[In the essay that follows, Cholakian examines the complexity of establishing female desire in three of Marguerite's stories that turn on a rape or a seduction.]

Seduce, v.t. 1. to lead astray, as from duty, rectitude, or the like; corrupt. 2. to persuade or induce to have sexual intercourse. 3. to lead or draw away, as from principles, faith, or allegiance: He was seduced by the prospect of gain. 4. to win over; attract; entice: a supermarket seducing customers with special sales [emphasis mine].

Rape, n. 1. the act of seizing and carrying off by force. 2. the act of physically forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse.

—Random House Dictionary

Sexual intercourse occurs in both rape and seduction, but whereas the seduced victim must be persuaded or enticed to have sex, the raped victim must be forced to do so.¹ Concomitantly, in seduction, the moral onus falls on the victim who has presumably chosen (after having been persuaded) to have sexual intercourse of her own free will; in rape, on the other hand, the guilt is the rapist's, who has deprived her of the right to free choice. From a practical point of view, this distinction hinges on whether the woman experienced desire for intercourse before the rape or pleasure during it. In other words, in order to prove that she was raped, the victim is obliged to prove that she did not want to be raped. This is surely one of the most curious of semiotic impasses. What is signified by a violent act cannot be determined by what the person who conceives and carries out this act does or in what frame of mind he is when he does it. It can be determined only by the emotional state of the person to whom it is done. Or as Frances Ferguson's puts it, “Rape … dramatizes a problematic about the relationship between the body and the mind.”²

It is this confusion about the semiotics of rape that leads to the repeated revision of and speculation about female desire in the Heptaméron. In “Novella 4,” the “wise” woman advises the Flemish princess to guard against “taking pleasure in remembering things that are so pleasant to the flesh that the most chaste have all they can do to guard themselves against their sparks” (33). To her way of thinking, rape is capable of arousing desire after the fact, thus bringing about the woman's eventual seduction and making her the guilty party in the future. In order to qualify as a rape victim, therefore, a woman must beware of experiencing desire at any time before, during, or after sexual intercourse.

NOVELLA 14

In “Novella 14,” Simontault, the embittered “servitor” who narrated “Novella 1,” tells about a case of rape/seduction in which the heroine is a “hypocrite” who really wanted sex all along. “In the duchy of Milan,” he begins, “there was a gentleman named the seigneur de Bonnivet, who later became through his merits an admiral of France.”³ The seigneur de Bonnivet is, of course, the very “gentleman” identified by Brantôme as the would-be rapist of “Novella 4”! Here, then, we have a story about one of his sexual adventures that identifies him by name, thus adding still more information about the rapist/lover.⁴ This time his victim is not Marguerite de Navarre, alias a Flemish princess, but a Milanese lady with whom he carries on a wartime romance while serving the imperialist interests of the Crown in an occupied (!) territory. The action takes place in Milan during François I's attempt to claim the North of Italy for France—an adventure that ended tragically at the battle of Pavia where Bonnivet was killed and the king himself carried off to Spain as a prisoner.

Like his prototypes, the charming gentleman of 4 and Amadour the ideal knight, Bonnivet is “much loved … as much for his looks, charm, and way of speaking as for his reputation as one of the most brave and skillful men of arms of his day.”⁵ At a carnival ball, he meets a beautiful Milanese lady and proceeds without delay “to make amorous propositions to her, as he knew how to do better than any other.”⁶ She goes out of her way to make it clear that she will never be unfaithful to her husband, but her protestations do not convince the cynical Frenchman. He continues to pursue her without success throughout Lent. What is more, although she maintains firmly that she has no intention of loving him or anyone else, Bonnivet suspects that given her husband's ugliness and her own beauty, she is lying. He therefore sets out to obtain proof that he is right: “He decided that, since she was dissimulating, he would use trickery; and from that moment, he stopped pursuing her and investigated her life so thoroughly that he discovered that she was in love with a good and honest Italian gentleman.”⁷ In other words, it is the heroine's presumed but as yet unproven guilt that determines Bonnivet to trick her into having intercourse with him.

