SOURCE: “Sun, Veil and Maze: Mlle de Scudéry's Parthenie” in Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, Vol. XX, No. 38, 1993, pp. 97-111.

[In the following essay, Capasso analyzes the character of Parthenie in Artamène, utilizing techniques derived from “constructivist” psychology, an approach, she maintains, that approximates seventeenth-century understanding of character.]

Mlle de Scudéry is best known for her analyses of love in the abstract, as illustrated by the famous “Carte du Tendre,” and for her creation of certain famous characters or types, such as Sapho and Mandane in Artamène. Yet her work in creating individual characters and tracing their psychology has not received the attention it deserves. Y. Fukui writes: “un autre apport de Madeleine de Scudéry est l'intérêt qu'elle porte aux analyses psychologiques. Ses dissertations sur le cœur de l'homme furent une des premières tentatives sérieuses de psychologie amoureuse”¹. Constant Venesoen appreciates “la complexité psychologique (compte tenu de l'époque) qui caractérise certaines femmes-clés” (45). “Compte tenu de l'époque” refers, perhaps, to the fact that Mlle de Scudéry can hardly be expected to conceive her psychological analyses in Freudian terms. Instead of the Oedipal drama that shapes an individual psyche according to Freudian psychology, in the overwhelmingly adult world of the seventeenth century novel, and in particular in the works of Mlle de Scudéry, one sees protagonists who exist almost exclusively as fully matured, autonomous adults, with only the weakest of family ties. One is reminded of De Pure's description of the précieuse who “n'est point la fille de son père ni de sa mère” (I, 63). Yet this effort of the précieuse to define herself apart from familial expectations or roles, apart from patriarchal power, underscores her awareness of and resistance to these societal and familial pressures. Mlle de Scudéry is equally conscious of the influence of society on human motivations. Her study of Parthenie in particular reveals an acute sense of individuals struggling with the complex interworkings of prescribed roles and individual desires.

To approximate and appreciate the pre-Freudian psychological understanding that shapes Mlle de Scudéry's vision, I propose to adopt a perspective derived from the individual psychology of Alfred Adler and, to some extent, Karen Horney². This approach studies the way individuals interpret and structure their “reality”. The analyst deals less with unconscious forces set at work in infancy than with the constructive efforts of the older self as she interprets experiences and works toward goals. While individual or constructivist psychology acknowledges the role of sexuality and other physical factors in an individual's development, it is much less deterministic than Freudian theory, stressing the creative potential and the forward movement that striving toward goals gives to human nature. The role of testing is considered highly important as a technique that allows the individual to evaluate her perceptions and self-perceptions against experience, permitting revision of interpretations and the setting of new goals.

With its emphasis on a mature individual's experiences and motivations, constructivist psychology is much closer than Freudian to the character analysis one sees at work in seventeenth-century literature, in which the focus is on the subtle shifts of emotion and reasoning of adult protagonists. Thus it may help to illuminate the story of Parthenie, a tale of the heroine's struggle for self-definition and for a satisfying love in a society where love is a dialogue between two individuals, each pursuing separate goals.

The tale of Parthenie is told in the sixth book of Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus, a ten-volume work published from 1649 to 1653. The story, entitled “Timante et Parthenie”, is told by a man, Mégaside, to the hero Cyrus.

Parthenie is a young Cyprian noble woman whose belief system reflects that of her society. In Mlle de Scudéry's depiction of the world of Cyprus, love is everything, and women rule and acquire prestige through their power to inspire and retain love: “toute leur gloire consiste à faire d'illustres conquestes … le principal honneur de nos Belles, est de retenir dans l'obéissance les Esclaves qu'elles ont faits, par la seule puissance de leurs charmes” (VI, 1, 65). For Parthenie, the “charms” of a woman refer above all to physical appearance. She expects to rule society, not merely because she is of a noble house, but because she is beautiful. This is the “female plot”³ which has been written by her Cyprian society and, to a great extent, by authors such as Mlle de Scudéry, particularly in the earlier, more heroic half of Artamène (Bannister, 170-171). For example, the first vision of Mandane dazzles the hero Artamène: “il se trouva si extraordinairement surpris de cette vue; & si fortement attaché par un si bel Objet; qu'il luy fut absolument impossible d'en pouvoir détourner les yeux” (I, 2, 163). Mandane's glory consists, to a large part, in her ability to hold Artamène's love through ten volumes of separations and adventures.

