[In the following essay, Wood examines how de Crenne fashions her self-portrait in her novel and letters.]

The innovative nature of france's first sentimental novel has been examined during the past few years in numerous doctoral dissertations and scholarly articles. The present study is concerned with the author's acquisition of writing techniques and traces how Hélisenne de Crenne creates her own persona in the reader's mind from a collage of elements. A multifaceted view of the author/character/narrator/letter writer evolves gradually during the course of her first two published volumes and becomes more complex as the author gains confidence in her craft. Her self-portrait is genre-specific and intertextual in nature. Contemporary criticism enables the modern reader to codify the different Hélisennes and to distinguish her fiction from autobiography. Hélisenne develops from a specially acceptable (i.e., passive young woman) to become a much-criticized bas-bleu, far ahead of her time. Despite social constraints of the sixteenth century, she paints a vivid fictional portrait in her prose. Reading her novel, Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d'amours (1538), along with her letter sequence, Les Epistres familieres et inuectiues (1539), provides the key to tracing the depiction of her personal development, culminating in her invective letters, wherein she presents her mature visage as defender of literary women and author of bestselling fiction.

The author's use of first-person narration complicates discussion of how her persona evolves due to the multiplicity of her separate, contiguous selves, all of whom may be referred to as “Hélisenne.” In order to distinguish clearly between the various layers of narrators, protagonists, and letter writers, the following appellations will be used:

1. De Crenne = the author

2. Hélisenne = a global reference to the various Hélisennes

3. Letter Writer A = the writer of Epistres familieres 1-9

4. Letter Writer B = the writer of Epistres familieres 10-12

5. Letter Writer C = the writer of Epistres inuectiues 1-5

6. Narrator = the narrator of the Angoysses, Part One

7. Protagonist A = the protagonist of the Angoysses, Part One

8. Protagonist B = the protagonist of the Angoysses, Part Three¹

The theoretical constructs for breaking down the components of the complex portrait of Hélisenne are recent developments. One should keep in mind that dividing her portrait into several letter writers and protagonists, as well as distinguishing between author, narrator, and character, is possible only because of modern narrative theory. Nonetheless, although the sixteenth-century reader did not have this theoretical framework, De Crenne's strong message was not lost. Narrative theory enhances the twentieth-century reader's appreciation of the author's technique in presenting her message: passion leads to personal ruin and women can write literature.

The novel and letters are linked by a common plot line. The first nine Epistres familieres fit chronologically into the first chapter of the Angoysses. They establish the nature of Letter Writer A's relationships and furnish details about her early life that are absent in the novel. The next two letters, which concern the character transformation that occurs after the young woman falls in love, complete Part One of the novel. The last two letters refer to the woman's rescue by her beloved and serve as an addendum to the novel's final episode, in which Protagonist B expresses Christian Neoplatonic ideals. The five Epistres inuectiues present Letter Writer C as the creator of a fictional world. The novel and letters are intended to be read together, as complements, receiving privilèges only thirteen months apart—11 September 1538 for the Angoysses and 18 October 1539 for the Epistres (along with her allegorical Songe). The two volumes were undoubtedly displayed side by side in the shop of their Parisian imprimeur/libraire Denys Janot. The complementary nature of the two separate works becomes even more obvious in the 1543 edition in which the novel, letters, and allegorical dream sequence appear in the same volume.² Subsequent sixteenth-century editions recognize the self-referentiality of the three works by continuing to publish them together. Three modern editions break this basic unity by presenting the novel separately, with two of the editions including only Part One of the novel.³ Such a presentation obscures for today's reader the evolution of Hélisenne's persona on several fictional levels.