He worms his way into her friend's good graces, and the two gentlemen compare notes about their love lives. Bonnivet discovers that he was right in suspecting that the lady had an admirer but wrong in assuming that she had rewarded him with her favors, for although the Italian has served the lady for three years, he has received nothing from her except “good words and the assurance of being loved.”⁸ In other words, the Milanese lady, like Parlamente and Marguerite de Navarre at the time of her near rape, is a married woman who has managed to keep her extramarital romance within honorable bounds. Bonnivet's assumption that she has lied about being faithful to her husband is therefore false.

This point, which establishes both the chastity and the honesty of the lady, Simontault skips over hastily. And just as he makes little of it, Bonnivet is not deterred from carrying out his plan for “revenge.” Instead, through his supposed friend, he entraps the lady into becoming what he has already decided she is. Although the lady has told the truth, she stands convicted of carnal desire before the fact to justify Bonnivet's projected rape. To the “hero,” female truth is a fiction, for which she must be punished. In other words, her desire is itself constructed by the misogynist, who tricks her into experiencing pleasure in order to get even with her for refusing him.

Through his skill in the art of seduction, Bonnivet is able to give such good advice to his friend the timid Italian that the friend at last succeeds in convincing the lady to receive him in her bedchamber. Bonnivet then gets this gullible man to reveal to him all the details of their tryst. He is told that the front door will be left open and that the lady will be in the third room beyond a small staircase. Disguising himself by trimming his hair and beard to resemble his friend's, Bonnivet puts on felt slippers and makes his way to the lady's bedroom several hours ahead of her lover. At this point in the tale, the textual signs (the small staircase and the third door, which replicate the secret passage of “Novella 4”) clearly indicate that he is invading female territory that, as the following passage conveys, is innocent: “And when he had entered the lady's room and bolted the door, he saw the whole room hung in white linen, both above and below, and a bed of the finest white cloth, all worked in pure white.”⁹

Once inside, Bonnivet goes silently to work, intent only on carrying out his long-deferred revenge: “He thought only of executing his vengeance, that is, to take from her her honor and chastity, without gratitude or grace.”¹⁰ In this passage, which parallels the “Fourth Novella” where the gentleman entered the princess's bed “without asking her leave or rendering her homage” (30), we hear the indignant woman's voice, unable to restrain herself from commenting on this outrageous behavior. Nor should we forget that this story, like 10, resonates with the situation the author found herself in.

This time, the carefully planned attack on the unwilling lady meets with success. Bonnivet proves that she secretly desires him as he desires her, for “against her will and intention,” the lady finds herself “content with this vengeance.”¹¹ When he has made his point, Bonnivet begins to laugh, asking her if she will refuse him the next time he requests her favors. Only then does the poor lady realize what has happened. “Recognizing him by his words and laugh, she was so overcome with shame and guilt that she called him more than a thousand times wicked, traitor, and deceiver, trying to throw herself out of the bed and find a knife with which to kill herself, since she had so unfortunately lost her honor to a man she didn't love and who, to get even with her, could divulge this affair in public.”¹² The implication here, as elsewhere in the Heptaméron, is that it is impossible for women to tell the difference between rape and seduction. Only when the man laughs does she recognize him as a rapist, but then the text makes clear that there is no question in her own mind about what has happened to her. Like Lucretia, she even tries to kill herself.

Bonnivet manages to calm her down by promising to keep her secret and swearing to be a better lover than his rival, which, the narrator adds dryly, “the poor fool believed.”¹³ In effect, what we have here is “Novella 4”'s scenario with a different ending, a fact the author seems more and more aware of as she allows her voice to rise above the narrator's. When the poor Italian arrives at the appointed hour, he is sent away. The story concludes that the lady “fixed her choice on the seigneur de Bonnivet, whose friendship endured, as usual, like the beauty of meadow flowers.”¹⁴ Like the shifts in “Novella 11” between Madame de Roncex and the men, these intrusions of the author's disapproval register the difference between how men and women regard such adventures.