The expectation that beauty will command love is fundamental to literature of the period. During a discussion of the role of the body in l'Astrée, Dalia Judovitz speaks of the “eros of vision” in this novel, a psychology that traces the origin of love to a dazzling vision of the beloved (530). Carleen S. Leggett sees the same process at work in Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves, as sight leads to passion, and the object of the gaze becomes an active subject, wielding power by the process of “domination through spectacle” (560). But while these works treat love as an uncontrollable passion, born of sight, and potentially as devastating for men as for women, in Artamène Mlle de Scudéry's victims of love at first sight are predominantly male; women are presented as exercising more control over their passions⁴. In the case of Parthenie, “domination through spectacle” is required of the heroine and actually sought by her. In Adlerian terms, it is her goal at this stage.

At her entrance into society, Parthenie's beauty wins her admirers and superior status over other women, whose lovers she has captured:

il ne fut pas de l'esclat de la beauté de Parthenie comme du Soleil, qu'on voit tous les jours s'eslever peu à peu, & aux rayons duquel on s'accoustume insensiblement: car elle parut tout d'un coup à Paphos, toute brillante de lumière. Aussi esblouit elle tous ceux qui la virent: & l'on peut assurer sans mensonge, qu'elle effaça toutes les autres beautez: & qu'elle brusla plus de cœurs en un jour, que toutes les autres Belles n'en avoient seulement blessé en toute leur vie (VI, 1, 68).

Unlike many other heroines of Mlle de Scudéry's novel, Parthenie is never described physically. The introductory portrait asserts her beauty, but focuses on her intellectual and social qualities.⁵ As a result of this silence, her beauty is absolute, not particularized. It is separate from her inner being and, in fact, because of the exaggerated importance assigned it by Cyprian society, it masks her personality. Far from being emblematic of her soul's beauty or purity, her physical attractiveness is significant only for its effect on others—at this point a negative effect, as shall be seen.

The use of the sun to symbolize this beauty is meaningful; its contemporary associations with royalty (“le roi soleil”) convey Parthenie's overwhelming power over all of her society. Its burning heat suggests the immediacy of her victory, but also its superficiality in comparison to relationships established over time. Finally, its brilliance suggests that her admirers are “dazzled”, but in the negative sense that they can not clearly distinguish the true Parthenie.

The number of men struck by Parthenie's loveliness should, by Cyprian standards, prove her superiority to other women. But in the economics of the novel, even this early in its development, the admiration of a crowd never equals the love of a solitary hero.

As they treat Parthenie like the sun, her admirers merely take part in a transaction, a simple exchange of woman's beauty for man's approval. But Parthenie believes in their admiration and sees herself as a true sun of her society. The image conveys her expectation of centrality and all-sufficiency: men will come to her, revolving around her like planets. Yet the reader and the protagonist will soon become aware that the complexity of human psychology and of sexual politics is too great to be conveyed through so simple a symbol, that Parthenie will not be allowed to reign as a static figure, and that the labyrinth, with its uncertainty and shadow, will soon become a more fitting symbol for love as she will know it.

Parthenie's victory itself suggests that the system of rule by beauty may be inherently flawed: other women react with jealousy and dislike, while among her multitude of suitors are many she finds undesirable. The very fact that these men deserted their lovers for a greater beauty (“elle ne fut aimée que par des inconstans”, VI, 1, 68) hints that beauty is not a stable quality that can quarantee lasting power or happiness, and that the “eros of vision” which shaped so many contemporary romances was nothing more than fiction. Thus this intercalated tale indirectly undermines one of the values of the literature in which it is embedded.

Tiring of the unthinking admiration of a crowd of sometimes unworthy men, Parthenie manages to reduce her suitors to three chosen ones, each of whom possesses certain assets. The figures are almost allegorical, each representing separate qualities of an ideal, and indeed, Parthenie would like to combine them to make the perfect man. The theme of incompleteness and the quest for someone who will be complete and who will see her as a whole being will shape Parthenie's future actions. In Adlerian terms, this is her goal, of which she is not yet fully aware. Instead, at this stage she seems to pursue a vision as limited as her experiences of life, and completely determined by her society: the goal of being admired.