The narrator of the Angoysses creates a psychological portrait of Protagonist A in the reader's mind by describing her inner reality as an intense déchirement, the embodiment of angoysse douloureuse. Physical description, on the other hand, plays a relatively small role in De Crenne's writings (Wood 134-36 and 140-46). The narrator offers only a glimpse of Protagonist A's physical attributes at age thirteen: “J'estoye de forme elegante, & de tout si bien proportionnée que j'excedoye toutes aultres femmes en beaulté de corps; & si j'eusse esté aussi accomplye en beaulté de visage, je m'eusse hardiment osé nommer des plus belles de France” (Angoysses 7). The relative plainness of her face, as compared with her stunning body, deflates the impression that Protagonist A's beauty is hyperbolic. This presentation undercuts, to a considerable extent, the reader's perception of the young girl's attractiveness, an estimation supported by the general opinion of her peers:

Quand me trouvoye en quelque lieu remply de grand multitude de gens, plusieurs venoient entour moy pour me regarder (comme par admiration) disans tous en general: “Voyez là le plus beau corps que je veis jamais.” Puis apres, en me regardant au visaige, disoient: “Elle est belle, mais il n'est à accomparer au corps.”

(Angoysses 7)

Despite her less-than-perfect face, the narrator states that several admirers, including a king, sought her favor (Angoysses 7). The negative comments concerning her features lend verisimilitude to her description of herself, prevent any possible charge of vanity on her part, and are in keeping with the topos of humilitas, a literary constraint very much in evidence in De Crenne's writings.

Along with physical description, details concerning Protagonist A's attire are also scarce. Her clothing is noted on only one occasion when her husband orders her to dress splendidly (“triumphamment”). Ironically, she takes delight in adorning herself not for her husband but for her beloved:

Je vestis une cotte de satin blanc & une robe de satin cramoisy; j'aornay mon chef de belles brodures & riches pierres precieuses. Et quand je fuz accoustrée, je commencay à me pourmener, en me mirant en mes sumptueulx habillemens, comme le paon en ses belles plumes, pensant plaire aux aultres comme à moy mesmes.

(Angoysses 32-33)

Her use of the male peacock to connote pride in her personal appearance is particularly striking. This simile is not original to De Crenne, however, but comes directly from Boccacio's Fiammetta, an important source for the novel.⁴ The narrator exploits the peacock's symbolism to make this pejorative comment concerning the vanity of her younger, foolish, and prideful self.

Whereas in the Angoysses description of the external is often lacking, the novel is replete with the description of both the narrator's and Protagonist A's troubled states of mind. The text is dominated by the overpowering sensual passion on the part of the focal character, who spends countless sleepless nights yearning for her beloved. The narrative is also punctuated by comments that the narrator relives her pain while writing the novel: “la recente memoire rend ma main debile & tremblante” (Angoysses 52). Tom Conley explains the function of the narrator's angoysse as catharsis. In the act of writing, the narrator regains her equilibrium through the process of reliving of her pain (Conley 328). From the time she first catches a glimpse of him, Protagonist A spends countless sleepless nights troubled by her obsession for her beloved: “mon entendement commenca à voltiger en composant diverses & nouvelles phantasies, qui me causoit une laborieuse peine, en sorte que ne povoye dormir” (Angoysses 25). The narrative continually oscillates between Protagonist A's inner turmoil and the remembrance and rekindling of this agitation by the narrator. The force of these extreme emotions oppresses the novel and gives it an almost claustrophobic tone, especially because the plot line has been so diminished by the narrow focus on intense psychological states (Conley 326).

Repetitive depictions of emotional turmoil reinforce the didactic message that passion is dangerous and must be avoided. The narrator presents herself as a negative model and attempts to teach others from her own unfortunate experience:⁵ “quand je considere qu'en voyant comme j'ay esté surprise, vous pourrez eviter les dangereulx laqs d'amours, en y resistant du commencement, sans continuer en amoureuses pensées” (Angoysses 3). Unbridled passion results in disastrous consequences, ruins her marriage, and eventually brings about her death. The intense descriptive focus that portrays Protagonist A's inner life mirrors her total absorption with her passion. The external world seems to cease to exist. She is figuratively imprisoned by her own tumultuous emotions long before her outraged husband finally gives the order to have her confined to a tower at the end of Part One.

While the impact of external reality is being reduced, Protagonist A is portrayed in the Angoysses as having no links with people besides her jealous husband and her beloved. The world of the novel (Part One) is limited to the three members of the love triangle. Other characters fulfill only minor narrative functions. No character assumes the role of confidant and penetrates the isolation of the focal character.⁶ This feeling of being cut off from society in the novel contrasts strikingly with the sense of connectedness apparent in the Epistres, where there is a social context of family, friends, and, later, the literary world.

In the Epistres familieres, Letter Writers A and B present themselves as confidants and counselors to an extended family system. Whereas the situation in the novel is dependent on Protagonist A's total involvement in her personal situation, by its very nature, the epistolary genre requires interaction and connection with others as part of the letter writing process (Altman 48). The letters as such could not exist without correspondents. They would have the form of a diary or confession similar to the Angoysses.⁷ A total of thirteen correspondents are addressed in the Epistres. Her personal letters are written to an abbess, two female relatives, three male acquaintances, two female friends, her lover's faithful companion, and an enigmatic addressee presumed to be her beloved. Her invective letters are destined for her husband, a literary critic, and the citizens of a town. The number of correspondents implies that she is at the center of a large network of relationships with friends and relatives both male and female.⁸

This sense of a social context, of ties to others, is totally lacking in the novel. Indeed, the Angoysses seems to strip Protagonist A of her relationships to focus solely on the intensity of her psychological state. The lack of social and familial connections in the novel predisposes the main character to develop her love obsession. Her father died when she was young, leaving her mother to see to her education: “ma mère print ung singulier plaisir à me faire instruyre en bonnes meurs & honnestes coustumes de vivre” (Angoysses 6). The novel makes no further mention of Hélisenne's mother who would logically figure as the young girl's most influential role model as, for instance, Mme de Chartres in La Princesse de Clèves. The Angoysses introduces an eleven-year-old bride, bereft of companions and married to a man she had never met and who lived far away: “il y avoit grande distance de son pays au mien” (Angoysses 6). The novel unfolds with Protagonist A functioning as an isolated individual, interacting in society, but with no friends, no persons with whom she feels at ease. Her imprisonment in a tower by her jealous husband continues this isolation and, ironically, permits her, as narrator, the “freedom” to write her life story.

By its very title, the Epistres familieres implies the existence of family connections. Whereas Protagonist A speaks only briefly of her mother, Letter Writer A is actively engaged in caring for her mother in Letters One and Two. Duty to her mother dominates these letters. In Letter One, she relates how she had to leave the peaceful atmosphere of the convent because of her mother's illness. In the second, she refuses her correspondent's kind invitations to a family wedding and to the birth of a child, two important occasions for social interaction in the extended family of sixteenth-century France, to remain at her mother's bedside. Far from being motherless, Letter Writer A portrays herself as a dutiful daughter who is devoted to her mother, who puts the welfare of her mother before herself, and who, in so doing, suppresses her own desires. Without the pressure of filial obligations, she would have stayed in a convent forever. Only familial responsibilities outweigh her desire to lead a contemplative life. In her letter to an Abbess, she lists the “sainctes coustumes” practiced in the convent which she tries to emulate. These practices form the basis of Letter Writer A's personal value system, an ideal of feminine perfection:

La bonne exemplarité, l'assidue reuerence à dieu, les frequentes abstinences, la virginalle continence, les sõbres parolles, l'espargné regard, la continue demeure solitaire, le mesuré temps, la dispersé charité, ensemble le contempnemẽt du monde, l'aspre penitẽce, l'extreme diligẽce en deuotes oraisons, & la souueraine pacience en toutes affaires obseruées.

(Epistres A4v)

The presentation of these admirable qualities fosters the reader's perception of Letter Writer A as a highly moral individual.⁹ In the first nine letters, she exemplifies these virtuous qualities. Because of her goodness, she is sought as a personal advisor. By her responses to their queries, she guides those who are having personal difficulties. She counsels patience three times: in the face of slander (Letter Three), banishment from court (Letter Four), and loss of personal wealth (Letter Six). She consoles a widower on the death of his young wife (Letter Seven). Three letters deal specifically with the question of love. Letter Writer A recommends the renouncing of illicit love and admonishes a young girl to be obedient when her father choses a husband for her. She has compassion for the misfortunes of others but, at the same time, offers stern advice to women who contemplate being unfaithful to their husbands or who are not sufficiently compliant to their father's wishes. Her ideal of virtue comes not only from her convent experience but, also has a secular aspect, inspired by her reading of the classics. Letter Writer A suggests the example of Dido as a model of female constancy and tells her correspondent Clarice to “imiter & suyvre vertu” (Epistres D4v). She does not think that Clarice is weak (“pusillanime”) but, on the contrary, urges her to model herself after the strength in adversity demonstrated by the Queen of Carthage:

Ceste Dido fist grande demonstrance de sa vertu … par elle fut construicte & edifiée la noble cité de Carthage: laquelle fut tresfameuse & renomée. O que selon le iugement d'ung chascun elle fut digne d'estre extollée, puis que sa supreme vertu en telle extremité la rendit cõstante.

(Epistres D5r-v)¹⁰

Dido's virtue and her constancy in loving Sicheus thus serve as models for emulation. Throughout the first nine letters, Letter Writer A serves as a competent advisor who maintains a detached and rational perspective. She speaks out strongly against love and underscores its negative force: “Certes amour comme nous lisons, est vng songe plein d'erreur, de folye, temerité & inconsideration” (Epistres B7r-v).

Letter Ten completely reverses the previous self-description, destroying her persona as a stable and mature personality capable of giving advice to others. After having warned of the dangers of love, she herself falls victim to passion. Because the first nine letters emphasize and underscore Letter Writer A's virtue, the irresistible power of love appears all the greater when she succumbs. The simile of green wood, which is difficult to ignite but which burns hotter when finally lit, expresses the letter writer's experience with love:

tu vueille [sic] mediter que tout ainsi que le bois vert à peine recoipt la flambe & ardeur du feu: mais apres qu'il l'a receue, la tiẽt & conserue plus longuement, rendãt plus vehemente chaleur. Pareillemẽt m'est il aduenu qui au precedent pressée, tentée, & stimuleé, auec assidues poursuytes ne fuz vaincue: Mais finablement estãt surprinse, trop plus que nul aultre amour feruẽte & fidelle: ie obserueray ce que manifestemẽt ie demonstre: Car il n'ya peril qui m'espouẽte: il n'y a accident qui me retire, ne prison qui me retienne.

(Epistres E3r)

Thus, Letter Writer A's initial portrayal of herself as virtuous may be seen as part of her strategy to demonstrate the overpowering negative force of passion. If even she can succumb, others likewise will do so. Her mention of “assidues poursuytes” that she had successfully resisted in the past harkens back to the Angoysses, where Protagonist A was sought after for her physical attributes. The change in her personality occurs rapidly, almost accidentally, but once begun, it proves unstoppable. Logic and virtue cannot prevent her from being overcome (“surprinse”). Beginning with Letter Ten, she presents herself differently. No longer can she claim to practice the virtues of convent life or the constancy of Dido. Love has overwhelmed her best intentions just as it once did the Queen of Carthage.

Letter Twelve to the friend of her beloved and Letter Thirteen (in code) to her beloved return to the plot line of the novel and show Letter Writer B dissembling her true feelings.¹¹ Dissemblance is a tactic that Letter Writer A mentions in Letters One, Eight, and Nine. At first, it is used for the noble purpose of concealing from her family the depth of her despair at leaving the convent. In the later letters, dissemblance is recommended as an effective strategy for delaying an unwelcome marriage. Thematically, it serves to link the letters with the novel, because dissemblance is a way of life in the Angoysses. After she falls into an extramarital love, Protagonist A finds it necessary to mask her true sentiments in all her dealings with her husband. In a particularly striking passage, she relates how she submits to sexual relations with her husband strictly for the purpose of hiding her true feelings:

il s'esveilla & me print entre ses bras pour me penser resjouyr & retirer à son amour. Mais, il estoit merveilleusement abusé, car mon cueur avoit desja faict divorce & repudiation totale d'avec luy; parquoy, tous ses faictz me commencerent à desplaire; & n'eussent esté contraincte je n'eusse couché avec luy. Mais, pour couvrir & donner umbre à mon inicque vouloir, me convenoit user de dissimulation.