To Simontault, Bonnivet's success proves that so-called virtuous ladies are really longing to be forcibly seduced, that is, raped. “It seems to me, my ladies,” he concludes, “that the gentleman's clever tricks are equaled by this lady's hypocrisy, for after she had made herself out to be an honorable woman, she revealed herself to be such a fool.”¹⁵ He justifies Bonnivet's trick, which culminates in sexual intercourse without the woman's knowledge or consent, on the grounds that the victim was a hypocrite.

The proof that rape is not seduction is the rape itself, for before she was doubly deceived by Bonnivet, the Milanese lady had been virtuous. In other words, a woman's dishonesty is proved by a man's lie. There is no room in this scheme of things for women's signifying systems. Just as the princess of 4 was prevented from telling the truth about her rapist because she knew no one would believe she was innocent, so it makes no difference to Bonnivet that the Milanese lady was faithful to her husband. Furthermore, Bonnivet engages in sex not to satisy his desire but, as the text states four times, as an act of vengeance. This is a violent deed, conceived out of spite and intended to do harm to the victim whose real crime is that she spurned his advances.

Here the specter of female desire, which the princess's friend in the earlier story warned against, becomes a fact. The Milanese lady allows herself to be cajoled by the suitor she has kept at arm's length for three years. In the eyes of the narrator, the substitution of the trickster Bonnivet for the timid and respectful “perfect lover” in no way changes the facts. It is not the object of her desire that matters but her susceptibility. For Simontault, her right to choose her partner never enters into the picture. The fact that the circumstances are all cunningly orchestrated by Bonnivet in no way mitigates her guilt. In this circular logic, the lady is dishonorable; therefore, she deserves to be raped.¹⁶

Of course, Simontault's female audience is not persuaded by this egregious example of doublethink. Ennasuitte objects, “But this gentleman played a wicked trick. Is it true that if a lady loves one man, another has the right to take her by ruse?”¹⁷ Longarine says that since all her servitors have been more interested in their own pleasure and glory than in her honor, she has concluded that they should be discouraged from the very beginning. And Parlamente seconds her, arguing that when a man makes impassioned oaths of love, it is better to part company with him.

In Hircan's view, however, sexual need justifies the use of any means, fair or foul. “Really,” says he, “your laws are too hard. And if you want women to be so rigorous when gentleness becomes them, we too will change our gentle supplications to trickery and force.”¹⁸ Simontault tries to argue that it is merely a question of “natural” desire: “The best way, as I see it, is for everyone to follow their natural inclination. Let those who love or don't love show it without dissimulation!”¹⁹ To which Saffredent cries, “Would to God that this law would bring as much honor as it would pleasure!” The men's libertine arguments are based on the false assumption that women have the same freedom of choice they do, as if desire were coded as gender-neutral. But this exemplum really transmits the woman author's message: The seduced (raped) lady's desire is the rapist's construction, a wager he wins with himself.

NOVELLA 16

Bonnivet is again the hero and Milan the scene of “Novella 16,” narrated by Geburon, the older man who has renounced the pastimes of his younger cohorts to warn the ladies about the dangers of love. The Milanese lady he courts is a widow this time, but the circumstances of their meeting are much the same as in 14. He catches sight of her at a ball, where she sits among the old ladies veiled in black, and immediately abandons the dancing to sit beside her. It is obvious that he is eager to become intimate, and she makes up her mind to avoid all the places where they might meet.

Undaunted, the gentleman discovers which churches and monasteries she frequents and always manages to arrive before her to gaze upon her affectionately. To avoid him, she feigns illness and hears mass at home. No sooner does she reappear in church, however, than the Frenchman is beside her at the moment of the elevation and swears on the Host that he is dying of love. She rebukes him for his blasphemy and hurries away, but he continues to pursue her relentlessly for three years, during which she continues to avoid him “as the wolf flees the hound by whom he will be taken; not because she hated him, but because she feared for her honor and reputation; which he knew very well, so that he pursued her more hotly than before.”²⁰ Throughout his tale, Geburon repeatedly uses the image of the hunt, comparing the lady to a beast of prey “pursued” by hounds.

