Home > Feminism > Women and Women's Writings from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages - Heloise (Letter Date C. 1163/64)

Women and Women's Writings from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages - Heloise (Letter Date C. 1163/64)

HELOISE (LETTER DATE C. 1163/64)

SOURCE: Heloise. The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated by Betty Radice. Hammondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1974.

In the following excerpts from her letters to Pierre Abelard, the twelfth-century nun Heloise (d. 1163/64) proclaims her love for the man who had seduced and secretly married her—a crime for which he was subsequently castrated.

God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess for ever, it would be dearer and more honourable to me to be called not his Empress but your whore.

For a man's worth does not depend on his wealth or power; these depend on fortune, but worth on his merits. And a woman should realize that if she marries a rich man more readily than a poor one, and desires her husband more for his possessions than for herself, she is...

[The entire page is 442 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass