralistic thought, the silence surrounding female intimacy dates back to the ancient philosophers. Rather more than a passing interest, the concept of male friendship (philia) clearly stands out as a social ideal; it is at the centre of Greco-Roman preoccupations, and occupies the highest rank in the hierarchy of human relationships and sentiments.³ As Michèle Sarde and Arnaud Blin have rightly noted, friendship in Antiquity represents a complex bond, one comprised of multiple facets,

[…] an emotional, moral and intellectual bond that represented […] a dual ideal: it was concurrently a free, reciprocal and intimate bond, as well as a relational thread linking social, familial, and political entities, weaving the fabric of social harmony and amity.

[(…) un lien affectif, moral et intellectuel qui a représenté (…) un idéal double: à la fois attachement libre, réciproque et intime, et fibre relationnelle tissant, entre les entités sociales, familiales et politiques, la trame de l’harmonie et de la concorde.] (141)

In fact, the rich variety of forms taken by friendship is reflective of the Greek term for it since, as David Konstan notes, “the form philia does in fact cover relationships far wider than friendship” (9). The common roots of the noun philia (friendship) and of the verb philein (to love) already imply a measure of overlap between the concepts of love and friendship. This lexical ambiguity, or blurring, is present from Plato to Aristotle, although, as we will see, it becomes progressively less marked.

For Plato, friendship is closely linked to love.⁴ Lysis,⁵ one of Plato’s first dialogues, already highlights his interest in friendship. Plato’s work can indeed be seen as an ongoing discussion of friendship, which will be taken up again specifically in his last dialogues, particularly in the Symposium. I will not attempt a detailed analysis of Lysis; I would, however, like to point out that in Plato, the concept of friendship is essentially male. In Lysis, Plato presents the main character, Socrates, as one who is passionate about friends (Lysis 11). Socrates attempts to explain to two children, Lysis and Menexenus (who are the favourites, in an erotic sense, of two young aristocrats, Hippothales and Ctesippus), the true nature of friendship (philia). Thus, in the first pages of Lysis, homosociality is already a determining factor. Furthermore, the setting for Lysis is essential in understanding the concept of friendship in Plato. Indeed, it is no accident that the dialogue in Lysis takes place in a Palaistra (palaestra), a kind of gymnasium where young Athenians would gather to practice sports or other physical activities (Gadamer 6–7). Thus, the setting for the dialogue on friendship itself represents a place where sex and class are determining factors for this Greek intelligentsia, a place entirely dominated not only by the male gender, but also by homosociality. The exclusiveness of relationships between men therefore forms the basis and the starting point of their discussion on friendship.

We also note that the moral similarity between friends is crucial for Plato: the good naturally attract the good, the bad attract the bad. The affinity of two friends is a component of ancient philosophy that, as we shall see later on, continues well into the Ancien Régime.⁶ The contrast between the young pupils’ ignorance and Socrates’s wisdom and knowledge is also part of the foundations of friendship in Plato. Among all the (male) intimate relationships in Lysis, the bonds formed with friendship and education (philia and paideia) as their basis, pairing ignorance with knowledge, appear as the most genuine and virtuous.⁷ Thus, as a philosopher and teacher, the character of Socrates exemplifies the inestimable virtue that is attributed to friendship in Antiquity. As Ullrich Langer explains:

Friendship is […] at the heart of ancient moral philosophy, in a theoretical and practical sense. In theory friendship is the paradigm of a virtuous relationship, and it is a fulcrum of the network of duties that constitute a civic life. In a practical sense, the very act of philosophizing is a demonstration of a basic level of male friendship. (Perfect Friendship 115)

In Plato, philosophy does not seem to exist without friendship or love,⁸ but this exchange of knowledge and wisdom occurs, let us not forget, in a universe that strictly privileges men. The homosocial (or even homosexual) forum in Plato’s Lysis therefore becomes a metaphor for the concept of friendship as it will be depicted and disseminated throughout Antiquity: a business conducted strictly between men.