Despite her prolonged resistance, at last the hero's perseverance pays off. The lady takes pity on him and agrees to grant him what he wants. “And when they had agreed on the arrangements, the French gentleman did not fail to take the risk and go to her house, despite the fact that his life might be in great danger, since her family all lived there together.”²¹ This passage calls attention to the danger incurred by men in rape/seduction, a danger also implied in “Novella 4” when the lady-in-waiting reminds the princess that her would-be rapist has risked his life to enter her bed.²²

And sure enough, as Bonnivet is about to undress, he hears the rattling of swords at the door, and the widow cries out that her brothers have discovered what he is doing and are about to kill him. She begs him to hide under the bed, but the fearless hero wraps his cape around his arm, unsheathes his sword, and throws open the door to confront his attackers. There, to his surprise, he finds only two chambermaids who explain that their mistress has ordered them to make this commotion.

Wasting no more time, the gentleman closes the door and proceeds with the business at hand, not even bothering to ask for an explanation until he has satisfied his desire. Only at daybreak does he ask the lady the meaning of this strange interruption. She replies that despite her vow never to fall in love, he had won her heart at their first meeting. She rejected him, however, because she did not want to risk her honor in such a liaison. “But just as the doe who has been wounded unto death thinks that a change of place will change the pain which she carries inside her,” she tells him, “so I went from church to church, thinking to flee the one I carried in my heart.”²³ The lady herself uses the simile of the wounded animal to explain her long hesitation. The chambermaids' strange attack, she continues, was her last test. Had he proved himself a coward by hiding under the bed, she would have judged him unworthy and never spoken to him again.

In this novella, the threat hanging over the head of the rapist/seducer becomes the trial through which he must pass if he is to win the lady's favors. The lady decides to make the danger equal on both sides. If she is to risk her honor, he must risk his life. The equation female honor equals male life is applied to the relationship between man and woman. Each must sacrifice to the other what is most precious.

Geburon does not concur with this solution to his heroine's dilemma, however. Instead, he concludes dryly, “And as if man's will was immutable, they swore and promised what was not in their power: an unending friendship, which can neither be born or remain in man's heart; and those [women] alone know this who have seen for themselves how long such thoughts endure!”²⁴ He goes on to warn the ladies against following his heroine's example: “Therefore, my ladies, if you are wise, you will guard yourselves from us, as the stag, if he had understanding, would avoid the hunter. For our glory, our felicity, and our contentment lie in seeing you caught and taking from you what is dearer than life.”²⁵

Needless to say, Hircan is outraged by his friend's defection. Has he not seen the time when Geburon said exactly the opposite? The older man excuses himself on the grounds that age has made him cross over to the enemy and reveal the secrets of the masculine plot.

When we read this story alongside the others whose protagonists resemble Bonnivet, we see that each narrative operates as a transformation of the preceding version in the progression from rapist to seducer. In 4, the Flemish princess, ignorant of her attacker's identity, fought him off and vowed to have his head. In 10, Floride admired and loved Amadour but resisted his attempts to possess her, even going so far as to mutilate her face. In 14, the first Milanese lady allowed herself to be seduced by a timid and long-suffering admirer only to discover too late that she had given herself to Bonnivet. Finally, in 16, the second Milanese lady is seduced after her long hesitation, substituting for her honor a pathetic test of her lover's valor.

Thus in the “Fourteenth” and “Sixteenth” novellas, narrated by men, the attempted rapes narrated by women in “4” and “10” are replaced by seduction, in which the women “desire” and “consent.” But although these two stories fantasize a different dénouement to the scenario invented by Bonnivet and his stand-ins, through authorial intervention in “14” and narratorial intervention in “16,” they end by justifying the Flemish princess's violent defense of her body and Floride's intrasigent refusal to surrender. What is more, Geburon's inside information, delivered by a former actor in the masculine plot, verifies the virtuous ladies' contention that the rapist and the seducer are in reality the same man.

NOVELLA 18

Not unexpectedly, when Hircan's turn as narrator comes, he is intent on rehabilitating masculine “honor,” which has been more than a little tarnished by Geburon's revelations. He does this by developing the trial motif suggested in 16. Geburon's hero proved himself worthy of the lady's favors by refusing to hide under the bed, but Geburon denigrated the value of such courage when weighed against women's honor. The trial topos is, of course, standard in the chivalric romance, knights being routinely expected to execute a task or pass unscathed through danger to win a lady's love.