(Angoysses 30)

Dissemblance becomes a way of coping when her true feelings are not aligned with a virtuous way of life, especially when revealing the truth might provoke physical abuse from her husband.

In the Epistres inuectiues, Letter Writer C's portrayal of herself has made the transition from that of a character in the narrative to its creator (Kauffman 25). No longer a family counselor, in these letters she becomes an author who defends first herself, then womankind, all women authors, and, finally, her own literary technique.¹² The first three letters present a heated exchange between Letter Writer C and her husband. The theme of dissemblance, which was woven throughout the Lettres familieres, reappears, because she claims her motivation to write stems from the virtuous necessity to avoid idleness and not, as her husband maintains, to record illicit love: “tu as estimé cela (que pour euiter ociosité i'ay escript) eust esté par moy cõposé; pour faire perpetuelle commemoration d'une amour impudicque (G5v). Her husband's reply in the “Second Invective,” with its misogynistic distrust of all women, permits a third letter wherein Letter Writer C catalogues exemplary women throughout the ages. This three-letter exchange accomplishes what was never possible in the novel. Letter Writer C verbally masters her former dominator. By permitting herself two letters to his one, she overshadows his arguments and gives herself the final word. Her calm logic triumphs over his accusations. In the novel, Protagonist A is totally under her husband's domination to the point of being physically restrained, beaten, and, finally, imprisoned. As Letter Writer C, she avenges herself by mastering him verbally.

In the “Fourth Invective,” she energetically replies to Elenot, an outspoken adversary of women authors. The introductory précis summarizes the arguments of this letter:

Epistre exhibé par ma dame Helisenne à Elenot, lequel excité de presumption temeraire, assiduelement contemnoit les dames qui au solacieux exercice litteraire se veulent occuper: mais pour le diuertir de sa folie, Icy est faict commemoratiõ des splẽdides & gentilz esperitz, d'aulcuns dames illustres.

(Epistres K4r)

Letter Writer C presents herself as an able and eloquent speaker on behalf of her sex, a theme that is expanded in her allegorical Songe. She lists many women from antiquity, as well as her contemporary Marguerite de Navarre, whom she praises at great length.¹³ As was the case with her husband in the previous letter, Elenot is overpowered by the force of Hélisenne's arguments, her display of erudition, and her logic. She condemns him for being motivated by “presumption temeraire” and calls his point of view “folie.” By extension, Hélisenne presents her own views as reasonable. Elenot is given no voice and his foolish objections to women writers are quickly silenced.

The Epistres inuectiues thus signal the final stage in the development of Hélisenne's persona. She proves in the letters that she has gained her mature voice as an author, a voice that will continue, in her Songe and her Eneydes, to express literary opinions and experiment with writing techniques. Reading the letters as autobiographical, Paule Demats sees the “Third” and “Fourth Invective Letters” as the real ending of Hélisenne's drama: “Déçue par l'amour, impuissante à prouver son innocence, elle cherche dans la littérature une consolation et un moyen de satisfaire son besoin d'activité vengeresse” (xxxviii). Demats's appraisal of the two letters as personal vengeance does not, however, explain Invective Five, wherein the author's reproach is the most vehement. A comparison of the endings of the four letters written by Letter Writer C demonstrates that her hostile tone culminates with the final letter in the series, not with the fourth. Three letters close with rather bland comments invoking God's aid to enlighten her detractors:

Letter One—exorant la supernele bonté quelle se condescende, à de toutes vaines opinions te liberer.

(H3v-4r)

Letter Three—le Dieu eternel [i'] exoreray, que par grace especiale, de telle obstinatiõ te libere.

(K3v-4r)

Letter Four—exorant le souuerain des cieulx, que pour grace especiale vueille ton obfusqué entendement illuminer.

