SOURCE: “‘Voylà, mes dames …’: Inscribed Women Listeners and Readers in the Heptameron,” in Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture, edited by John D. Lyons and Mary B. McKinley, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, pp. 104-22.

[In the following essay, Bauschatz contends that the Heptameron is primarily directed at a female audience, and this intention is reflected in a disruption of the traditional narrative structure.]

Many critics of the Heptameron have appeared frustrated or baffled in their attempts to find a coherent and unified message in the book. Rather than reaching any sort of closure, the stories succeed each other in a narrative process, often seeming to cancel out each other's meaning. Thus the message, if any, to be derived from the book appears ambiguous at best.¹ One way out of this impasse may be to look at stylistic patterns which repeat throughout the collection. These patterns reveal underlying structures not apparent in simply trying to derive the philosophical meaning of each story or of the collection as a whole, separately from the words and phrases which make it up. One such stylistic pattern is the ostensible address of almost every story in the collection to women, contained in phrases like “Voylà, mes dames.”² What does this address show about what Marguerite thinks of women, readers/listeners, storytelling, and the relationship of these elements to her project in the Heptameron?

Marguerite's prologue may give us some information about her “implied audience.”³ Gérard Genette, applying the techniques of narratology to the study of a book's reception, has described the “paratexte,” including prologues, as “ce par quoi un texte se fait livre et se propose comme tel à ses lecteurs, et plus généralement au public.”⁴ He sees the existence of the preface genre itself as linked to the advent of print in the sixteenth century: “une pratique liée à l'existence du livre, c'est-à-dire du texte imprimé” (Genette, 152). Among the tasks accomplished in any preface is the “choix d'un public,” learned or unlearned, male or female: “Cette visée-là, qui est à bien des égards aussi ancienne que le roman (aux hommes l'épique, aux femmes le romanesque),⁵ nous l'avons déjà vue exprimée par Boccace s'adressant à ses ‘aimables lectrices,’ et l'on peut en lire comme une parodie dans l'adresse du prologue de Gargantua aux buveurs et vérolés, emblème et portion non négligeable de l'autre sèxe” (Genette, 197).

A second task accomplished by the Renaissance prologue, again in Genette's eyes starting with Rabelais's Gargantua, is the declaration of intention by the author, governing the interpretation of the book to follow, by the reader. Thus, since Rabelais, “la pratique auctoriale … consiste bien à imposer au lecteur une théorie indigène définie par l'intention de l'auteur, présentée comme la plus sûre clé interprétative, et à cet égard la préface constitue bien l'un des instruments de la maîtrise auctoriale” (Genette, 206). Presumably, then, if the Heptameron follows this model, we need only look to Marguerite's prologue in order to find out who her intended audience is, and what her purpose with them will be.

Surprisingly, however, we do not find that Marguerite gives many instructions to her reader, or that she singles out women readers specifically, in the prologue. “Maîtrise auctoriale” is not what this prologue seems to demonstrate. The few addresses of the reader are with a generalized “vous,” but this reader is not really given instructions—if anything, the tone is apologetic.⁶ For example, on the first page, sensing that the prologue has been too carried away with a description of the circumstances of the book, the narrator (never explicitly identified as Marguerite) tells the reader: “Ma fin n'est de vous declarer la scituation ne la vertu desdits baings, mais seullement de racompter ce qui sert à la matiere que je veulx escripre” (1;60). This anonymous reader (“vous”), however, like the narrator Marguerite herself (“je”), makes only a very brief appearance, before being replaced by the devisants who alternately sit in for both.⁷ That is, the devisants serve as narrators during the tales, and as listeners/participants during the discussions. They are able to switch roles easily, from authoritative speaker to receptive listener, making the distinction between the two roles much less clear than in most narrative literature. Male and female devisants participate equally and democratically in both storytelling and listening/discussion.⁸

Within the stories themselves, however, as well as during the discussions before and after, the repeated phrase, “Voylà, mes dames,” implies that women are the primary audience intended by the storytellers. Despite the democratic structure whereby male and female speakers alternate, their targeted listeners are not so democratically chosen. An interpretation of this address of women could be that Marguerite has her tellers maintain a convention borrowed from Boccaccio (as we saw suggested above in Genette's attribution), and through him from the medieval courtly tradition of addressing romances and love poetry to women (while, as Genette implies, the epic was theoretically addressed to men). The Heptameron was composed during the 1540s, approximately two hundred years after Boccaccio's Decameron, which had recently been translated into French by Antoine Le Maçon. In the prologue, Marguerite's Parlamente explicitly suggests that the group write something similar to the Decameron, while casting the historical “Madame Marguerite” in a role as reader of Boccaccio.⁹ Even though the narrator does not explicitly address her book to women, in invoking Boccaccio she may imply that her storytellers will do this for her.¹⁰

Boccaccio had stated in his preface that his stories were specifically addressed to women: “And who will deny that it is far more fitting to give this [his support and comfort] to beautiful women than to men?”¹¹ Boccaccio also predicted that the ladies would derive both the Horatian pleasure and profit from his tales: “The ladies who read them may find delight in the pleasant things herein displayed,” but in addition, “They may also obtain useful advice, since they may learn what things to avoid and what to seek” (Boccaccio, 27). These topoi are maintained in the Heptameron, but they are found in the stories themselves or in the discussions afterward, not in the prologue, which does not mention listener or reader response, beyond the desire to bring the tales back to court, as a sort of souvenir of the trip. Marguerite thus departs from the narrative conventions established by Boccaccio and followed in most sixteenth-century prologues, from Rabelais to Bonaventure Des Périers to Montaigne.¹² As Marguerite is the first woman writer of the novella,¹³ she may hesitate to take responsibility for narrative or authorial voice and message, as her male predecessors emphatically did.¹⁴ Rather, she allows the devisants to define the intended effects of the stories for her.

