SOURCE: Bauschatz, Cathleen M. “‘Les Puissances de Vostre Empire’: Changing Power Relations in Marie de Gournay's Le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne from 1594 to 1626.” In Renaissance Women Writers: French Texts/American Contexts, edited by Anne R. Larsen and Colette H. Winn, pp. 189-208. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

[In the essay below, Bauschatz examines de Gournay's concept of the various uses of power in Le Proumenoiur. The critic also demonstrates how de Gournay's revisions to subsequent editions of the work illustrate her artistic maturation.]

In the dedicatory epistle to its first reader, Montaigne, before the original 1594 edition of her moralistic novel Le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne (Monsieur de Montaigne's Walk), Marie de Gournay stated that she hoped Montaigne would correct some of the errors in her book and also that in the process she might take pleasure in experiencing the power the essayist had over her: “C'est tout un, encore ne sçay-je si je ne prends pas volontiers plaisir à faire quelque niaiserie exprez, pour vous mettre, en me chastiant mon pere, à l'exercice de l'Empire que vous avez en moy”¹ (It's all the same, but still I'm not sure whether I don't take pleasure in doing some sort of foolishness on purpose in order to goad you, in chastising me, my father, to exercise the power which you have over me). The power of men over women was a central theme in the Proumenoir of 1594—both Montaigne's power as writer, reader, and adoptive father over Gournay, and the power exerted by various male characters over the novel's heroine, Alinda. Her father, the Persian Satrape, and her lover, Léontin, left Alinda very little control over her own destiny. But when Gournay revised this novel thirty years later for publication in the first volume of her complete works, L'Ombre (The Shadow) (1626),² we see that issues of power, among others, have been rethought. Gournay addresses these issues directly in her statements about the novel in its various prefaces and other “paratextes,” as well as indirectly in the revisions she makes to the novel itself.

When Gournay reprinted the Proumenoir in 1626, she made many changes in the book, partly in response to reactions by specific readers, but more important as well, through her developing sense of herself as a woman writer treating a woman character and writing for a general reader who might well also be female. Although the novel was originally written for Montaigne to read, in 1626 this is obviously no longer the case. While at the time of the 1594 Proumenoir, as in the 1595 “Préface” to Montaigne's Essais, she felt inhibited from taking on a strong narrative persona because she was a novice and a woman, by 1626 she has come to terms with this conflict. It is no accident that the Proumenoir is revised soon after the writing of the “Egalité” (Equality) and the “Grief” (Grievance), Gournay's best known feminist works. Rather than hiding or apologizing for her identity as a woman writer, Gournay now uses this identity as a source of strength and in some surprising ways.

In publishing her complete works, L'Ombre, Gournay wrote an introduction to the entire collection, “Advis au Lecteur” (Advice to the Reader), which gives us a sense of the identity she has developed as a woman writer, in the thirty years separating the volume from her first forays into literature, the Proumenoir and the Préface. The very existence of a collection of her complete works makes a statement about her vocation as a writer. We find in this “Advis” confident assertions that the book is a portrait of herself. Such a statement would have been impossible thirty years earlier, when she saw her career and her writing as totally subordinate to Montaigne's.

The “Advis au Lecteur” does contain many statements about the expected hostility of the reader, as we find in most of her work.³ She begins the “Advis” by squaring off with this imaginary reader: “c'est que sentant que tu es poinctilleux en chois d'Escrits, & que je suis poinctilleuse en chois de lecteurs; je cognois qu'on ne nous peut mieux accorder qu'en nous separant” (ij) (for sensing that you are particular in your choice of writings, and that I am particular in choosing readers; I know that no one can find a better way to make us agree than by separating us). Her readers may not like her, but then she does not like them, either! No longer apparently overwhelmed by their criticisms, she even suggests that these critics might be wrong, as she did earlier but only in defending Montaigne's Essais against critics. This self-confidence about her own work, despite opposition, would have been impossible in 1594, when she relished the “Empire” that her first reader and critic, Montaigne, had over her.

As she earlier hoped for Montaigne's Essais, she tells us that like herself, its mother, her book will try to “plaire à tous les sages, & desplaire à tous les fols” (please the wise, and displease the foolish) (ijv). Whether or not people like it, the book will present her as she is: “Ce volume est en fin d'un air tout particulier & tout sien: comme aussi suis-je moy-mesme” (This volume finally has a very particular appearance all its own, as I do) (ijv). But most readers do not value a woman writer: “qui daignast priser une femme qui se fust efforcée d'arriver à cet excez” (who would not deign to value a woman who endeavored to go to these lengths) (ijv-iij). Despite the defensiveness of her tone, Gournay does state her identity and purpose here in a new, forceful manner.

While the title of the book, L'Ombre, appears to be a negative one—still the image of the shadow also suggests the idea that the book reflects her as she is: “d'autant qu'il exprime la figure de mon esprit maistresse piece de mon estre” (so much so that it conveys the image of my mind, mistress of my being) (iij). She has learned from Montaigne that a book can represent its author, and she now dares to apply this principle to herself because she is now able to call herself an author. Furthermore, she states that the image of a young pine tree on her title page prefigures the favor her book hopes to find in the future. The strength Gournay and her book appear to have drawn from surviving the negative reactions of their readers will carry over to many of the forceful essays and translations in the volume, as well as to the revised novel, the Proumenoir.