(L3r-v)

The tone of the three endings appears almost mild when compared with Invective Five, which closes with a scathing malediction worthy of Rabelais:

ne voulant plus aultre choses escripre, sinon que te dõner certitude de mon desir, que totalemẽt aspire, que anticque, infirme, aueugle, sourd, muet, indigent, & souffreteux te puisse veoir. Et si pour n'auoir en toy force de telles calamitez tolerer, Atropos te couppe le fil de ta miserable vie, ie vouldrois qu'apres telle dissolutiõ, tõ corps sans hõneur de sepulture, peult demourer: affin qu'il deuẽt pasture de liepars, loups affamez, liõs, Ours, Tigres, & toutes bestes feroces pour à leur exorbitante faim, de ton malheureux corps satisfaire: & auec ce desir, mettrya [sic] fin à mon epistre: & ne voulant tes compaignons oublier, les aduertis, que ie vouldrois que ce qu'il interuint à Dathan & Abiron, leur peult aduenir.

(L7v-8r)

This imprecation is addressed to the inhabitants of the city of Icuoc (anagramme of Coucy), and especially to the most wicked of them all, a man whom she does not even deign to name. Her vehemence stems from his criticism of her as an author. Letter Writer C heaps scorn upon the latter for slander (detraction) and for criticizing the technique of her novel as being a roman à clef, which is too easily understood: “que mon liure intitulé, les Angoysses, estoit trop intelligible: & que ie debuois plus occultement parler, sans ainsi faire designatiõs des lieux” (L7r). The intensity with which she reacts to the criticism of her novelistic technique makes her dispute with her husband and her most vociferous Parisian critic appear minor.

This final invective letter evokes Letter Writer C as an author of fiction and the creator of a fictional world. Whereas the writer twice repudiates her novel as fiction in other letters, in Invective Five she contradicts her earlier statements and treats fictional incidents as having taken place. This is not to say, however, that she is claiming an autobiographical connection between her novel and her life. On the contrary, she is speaking solely of events in the lives of her male heroes. In this letter, the events of the novel are not seen as inventions out of whole cloth to prevent idleness but as “lived” situations that occurred and must be defended. The question of fiction versus reality becomes all the more difficult to resolve because of the importance that the narrator/protagonist/letter writers have already given to the techniques of dissemblance. Similarly, questions may be asked about veracity of the last two lettres familieres. The slippage between various levels of “fiction” adds to, rather than detracts from, the interest of De Crenne's texts by contributing an illusive ambiguity.

Whereas the portrait of Letter Writers A, B, and C evolves from ideal virtue to obsessive passion to self-conscious authorship, the depiction of Protagonists A and B moves from innocent virtue to obsessive passion to sublimation of the sensual. The tensions implicit in such swings of sentiment augment the nuancing of the portrayal of Hélisenne in all her various facets. Far from a stereotyped creation, she has human frailties with which the reader may identify, as well as a heroic dimension in her triumph as a literary woman.

Reading the Angoysses along with the Epistres demonstrates the self-referential nature of the author's corpus and offers a view of how the composite portrait of the fictive Hélisenne evolves: literally how she creates herself in the reader's mind. In the two works she gives us complementary aspects of herself—a psychological profile in the novel and a sociological one in the Epistres familieres. The didactic message is the same in both works: love brings moral decline and personal ruin. The elements constituting her composite persona are genre-specific. When she gains her voice as an author in the Epistres inuectiues, she speaks forcefully about womanhood and literature. From a timid beginning, she gradually finds a voice and uses it in her own defense and in defense of her sex. This is the persona that she presents in her last two volumes—the mature woman author who is confident and contributes to the literary debate of her time. Creating such a voice requires experience and the courage to break with the social convention of her time. Tracing this evolution bears witness to the painstaking effort that De Crenne exerted to master her craft.

Notes

1. The protagonist of the Angoysses, Part Two, is Hélisenne's beloved Guénélic. Research for this article began during an NEH Summer Seminar at Princeton with François Rigolot. Special thanks go to Natalie Davis, who rekindled my interest in the Epistres. Subsequent research was supported by an NEH Travel to Collections Grant, Texas State Organized Research Funds, and a Faculty Development Leave from Texas Tech University.