The address to women of the stories in the Heptameron will be connected with the frequent claim by the tellers that the tales are didactic: “Voylà, mes dames” usually is followed by a moralistic or prescriptive injunction, as we shall see in our analyses.¹⁵ This suggestion of didacticism for women was only partially true for Boccaccio, who stated in his conclusion that if women found some of the stories to be immoral, they could simply read those they liked, and leave the others (for male readers, seemed to be the implication).¹⁶ But despite this bow to the convention that literature written for women should be didactic in nature, pleasure appeared to far outweigh profit in most of the comments about listener or reader reception by women scattered through the Decameron.

The prologue to Boccaccio's first day stressed the sense that pleasure and amusement were the author's major objectives, as he tried to distract the ladies from the pain of love. The character Dioneo repeated this understanding, before the fourth tale: “If I have understood your intention rightly, amorous ladies, we are here to amuse ourselves by telling stories. So long as we achieve that, I think each of us should be allowed to tell the story he thinks most likely to be amusing; and just now the queen said that we could do this” (Boccaccio, 61).

Although the tale itself embarrassed some women, they also found it entertaining: “The tale told by Dioneo at first pricked the hearts of the listening ladies with a little modest shame, which appeared by their chaste blushes. But, as they glanced at each other, they could scarcely keep from laughing. However, they smiled to themselves as they listened” (Boccaccio, 64). Boccaccio portrayed his lady listeners as young and receptive—easily entertained—not as women looking for instruction.

Marguerite de Navarre will keep the convention of explicitly addressing the stories to ladies, even though her storytellers and listeners (as in the Decameron) are a mixed group of males and females. More importantly, Marguerite will add a discussion after each story, showing male and female reaction to and analysis of them, rather than only limiting herself to Boccaccio's “blushes and laughter.” From the start, she will be more aware than Boccaccio of the variety in listener response, especially between males and females. Although Marguerite may inherit from Boccaccio the tradition of addressing her stories to women, she will go much further than he to develop—and test—the implications of this convention. She will go beyond the address of women listener/readers, found in the phrase “Voylà, mes dames,” to analyze the response of these same women.

In the Heptameron, inscribed women listeners are taken much more seriously than they were in the Decameron, and the reactions of the devisantes, in their role as interpreters, are described in detail. The authoritative interpretative stance generally assumed by writers of Marguerite's time (like Rabelais or Bonaventure Des Périers) is abandoned in favor of presenting a variety of interpretative stances, on the part of the devisants.¹⁷ But the author may keep some of her narrative authority by highlighting the reactions of the devisantes, when they respond to the address contained in the expression “Voylà, mes dames.”

Marguerite establishes a pattern of female address and response in the first half of her book, and does not depart significantly from this pattern in what she completed of the second half.¹⁸ An important question to consider in analyzing the address of and response by women listeners in the first five days is that of what topics, themes, and characters are thought to interest, and in fact elicit the most reaction from, the devisantes. Generally these stories treat the difficult virtue of chastity, or the contrary vice of promiscuity, in a woman character. Are these the only topics interesting to women readers? If so, is there a relationship between sexuality and the nouvelle, for women, which may differ from the nature of that relationship for men? An analysis of several tales will help to answer these questions.

The first tale, like the prologue one of the most disjointed elements in the collection, is a clear example of a male teller (Simontaut), who wishes to show as bad a woman as possible.¹⁹ He is open about his desire to seek revenge on women for the suffering they have caused him.²⁰ Therefore, when he tells us the moral of his story with the loaded pejorative terms “mal,” “meschante,” “maulx,” and “peché,” we are automatically skeptical about it: “Je vous suplie, mes dames, regardez quel mal il vient d'une meschante femme et combien de maulx se feirent pour le peché de ceste cy” (18;78).

His story, and the message he attributes to it, are so outrageous that the women don't even bother to respond.²¹ This first story prepares us to be suspicious about the message addressed to women with courteous phrases like “Voylà, mes dames,” by the male devisants, throughout the book. It establishes the affiliation of the Heptameron with the literature of the querelle des femmes.²² Most often, the devisantes will respond at length to attacks like this. But in this case, the whole second tale provides a response to the first.

The second tale, told by Oisille, is that of the mule driver's wife (“la muletiere”), who died rather than be unfaithful to her husband. Oisille has already admitted before telling the tale that she has searched her memory for the most virtuous woman imaginable, in order to respond to Simontaut's negative example.²³ In other words, we will now see a positive example, which women should try to follow. After the tale, Oisille presents the moral with strongly prescriptive language, as well as the book's typical address of women listeners (21;81): “Voylà, mes dames, une histoire veritable qui doibt bien augmenter le cueur à garder ceste belle vertue de chasteté.”

Unlike the first story, which presented a negative example, this one shows a positive model of chastity (which refers here, as in most cases, to marital fidelity—not virginity), the primary female virtue illustrated in the book. After this explanation of the “moral” of the story by its author, Oisille, we learn the reactions to it by, not surprisingly, the women in the group: “Il n'ye eut dame en la compaignye, qui n'eut la larme à l'oeil, pour la compassion de la piteuse et glorieuse mort de cette mulletiere. Chascune pensa en elle-mesme que, si la fortune leur advenoit pareille, mectroient peyne de l'ensuivre en son martire” (21;82).²⁴ This is far indeed from the simple “blushes and laughter” of Boccaccio's lady listeners. Rather than only reacting affectively to the stories (“la larme à l'oeil”), Marguerite's listeners move on to a cognitive reaction (“chacune pensa”), and try to apply the truths illustrated to their own lives (“si la fortune leur advenoit pareille …”). Instead of simply showing a good or bad model of behavior, as in an exemplum, Marguerite demonstrates the additional step of reflection which is needed in order to digest or internalize the model provided.