Gournay also wrote an “Advis” or Preface to the revised Proumenoir itself, in 1626, in which she once again responds to criticisms, while she also shows that the book has had some measure of success, especially with aristocratic women readers. Whether or not Montaigne ever read the novel, apparently these women readers liked the story of Alinda and asked Gournay to reprint it, although they also asked for some changes:

Le Proumenoir ayant esté mis au jour dés ma jeunesse, je croirois avoir autant de tort de refuser quelques Dames du premier rang, qui me commandent de luy faire revoir la lumiere à present, que j'en aurois de le composer en l'aage où je suis aujourd'huy—bien que son histoire soit assaisonée d'advertissements exemplaires, & qu'elle represente la peine en suitte de la coulpe.⁴

The Proumenoir having come to light in my youth, I would believe myself to be equally wrong to refuse several Ladies of the first rank, who have asked me to bring it back to light now, as I would have been to compose it at the age I am today—even though the story is seasoned with exemplary warnings, as well as showing punishment following guilt.

She is reprinting the story in middle age, despite the fact that it treats love, an immoral topic. But, it is seasoned with exemplary warnings and shows pain followed by punishment. The first objection by women readers (that the story is immoral) is one that Gournay had already answered in the first edition of the Proumenoir, where it was evident that negative exemplarity was the moral of the story.

But in 1626 Gournay defends her daring to write on the topic of love, now with more than negative exemplarity as a justification. She lists ancient authors, including Plutarch, who treated the theme. As in the “Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes” (Equality of Men and Women), Gournay uses the authority of ancient male authors here to support her writing on a woman's topic—the subject of love.⁵ Of Plutarch, she cites, “son propre exemple en tant de divers accidens & discours de l'amour, qu'il a traictez jeune & vieil” (645) (his own example in so many anecdotes and discourses on love, which he treated as both a young and old man).⁶ Virgil is another author she mentions, for his treatment of Dido, a woman to whom Gournay frequently compares her heroine, Alinda. In citing Plutarch, Virgil, and others, Gournay now takes the topic of love more seriously than she did in 1594, when she felt obliged to apologize for it. She also connects the topic of love with her developing feminism. This connection becomes more explicit in the novel itself, where she discusses the rivalry between male and female conceptions of love.

A second readerly objection to which Gournay responds in the 1626 “Advis” provides us with more information about reception in the early seventeenth century, as well as its role in the evolving definition of the novel genre (646):

Une autre querelle, que le nouveau goust de ceste saison dresse à ce petit Livre, ou pour mieux dire à tous mes Escrits, mais à luy plus qu'aux autres, veu ce charactere de roman qu'il porte, c'est d'inserer en son texte quelque ornement en langue estranger, & de citer les Autheurs par leurs noms.

Another quarrel, which the new taste of this season addresses to my little book, or rather to all my writings, but to this one more than to the others, given the character of a novel which it takes on, is that I insert into the text some ornamentation in foreign languages, and that I cite authors by name.

As we have just seen in Gournay's use of male authorities to justify writing on the topic of love, the sort of argument from authority described here has always been one of her favorite rhetorical techniques. Most of the remainder of the “Advis,” however, is taken up with a response to readers who felt that she should not quote in a novel and especially that she should not quote Latin passages (as she did in 1594) or give the names of authors she cites. Gournay's real readers were no longer humanists like Montaigne (or like herself), but they were now frequently women or nobles who had not learned Latin or studied the classics.⁷ The Latin quotations in her text would have been perfectly appropriate in a humanist narrative of the sixteenth century, as they were in Montaigne's Essais. But Gournay witnesses in the early seventeenth century what John Lyons describes as “the transition from heavy reliance on textual authority to emphasis on observation and introspection.”⁸ This textual authority is no longer viewed by Gournay's readers as bearing any relationship to her story or application to their own lives.

In this quotation from the “Advis” we also see the first reference to Gournay's book as novel (“roman”), rather than story (“histoire” or “conte”), as it was characterized in 1594. In describing the book in this new way, she now appears to take the Proumenoir more seriously as a literary work in its own right, rather than simply as an anecdote she had told Montaigne and wanted to remind him of. But in defining her book as “roman,” she needs to come to terms with both contemporary expectations about this genre and its readers, most of them women. While these readers do not have the power (“Empire”) over her that Montaigne did, still they represent a force to be reckoned with. A few pages later she explains why she disagrees with some seventeenth-century readers, who do not want quotations in a novel. Gournay believes that the novel is just as prestigious (“glorieux”) as the more lofty genres of philosophy, politics, and so on. And, in her opinion, it needs to rely on authority as much as they do. In other words, she sees the novel as a rhetorical genre, rather than solely as an imaginative fictional creation. The exemplary nature of her story places it in the tradition of the ancient works she quotes, rather than in the lighter vein of the romance. The novel's goal, in her eyes, is still much closer to teaching (“instruire”) than to amusement (“plaire”). But readers do not seem to agree with her. The defense of the Latin quotations in the book, then, also entails a defense of the author's serious, moral intentions in writing it. These intentions are maintained in spite of the apparently more frivolous tastes of her contemporary public.

Gournay answers a third and related criticism of her book: to defend the many digressions found in the first edition of the Proumenoir, which readers did not like. Gournay herself (and here we see her close affinity to Montaigne) thought the digressions were the best part of the story (652):

Je puis justement representer … la brute & lourde humeur de ces gens icy, soient-ils Autheurs ou lecteurs, qui s'en vont si seichement apres leur narration toute crue, quoy qu'elle ouvre la carriere à tant de beaux & florissans discours, soit en la chose mesme, soit aupres d'elle tendant une favorable main à la digression.

I can justly represent … the brutal and heavy humor of these people, whether they be authors or readers, who march along so dryly after their raw narrative, even though it could open the way to so many beautiful and flourishing discourses, either on the subject itself or on a closely related one, lending a favorable hand to digression.

We see in the ensuing discussion that Gournay in fact is familiar with the evolution of the novel genre in the early seventeenth century, and that she has read many of the popular, especially Spanish, models. She proudly points out that Don Quixote, the Argenis, the Diana, the Arcadia, and others do use digression, as much as she does. Only the French taste (and here we must understand frivolous court and “salon” taste) refuses the serious, reflective side of the novel.

Although the “Advis” to the Proumenoir began by giving women readers credit for encouraging her to reprint the novel, it ends by showing these same readers as severe critics and expresses disappointment that they have not been able to appreciate the style and didactic goals of the book. She asks at the end of the “Advis”: “Demandes-tu si ce degoust qu'elle [la jeunesse de la Cour] a pour moy, provient de sa faute, ou de la mienne? Vrayement je ne sçay, mon bon amy” (655) (Do you ask whether the distaste which the young people at Court have for me comes from their fault, or from my own? Really I couldn't say, my good friend) Despite the antagonism toward readers expressed here, Gournay does seem to have moved beyond the earlier “power which you have over me” (“Empire que vous avez sur moy”) as a depiction of her relationship to one of them. Rather, she is now able to throw out a challenge to her presumably hostile reader: “toutesfois je sçay bien, que celle de nous deux qui a tort en cela, n'en daigneroit avoir pour un peu” (still I know perfectly well, that whichever of us women is wrong about this, will not deign to be so for very long) (655). The use of the feminine “celle” in this last quotation suggests one reason why Gournay now feels more equality with her reader than she did earlier: many of her current readers are women, and so do not intimidate her as Montaigne and other male humanist readers tended to do.

A third piece of the “paratexte” to the Proumenoir of 1626 is the letter to Montaigne that originally provided the novel's frame. Surprisingly, the “Epistre sur le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne—à luy-mesme” (Letter on Montaigne's Walk addressed to himself) retained in the 1626 edition, also contains some changes, and it inserts a new fictitious date of 1589 (rather than the original 1588). Despite the fact that Montaigne has been dead since 1592, Gournay in 1626 still maintains the pretense that the book is addressed to him. The letter begins, as before, with a description of the walk they took together (in 1588) during which they discussed the “tragiques accidents de l'amour recitez par Plutarque” (tragic accidents of love related by Plutarch) (655). She also repeats, in a slightly different form, the hope that Montaigne will send the book back to her with corrections (despite the fact that he is now deceased). Interestingly, she takes out the earlier statement that, although the topic of the book may appear inappropriate for a woman writer, still its purpose is to warn women to stay away from men (“l'utilité d'advertir les dames de se tenir en garde”). Negative exemplarity may no longer be her major objective in the book, now that its real readers are women. While the fiction of negative exemplarity for women was useful in promoting the book to men (and especially to Montaigne), Gournay no longer needs to maintain this fiction.

Instead of talking in this earlier way about her relationship to the reader, she now develops an apology or excuse for having taken the story from another author (Taillemont).⁹ In responding to this criticism, Gournay now underlines her own role as adapter of Taillemont and departs from the earlier convention of the short story (“nouvelle”); she acknowledges that she did make many changes in the story, rather than just repeating it verbatim. She underlines her importance as writer/narrator, which is a new direction in 1626. As she begins to throw off Montaigne's “empire” over her, she also asserts her own power over the previous (male) sources or authors she has drawn from.

In developing this response, Gournay paraphrases something which she has stated in the “Advis” to the Proumenoir—that a story is not just a series of events, but rather consists in what an author does with them:

Ce que je ne dis nullement pour relever le merite de mon ouvrage en cecy: mais seulement contre la simplesse de ceux qui presument qu'un conte ne consiste principalement qu'au fil de ses accidens: & qu'il ne peut appartenir ny faire honneur qu'à celuy qui l'auroit escrit le premier.

(658)

I say this not to point out the value of my own work here: but just against the simplicity of those who think that a story only consists in the series of events it contains: and that it cannot belong or give honor to anyone other than the person who wrote it in the first place.

This argument moves away from Gournay's more usual reliance on the authority of the past to stress the possibility of modern invention. Like most new discoveries in the “paratexte” to the Proumenoir of 1626, this one seems to respond to negative reactions by readers (“la simplesse de ceux”). Gournay's identity as an author has emerged almost in spite of her readers.

Not surprisingly, a final change, in the 1626 “Epistre,” is the omission of the playful invitation from 1594 to Montaigne, to the effect that she hopes he will find fault with the book and demonstrate “l'Empire que vous avez en moi.” Since his death this statement is neither realistic nor appropriate. But its omission may also indicate, in fact, that Gournay is beginning to assume power over both herself and her readers, as a writer.

The 1626 “Epistre” concludes however with an affectionate address of Montaigne, which was in fact not found in the more formal 1594 “Epistre”: “Recevez quand à vous, un million de bons jours de vostre fille; aussi glorieuse de ce tiltre, qu'elle la seroit d'estre mere des Muses mesmes” (658) (As for you, please receive a million “Good Days” from your daughter; as proud of that title, as she would be to be mother of the Muses themselves). Written at the age of sixty, this is a surprisingly emotional expression of her continuing love for Montaigne and pride in their relationship. But this closing also expresses her sense that she has grown up and accomplished a significant artistic creation (“mere des Muses mesmes”).¹⁰ She has grown from literary daughter to literary mother.¹¹ In expressing her friendship for Montaigne in a direct way, here, Gournay in fact takes control of these emotions herself and begins to move away from his “empire” over her. Rather, she expresses her own feelings and point of view, toward him.

Gournay is much less influenced by her imaginary reader Montaigne, in this “Epistre,” than she was in 1594. She is more interested, however, in defining her own role—her authority—as writer of the book. This change is understandable, as she places the book alongside the considerable number of her other writings. This new authorial voice will be even more evident when we look at the revised version of the Proumenoir itself.

When we turn to the text of the novel itself in 1626, we see that Gournay does make many changes in the story, despite her stated resistance to doing so, in the “Advis.” Most obviously, she translates into French all the Latin quotations, which salon readers apparently did not like. This fact is all the more surprising, in that the “Advis” defended the use of Latin and did not even mention that she had made the translations! It is important to evaluate the significance of this change for Gournay's role as author in 1626.

Early in the 1626 version, Gournay explains, as she did not in 1594, that she is applying the experience of Ariadne and Dido, by these quotations, to that of her heroine, Alinda (660): “J'applique icy & partout ce Livret avec trop de miserable correspondance, les vers d'Ariadne & de Didon à ceste Princesse” (I am applying here and throughout this little book, with almost too wretched a resemblance, the verses of Ariadne and Dido to this Princess). This statement, which follows in 1626 eight lines of French poetry describing Alinda's upbringing, stresses the relevance of the poetry to the story. This relevance has been provided by its author, Gournay (“J'applique”), whose literary training has allowed her to enrich Taillemont's story with classical parallels, as she did in 1594. A few pages later, after another added line of French verse, she adds another explanation to the reader: the poetry in the book is only hers through translation (667): “Voicy les recits de l'histoire Poetique: & je declare icy, qu'en quelque lieu que j'insere des vers en ma prose, ils ne sont miens que par la version” (Here is the account of the poetic story, and I declare here, that wherever I insert verses into my prose, they are only mine through translation). Although she appears to apologize for these translations, still the apologies throw her own role as translator into relief, with a repetition of the first-person singular rare in her work before L'Ombre.¹² The translations give Gournay a stronger role as narrator than did the Latin quotations. The French passages substitute a contemporary woman's voice for those of the ancient male authors she originally quoted. In this way the translations help to resolve the conflict between humanism and feminism in the book. They make the parallels with ancient literary works accessible to contemporary women readers.¹³ The translations, however, are not the only changes made in the text of 1626.

Almost every section of the 1626 Proumenoir contains major revisions. Although the action of the story remains the same, the scenes of real interest to Gournay are those she adapts: conversations, monologues, and digressions—talk rather than action. The first section to be revised is the initial conversation between father (the “Sattrappe”)¹⁴ and daughter Alinda, which treats not only her obligation to marry the “Roy de Parthes” as part of a peace treaty but also lengthy considerations about political theory and the relationship between monarch and subject, which may not seem appropriate for a young woman of twenty. The changes in 1626 show a closer relationship between father and daughter than was found in the 1594 version, which stressed Alinda's relationship to her mother;¹⁵ but also the 1626 version takes Alinda more seriously as a member of the royal family (her father is the King of Persia's uncle) and laments the fact that now she will never be able either to rule or to provide an heir to the throne. The Sattrappe describes the way in which he has raised her (“à l'esperance de perpetuer en ma maison la Grandeur & la vertu des premiers Roys du monde” (in the hope of perpetuating in my family the greatness and virtue of the first kings of the world) and exhorts her to rememer her worth. He then discourses on the art of being a good king but downplays the notion of power while stressing instead equality between subject and ruler (661): “Il faut quitter l'Empire sur les hommes, ou que nos passions & nos interests particuliers le quittent sur nous. Apprenons, apprenons, m'amie, le mestier de commander” (We must leave behind power over men, or our passions and particular interests will leave this behind for us. Let us learn, my dear, the true profession of ruling). Gournay seems to be developing here an egalitarian model of leadership, based on consensus between ruler and subject and proposed, surprisingly, to a young woman. The phrase, “l'Empire sur les hommes,” reverses in a striking way the relationship of power between Gournay and Montaigne, expressed in 1594 as “l'Empire que vous avez en moy.” While Gournay suggests here that a young woman may rule over men, she already begins to move beyond power to suggest equality between classes as well as between genders.¹⁶ In the ensuing pages, the Sattrappe addresses his daughter with remarkably republican ideas such as: “Orgueil à part, ma fille, tes subjets, le masque levé, sont tes compagnons” (All pride aside, my daughter, your subjects, once the mask is removed, are your equals); and “De plus, tous les hommes estans nais soubs les loix de l'égalité, chacun de ceux qui vivent soubs ton sceptre estoit capable d'estre ce que tu es” (Furthermore, because all men are born under the laws of equality, each of those who live beneath your scepter was capable of being what you are) (663). In concluding this development, Gournay has him add a reflection on the singularity of telling Alinda all this, despite the fact that she is a woman (664):

Tu m'as porté, m'amie, outre les termes du suject present: neantmoins c'est tout un, ces instructions te pouvans servir ailleurs: & ne me desplaist pas de t'avoir entretenuë de chose si serieuse, quoy que jeune & femme: car puisque ces qualitez ne te desrobent point la hardiesse & l'authorité de regir les hommes, il seroit hors de raison qu'elles t'en desrobassent la science.

(664-665)

You have brought me, my dear, beyond the limits of the present subject: still it's all the same, since these instructions can serve you elsewhere: and it doesn't displease me to have talked with you on such a serious topic, even though you are young and a woman: for since these qualities do not deny you the boldness and the authority to rule over men, it would be wrong for them to deny you the knowledge of how to do this.

In the context of the much debated French Salic law, this suggestion that women may be able to rule is surprising (and new in 1626).¹⁷ This digression also makes a case for women's education (“la science”) and suggests ideas already contained in Gournay's “Egalité,” about the theoretical equality of men and women. None of this discussion was contained in the 1594 version of the novel, and it may show us that Gournay is now more in tune with the political and social thought of her time than she explicitly admits in the “Advis.” Feminism may have brought her to consider equality between ruler and subject, as well as between men and women: her consciousness has now been raised on all questions of power.¹⁸

Alinda, Mlle de Gournay, and their women readers emerge in 1626 as intelligent, responsible citizens, fully able to comprehend the intricacies of political power and even, if need be, capable of wielding it themselves. Gournay shows us that her feminism has led her to consider the nature of political power itself and to question the authoritarian, patriarchal model for it inherited from the sixteenth century. None of this, perhaps wisely, was suggested in the “Advis” or the “Epistre” to the Proumenoir of 1626.

A second and very different major development added in 1626 is a long digression on the nature of love: particularly, what causes it, and whether true love is primarily physical or spiritual. This digression is added as a sort of gloss to the original scene where the novel's heroine, Alinda, en route to meet her fiancé (the King of Parthia), falls in love instead with Léontin, the son of a gentleman at whose home they are lodged. Significantly, the additions stress primarily the process by which Alinda (rather than Léontin) falls in love, and they address the difference between male and female conceptions of love. Gournay also adds some new French verse passages, not in the original, which highlight Léontin's beauty, grace, and articulateness.

One interesting feature of this development, when one is aware of Gournay's fascination with language, is her statement that Léontin wins Alinda over by his beautiful speech (“beau langage”) as well as by his grace and good manners (“graces & gentillesses”) (668), not just through his beauty. As in all her rhetorical work, Gournay quotes several ancient and modern authorities, this time to the effect that love (at least for women) is not only physical. The principal arguments of this digression seem to be: that although we don't really know where love comes from, still it is clearly not just a result of physical beauty; and that Neoplatonic views of love are more appropriate. She explicitly states that women are more capable of this spiritual love than men are and that women need to encourage men to understand spiritual love. Just as Gournay has begun the 1626 Proumenoir by redefining the nature of political power along what could be called a feminist model, she continues in the book to redefine love as a spiritual power, which view she explicitly labels as feminist. Because she cannot eliminate the subject of love completely from the book, she substitutes a feminist version of love.

She continues to develop the rivalry between male and female conceptions of love, with a repetition of the word “empire,” which we have seen to be central in the 1626 edition (673):

& puis encores que le sexe masculin y [à la beauté] vise plus que l'autre en ses desirs, estant neantmoins tous deux jettez en mesme moule, elle [la beauté] n'a pas consequemment de juste & naturel empire sur les coeurs: les choses vrayement naturelles, estans universelles & necessitées. Tel est l'empire des graces qui s'estend par tout, bien que plus & moins, selon la disposition, capacité ou incapacité, des objects qu'elles rencontrent pour spectateurs.

And then since the male sex is more attracted to beauty than is the female, even though both are made from the same mold, beauty, therefore, does not have a just and natural power over our hearts: for the truly natural tendencies are universal and necessary. Such is the power of grace which extends everywhere, although a little more or less, according to the disposition, capacity or incapacity, of the observer.

The word “empire,” repeated in this passage, is significant in the context of Gournay's definition of political power in 1626, as well as her earlier treatment of Montaigne's power over her, in 1594. The topic of love is tied to these other discussions because it, too, is a question of power. The fact that Alinda now falls in love with Léontin's “beau langage” shows her to be making in part a rational choice rather than only succumbing to a fatal physical attraction, which is more the case in his fleeting love for her. There is also a feminist argument contained here: because the female conception of love based on grace rather than only beauty is more universal, it is therefore truer: it has, in fact, more power (“empire”).

A third major area of change in 1626 comes during Léontin's tirade, as he realizes that he is in love with Alinda and tries to persuade her not to marry the King of Parthia. Gournay adds some new arguments here by showing the power Alinda has over Léontin, which he even describes himself.

While the 1594 edition contained a short (three-line) and economical Latin quotation, describing the fact that Léontin noticed her (“spectat & audit”), the 1626 version substitutes a twelve-line French passage translated from Sappho. This passage is much more passionate than the earlier Latin verse, and it highlights Léontin's subjugation to Alinda. Like all the French verse in 1626, this selection is more immediate and more closely linked to the text than was the earlier Latin quotation. It brings into focus the emotional and psychological impact of the scene, rather than the narrator's moralistic conclusions to it. The passage also throws the heroine's power over the hero (described as weak, enslaved, and transported) into relief.

The 1626 version of the story then repeats a scene from 1594, where Leontin approaches Alinda to reveal his passion for her. But the later version stresses Alinda's role in this scene, and particularly, once more, her power: “Alinda le veid vaciller, le prevint doucement: comme les personnes vrayement naies à dominer, dominent leur Grandeur mesme, pour se rendre affables & benignes” (678) (Alinda saw him hesitate, and encouraged him gently as those who are really born to lead, overcome even their greatness, to make themselves gracious and kindly). The 1626 version also adds a much more declamatory conclusion by Léontin, stating that the proposed marriage prostitutes Alinda, violating Cupid and his mother, and finally addresses Alinda herself:

Miserable beauté! miserable jeunesse! miserable fleur de toutes les graces & delices! vous n'aurez donc jamais le plaisir de recognoistre & de contempler en l'ardeur d'un gentil esprit quelles sont les puissances de vostre empire: & renoncerez pour le reste de vostre vie, à vous enrichir d'une si douce obligation, que seroit celle d'une belle ame qui vous possederoit!

(681)

Wretched beauty! Wretched youth! Wretched flower of all the graces and delights! You will never, then, have the pleasure of recognizing and contemplating in the ardor of a pleasing spirit what the strengths of your power are: and you will give up for the rest of your life the possibility of enriching yourself with such a sweet obligation, as that of a beautiful soul which would possess you!

In the 1594 version of this argument Léontin stressed military ethics and Alinda's responsibility to provide a male heir; this addition turns our attention once again to Alinda's power (“empire”) through love: if she consents to an arranged marriage, she will never be able to experience this power. Passages like this one may contain the key to Gournay's surprising interest in love, in this version of the novel, written at the age of sixty, soon after publishing two feminist tracts. Love is a feminist topic, for her, because it can demonstrate the power of women over men. But this power, like the political power described earlier, should be democratic or reciprocal, with respect to “une belle ame qui vous possederoit.” By eventually following Léontin, Alinda will choose the “Empire” of love rather than that of political power. In 1626 this is a conscious choice, while in 1594 it was simply a result of blind passion.

In the 1626 version, Gournay as author feels much freer than in 1594 to express Alinda's emotions and physical sensations, when she falls in love with Léontin. Although these additions may be reception driven, part of an attempt to imitate the genre of the “roman sentimental,” still it would be hard to deny that the narrator seems to enjoy the more subtly erotic aspects of the description of the storm (“orage”) of emotions that comes over Alinda as well as a certain shivering (“quelque frisson”) (682). While the 1594 text described feelings contained within her breast, in 1626 this becomes “en son beau sein pantelant du ressentiment de ses infortunes” (in her beautiful breast heaving with resentment against her misfortunes). While 1594 relates that a glance (“oeillade”) was exchanged, 1626 elaborates on this and, although condemning the exchange, admits that sensual pleasure (“volupté”) was as significant a result as the misery stressed in 1594. Gournay also translates a short Latin passage into French, in 1626, expanding metaphors describing the flame of love. She no longer hides behind Latin quotations to express things she may hesitate to say in French, as she did in 1594, perhaps following Montaigne's example in “Sur des vers de Virgile.”

The “tête à tête” between Alinda and Léontin is interrupted, as Gournay repeats an earlier statement from 1594: her goal is not to describe their love, but to bemoan it. She reminds us that she is only describing all this because punishment followed the guilty actions (684). In 1626 these excuses hardly still seem true, however. Rather, Gournay now has the courage to describe romantic love from a woman's point of view and even to enjoy this description. She also adds ten lines of French poetry (replacing the earlier five lines of Latin), which in fact do paint the fiery progress of love, in detail. The description of love in all its fury now predominates over its ostensible condemnation. Surely this change is owing in part to Gournay's sense as a woman writer of what women readers really want, as opposed to what male writers think women should read.

A fourth scene that undergoes extensive transformation in 1626 contains a description of Alinda's turmoil, as she eventually decides to give in to Léontin, with a declamatory speech (as in 1594) in which she bemoans the bad example that she sets to future generations of women. Despite Gournay's determination to keep the “lesson” in this part of the book, still the 1626 version seems more positive, adds extenuating factors (Alinda's upbringing and inexperience), delves into Alinda's psyche more extensively, and now speaks of the young lovers' flight as hidden under the veil of clandestine marriage (“soubs un voile de nopces clandestines”) (686). Like the other discussions of love in 1626, this one presents Alinda's experience in a more accepting manner, rather than condemning it as the earlier version consistently did.

While the first edition stated that Alinda did not give in to Léontin without great mental conflict, the 1626 Proumenoir analyzes that conflict in terms of divisions within the self. The 1626 version acknowledges that this passion has become part of herself (“si sa passion & elle se peuvent distinguer icy”), whereas 1594 saw it as foreign to her and largely owing to Leontin's manipulations. This change conforms to what we see as greater emphasis on Alinda's responsibility, control, autonomy, in 1626. She is no longer just a victim, as she was earlier, but she now has some control over her feelings and actions. Issues of power over herself are now as important as those of power over others.

The central scene in the book contains Alinda's tragic lament on what her family, friends, and future generations will think and say about her actions. This is largely the same as in 1594, although 1626 adds a few sentences underlining her importance as a woman to the Persian Empire—her exemplarity is not only negative, here:

Est-il dit que je precipite ce precieux honneur: rendu si souverainement important en moy, par dessus toutes les femmes, par l'importance de ma personne; heritiere du diademe de Cyrus, rançon du Roy des Roys, rançon de l'Empire?

(686)

Will it be said that I have thrown away this precious honor, which has become so supremely important to me, above all women, by the importance of my person; inheritor of the crown of Cyrus, ransom of the King of Kings, ransom of the Empire?

In this passage the use of “Empire” as a noun to refer to the Persian Empire makes explicit the connection, already latent in the text, between notions of power of various kinds and that of empire, the ultimate source of power for Alinda as a member of the royal family.

While the 1594 version stressed her horror at what she had done (“l'horreur de mon exemple”), the later version questions whether she really does regret her actions because they have now become part of her. Although Gournay ostensibly still criticizes this tendency in Alinda, it is obvious that she is also swept away by the description of a strong and overwhelming passion to see her heroine's point of view as well as the moralizing stance she must adopt as narrator (and which earlier supported only Alinda's self-flagellation and self-denial). Gournay as narrator now identifies much more closely with Alinda the character than she did earlier.

Although Alinda states that she would like to be “cured” of this passion, if necessary, through death, the narrator questions how sincere this desire is: “si les amans vrayement picquez, c'est à dire insensez, peuvent vrayement desirer de s'y mettre: & s'ils ne prenoient plaisir, d'enflammer exprés les amorces de leur propre passion” (687) (as if lovers who are really stung, that is who have lost their senses, can really desire to be cured, and as if they don't take pleasure in purposely inflaming the beginnings of their own passion). In fact, it is useless for Alinda to try to “root out” (“déraciner”) Léontin from her mind because her mind has become the image of Léontin himself (“la figure mesme de Leontin”).

What we take away from this scene is a strong sense of Alinda's love for Léontin, which is presented in this later version as an active, conscious part of her identity—not a result of passive victimization. As in the previous example, the passages of poetry added here continue to belie or subvert Gournay's stated purpose to bemoan and condemn Alinda's actions.¹⁹ These striking visual metaphors strengthen our picture of Alinda's passion as something larger than an excuse for moralizing. The novel has become more literary and less exemplary than it was in 1594.