2. Printed in Paris by Charles l'Angelier.

3. Secor presents the Angoysses in its entirety. Paule Demats and Jérôme Vercruysse (Paris: Minard, 1968) present only Part One of the novel. Of the modern printings, only the 1977 Slatkine reprint of the 1560 edition gives the reader the three works in a single volume.

4. See Secor's note 32-33: 75-81, 427.

5. This insistence on the personal nature of the experience has encouraged readers to read the novel as autobiography rather than as fiction.

6. The old woman in the tower at the end of Part One is a soundboard for Hélisenne's complaintes rather than a character with whom the protagonist interacts.

7. Mustacchi and Archambault note that one of Hélisenne's models for her novel, Boccaccio's Fiammetta, is itself a long letter-elegy (10). By recounting her story as a novel, Hélisenne actively rejects the epistolary genre as appropriate for her first literary endeavor.

8. Such a web of connected relationships is basic to human development, and especially to the development of women (Chodorow 43-4 & Gilligan 62).

9. Conley comments on the morality of the first group of letters but does not link such a moral view to characterization of the letter writer: “the first nine letters appear to have no rapport other than one of moralism, a hightening [sic] of the stoical position longed for in the Angoysses” (329). The “moral energy” of the letters echoes the verbal preferences of the narrative present in Part One of the novel as quantified by Frautschi (216). If his study were repeated on the vocabulary of the letters, one might expect less of the pathos that Frautschi found Hélisenne often combined with vocabulary denoting moral energy and goodness.

10. De Crenne's presentation of Dido is drawn from Christine de Pisan's Livre de la Cité des Dames (768 & 775). The story of Dido's disastrous love for Aeneas and her subsequent suicide is not mentioned in the Epistres. That aspect of Dido's legend is explored subsequently by Hélisenne in Les Eneydes, her translation of the first four books of the Aeneid (1541). The Dido mentioned in the Epistres remains virtuous and resists passion.

11. Mustacchi and Archambault term this letter a “coded message” (6). Demats calls it a “cryptogramme puéril” (xxx). Larsen defines dissimulation in the Angoysses (Part One) and the Epistres and shows how this tactic can be either a vice or a virtue, depending on the circumstance (237-39).

12. Larsen summarizes Hélisenne's arguments in the Lettres invectiues, discussing them as self-justification, not as part of her technique of self-characterization (240-41).

13. With this catalogue of exemplary women, Hélisenne is echoing Christine de Pisan's praise of women in Le Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405).

Works Cited

Altman, Janet G. Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form. Columbus: Ohio UP, 1982.

Chodorow, Nancy. “Family Structure and Feminine Personality.” Woman, Culture, and Society. Ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1974. 43-66.

Conley, Tom. “Feminism, Écriture, and the Closed Room: The Angoysses douloureuses qui procèdent d'amours.” Symposium 27 (1973): 322-32.

De Crenne, Hélisenne. “Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d'amours (1538).” Ed. Harry R. Secor. Diss. Yale, 1957.

———. Les Epistres familieres & inuectiues. Paris: Denys Janot, 1539.

Demats, Paule. Introduction. Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d'amours (1538). Première Partie. By Hélisenne de Crenne. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1968. v-xlix.

De Pisan, Christine. “Le Livre de la Cité des Dames.” Ed. Maureen C. Curnow. Diss. Vanderbilt, 1975.

Frautschi, Richard L. “Narrative Voice in Les Angoysses douloureuses I: The Axe Present,” French Forum (1976): 209-16.

Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982.

Kauffman, Linda S. Discourse of Desire: Gender, Genre, and Epistolary Fictions. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986.

Larsen, Anne R. “The Rhetoric of Self-Defense in Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent damours (Part One).” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 29 (1982): 235-43.

Mustacchi, Marianna M. and Paul J. Archambault. Introduction. A Renaissance Woman: Hélisenne's Personal and Invective Letters. By Hélisenne de Crenne. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1986. 1-33.

Wood, Diane S. “Literary Devices and Rhetorical Techniques in the Works of Hélisenne de Crenne.” Diss. Wisconsin-Madison, 1975.