The reaction of the devisantes to Oisille's tale is generally positive. It shows the women listeners making a sincere attempt to apply the example to their own lives (although one may privately doubt whether they could actually go this far to protect their chastity). This parallelism between message and reaction will not be true of most of the cases we will examine, when male speakers address women listeners with the phrase “Voylà, mes dames.”

The next two stories play with the question of exemplarity for women, although there is very little discussion of the examples.²⁵ After story 5, that of the ferrywoman (“la bateliere”), told by a male devisant (Geburon), he prescribes to the ladies how they are to interpret and, more importantly, to act on his story. The tale is presented with morally loaded vocabulary, particularly words like “bonté” and “vertu”:

Je vous prie, mes dames, pensez, si ceste pauvre bastelliere a eu l'esperit de tromper l'esperit de deux si malitieux hommes, que doyvent faire celles qui ont tant leu et veu de beaulx exemples, quant il n'y auroit que la bonté des vertueuses dames qui ont passé devant leurs oeilz, en la sorte que la vertu des femmes bien nourryes seroit autant appelée coustume que vertu?

(37;100)

Obviously educated women should be even more virtuous, when they learn the story of a chaste uneducated woman (but in fact they often are not). Interestingly, the devisantes then make fun of Geburon's somewhat pompous prescriptions. They point out that it does not really take much virtue to resist a Cordelier—since these friars offer very little temptation.

Nomerfide has the last word, making a final comment on the puzzle of the exemplarity of the story (38;101): “… tout ainsy que la vertu de la batteliere ne honnore poinct les aultres femmes si elles ne l'ensuyvent, aussi le vice d'une aultre ne les peut deshonorer.” An example only has meaning if people follow it; otherwise it is just an isolated case of human behavior with no particular implications for others. The implications for others are what turn a story into an exemplum. This story, like the second tale, makes a case for reader reception being demonstrated through actions, rather than simply by laughter, tears; passive approval or disapproval. Presenting a model, as Geburon has done, is not enough. The listener or reader must also analyze, interpret, and apply. Boccaccio never considered these next steps in the Decameron, because the mechanism of didacticism did not really interest him there.²⁶ We begin to sense that, similarly, even if the stories told by male devisants present positive models of female behavior, they will not go far enough to indicate how and whether these models may be applied. Despite their use of the phrase “Voylà, mes dames,” they do not really take into account women's perspectives as receivers of the stories.

The seventh story, in which a girl and her merchant lover outwit the girl's old mother, is told by Hircan. He intends it to prove the quick-wittedness of men: “Par cecy, voyez-vous, mes dames, que la finesse d'un homme a trompé une vieille et sauvé l'honneur d'une jeune” (42;106). Hircan is spelling out the moral, for the sake of the ladies, and naturally to the advantage of men. He sees the central character in this story as male, and the women characters as subordinate. But Longarine reacts to the story as women must actually often have done to similar stories in the Decameron, again stressing the dilemma of exemplarity:

Longarine luy dist: “Vrayement, Hircan, je confesse que le compte est trop plaisant et la finesse grande; mais si n'est-ce pas une exemple que les filles doyvent ensuivre. Je croy bien qu'il y en a à qui vous vouldriez le faire trouver bon; mais si n'estes vous pas si sot de vouloir que vostre femme, ne celle dont vous aymez mieulx l'honneur que le plaisir, voulussent jouer à tel jeu.

(42;106)²⁷

Unlike Hircan, Longarine sees the central character in the story as female—the young girl. And she sees the central action of the story as the moral choice made by the young girl—not as the quick-wittedness and deception brought about by the male character. Frequently the first step for women listeners in reinterpreting a story told by one of the male devisants is to reinterpret who the central character is, and what the central action involves. This is a much more active form of reception than simply to agree or disagree with the teller's interpretation of his story.²⁸

Longarine has here also astutely analyzed the “double standard” which exists in the novella genre, between “ideal” and “real” women readers, from the viewpoint of a male writer or reader: to say that the stories are for (imaginary) women readers, but then to show the women characters doing things that he does not want his (actual) wife or daughter to do. This double standard was present in the Decameron, but was never questioned or analyzed by the listeners, as it is here. The potential bad effect of reading, as well as its positive, inspirational side, both are demonstrated in the Heptameron. A model or exemplum may work either positively or negatively, and it is up to the listener to decide of which sort an example is, whether it should be acted upon, and how. This decision is partly the task of the devisantes in the Heptameron: to sort positive from negative examples, which are all presented with the apparently value-free, nonjudgmental address, “Voylà, mes dames.” It is usually assumed by the speaker that the example itself shows what he or she has in mind, but the discussions generally show that the movement from example to lesson is not so simple as that.²⁹

In the first day, we have seen women listeners react in a variety of ways to the address contained in the phrase “Voylà, mes dames,” when it is used by male devisants. Some of these reactions have been: to tell a story which proves the opposite; to question whether the story can or should be applied to their own lives; and to reinterpret what and who the story is actually about. This first day, as one would expect from its explicit treatment of the war between the sexes (“un recueuil des mauvais tours que les femmes ont faicts aux hommes et les hommes aux femmes” [83;47]), has established the definition of the power to interpret as another facet of this war. This struggle will be continued throughout the book, as the devisantes react to the prescriptions prefaced by “Voylà, mes dames” and similar phrases.