Just as Parthenie sought social domination through her appearance, she is, at first, most moved by appearances herself, favoring the handsome Polydamas. But the clever Callicrate determines to kill her affection for his rival. His weapon is language; unbeknownst to Parthenie, he records in writing a conversation between her and Polydamas—in effect, he turns Polydamas into words on paper. Faced with the man in this reduced form, unable to project her own image onto him, Parthenie must admit that he is her intellectual inferior. More importantly, Parthenie learns the power of rhetoric. Callicrate is, in fact, all rhetoric, all style. He charms society by his wit, despite his lower social status and his physical unattractiveness. He pursues Parthenie, not for her intrinsic worth, but for her value as a status symbol: “je ne doute nullement qu'il n'eust esté plus satisfait que toute la Cour eust crue que Parthenie l'aimoit, que si elle l'eust aimé effectivement, & que personne ne l'eust sçeu” (72). In his effort to flatter Parthenie, he suggests that her inner worth is even greater than her beauty and provides the first hint of the future test in which she will veil her beauty: “quand mesme on ne vous regarde pas, & qu'on vous entend parler, on ne laisse pas de vous admirer, & on meurt d'envie de vous voir” (85). He puts into words the goal that will shape her future actions: “trouvez, s'il se peut, en une mesme Personne, un homme qui vous connoisse, & qui vous adore” (85). Unwittingly Callicrate has also presented Parthenie with a way to reach that goal by testing, interpreting and shaping her environment through the use of language. Finally, the concept that mere “being” is not enough, that the self must be presented with artistry in order to win over one's audience, is a concept that Parthenie will retain and apply later in pursuit of her ultimate goal of male acceptance.

That Parthenie cannot truly dominate her society through beauty alone becomes obvious when her family arranges for her to wed de Salamis, the third rival and the man who killed Polydamas in a duel. Parthenie is repelled, yet the forced marriage which might have been a tragedy for other heroines is softened, in part, by her vanity: “le prince de Salamis … luy tesmoigna tant d'amour au commencement de son mariage, qu'il en adoucit ses chagrins, et diminua de beaucoup l'aversion qu'elle avoit pour lui” (VI, 1, 93).

For Parthenie, tragedy only strikes when she learns that de Salamis has tired of her. The loss of his love is not in itself painful, for Parthenie never loved him. It is her system of beliefs that is attacked and principally her faith in the power of her own beauty. For the first time Parthenie realizes that the beauty on which she based her sense of self is vulnerable, contingent, dependent on the constancy of the man who looks upon her, dependent on her own body's resistance to the passing of time. Until this moment Parthenie had had only one image of herself, as queen of her society, reigning in the eternal present of love-at-first-sight. Unable to formulate a new self-image and to project this image into the future, she undergoes a symbolic death: her treasured beauty fades. Society then affirms her sense of failure: Callicrate abandons her, since she can no longer increase his prestige, and her former rivals and rejected suitors rejoice. Parthenie sees this rejection as a result of her personal failure, and not as proof of the invalidity of society's standards: “elle … entra en une telle indignation contre elle mesme, qu'elle quitta la Cour” (VI, 1, 96).

Such an extreme reaction indicates the full measure of Parthenie's need for male approval. Unable to face the humiliation of her defeat, she determines to avoid all sexual contact and all rivalry with other women. In these alternating impulses toward romantic conquest and retreat she resembles the women described by Karen Horney in her essay, “The Overvaluation of Love” (1934). That Mlle de Scudéry places the crucial cause for this behavior (de Salamis' rejection) in young adulthood rather than childhood reflects her pre-Freudian viewpoint but in no way diminishes the astuteness of her portrayal of the condition. That she attributes Parthenie's pain to societal attitudes as well as to an individual catastrophe (as I shall discuss below) is also supported by Horney's analysis⁶.

In her retreat Parthenie undergoes a rebirth as her intellectual powers are enriched and, safe from further insult, her beauty is restored and brought to perfection. At the death of de Salamis, she returns to society, repeating the stunning entrance that began her story. We may say that she is testing her ability to succeed in society on its terms. But she no longer automatically accepts society's appraisal of her, for she no longer believes in the validity of its standards, as she declares: “tant que je croiray que l'on ne m'aimera que parce que je ne choque pas les yeux, et que pour une chose qu'un petit mal me peut oter, je ne feray pas un grand fondement sur cette espèce d'affection” (VI, 1, 98-99). She is determined to be perceived as a complete being, and not merely as a body: “Je veux qu'on aime Parthenie toute entière” (VI, 1, 99). This is the clearest expression of her ultimate goal, in Adlerian terms.

