Against Marriage: The Correspondence of La Grande Mademoiselle / Edition 1

by Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, Joan DeJean

Overview

In seventeenth-century France, aristocratic women were valued by their families as commodities to be married off in exchange for money, social advantage, or military alliance. Once married, they became legally subservient to their husbands. The duchesse de Montpensier—a first cousin of Louis XIV—was one of very few exceptions, thanks to the vast wealth she inherited from her mother, who died shortly after Montpensier was born. She was also one of the few politically powerful women in France at the time to have been an accomplished writer.

In the daring letters presented in this bilingual edition, Montpensier condemns the alliance system of marriage, proposing instead to found a republic that she would govern, "a corner of the world in which . . . women are their own mistresses," and where marriage and even courtship would be outlawed. Her pastoral utopia would provide medical care and vocational training for the poor, and all the homes would have libraries and studies, so that each woman would have a "room of her own" in which to write books.

Joan DeJean's lively introduction and accessible translation of Montpensier's letters—four previously unpublished—allow us unprecedented access to the courageous voice of this extraordinary woman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226534923
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/01/2002
Series:	The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe
Edition description:	1
Pages:	115
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Joan DeJean is a Trustee Professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of a number of books, most recently Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle and The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France, both published by the University of Chicago Press.


Joan DeJean is a Trustee Professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of seven books, most recently Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France and Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Series
Acknowledgments
Introduction: La Grande Mademoiselle
Montpensier-Motteville Correspondance
Montpensier-Motteville Correspondence
Volume Editor's Bibliography
Series Editor's Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

“Joan DeJean’s introduction skillfully situates the texts within the struggles of Montpensier’s own life without ever allowing the two to become confused or conflated.”

Journal of European Studies - Pollie Bromilow

"Famous during her lifetime, a leading figure in the insurrection known as the Fronde, and France's richest woman, La Grande Mademoiselle was also a writer of considerable ability; she brings to her memoirs the unique double perspective of a woman and an insider, and they provide a rare portrait of aristocratic life during the most tumultuous and dazzling decades of the century."

New York Review of Books - Benedetta Craveri

This correspondence offers a unique entr[5]ee into mondain culture in the post-Fronde transition to Louis XIV’s personal rule. Better, perhaps, than any other single document of the period, it engages modern readers in the femninist literature of mid-century and makes them take seriously a discourse on women,s choices and women’s dreams that is too easily dismissed as pr[5]ecieuse posturing.

H-France Book Reviews - Carolyn Lougee Chappell