The tales of the second day, like those of the first, involve discussion of women.³⁰ But in these discussions the women are quick to correct male perceptions of their morality, presented with the phrase “Voylà, mes dames.”³¹

The third day, “Des dames qui en leur amytié n'ont cerché nulle fin que l'honnesteté, et de l'hypocrisye et meschanceté des religieux” (156;50), contains many stories about the Cordeliers. Because the listeners generally agree about the hypocrisy and wickedness of these monks, the discussions are often less heated than in the first two days, and provide fewer examples of clear-cut, differing positions by males and females. The third day continues to show, however, that women's psychology is more complex than men would have it,³² and that women are better in control of their impulses than men are.³³ As Emile Telle describes the conclusion to the third day, “C'est une grande victoire du féminisme de Parlamente” (Telle, 120-21). One might add that this conclusion also provides a victory for her anti-clericalism, and that we begin to see a connection between those two themes, during the discussions. The conclusion to the third day finds the monks hidden behind a hedge, listening to salacious stories about the sexual behavior of members of the religious orders. This theme will be expanded during the fourth and fifth days, and will help to shed light on the developing irony in phrases like “Voylà, mes dames.”

The fourth day treats the “vertueuse patience et longue attente des dames pour gainger leurs marys” (236;52), as well as the reverse behavior of husbands towards their wives. One example is story 35, told by Hircan, that of the “Dame de Pampelune,” who is cured of her love for a Cordelier by a beating from her husband. The story treats the situation of men who preach to women, only to seduce them. But Hircan, the teller, is actually like the Cordelier in the story, as he frequently combines preaching with seduction.³⁴ The theme of men appearing to correct women, but actually leading them astray, is a central topic of the fourth day.³⁵ This topos has important ramifications for the interpretation of the phrase “Voylà, mes dames” as well as the reception by women of it. It suggests that women should not heed all the prescriptions they receive from men, whoever they may be.³⁶

The fifth day pursues the subject of the relationship between honor and pleasure, among women and girls (“de la vertu des filles et femmes qui ont eu leur honneur en plus grande recommandation que leur plaisir, de celles aussi qui ont fait le contraire …”) (282;54). Thus the subject of this day, unlike most of the others, is specifically women, rather than both men and women. The subject of the relationship between honor and pleasure for women is central to the interpretation of the way in which women may read or listen to the stories themselves, whether for profit or pleasure. The fifth day concludes with a sort of temporary closure, as Oisille expresses the fear that the group may run out of ideas for stories.³⁷ Although the devisants, of course, do not run out of ideas, still this textual indication appears sufficient to permit tentatively interpreting the fifth day as a conclusion to what was intended to be the first half of the Heptameron.

Several discussions in the fifth day reinforce the idea (already noted in the seventh tale) that there is a double standard for men and women, crucial to the moral evaluation of male and female characters in the tales.³⁸ Parlamente responds to the sermonly forty-third tale, told by Geburon, with a definition of the difference between male and female virtue:

Si nous n'avions d'autres advocatz, dist Parlamente, que eulx [le plaisir et la folie] avecq vous, nostre cause seroit mal soutenue; mais celles qui sont vaincues en plaisir ne se doibvent plus nommer femmes, mais hommes, desquelz la fureur et la concupiscence augmente leur honneur. … Mais l'honneur des femmes a autre fondement: c'est doulceur, patience et chasteté.

(301;396-97)

Because men's and women's virtues differ, it is difficult for men, including lawyers and preachers, to correct women. Men's honor is closely related to the quest for pleasure, whereas women's involves the rejection of pleasure—chastity.³⁹ This differing moral code will obviously influence the way in which men and women interpret the actions of others, including those in the stories they hear in the Heptameron.

Oisille later tells a tale about the Cordeliers, this time about a monk who rapes the young girl he is sent to discipline (story 46).⁴⁰ Her conclusion moves beyond the general attack on the Cordeliers to consider again the issue of men who preach to women:

Vous voiez, mes dames, quelle seureté il y a à bailler telles charges à ceulx qui ne sont pour en bien user. La correction des hommes appartient aux hommes et des femmes aux femmes; car les femmes à corriger les hommes seroient aussi piteuses que les hommes à corriger les femmes seroient cruelz.

(310;408)

In this speech by Oisille, the attacks on monks and on men in general are related, from the point of view of women who must beware of both. Although Oisille is the most extreme and most conservative proponent of women, in the querelle des femmes which runs through the book, still this statement contains much truth about the relationship between men and women, speakers and listeners, in the Heptameron.

There is a developing sense, toward the end of the fifth day, that not only the Cordeliers but all men are really incapable of preaching to women, since men's and women's conceptions of virtue differ so much, and because men stand to gain from the folly of women. The frequent negative reaction of women listeners to phrases like “Voylà, mes dames,” when uttered by male devisants, is not just a coincidental stylistic device. Rather, it reveals an underlying system within the Heptameron based on the difference between male and female versions of morality and even perceptions of reality. Given this dual reality with which they must live, women listeners, and by extension readers, are advised to resist almost anything they hear which comes from a male speaker or writer. The message of the phrase “Voylà, mes dames” is actually the opposite of what it initially appears to be: while it seems to offer women listeners a secure guide to behavior, the reactions of the women to the phrase show that these precepts are suspect, and must often be rejected. This double message is present in much literature directed to women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but only women writers like Marguerite de Navarre appear to be sensitive to its implications.⁴¹

In the Heptameron, the phrase “Voylà, mes dames” introduces, for women, judgments frequently of women, who behave in a variety of ways—good, bad, and indifferent. “Voylà, mes dames,” throughout the book, is generally used in a prescriptive manner, to spell out the overt message of a story, from the point of view of its teller. All the devisants—male and female—take their turn at using this phrase, when they are cast in the authoritative role of storyteller. But the reactions of the dames to the phrase vary, depending on who is using it, and how. Generally women listeners react positively to a message delivered by a devisante, but negatively to that of a male speaker. The examples studied above demonstrate the existence of this phenomenon in the Heptameron, which is closely related to its affiliation with the literature of the querelle des femmes.