The action of the novel in 1626 unfolds essentially as it did in 1594, although there are additions by the narrator in almost every scene, which make the descriptions more vivid. Toward the end of the story, the 1594 version added (in Latin) a quotation of Ariadne's lament (by Catullus) and a long (eighteen page) digression on women's education, beginning with the opinion that “Ces vers de la chetive Ariadné devroient estre escrits par tout dans les heures des dames” (These verses by the wretched Ariadne should be written everywhere in ladies' books of hours) (41-41v). In 1626, this entire development (as well as the Latin verse) is gone. While the 1594 version stressed the negative exemplarity of Ariadne's and Alinda's stories, which illustrated the principle that women should read in order to learn what kinds of behavior to avoid, in 1626 this entire moral lesson has disappeared! No doubt Gournay's women readers found the digression boring and irrelevant, out of place at the moment of the heroine's death. The defense of digressions in the 1626 “Advis au Proumenoir” seemed to imply as much, although Gournay did not reveal there that she had in fact eliminated the major digression from the book. But when we see this omission in the light of the additions in 1626, it is possible to speculate about what other reasons Gournay may have had for removing the digression. Her narrative project in the Proumenoir seems to have changed—from a moralistic demonstration of negative exemplarity to a much more positive exploration of the psychology of love, which has value in itself as a form of experience and as one step in the formation of a woman's identity. In 1626 Gournay allows herself to express these views, which have in addition the advantage of appealing to the literary taste of her time. Rather than impose her earlier belief, largely inherited from humanist authors like Vives, that women should read to receive chastisement and moral instruction, Gournay now has learned through experience that women, like men, may also read for pleasure, escapism, and emotional catharsis. The 1626 poetic passages that partially displace the digression of 1594 bear out our sense that Gournay now outlines a different role for her reader than she did earlier, more in line with the appreciation of metaphor than with the absorption of a moral lesson. She has moved closer to “plaire” and further from “instruire,” on the aesthetic continuum.

In the light of Gournay's defensive statements about her novel in the “Advis au Proumenoir” of 1626, the actual changes made to it are surprising and even at times astonishing. They involve nothing less than a revolution in the genre of the book, the depiction of its heroine, and, most important, in the role it outlines for its author and her relationship to the reader. These changes follow some metamorphosis in social and literary climate from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. But they also mirror some internal developments on the part of Gournay herself, who seems to have undergone a transformation between 1594 and 1626, paralleling the transformation undergone by her heroine, Alinda.²⁰

The word “Empire,” repeated throughout the 1626 version of the Proumenoir, contains a key to Gournay's preoccupations at this time and also links the seemingly disparate elements of the book to each other and to Gournay's development as a woman writer. While “Empire” was originally defined as the power Montaigne as father-figure had over Gournay, his adoptive daughter, in 1626 this definition has changed. “Empire” now refers to not only the Persian Empire but also issues of political and personal power, which Gournay links in anticipation of the twentieth-century feminist realization that “the personal is political.” Throughout the book she now struggles to understand the nature of the relationship between ruler and subject, as well as the nature of the power that men and women exert over each other. Both kinds of power, spiritual as well as physical in 1626, should ideally involve reciprocity rather than only dominance and coercion.

The exploration of “les puissances de vostre Empire” also extends to a new understanding of the relationship between reader and writer, for Gournay as well as between Gournay as author and her sources or “authorities.” Although she earlier invested her readers with excessive power over her, Gournay now is able to express herself forcefully as a writer and as a woman. The “Advis au Proumenoir” seemed to imply that her relationship with readers was largely negative: she had won her right to be called an author through a battle with these inconsiderate slanderers (“calomniateurs”). But the Proumenoir itself, in 1626, actually demonstrates a much more positive relationship with readers than the two “Advis” imply. Gournay transforms her novel in part through responsiveness to the requests of readers and comes part way from “instruire” to “plaire” to meet their desire for a love story expressed in French, rather than a moralistic tract laced with Latin quotations. Gournay's role as translator and adaptor of earlier material shows us another facet of her “Empire,” which now involves integration and interpretation of her sources rather than only quotation and citation.

The final “Empire” that Gournay may still need to master, in 1626, is power over her own emotions, a central concern for “Cartesian women” of her time.²¹ Although the objectives of her book are defined in the “Advis” with rationalism and objectivity, the changes she actually makes in the story reveal her own emotionalism and physicality.²² In allowing this second version of the novel to be published, however, Gournay may move “beyond power” to an acceptance of herself as a woman as well as a writer. This acceptance is partially expressed in the statement found in her “Advis au Lecteur,” that the book reflects her as she is: “maistresse piece de mon estre.” Like Montaigne, Gournay comes toward the end of her life to accept her physical and emotional traits as a human being, even when they may conflict with her moral and rational program as a writer. In moving away from the “Empire” that Montaigne had over her in 1594, Gournay has nonetheless internalized his message by now disengaging the “Empire” of self-repression and moving instead toward self-acceptance.

Notes

1. Marie de Gournay, Le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne, ed. Patricia Francis Cholakian (Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1985), 4. Emphasis mine, as is the case throughout this study.

2. Marie de Gournay, L'Ombre de la Damoiselle de Gournay (Paris: Jean Libert, 1626). This volume was consulted at the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Although Gournay revised the Proumenoir again in the later volumes of her collected works, Les Advis (1634 and 1641), I have selected the 1626 edition because it illustrates most dramatically the emergence of her authorial voice after the death of Montaigne. A separate study of each of the other two revised versions requires more space than I have here.

3. See for example the 1595 “Préface” to Montaigne's Essais, which complained: “Tu devines ja, Lecteur, que je me veux plaindre du froid recueil, que nos hommes ont fait aux Essais” (You already guess, Reader, that I want to complain about the cold reception that people have given our Essays), “Préface sur les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, par sa fille d'alliance,” ed. François Rigolot, in Montaigne Studies 1 (1989): 22-54; citation at 23.

4. Marie de Gournay, “Advis sur la nouvelle édition du Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne,” L'Ombre (644).