Unfortunately, Parthenie seems condemned to relive all of her earlier story, including its painful period of rejection. Once again a nobleman loves her, only to grow weary and to abandon her. Parthenie's problem at first appears as a particular, individual one, insofar as de Salamis' rejection of her is depicted as unnatural male behavior. Yet her repeated rejection indicates that it is part of a more generalized pattern, wherein society restricts a woman's achievement to sexual conquest, then denies the value of that accomplishment, leaving her with nothing.

This time, however, Parthenie has learned to maintain her sense of self-worth and to reject her society: “elle vint à estre si rebutée du monde et de la Cour, qu'elle ne les pouvoit plus endurer” (VI, 1, 102). The court, land of the sun, is now antipathetic to her, in part because she can no longer reign there, but also because she has become aware of her need to better understand society and herself. She has been faced with complex behavior that does not match her simple, goal-oriented forward movement of “domination through spectacle”. De Salamis, her husband, has revealed a perverse preference for other women, despite her compelling beauty. Callicrate, her friend and advisor, reveals himself to be not a creature of the sun, but of the shadow, associating with people that are unacceptable in open society⁷ and manipulating her friendship in accord with his own hidden agenda. These glimpses of the shadows of human behavior require Parthenie to rethink her own approach to life, suggesting that a simple goal-oriented approach is inadequate unless it also takes into account the often changing goals and motivations of others. Parthenie retreats to a country home, and builds a maze, symbolic of her need to work through these complexities.

At this juncture it is reasonable for the reader to assume that the heroine, having suffered inferior loves, will be rewarded with the perfect hero. This expectation appears to be met with the entrance of the traveler Timante, but the reader will gradually become aware that once again Mlle de Scudéry is reworking conventional material in order to create characters of greater psychological depth, to play with the fictionality of her own work, and to comment on the society that consumed the conventional heroic novel.

Timante comes upon Parthenie as she visits a famous maze and is drawn by the beauty of her voice and a glimpse of her hand and overall build (she is covered by a veil and seen through the shrubbery). He begins a courtship that will allow Parthenie to re-evaluate the importance of beauty and love in her life and to set new goals for the future.

The episode in the maze is important on several levels. The maze symbolically represents the spiritual realm, where the mind, and not the physical sight, must guide the traveler. It is significant that Parthenie is complete mistress of the maze, having built an identical one on her own land. It is her territory, a realm of partial sight and seclusion, where she can develop her skill in hiding. During the episode she is triply hidden, her body protected by the maze and the veil, her social being masked by her refusal to give her name. Yet in a deeper sense, it is Parthenie who is more confounded by the maze than Timante; if the labyrinth can also be seen as the unconscious, her fascination with it, her need to master and replicate it, suggests her confusion and preoccupation with unspoken needs and desires⁸. In the maze she can organize and master her world, but it is a formal, restricted and closed setting, a safe but ultimately sterile environment. As this meeting troubles her solitude, Parthenie is forced to reconsider whether she truly wants to live in this isolation. In contrast, Timante, lost in the physical maze, is nevertheless quite certain of his goals. Finally, a meeting in a labyrinth is a highly literary artifice, as Mlle de Scudéry seems to acknowledge, when she has Timante refer to the myth of Theseus and Ariadne. Parthenie, however, has no wish to re-enact a story that ended with the heroine's abandonment and, refusing the literary model, escapes the maze unseen.

Timante returns to the city, determined to find his mystery lady. When he attends a service at a temple dedicated, significantly, to Venus Urania, the goddess of pure love⁹, he stands close to a veiled woman whose voice he recognizes as that of the lady of the maze. He pursues her, and Parthenie is forced to agree to further meetings.