For what is striking about Marguerite's use of this phrase is not so much the phrase itself as the response to it, by the very women being addressed. In most cases they do not react passively as the speaker intended (and as the exemplum tradition would indicate), but rather reinterpret and reevaluate very actively the picture of human behavior being presented them. The most striking examples of active response by women readers to the phrase “Voylà, mes dames” are after stories told by male devisants, who generally fill the authoritative (and somewhat pompous) role outlined by the phrase better than the women speakers do. In addition, their negative reactions to these pompous and frequently chauvinistic pronouncements force the women listeners to define their own positions, more clearly than when they simply agree with their fellow devisantes. The critical difference here is a productive one.⁴²

The phrase “Voylà, mes dames” itself appears to emanate from an authoritative male speaker (despite the fact that women also use the phrase).⁴³ For the address of women assumes both a sexual and textual difference between speaker and listener: in defining “mes dames” as listeners, it casts the male “other” in a role as speaker or source for the stories. Marguerite the writer in fact does not take on a narrative persona herself, as we saw in our discussion of the hesitant use of the narrative “je” in the prologue. In the stories and discussions of the Heptameron, a writerly “je” is, similarly, almost never found, except in side references to translations which the narrator has made from Spanish or Italian, and very occasionally to the act of transcribing stories taken from elsewhere.⁴⁴ This narrative “je” is a very neutral one.

But the phrase “Voylà, mes dames,” when uttered by the storytellers, assumes a much stronger relationship of power between male speaker and female listener, not unlike the relationship of male strength to female weakness contained in the many examples of rape and other forms of male violence to women, in the stories themselves. Storytelling, in the Heptameron, as in the Decameron, is often a substitute or metaphor for the activities described in the stories, which are primarily sexual in nature.⁴⁵ But while Boccaccio clearly outlined a relationship of flirtation and compliance between male speaker/writer and female listener/reader,⁴⁶ Marguerite shows us a darker version of this interaction, which parallels the relationship between men and women in the tales themselves.

Women characters distinguish themselves, in the stories, by resisting male sexual violence. The suggestion is thus made that women listeners or readers should likewise resist the sexually suggestive models found in male literature, whether these models are found in Boccaccio, in the sermons told by the Cordeliers, the stories recounted by the devisants, or in medieval French romances.⁴⁷ This resistance raises some interesting questions about the representation of listening and reading by women in the Heptameron, and in particular about the ostensible exemplarity of the stories, implied by the performative catch-phrase “Voylà, mes dames.” Although this phrase seems to suggest that women need only imitate the models contained in the tales in order to derive the Horatian “profit” which they contain, the women characters we are shown, both inside and outside the stories, seem as frequently to react with something akin to another well-known performative phrase, “Just say no.”⁴⁸

In illustrating the combination of profit and pleasure which can be derived from the stories in the Heptameron, Marguerite seems to distinguish sharply between the reactions of male and female reader/listeners. Pleasure appears to be the reader reaction associated with the body and is generally attributed to male devisants. But profit, as a reader reaction, must be associated with the mind or spirit, and thus requires rejecting the more pleasurable, carnal (and obvious) readings, in favor of a fairly austere and difficult interpretation, based on suffering and self-sacrifice.⁴⁹ This austere reading is generally provided by the devisantes, when the discussions move to reception by women listener/readers, rather than simple address of these same listeners.

Looking at speakers and listeners in the Heptameron helps us to sort out some issues of male dominance and female submission in the book on a metatextual as well as textual level. While the phrase “Voylà, mes dames” appears to outline a passive, compliant woman listener, the reactions to it by the inscribed women listeners show a very different sort of woman “reader” who is able to insert her own version of reality into the text. To hope for a unified vision of the meaning of the Heptameron is to effact the resistance of the woman reader/listener to the very message she is being so courteously shown with the phrase “Voylà, mes dames.” This resistance ultimately is the subject of the Heptameron.

Despite the fact that Marguerite de Navarre writes early in the French Renaissance, before the liberating effect of print on the reader described by Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and others,⁵⁰ she is far ahead of her contemporaries, notably Rabelais, in the major role she accords to listeners, and by extension, to readers. While Rabelais addresses his listener/readers in an authoritative and even threatening manner, reminiscent of the polemics of oral debate, Marguerite not only shows her listeners to be addressed in a courteous way, but more importantly, demonstrates their ability to answer back, and to challenge the message being presented them. Rabelais never permits his “beuveurs illustres” to go so far, and even threatens the “lecteur calomniateur” with dire consequences. His narrative stance perfectly illustrates Genette's conception of “maîtrise auctoriale,” described at the beginning of this chapter.

The way in which the Heptameron's women listeners challenge its male speakers is a model to all readers of the book, male and female. It shows Marguerite as an author to have the ability to relinquish verbal authority not found in Rabelais, and a respect for the intelligence of the reader rarely achieved before Montaigne. This empowerment of the reader is connected in large part with her empowerment of women, the traditional addressees of courtly literature as well as sermons. But its implications go far beyond the confines of the querelle des femmes about women's nature, to consider larger issues of power in spoken and written language.⁵¹

The lack of closure frequently noted in the Heptameron (in comparison with the Decameron, for example) thus emerges not as a weakness but as a strength. In refusing to adopt the earlier authoritative male conception of narrative closure—or power over the text—Marguerite empowers the reader in a strikingly modern way. This empowerment could be viewed as feminist, but it is not necessarily limited to the feminine.