Following Plato, many thinkers, as expected, continue to perpetuate this male-centred discourse on friendship. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle, Plato’s student, insists on the necessity of elitism with regard to ethics. For Aristotle, only a male adult of higher social standing can succeed in his pursuit of human excellence, be it moral or intellectual. In fact, in Aristotle as in Plato, friendship can only be a result of male experience. The Nicomachean Ethics is a discourse transmitted from father to son that, in a way, perpetuates homosociality since the work is dedicated to Aristotle’s son, Nicomachus. For both Aristotle and Plato, friendship proves vital, yet, while the discussion in Lysis is set against the erotic background of Hippothales’s declaration of love for Lysis, in Aristotle friendship is, as Langer notes, “generally distinct from desire, concupiscence, or erotic love (eros)” (Perfect Friendship 20).⁹

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle dedicates two chapters (books eight and nine) to friendship. For this philosopher, friendship certainly is one of the most noble human virtues, but more specifically, it is one’s raison d’être,

for it is a kind of virtue, or implies virtue, and it is also most necessary for living. Nobody would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other good things. (200)

Virtue is thus fundamental as the basis for perfect friendship. Because of its status as a most satisfying relationship, the philosopher ranks friendship (the mark of a virtuous soul) above simple affection; in fact, it is a relationship that increasingly appears as an exchange, a communion:

Affection resembles a feeling, but friendship is a state. […] And in loving a friend they are loving their own good. For when a good man becomes a friend to another he becomes that other’s good; so each loves his own good, and repays what he receives by wishing the good of the other and giving him pleasure. There is a saying ‘caring is sharing’, and these qualities belong especially to the friendship of good men. (209)

Giving of oneself entirely, sharing, reciprocity, such are some of the main characteristics of Aristotelian friendship that one could easily mistake for those of a traditional marriage. Without a doubt, friendship is depicted in Aristotle as an absolute ideal. According to Marie-Dominique Philippe, Aristotle’s insistence on the notion of an ideal is essential in order for him to “affix its exact place among the various perfections of our human lives” [“fixer sa place exacte parmi les perfections diverses de notre vie humaine” Philippe 68].

But in Aristotle, is friendship truly a “human perfection”? It in fact appears that, contrary to Philippe’s humanistic reading, Aristotle’s concept of friendship in no way extends to the whole of humanity. What he describes is, in actuality, an idealized model of male love, a perfection that neither woman, child nor slave could ever attain. After all, if, as Aristotle claims, “the basis of affection is equality and similarity” (214), who would have access to the perfect happiness provided by friendship in ancient Greek society—a world governed strictly by the adult male—other than the male citizen? In her article “Who’s Who in the Polis,” Elizabeth V. Spelman reminds us that for women, the problem lies in the social foundations of the city (polis):

In a well-ordered city-state, women and slaves are not parts of the polis, but they are the conditions of it. Without their work, the polis could not exist, but they do not participate in the activities of the polis. They are not capable of living lives that exhibit the highest form of human excellence, though it would not be possible for others to live such lives without them. (100)

Spelman reveals two important points. She first highlights the close link between women’s condition and slavery in the structure of an ancient Greek city. Spelman also shows, however, that for the male Greek citizen, allowing women to exist within the city means that he can profit from an entirely parasitic relationship in which women’s services are indispensible to men. Finally, Spelman recalls one of the main components of the antique city that is also one of the objectives found in the Nicomachean Ethics: the pursuit and attainment “[of] the highest form of human excellence”—a perfection of which women, according to classical thinkers, are obviously incapable. Given women’s supposed lack of innate perfection, one wonders if Aristotle even ponders the possibility of intimate relationships between women in his Nicomachean Ethics. For Janice Raymond, female friendship is simply an impossibility in classical society, one that can be explained in part by the political structure of that society:

The society of ancient Greek philosophers and friends taught that politics was the business of friends. Friendship in the Greek male homo-relational tradition was the basis of the state. Aristotle, for example, taught that friendship held states together. However, the citizens of this polis [sic] were all male. Women had no civic status, and therefore friendship was an affair between men, as was also politics. Neither slaves nor women, who were considered in many ways to be slaves, could be friends or holders of political office. (8)¹⁰

Politics and friendship were thus strictly reserved for the male citizens since the social bond that rendered women’s condition close to that of a slave also rendered her participation in politics—by which friendships are made—impossible.

In Aristotle, we note that “the good man […] extends to his friend the same relation that he has towards himself (for a friend is another self)” (237). Needless to say, this concept of the Self excludes women since in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Historical Overview: The Refusal of Female Intimacy
• 2 Female Intimacy in the Masculine Imagination: From Sexual Fantasy to Apprehension
• 3 Female Intimacy in Women’s Imagination: The Death of Prince Charming
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index