The temple ceremony symbolizes a closer approach of Parthenie to re-entry into her society. Although she is completely veiled and anonymous, she has participated in a public ceremony and one which re-enacts the resurrection of love through the myth of Adonis. Veiled women, those performing the rite and in the audience, pretend to mourn the dead Adonis, until, in a pivotal moment, they symbolize his rebirth through the lifting of their veils. Parthenie refuses to risk identification by participating in this ceremonial act, but her very presence in the temple mirrors a re-awakening desire for love, for a personal resurrection.

Her interest in Timante continues to lead her back into society, as she attends a horse race, where she expects him to be a participant. Each man carries a javelin and shield, although there is no military significance to this performance in the pacifistic society of Cyprus. Instead, it provides lovers with a means of communication with their ladies, and the fact that Timante wins the race is secondary to the opportunity it gives him to display his love. His shield shows a phoenix on a burning log beneath an eclipsed sun, with the motto: “Il me brusle tout eclipsé qu'il est” (161). Again the sun is associated with Parthenie, but its partial eclipse suggests that Timante's love will not be the simple, immediate and transitory passion that she has provoked in the past. Parthenie accurately interprets Timante's armor, and indeed his participation in the race, as a message to her, and is pleased. As a rhetorical device the race is successful, for it causes her to become increasingly preoccupied with him.

Yet she determines to put Timante—and herself—to the test by meeting him and establishing a relationship based solely on dialogue. This is a repetition of the test Callicrate applied to the handsome but stupid Polydamas, and, although Parthenie does not appear to be aware of the parallel, it is essential for her peace of mind that she prove herself to be more complete than Polydamas had been. Parthenie's test requires Timante to love her without seeing her, so while he visits she remains hidden beside a window—at once an opening and a barrier. Their lengthy discussions duplicate for the reader her hesitation, her attempts to forestall the moment when her identity will be revealed and—as she fears—the story will end. As long as she keeps talking, she holds the reins of the relationship. It is in one way a power struggle: she must control the man's actions and feelings and limit his access to her, protecting herself with a “discursive veil”¹⁰.

One may say that this process of deferral is, like the everlasting separation of Artamène and Mandane, proof that the précieuse Mlle de Scudéry feared sexual relationships: “l'idée même de l'amour sous sa forme la plus naturelle répugne à Madeleine de Scudéry” (Venesoen, 48). But Parthenie's pleasure at her final union with Timante weakens this argument, as does the stated purpose of the intercalated tale: Mégaside recounts it to Artamène in order to prove that his separation from Mandance will end and that, ultimately, deferral is not the way of the novel. I read this period in the story as indicative of Parthenie's strong desire for a more complete erotic relationship than she has experienced in the past; she wishes Timante to know and possess her more completely than de Salamis ever did.

But it is certainly true that, in a society in which female self-display is fundamental, the act of veiling herself is a radical statement, a refusal to play her society's game. It communicates her resistance to the system of classification according to beauty. Timante reads this gesture as a rejection of society's norms, but interprets it as a sign that Parthenie is outside of society: he speculates that she may be a prostitute. To test this theory, he sends her a rich gift of jewelry. Parthenie reads the gift as a test and conveys her social position by sending him an even costlier offering. This exchange is particularly significant, as it reveals a remarkably modern sense of communication as a transaction between two active participants, each motivated by independent goals, but mutually involved. The entire courtship passage in which it occurs underscores this perception of love as a process, goal-oriented and concerned with power. Although the modern reader may echo Marmontel's impatience with “leur insipide et plate galanterie, la froideur de leurs entretiens” (277), it is important to see that the dialogues were more than illustrations of elegant conversation, they were translations of a vision that saw social interaction as a goal-oriented process and which asserted a woman's right to a goal of autonomy and personal satisfaction.

There are yet more reasons to be seen in Parthenie's hiding behind the veil. It is a rhetorical act, the product of the lesson learned from Callicrate. Parthenie is attempting to create herself for Timante through the use of words, to create an image more complex and lasting than the elementary symbol of the sun and to test his reception of this image, independent of the trappings of name, social rank, and even physical presence. She presents the simple facts of her being as a mystery to be studied, a meaning to be pursued, and thus she seeks to truly engage Timante in the appreciation of her beauty, so that he will never be like the passive and ultimately indifferent spectators who deserted her in the past.