Notes

1. Two of the many critics to comment on the lack of closure in the Heptameron are Arthur Kinney, “The Poetics of Metaphysics and the Fiction of L'Inquiétisme,” in Continental Humanist Poetics: Studies in Erasmus, Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, and Cervantes (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989); and John D. Bernard, “Realism and Closure in the Heptaméron: Marguerite de Navarre and Boccaccio,” in The Modern Language Review, vol. 84, no. 2 (April 1989): 305-18.

2. There is only one exception, story 9, addressed by Dagoucin to the gentlemen: “Que vous semble-t-il, Messieurs …” (53;118). All the other stories are addressed to the ladies, with some version of “Voylà, mes dames.”

3. For an explanation of this and other terms of reader-oriented criticism, see The Reader in the Text, ed. S. Suleiman and I. Crosman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), especially the introduction by Susan R. Suleiman.

4. Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Seuil, 1987), 7.

5. Emphasis added, as will be the case throughout this chapter, unless otherwise indicated.

6. Philippe de Lajarte has carried out a complex analysis of the use of pronouns, particularly “je” and “vous,” in Marguerite's prologue, in his “Le Prologue de l'Heptaméron et le processus de production de l'oeuvre,” pp. 397-423 in La Nouvelle française à la Renaissance, ed. Lionello Sozzi (Geneva: Slatkine, 1981).

7. Michel Jeanneret, in a recent article on comic prologues in the French sixteenth century, has commented on the disappearance of the narrator after Marguerite's prologue: “La narratrice de l'Heptaméron, quant à elle, se manifeste fugitivement puis, très vite, s'efface devant les devisants, qui exprimeront, sur les contes, des opinions diverses et déjoueront, par la même, le principe d'une autorité qui contrôlerait la réception.” (Michel Jeanneret, “La Lecture en question: Sur quelques prologues comiques du seizième siècle,” French Forum 14, no. 3 [September 1989]: 279-289; esp. 283.)

8. It is striking to note that in the prologue, Hircan admits: “au jeu nous sommes tous égaux” (10;70, emphasis added).

9. “Entre autres, je croy qu'il n'y a nulle de vous qui n'ait leu les cent Nouvelles de Bocace, nouvellement traduictes d'ytalien en François, que le roy François, premier de son nom, monseigneur le Daulphin, madame la Daulphine, madame Marguerite, font tant de cas, que si Bocace, du lieu où il estoit, les eut peu oyr, il debvoit resusciter à la louange de telles personnes.” (Prologue, 9;68). Surprisingly, despite the oral/aural mode of the stories themselves, the prologue speaks specifically about writing: “n'escripre nulle nouvelle,” and furthermore, “nous leur en ferons present au retour de ce voiage” (10;69). There is a strong suggestion that there will be a written product at the end of the ten days, similar to the book by Boccaccio which has provided inspiration.

10. Lionello Sozzi points out that this convention is a typical feature of novella collections at the time, which he attributes to their association with feminism: “Par contre, chose remarquable, onze recueils, de celui de Bocace au Moyen de Parvenir de Béroalde de Verville, s'adressent aux femmes, leur sont dédiés, sont offerts comme respectueux hommages aux dames, leur lancent au fond un message de solidarité, un message complice” (“L'Intention du Conteur: Des textes introductifs aux recueils de nouvelles,” 71-83, in L'Ecrivain face à son public en France et en Italie à la Renaissance, ed. Fiorato & Margolin [Paris: Vrin, 1989], 76).

11. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. Richard Aldington (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1972), 26.

12. Des Périers, for example, a contemporary of Marguerite, raises in his prologue (actually the first story, subtitled “en forme de preambule”) the question already posed by Boccaccio, of whether the effect of his book may be positive or negative for women: “Lisez hardiment, dames et demoyselles, il n'y ha rien qui ne soit honneste; mais si d'adventure il y en ha quelques unes d'entre vous qui soyent trop tendrettes et qui ayent peur de tomber en quelques passages trop gaillars, je leur conseille qu'elles se les facent eschansonner par leurs freres ou par leurs cousins, affin qu'elles mangent peu de ce qui est trop appetissant” (Bonaventure Des Périers, Les Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis [Paris; Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1874], 11, emphasis added).

13. Except for “Jeanne Flore,” whose gender and identity are not certain.

14. See Elizabeth C. Wright, “Marguerite Reads Giovanni: Gender and Narration in the Heptaméron and the Decameron,” Renaissance and Reformation 15, no. 1 (Winter, 1991): 21-36. Wright addresses the shift from a male narrator in the Decameron to a female narrator in the Heptameron, but shows how carefully Marguerite avoids revealing herself as female.

15. The phrase frequently alludes to or shows the exemplary nature of the stories, for women. John Lyons has analyzed the use of example in the Heptameron in detail, in his “The Heptaméron and Unlearning from Example,” chap. 2 of Exemplum: The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989).

16. “Some of you [ladies] may say that in writing these tales I have taken too much license, by making ladies sometimes say and often listen to matters which are not proper to be said or heard by virtuous ladies. … However, those who read these tales can leave those they dislike and read those they like.” (Boccaccio, The Decameron, Conclusion, 637-39). This strategy for reading is repeated by Des Périers and other male authors of the sixteenth century (as we saw above).

17. Michel Jeanneret suggests something similar when he says: “Une certaine pratique de la lecture est ainsi illustrée: non celle qui surmonte less difficultés, conduit à des certitudes et des synthèses, mais celle qui reconnaît la pluralité des interprétations possibles et, par là, stimule la recherche du lecteur empirique.” (“La Lecture en question,” 285)

18. I am indebted to Marcel Tetel for the insight that the first half of what was intended to be Marguerite's version of the Decameron forms an identifiable unit. For example: “The circle opened in the prologue is closed at the end of the [fifth] day” (Marcel Tetel, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron: Themes, Language and Structure [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1973], Chap. 5, p. 171).