5. In his Etudes sur la littérature féminine au XVII^e siècle: Mademoiselle de Gournay, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Madame de Villedieu, Madame de Lafayette (Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publications, Inc., 1990), Constant Venesoen comments on the use of male authorities to make feminist arguments in the Egalité: “Mais, soit qu'elle passe outre la leçon ‘anti-féministe’, soit qu'elle préfère l'ignorer et brandir des références qui prouveraient le contraire, toujours est-il que la sagesse antique, de tradition gréco-latine ou judéo-chrétienne, lui sert de solide rempart contre le mépris du mérite féminin” (2: 27) (But, whether she glosses over the “anti-feminist” lesson, or whether she prefers to ignore it and brandish references that seem to prove the contrary, still it remains that ancient wisdom, of the greco-latin or judeo-christian tradition, serves her as a solid rampart against scorn at feminine merit).

6. Citations from “L'Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes” and “Grief des Dames” are from Marie de Gournay: Fragments d'un discours féminin, ed. Elyane Dezon-Jones (Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1988).

7. In his Naissance de l'écrivain: sociologie de la littérature à l'âge classique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1985), Alain Viala describes the “para-scholarly” education received by most young girls, from tutors, which did not include Latin: “De plus, l'instruction restreinte donnée aux filles, ne passant pas par les collèges, ignorait en général les lettres, la tâche des précepteurs se bornant à l'apprentissage de la lecture et de l'écriture, en laissant la plus large place à l'éducation morale, à la civilité et à la religion” (138) (Furthermore, the limited instruction given to girls, who did not go to school, generally left out literature, while the task of tutors was limited to teaching, reading, and writing, leaving the greatest role to moral instruction, to manners, and to religion).

8. See John Lyons, Exemplum: The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 238.

9. She claims her story to be from Claude de Taillemont, Discours des champs faëz à l'honneur, et exaltation de l'amour, et des dames (Lyon: Michel Du Bois, 1553): “Ny ne suis pas de ceux qui croyent, que celuy qui prend l'argument d'un conte quelque part, ne puisse avoir autant de merite, s'il le recite de bonne grace, que si l'argument mesme estoit sien” (657) (Nor am I one of those who believes, that the person who takes the argument of a story from somewhere else, cannot have as much merit, if he tells it with grace, as if the argument itself were his own).

10. Tilde Sankovitch notes that Gournay does not publish anything until after Montaigne's death: “After Montaigne's death, Marie de Gournay finds it possible to become her own champion, and to complete, once and for all, her journey toward her constantly pursued and constant self.” See “Marie le Jars de Gournay: The Self-Portrait of an Androgynous Hero,” in French Women and the Book: Myths of Access and Desire (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1988), 83.

11. See Philippe Desan's treatment of Gournay's transition from daughter to mother of the Essais in “‘Cet orphelin qui m'estoit commis’: la préface de Marie de Gournay à l'édition de 1635 des Essais,” Montaigne Studies 2, no. 2 (1990): 58-67.

12. Dezon-Jones shows that not only does Gournay refer to herself as “sa fille d'alliance” on the title page of the 1594 edition of the Proumenoir as well as on that of the 1595 edition of Montaigne's Essais, but that she also wrote an autobiographical sketch of herself, “Copie de la Vie de la Demoiselle de Gournay,” entirely in the third person. See “Marie de Gournay: le je/u/ palimpseste,” L'Esprit Créateur 23, no. 2 (1983): 26-36.

13. On the role of women as writers and readers of translation in the English Renaissance, see Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators and Writers of Religious Works, ed. Margaret Patterson Hannay (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1985); and Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475-1640 (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1982).

14. The spelling of “Satrape” in 1594 becomes “Sattrappe” in 1626.

15. See Patricia F. Cholakian's discussion of the importance of Alinda's mother to the story, in her introduction to the 1594 Proumenoir (21-22).

16. On this subject see Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (New York: Summit Books, 1985).

17. Ian Maclean suggests that debate over the Salic Law was part of the “Querelle des Femmes” in the seventeenth century. See his Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610-1652 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 259.

18. See Carolyn Lougee's discussion of the connections between feminism and other social movements in the seventeenth century in ‘Le Paradis des Femmes’: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976).

19. The poetic passages describe Alinda variously as a doe fleeing with an arrow in her side, then as a Bacchante, and then (as frequently) engulfed in “une si belle flamme” (688-689).

20. Tilde Sankovitch sees this transformation as an analog to the process of alchemical transformation, which also interested Gournay (83).

21. See Erica Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

22. See Constant Venesoen's statement that: “L'histoire d'Alinda et de Léontin, sirupeuse ou naïve, si on veut, révèle un rêve et un destin. Elle lève aussi le voile sur la sensibilité de Mlle de Gournay” (22) (The story of Alinda and of Léontin, syrupy or naïve, if you will, reveals a dream and a destiny. It also discloses Mlle de Gournay's sensitivity).

Bibliography

Sixteenth-Century Editions

Gournay, Marie le Jars de. Le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne, par sa fille d'alliance. Paris: Abel L'Angelier, 1594.

———. “Preface” to Montaigne's Essais. Paris: Abel L'Angelier, 1595. Reprinted with revisions in the 1598, 1600, 1604, 1611, 1617, 1625, and 1635 editions of the Essais.

———. Bienvenue de Monseigneur le Duc d'Anjou (Abrégé d'institution pour le prince souverain). Paris: Fleury Bourriquant, 1608.

———. Adieu de l'Ame du Roy de France et de Navarre, Henry le Grand à la Royne, avec la Defence des Pères Jesuites. Paris: Fleury Bourriquant, 1610.

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Modern Editions

Gournay, Marie le Jars de. Le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne. Ed. Patricia Francis Cholakian. Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1985.

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English Translation

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