Finally, she wishes to test Timante's completeness; he combines the three qualities of her earlier suitors (nobility, intelligence and physical attractiveness) but now Parthenie desires a new attribute: the ability to love her as an individual, not as an object. One is reminded of Celidée in L'Astrée who disfigures herself to be rid of one unwanted suitor and to prove the passion of her beloved (II, 11, 450). Parthenie is less desperate and, as Timante's behavior will show, much wiser to content herself with a veil.

The uniqueness of Parthenie's rejection of usual courtship behavior and her determination to set up her own pattern of intercourse is underscored by Timante's inability to understand her motives. For a man, the system of “domination through spectacle” must have been quite acceptable, for while it may initially seem to place women in an exalted position, in fact it empowers men, for a woman's success is completely dependent on men's admiration and approbation. Timante sees no reason to avoid or to test this system, which privileges the male observer.

While Parthenie is consciously attempting to control and test the man, on a deeper, unspoken level she needs this period of time to find her way out of the emotional maze left by her earlier failed loves. Indeed, the story is less about how Timante perceives her than about how Parthenie sees him and herself. Frequently she asks her companions for an opinion, thus testing her perceptions through the “shared constructs of others”¹¹. Significantly, her friends do not believe exclusively in the “eros of vision”, saying that many women of mediocre beauty are well loved. Parthenie's reluctance to accept such reasoning suggests that she does not care about being like other women, that she still, despite her painful rejections, longs to be the extraordinary—and very literary—heroine, who inspires an irresistible love. The practical-minded friends who find her actions a bit exaggerated raise again a gentle question about the place of heroism in a society and a genre increasingly devoted to sociability and moderation.

In any event, the relationship cannot remain static: the story must have an end, and for that to occur Parthenie's beauty must be revealed. She attempts to forestall this by providing substitutes: first the veil, and then another woman. She promises Timante that she will reveal herself to him at the temple where the ceremony of love was enacted. But she sends instead a hideously ugly servant to test Timante's professed devotion to her, regardless of her looks. The trial is a severe one, and Timante nearly fails, for he is repelled by the woman he takes to be Parthenie. Happily, Timante is not an emotional Céladon; he takes a good hard look and sees that the woman's hands do not resemble those he saw in the maze. He realizes the trap, and returns to their next hidden meeting, professing his continued love. She believes him and begins to consider removing her veil.

But revealing herself to Timante is the greatest test for Parthenie, and one she fears to undergo, for it will require her to leave the carefully structured, well-known paths of the maze to face the uncertainty of her future. And it will test not only her beauty, but the complete self she has attempted to create. Rejection now would be total rejection. To prevent this, yet simultaneously satisfy her growing need to be admired and desired by Timante, Parthenie attempts to split her physical and inner beings. She allows Timante to see her, but refuses to speak, so that the bewildered lover is torn between two desirable women: the beautiful princesse de Salamis and the charming Inconnue. Parthenie's struggle between vanity and self-hatred reaches its most intense level as she becomes her own rival. “Bizarre” as the situation seems in Parthenie's own estimation, it is in fact a mise en abyme of the entire tale: Parthenie has always been her own rival. Indeed, the story suggests that this is the “female plot” for any woman: to be at war with her body, or rather, with those assessments of her body that then determine her individual fate. Parthenie never realizes that, by presenting herself for Timante's judgment, she is submitting to this system, for she refuses to question her motives: “Parthenie ne voulut point s'examiner elle mesme; et sans sçavoir bien précisément ce qu'elle penseroit si Timante la loüoit trop ou trop peu, elle fut à ce Temple” (VI, 1, 229). Timante manages to remain faithful to his Inconnue, but his fidelity is not wholehearted.

Ultimately their final meeting is forced upon Parthenie, as her impatient friends put an end to the baroque play of veils and mazes and make the two come face to face in the ordinary light of a salon. It is significant that in a work so focused on the goals and needs of individuals, society in its predominant role as judge and arbiter provides the final resolution. Parthenie is forced to play the role that society had intended all along, and which, despite her fears and efforts at change, she never truly rejected. She and Timante pass their respective tests—of beauty and fidelity—and the story ends with an assurance of their continued and future happiness, a happiness that comes only when Parthenie accepts society's rules and stops acting like a character out of a book.