19. See John Lyons's statement that this story is “an image of women, for women, but made by a male character-narrator” (Exemplum, 90).

20. This open admission of hostility by Simontaut provides an interesting departure from Boccaccio's stated desire to offer women comfort, since he has also experienced the pain of love himself.

21. Only Parlamente responds, and we are told that this is only because Simontaut has hidden a message for her there: “Parlamente, faingnant de n'entendre poinct que ce fut pour elle qu'il tenoit tel propos …” (18;78).

22. See Emile Telle's treatment of this topic in L'Oeuvre de Marguerite d'Angoulême, reine de Navarre, et la querelle des femmes (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969). See particularly, chap. 4, “La Pensée de la reine de Navarre dans l'Heptaméron”; and chap. 10, “Le ‘Féminisme’ de la reine de Navarre.”

23. “Il me semble, mes dames, que celluy qui m'a donné sa voix, a tant dict de mal des femmes par une histoire veritable d'une malheureuse, que je doibtz rememorer tous mes vielz ans pour en trouver une dont la vertu puisse desmentir sa mauvaise opinion; et, pour ce qu'il m'en est venu une au devant digne de n'estre mise en obly, je la vous vois compter” (18;78).

24. This judgment parallels the reaction of the women in the story (21;81): “… toutes les femmes de bien de la ville ne faillirent à faire leur debvoir de l'honorer autant qu'il estoit possible, se tenans bien heureuses d'estre de la ville où une femme si vertueuse avoit esté trouvée. Les folles et legieres, voyans l'honneur que l'on faisoit à ce corps, se delibererent de changer leur vye en mieulx.” I am indebted to Mary McKinley for pointing this passage out (in a talk presented at the Renaissance Society of America, Spring 1989), and for showing that it was the “folles et legieres” who actually thought that they could imitate this “martire de chasteté,” not the “femmes de bien.”

25. Saffredent, after the third tale, shows the ladies how they could get back at their unfaithful husbands in kind, and Ennasuite, after the fourth, presents a straightforward positive example of virtue, which “doibt bien augmenter le cueur aux dames” (34;96).

26. Pierre Jourda comments, in contrasting the two authors, “Il n'y a, dans le Décameron—on l'a bien vu, aucune préoccupation religieuse, ou simplement morale” (Pierre Jourda, Marguerite d'Angoulême, Duchesse d'Alençon, Reine de Navarre [Paris: Honoré Champion, 1930], 2: 995).

27. John Lyons sees that “Longarine implies that the purpose of the narrative is to provide a pattern of conduct and to make that pattern attractive” (Exemplum, 75). I would add that she resists that attractiveness, however.

28. This sort of reinterpretation works both ways,and is often the mechanism which drives the discussions after the stories. In day one alone, we find several examples of this phenomenon, in which Hircan and Parlamente dominate. After story 4, told by Ennasuite as an example of “la vertu de ceste jeune princesse,” Hircan reinterprets it as actually about the cowardice of the male, who was “si despourveu de cueur” (34;96). Story 9, told by Dagoucin, is one of the few addressed to the men in the group (“Que vous semble-t-il, Messieurs …,” 53;118). His story shows how love, when it is concealed, can lead to death by the unsatisfied male. Hircan then shows the male to have simply lacked initiative. But Parlamente turns the discussion to the women's role in all this, asking Hircan whether “vous estimez les femmes toutes pareilles?” (54;120). Similarly, story 10, about Amadour and Floride, is told by Parlamente as an example of the virtue of Floride. But Hircan sees that it is actually about the cowardice of Amadour (83;153). The struggle to interpret right and wrong in these stories is also the struggle to interpret which character, male or female, has the power to influence their outcome.

29. This uncertainty about the lesson of an example is part of what John Lyons refers to as the “crisis” of the exemplum in the early modern period: “This common rhetorical practice in the face of contradictory visions of reality leads to lively and often paradoxical texts, revealing the push and pull of various currents of thought” (Exemplum, Preface, x). I would add that feminism is one of the currents of thought leading to the crisis of the exemplum in the Heptameron.

30. See Telle, L'Oeuvre de Marguerite d'Angoulême, 113: “Je remarque que cest vingt premières nouvelles (excepté 11 et 17) sont contées en fonction des femmes: les faits et gestes des hommes n'intéressent la compagnie qu'incidemment.”

31. See for example tale 12, in which the “Duc de Florence” is killed in his bed at the very moment when he hoped to enjoy the favors of his best friend's sister. The discussions after this story and the following one examine whether or not women's beauty can really kill suffering lovers.

32. See for example tale 26, where Saffredent divides women into “folles” and “saiges,” while Longarine points out that feminine psychology is more complex, especially when we consider issues of desire and self-control (221;306).

33. See Telle, L'Oeuvre de Marguerite d'Angoulême, 120: “Dans cette journée tout particulièrement, elle s'est élevée contre la conception grossière que se font les hommes de l'amour et de l'honneur. Aux femmes de les civiliser, et d'en faire de bons chrétiens en les guidant sur la voie de l'amour fondé sur la vertu, c'est-à-dire la chasteté. …”

34. “Je suys bien ayse, dist Parlamente, de quoy vous estes devenu prescheur des dames; et le serois encores plus si vous vouliez continuer ces beaulx sermons à toutes celles à qui vous parlez” (260;351). On several other occasions the listeners comment explicitly on the preacherly tone of the male devisants who address the women listeners. Earlier, at the end of the sixteenth tale, Geburon warned women to stay away from men: “Et pour ce, mes dames, si vous estes saiges, vous garderez de nous, comme le cerf, s'il avoit entendement, feroit de son chasseur” (133;208). Hircan responded with amusement: “Comment, Geburon? … depuis quel temps estesvous devenu prescheur?”