Hircan begins by telling how Amour (“love” with a capital A) taught its “lessons” to a young gentleman scholar of about eighteen, by appearing to him in the guise of a beautiful widow. This is the situation rendered classic by later French fiction: the sexual initiation of a young man by an experienced older woman. Desire, signified conventionally by fire, comes immediately into play: “You who know the quick path this fire takes … can well judge how between two such perfect subjects Love hardly paused until it had them in its sway and so filled them both with its bright light that their thoughts, will, and speech were completely overtaken by the flames of Love.”²⁶

The narrator wants to convince his listeners that both the gentleman and the lady were equally consumed by passion. If they did not proceed to consummate it at once, it was because the hero's youth “inspired in him some fear, and made him pursue his suit as gently as possible,”²⁷ and “the shame that keeps ladies company whenever possible prevented her for some time from revealing what she wanted.”²⁸ But at last, “the fortress of the heart, where honor lies, was so ruined that the lady decided to grant him what she had never seriously been opposed to.”²⁹

She will give herself to him, however, only after she has tried his “patience, firmness, and love.” She promises, therefore, to become his mistress if he can prove he is capable of spending a night in her bed without doing anything besides talking and kissing. Notice that whereas in the traditional trial the hero must pass through some kind of danger or accomplish some kind of magical feat, here the test is sexual self-control, the same inhibition of desire that is imposed on “honorable” women. In other words, the hero must prove that he is quite as capable as a woman of repressing his physical reactions to sexual stimuli.

He passes the test with flying colors, at which, the narrator says cynically, “the lady was, in my opinion, more amazed than happy, and she immediately suspected either that his love was not so great as she thought, or that he had found less good in her than before, and she did not take note of the great honesty, patience, and fidelity with which he kept his vow.”³⁰ The interjection (“comme je croys”) is unmistakably Hircan's, confirming his conviction that women really mean yes when they say no.³¹ It underlines both the lady's bad faith and her failure to appreciate the hero's feat.

Dissatisfied, she decides to lay a second obstacle in her lover's path. She orders him to pretend to be interested in one of her companions, a young girl who is also very beautiful. When the widow sees that the girl has fallen in love with the scholar, she invites him to her bedroom and asks the younger woman to take her place in the bed while her mistress hides and observes what happens between them. When the hero discovers her trick, he is furious. He leaps out of the bed, denounces both of the women, and storms out of the house. “Nevertheless,” comments the narrator, “Love, which is never without hope, assured him that the more the great firmness of his love was proved by such a test, the more his enjoyment would be long and happy.”³²

Faced with this proof of his constancy, it is the lady who goes after him, begs his pardon, and gives him his reward. And Hircan concludes smugly, “I beg you, my ladies, find me a woman who was so firm, patient, and loyal in love as this man.”³³ To which Oisille replies, tongue in cheek, “It's too bad that he didn't court a woman as virtuous as himself, for that would have been the most perfect and honest love ever known.”³⁴

The story is a reversal of the situation in 8 and 14 where the rapist displaces the man presumed to be the husband or lover. Here the lady plays the same trick on the man. But whereas one man seems much like another to women, Hircan's hero immediately identifies the proxy and denounces her. In the end it is the woman who must humble herself, admit that he merits her favors, and apologize. The next story told by Hircan will reveal that when women assume the role of the stranger in bed, it leads to even direr consequences.

At the end of the tale, Geburon suggests that the company should decide which of the two trials was the more difficult.³⁵ Simontault, however, cannot contain himself and reveals once again the truth behind the “courtly” façade: “You may speak as you like,” he says bluntly, “but we, who know what such things are worth, should give our opinion. As for me, I esteem him stupid for the first trial and foolish for the second; for I believe that when he kept his promise to his lady, she suffered as much if not more than he. She only made him swear this oath to pretend to be a better woman than she was.”³⁶ To Simontault, the trial proves only that the hero was unable to get his way in a more direct fashion. Saffredent agrees and even wonders aloud if the gentleman's virility was all that it should have been. And besides, he goes on, wasn't he strong enough to take her by force since she had opened the way for him?