Parthenie began life with the common seventeenth-century view of love as a power struggle where beauty dominates. Through her experiences, she was forced to modify her self-perceptions and her definition of success. From ruling over a crowd of men, she came to long for one complete and intimate relationship: “une amour innocente & toute pure seroit la plus douce chose du monde, si elle pouvoit estre durable” (VI, 1, 153). And if, as Alfred Adler maintained, one of the values of literature is to allow the testing and playing out of systems of belief (Herring, 233-4), then Mlle de Scudéry, through Parthenie, has put to the test her century's “eros of vision”—exploring this conceptual system and finding it wanting. Through Parthenie, she has argued for an appreciation of woman that embraces the whole being—physical, mental, and emotional.

And yet, the experiment has not been a complete success. Despite the apparent rejection of beauty as a standard of female worth, the heroine and the narrative itself continue to emphasize its importance. Clearly, Timante has not radically altered his attitudes toward women; he remains fixed on vision and the possession of the object and was ready to flee from the ugly ersatz Parthenie. If Timante continued his discussions with the hidden heroine, it is in large part because he was sustained by a conviction of her attractions. It was part of his belief system that he would love a beautiful woman; rather than functioning as a barrier, the veil merely served as a canvas on which he could project his own wishes.

If neither Timante, nor Parthenie is required to change greatly, neither is the reader, for, after all, Mlle de Scudéry has not created a truly homely character, such as Jane Eyre. Such a heroine may have been inconceivable at the time. Indeed, part of Parthenie's problem was that she had no model for her new self-image; no one could point to an older, beloved heroine on the isle of Cyprus or in the literature of the seventeenth century¹². The reader is constantly assured that Parthenie is beautiful and noble, and therefore, worthy of being a heroine of her period and of this genre. The reader is not put to the test to change her perceptions of what a heroine is.

Thus Mlle de Scudéry has sent her reader an ambiguous message. She has questioned her society's preparation of women to “dominate through spectacle” by illustrating the limiting effects of this preparation on a woman and her relationships with men and by showing that men ultimately profit from the system. She has shown a woman actively questioning and rejecting her societal role and attempting to create her own sense of self-worth. But she has done this in a love story and one that ends traditionally, with the woman's triumph represented by the man she has won. For a modern feminist testing the work against her own expectations and constructs, this approach might well be considered inadequate.

Yet it is an “approach” as Adler might say, a moving forward toward a goal that, in truth, has yet to be realized—a society where superficial attributes and gender roles do not define the individual. Furthermore, the tale of Parthenie reveals a self-consciousness about the conventions of the heroic novel and a willingness to play with new images of the heroine and the “female plot”. For her participation in the development of seventeenth-century French feminism, as well as for her literary experimentation, Mlle de Scudéry deserves our continued attention¹³.

Notes

1. Cited in Venesoen, 147.

2. For a discussion of cognitive psychology and its applications in literary criticism, see “Constructivist Interpretation: The Value of Cognitive Psychology for Literary Understanding” by Henry D. Herring in Psychological Perspectives on Literature: Freudian Dissidents and Non-Freudians. A Casebook. Ed. Joseph Natoli. Hamden, CT: Shoe String Press, 1984.

3. “By female plot I mean quite simply that organization of narrative event which delimits a heroine's psychological, moral, and social development within a sexual fate. Female plot thus is both what the culture has always already inscribed for woman and its reinscription in the linear time of fiction,” Nancy K. Miller, 125.

4. According to Bannister (84), by the 1640s French women were claiming that they could listen to reason and resist passion easier than men.

5. The following is the portrait of Parthenie:

   … je vous diray que son esprit brille aussi bien que ses yeux: & que sa conversation, quand elle le veut, n'a pas moins de charmes que son visage. Au reste son esprit n'est pas de ces esprits bornez, qui sçavent bien une chose, & qui en ignorent cent mille: au contraire, il a une estenduë si prodigieuse, que si l'on ne peut pas dire que Parthenie sçache toutes choses égallement bien, on peut du moins assurer, qu'elle parle de tout fort à propos, & fort agréablement. Il y a mesme une delicatesse dans son esprit, si particulier & si grande; que ceux à qui elle accorde sa conversation en sont espouventez; & d'autant plus; que c'est une des personnes du monde qui parle le plus juste & le plus fortement, quoy que toutes ses expressions soient simples &naturelles. De plus, elle change encore son esprit comme elle veut: car elle est serieuse, & mesme sçavante, avec ceux qui le sont, pourveu que ce soit en particulier: elle est galante & enjoüée, quand il le faut estre; elle a le cœur haut, & quelquefois l'esprit flateur: personne n'a jamais mieux sçeu le monde qu'elle le sçait: elle est d'un naturel timide en certaines choses, & hardy en d'autres: elle a de la generosité heroïque, & de la liberalité: & pour achever de vous la dépeindre, son ame est naturellement tendre & passionnée (VI, 1, 67).