35. See Telle's comment that the conclusion to be drawn from the fourth day is that “les hommes ne visent qu'à déshonorer les femmes.” (L'Oeuvre de Marguerite d'Angoulême, 126)

36. Is it possible that Marguerite has written an indirect response to Boccaccio's fourth day, here? The Decameron begins that day by admitting that “some who have read these tales, discreet ladies, have said that you are too pleasing to me and that it was not modest that I should take delight in pleasing and comforting you and—others have said worse than this—in commending you, as I do” (Boccaccio, The Decameron, 246).

37. “… que les cinq Journées estoient accomplies de si belles histoires, qu'elle avoit grand paour que la sixiesme ne fut pareille; car il n'estoit possible, encores qu'on les voulut inventer, de dire de meilleurs comptes que veritablement ilz en avoient racomptez en leur compaignye” (326;427). Emile Telle, in fact, believes that the sixth, seventh and eighth days do not really add many new ideas to the arguments for and against women, in the book (L'Oeuvre de Marguerite d'Angoulême, 131-39).

38. Patricia F. Cholakian has shown this for tale 42 when she says, “Saffredent's tirade demonstrates how the terms honesty, perfection, and honor are defined differently by men and women in the Heptaméron” (Rape and Writing in the “Heptaméron” of Marguerite de Navarre [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991], 181).

39. It is striking to note the way in which Marguerite reverses Saint Paul's association of women with flesh, men with spirit. See Constance Jordan's discussion of chastity perceived as a male virtue, in medieval theology stemming from Paul (Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990], chap. 1, “The Terms of the Debate,” p. 27).

40. The theme of men who preach to women in order to try to seduce them is a central motif in the fifth day, and one which ties together the themes of language and sexuality which are linked throughout the book, but especially in the fifth day. We are reminded of Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Oisille's text for the sermons of the first five days), 2:21-22: “You then who teach others, will you not teach yourself? … You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?” (Revised Standard Version).

41. For this reason I would disagree with Lionello Sozzi's claim that the address of women in the Renaissance novella written by men shows the genre's affiliation with feminism—quite the opposite is true (Sozzi, “L'Intention du Conteur”).

42. See Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). Elizabeth Abel elaborates on Johnson's concept thus: “Sexuality and textuality both depend on difference. Deconstructive criticism has made us attend to notions of textual difference, but the complexities of sexual difference, more pervasively engrained in our culture, have largely been confined to the edges of critical debate” (Writing and Sexual Difference, ed. Elizabeth Abel [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982], Introduction, p. 1).

43. It is significant to note that in the prologue, the narrator tells us that the devisants are requested to tell stories they have heard from “quelque homme digne de foy” (10;69). Part of the authority for these (supposedly true) stories resides in their originally male authorship.

44. Examples include: story 19 (of Poline; Ennasuite is the teller), “… j'en ay voulu traduire les motz en françoys” (146;223); story 24 (of Elisor; Dagoucin speaks), “… je ne l'eusse jamais osé traduire …” (198;280); story 25 (Longarine speaks), “… ce qu'elle m'a faict mettre icy en escript” (206;289); and story 5, in the “Appendice” of the “Curé Auvergnat,” where the teller explains: “… pour la fin de ce dixiesme, que j'en voulsisse escripre ung qu'il tenoit aussy veritable que l'evangile …” (p. 445). These instances of a narrative “je” as writer, as in the references to writing in the prologue, break down the fiction that the stories are told orally, and return us to Marguerite the actual writer of the book. But this narrative “je” is certainly a hesitant and anonymous one, defining itself in a role as transcriber rather than creator.

45. In the prologue to the Heptameron, for example, it was made clear that storytelling, at least for Hircan, was only a second choice to lovemaking (9;68).

46. “… one of my women neighbors the other day told me I have the best and sweetest tongue in the world. But, to speak the truth, when that happened there were not many of my tales left to finish.” (Boccaccio, The Decameron, 640)

47. Marguerite shares the ambivalence of her time for this medieval genre. While authors of instruction books for women forbade these works (see for example Vives's Institution de la femme chrestienne), still women did make up the principal audience for them. We see both attitudes in the Heptameron, when characters read romances. In the story of Rolandine, for example, the mother of the bâtard comments on what a waste of time reading romances is: “La dame, regardant ce gros livre de la Table ronde, dist au varlet de chambre qui en avoit la garde: ‘Je m'esbahys comme les jeunes gens perdent le temps à lire tant de follyes!’” (164;242-43). Throughout the Heptameron, reading romances appears as a pretext or substitute for actual “romance.”

48. This phrase sums up the critical stance described by such feminist reader-oriented critics as Judith Fetterley, whose The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979) describes a set of strategies for subverting the role in which women readers feel trapped by the expectations of male (chauvinist) authors.

49. This sort of reading is more similar to the Bible reading suggested by Oisille than it is to the reading of “fiction,” ostensibly criticized on moral grounds as “rhetoricque,” in the prologue. Once again Marguerite reverses the Pauline association of male with spirit, female with flesh. It is impossible to overlook the fact that, in this respect at least, Marguerite is a “resisting reader” of the Gospel itself.

50. Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). Walter J. Ong, S.J., Orality and Literacy (London: Methuen, 1982); Interfaces of the Word (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), and so forth.

51. See Peter Rabinowitz's discussion of the close connections between feminist and reader-oriented perspectives, in his Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987). The same sorts of arguments have also been made by Jonathan Culler, in On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982).

This chapter was completed with the help of a grant from the Folger Shakespeare Library, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, during academic year 1989-90.