“It seems to me,” said Saffredent, “that one cannot do greater honor to a woman from whom one desires such things, than to take her by force, for there is not the slightest maiden who does not want to be pleaded with. And there are others to whom one must give a great many presents, in order to win them; others are so stupid that by no means or finesse can they be won, and for them there is nothing for it but to find a way. But when one is up against a virtuous women who cannot be deceived, one who is so good that she cannot be won by words or presents, isn't one right in seeking every possible means of victory? And when you hear that a man has taken a woman by force, be sure that that woman took from him the hope of any other means; and do not think less of the man who has put his life in danger to make way for his love.”³⁷

Even more clearly than Geburon in “Novella 16,” Saffredent gives away the masculine plot. Any means is justified in what is a battle for mastery. These stories bring the reader full circle to the expedient used by the gentleman in “Novella 4.” When he saw that he could not convince the princess to give in to him, he simply invaded her bed, confident that she would let him do as he wished. There could be no clearer statement of how these men view rape than Saffredent's. His perspective erases the woman's right to dissent. The argument that women desire sex as much as men turns out to be a red herring. The question is not what the woman wants but what the man wants. Her refusal becomes a temporary obstacle that cannot and should not deter him from his goal—to possess her by fair means or foul.

Notes

1. For an elucidation of the relationship between rape and seduction in Freud's thought, see Forrester. See also Tomaselli's “Introduction” to Rape for her analysis of how rape becomes seduction in Enlightenment thought.

2. Ferguson, 99. Her article, which analyzes this paradox in Clarissa, contains a cogent summary of rape theory. Ferguson also writes: “While the statutory definitions of rape consistently revolve around the violation of the victim's will, around the perpetrator's disregard for her nonconsent, that apparent unanimity masks an ongoing debate about what consent is and how it manifests itself in the world. This is to say, in part, that the issue of consent itself reflects a question about who or what counts as a person who can consent, whose consent is significant. To frame the question in this way is, however, to suggest an answer. For it implies that rape victims … must inevitably be perceived as deficient persons, inasmuch as women are generally ‘by our society’ seen as deficient versions of men. From this perspective, rape victims are violated first by the actual, physical act of rape and then by a legal system that does not take them at their word but demands further proof” (88).

3. En la duché de Millan … y avoit ung gentil homme, nommé le seigneur de Bonnivet, qui depuis, par ses merites, fut admiral de France (109).

4. Jourda writes in this regard: “Il semble toutefois que la reine n'est ici que l'écho des on dit de son temps, et que pour ces deux nouvelles [14 and 16], elle se borne à répéter ce qu'elle a entendu de la bouche du Roi, d'un de ses favoris, ou, qui sait? de Bonnivet lui-même?” (Still it seems that the queen is only echoing the gossip of her day here, and that for these two novellas, she limits herself to repeating what she had heard from the king, from one of his favorites, or, who knows? from Bonnivet himself?) Marguerite d'Angoulême, 775-76.

5. fort aymé … tant pour sa beaulté, bonne grace et bonne parolle, que pour le bruict que chascun luy donnoit d'estre ung des plus adroicts et hardys aux armes qui fust poinct de son temps (109-10).

   Losse also notices the way the narrators embellish the heroes in this series of tales. She believes Marguerite de Navarre is following “the tradition of the courtly romances” in which “the narrator creates a parallel between the moral and physical attributes of the man and the woman” (“Distortion,” 81).

6. ne failloit à luy tenir les propos d'amour qu'il sçavoit mieulx que nul aultre dire (110).

7. Il se delibera, puisqu'elle usoit de dissimulation, de user aussy de tromperie; et dès l'heure, laissa la poursuicte qu'il luy faisoit, et s'enquist si bien de sa vie, qu'il trouva qu'elle aymoit ung gentil homme italien, bien saige et honneste (110).

8. bonne parolle et asseurance d'estre aymé (110).