6. In her discussion of women who “think they can be happy only through love”, yet cannot find fulfillment, Horney stresses that individual factors are responsible for each separate woman's problems, but that the frequency of this emotional type is attributable to social causes, in particular “the social narrowing of women's sphere of work” and the focus on the sexual function of woman (212).

7. “… il ne laissoit pas d'avoir certains gousts bizarres & extravagans, qui lui en faisoient quelquesfois aimer d'autres, qui n'estoient point du tout aimables … Comme il avoit l'esprit imperieux, il aimoit à avoir tousjours quelqu'un qu'il peust mépriser impunément: & comme il n'eust assurément pû trouver cela parmy des personnes de qualité & des personnes raisonnables; il en souffroit quelques autres, seulement pour avoir le plaisir de pouvoir les tourmenter, & d'estre plustost leur Tirant que leur Amant” (VI, 1, 74).

8. For a discussion of the symbolism of the maze, see W. H. Matthews' Mazes and Labyrinths: Their History and Development (1922, rpt. New York: Dover Publications, 1970).

9. In this tale, Mlle de Scudéry utilizes two images of Venus: Venus Uranie (symbol of ideal love) and Venus Anadiomene (depicted as rising from the water and thus conveying sensuality) to underscore the chaste emotion Parthenie seeks.

10. Judovitz uses this term to refer to a character's silence (535) but Parthenie instead uses a multitude of words to postpone the ultimate communication of their face-to-face meeting.

11. According to clinical psychologist George A. Kelly, the individual tests his or her constructs through experimentation, but also through “the shared constructs of others” (Herring, 229).

12. One exception might be Scudéry's own Laura, whose age is not stated, but who serves as a mother figure to the eponymous heroine of Mathilde (d'Aguilar), 1667, and who is still clearly beloved by Pétrarque.

13. This study is a revision of a paper presented at the 1991 NEMLA conference. I would like to thank the participants for their insightful comments.

Works Cited

Bannister, Mark. Privileged Mortals: The French Heroic Novel, 1630-1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

De Pure, Michel. La Prétieuse ou le Mystère des Ruelles. Ed. Emile Magne. Paris: Droz, 1938, rpt. of 1656.

Herring, Henry D. “Constructivist Interpretation: The Value of Cognitive Psychology for Literary Understanding.” In Psychological Perspectives on Literature: Freudian Dissidents and Non-Freudians. A Casebook. Ed. Joseph Natoli. Hamden, CT: Shoe String Press, 1984.

Horney, Karen. Feminine Psychology. Ed. Harold Kelman. New York: W. W. Norton, 1967.

Judovitz, Dalia. “The Graphic Text: The Nude in L'Astrée.” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, XV, 29 (1988), 529-541.

Kelly, George A. A Theory of Personality. New York: Norton, 1963.

Leggett, Carleen S. “Baroque Antithesis and the Woman in La Princesse de Clèves: Themes in Contrast and Contrast as Theme.” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature, XV, 29 (1988), 555-566.

Marmontel. Elémens de littérature, vol. 8. Paris: Persan et Cie, 1822.

Matthews, W.H. Mazes and Labyrinths: Their History and Development. New York: Dover Publications, 1970, rpt. of 1922.

Miller, Nancy K. “Writing (from) the Feminine: George Sand and the Novel of Female Pastoral.” In The Representation of Women in Fiction. Ed. Carolyn G. Heilbrun and Margaret R. Higonnet. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1983.

Scudéry, Madeleine de. Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, Vols. I and VI. Paris: Courbé, 1654.

———.Mathilde (d'Aguilar). Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1979.

Urfé, Honoré d'. L'Astrée. Ed. Hugues Vaganay. Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1966.

Venesoen, Constant. Etudes sur la littérature féminine au XVII^e siècle. Birmingham, Alabama: Summa Publications, 1990.