9. Et, entré qu'il fut en la chambre de la dame, la referma au coureil, et veit toute ceste chambre tendue de linge blanc, le pavement et le dessus de mesmes, et ung lict, de thoille fort delyée, tant bien ouvré de blanc qu'il n'estoit possible de plus (112).

10. ne pensa qu'à mectre sa vengeance à execution: c'est de luy oster son honneur et sa chasteté, sans luy en sçavoir gré ni grace (112).

11. Mais, contre sa volunté et deliberation, la dame se tenoit si contente de ceste vengeance (112).

12. Elle, qui le congneut à la parolle et au riz, fut si desesperée d'ennuy et de honte, qu'elle l'appella plus de mille foys meschant, traistre et trompeur, se voulant gecter du lict à bas pour chercher ung cousteau, à fin de se tuer, veu qu'elle estoit si malheureuse qu'elle avoit perdu son honneur pour ung homme qu'elle n'aymoit poinct et qui, pour se venger d'elle, pourroit divulguer ceste affaire par tout le monde (112-13).

13. ce que la pauvre sotte creut (113).

14. s'arresta au seigneur Bonnivet, dont l'amityé dura, selon la coustume, comme la beaulté des fleurs des champs (114).

15. “Il me semble, mes dames, que les finesses du gentil homme vallent bien l'hypocrisie de cette dame, qui, après avoir tant contrefaict la femme de bien, se declaira si folle” (114).

16. Olsen notes that this novella conforms to the traditional model in which ruse or violence is crowned with success (Transformations, 166).

17. “mais ce gentil homme feit ung tour meschant. Est-il dict que si une dame en aymoit ung, l'autre la doyve avoir par finesse?” (114)

18. “Vrayement,” ce dist Hircan, “voz loix sont trop dures. Et si les femmes vouloient, selon vostre advis, estre si rigoureuses, ausquelles la doulceur est tant seante, nous changerions aussy nos doulces supplications en finesses et forces” (115).

19. “Le mieulx que je y voye … c'est que chacun suyve son naturel. Qui ayme ou qui n'ayme poinct le monstre sans dissimullation!” (115).

20. comme le loup fait le levrier, de quoy il doibt estre prins; non par hayne qu'elle luy portast, mais pour la craincte de son honneur et reputation; dont il s'apperceut si bien, que plus vivement qu'il n'avoit faict, pourchassa son affaire (131).

21. Et quant ilz furent d'accord des moyens, ne faillit le gentil homme François à se hazarder d'aller en sa maison, combien que sa vye y povoit estre en grand hazard, veu que les parens d'elle logeoient tous ensemble (131).

22. The Heptaméron shows not only that rape was theoretically punishable by death but that a woman's male relatives considered themselves justified in killing men whom they found having illicit relations with a wife, sister, or daughter on the spot. See Novella 40 in which Count Jossebelin kills his sister's clandestine husband and emprisons her in a tower.

23. “Mais, ainsy comme la bische navrée à mort cuyde, en changeant de lieu, changer le mal qu'elle porte avecq soy, ainsi m'en allois-je d'eglise en eglise, cuydant fuyr celluy que je portois en mon cueur” (132).

24. Et, comme si la volunté de l'homme estoit immuable, se jurerent et promirent ce qui n'estoit en leur puissance: c'est une amityé perpetuelle, qui ne peult naistre ne demorer au cueur de l'homme; et celles seulles le sçavent, qui ont experimenté combien durent telles oppinions! (132-33).

25. “Et pour ce, mes dames, si vous estes saiges, vous garderez de nous, comme le cerf, s'il avoit entendement, feroit de son chasseur. Car nostre gloire, nostre felicité et nostre contentement, c'est de vous veoir prises et de vous oster ce qui vous est plus cher que la vie” (133).

26. Vous, qui sçavez le prompt chemyn que faict ce feu … vous jugerez bien que entre deux si parfaictz subjectz n'arresta gueres Amour, qu'il ne les eust à son commandement, et qu'il ne les rendist tous deux si remplis de sa claire lumière, que leur penser, vouloir et parler n'estoient que flambe de cest Amour (138).

27. La jeunesse, qui en luy engendroit craincte, luy faisoit pourchasser son affaire le plus doulcement qu'il luy estoit possible (138).

28. Toutefois, la honte qui accompaigne les dames le plus qu'elle peult, la garda pour quelque temps de monstrer sa volunté (138).

29. Si est-ce que à la fin la forteresse du cueur, où l'honneur demeure, fut ruynée de telle sorte que la pauvre dame s'accorda en ce dont elle n'avoit poinct esté discordante (138).

30. La dame, comme je croys, plus esmerveillée que contente de ce bien, soupsonna incontinant, ou que son amour ne fust si grande qu'elle pensoit, ou qu'il eut trouvé en elle moins de bien qu'il n'estimoit, et ne regarda pas à sa grande honnesteté, patience et fidelité à garder son serment (139).

31. This is just one instance that contradicts Lajarte's assertion that the ideological oppositions that separate male and female devisants disappear when they become narrators. “Des Nouvelles,” 49.

32. Toutesfois, Amour, qui jamais n'est sans esperance, l'asseura que plus la fermeté de son amour estoit grande et congneue par tant d'experience, plus la joïssance en seroit longue et heureuse (140).

33. “Je vous prie, mes dames, trouvez-moy une femme qui ait esté si ferme, si patiente et si loyalle en amour que cest homme icy a esté” (140-41).

34. “C'est dommaige,” dist Oisille, “qu'il ne s'adressa à une femme aussy vertueuse que luy; car ce eust esté la plus parfaicte et la plus honneste amour, dont l'on oyst jamais parler” (141).

35. Such debates were practised in the “courts of love.”

36. “Vous en parlez bien à vos aises,” dist Simontault; “mais nous, qui sçavons que la chose vault, en debvons dire nostre oppinion. Quant est de moy, je l'estime à la premiere fois sot et à la dernière fol; car je croy que, en tenant promesse à sa dame, elle avoit autant ou plus de peyne que luy. Elle ne luy faisoit faire ce serment, sinon pour se faindre plus femme de bien qu'elle n'estoit” (141).

37. “Il me semble,” dist Saffredent, “que l'on ne sçauroit faire plus d'honneur à une femme de qui l'on desire telles choses, que de la prendre par force, car il n'y a si petite damoiselle qui ne veulle estre bien long temps priée. Et d'autres encores à qui il fault donner beaucoup de presens, avant que de les gaingner; d'autres qui sont si sottes, que par moyens et finesses on ne les peult avoir et gaingner; et envers celles-là, ne fault penser que à chercher les moyens. Mais, quant on a affaire à une si saige, qu'on ne la peut tromper, et si bonne qu'on ne la peult gaingner par parolles, ne presens, n'est-ce pas la raison de chercher tous les moyens que l'on peult pour en avoir la victoire? Et quant vous oyez dire que ung homme a prins une femme par force, croyez que ceste femme-là luy a osté l'esperance de tous autres moyens; et n'estimez moins l'homme qui a mis en dangier sa vie, pour donner lieu à son amour” (142).

Works Cited

Ferguson, Frances. “Rape and the Rise of the Novel.” Representations 20 (Fall 1987): 88-112.

Forrester, John. “Rape, Seduction, and Psychoanalysis.” In Rape edited by Sylvana Tomaselli and Roy Porter, 57-83. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.

Jourda, Pierre. Marguerite d'Angoulême, duchesse d'Alençon, reine de Navarre (1492-1549): Etude biographique et littéraire. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1930; reprinted, Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1966; Geneva: Slatkine, 1978.

Lajarte, Philippe de. “Des Nouvelles de Marguerite de Navarre à La Princesse de Clèves: Notes sur quelques transformations de l'écriture narrative de la renaissance à l'âge classique.” Nouvelle Revue du seizième siècle 6 (1988) 45-56.

Losse, Deborah N. “Distortion as a Means of Reassessment: Marguerite De Navarre's Heptameron and the ‘Querelle Des Femmes.'” Journal of Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 3 (1982): 75-84.

Olsen, Michel. Les Transformations du Triangle Erotique. Universitetsforlaget I Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1976: 152-82.

Tomaselli, Sylvana, and Roy Porter. Rape. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.