Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 05-03-08
Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne,
Comtesse de La Fayette /LaFayette /Lafayette (1634-1693)
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"WE DEVISED THE PLAN OF OUR STORY."
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Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne was born and raised in Paris, to members of the minor nobility. Her father died when Marie was 15, and in the following year her mother married a member of the Sevigne family, which brought Marie a connection to Madame de Sevigne, who would become her closest friend. Marie Madeleine became an attendant to the queen, Anne of Austria, and began the study of classical literature and modern languages under the scholar-satirist Gilles Menage, who would remain her mentor for years. It was Menage who introduced her to the salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudery.
At 20, Marie Madeleine was married to Francois, Comte de La Fayette, of Auvergne, a widower 18 years older than she; the couple had two sons. For about five years, Madame de la Fayette lived part of the time in Auvergne and part in Paris. In Auvergne, she helped her husband deal with his family's debts. In Paris she continued to be part of salon life --- at Scudery's, at Madame de Sable's at Port-Royal, and at the Duchesse de Montpensier's.
It was as part of Montpensier's salon that La Fayette produced her first published writing, a pen-portrait of Sevigne. It was printed in the 1659 Divers portraits, a collection arranged by Jean Segrais, an established writer and Montpensier's secretary. A longer work, La Princesse de Montpensier, would be published anonymously in 1662; it was known in salon and court circles to have been written by La Fayette, perhaps under the guidance of Menage. It contained "imaginary adventures," but was loosely based on the life of one of Montpensier's ancestors.
By the end of 1660, La Fayette was living permanently in Paris, while her husband remained in Auvergne. There was no formal separation; her husband visited occasionally and signed papers allowing her to control her own finances. She also began the friendship with the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, which would last until his death. All was done so discreetly that there was no gossip, even in a small society that relished gossip.
In 1661 the 17-year-old Princess Henrietta of England married Louis XIV's brother, Philippe, and the 27-year-old La Fayette soon became part of her inner circle. In 1664, at Henrietta's request, La Fayette began to write Histoire de Madame Henriette d'Angleterre; she would end it with Henrietta's death in 1670.
In the mid-1660s Jean Segrais left Montpensier's service and became part of a salon that La Fayette had established at her home in Paris. In 1669 the first part of Zayde, histoire espagnole, was published under Segrais' name (the second would follow in 1671). In his memoirs, Segrais identified La Fayette as the work's "principal author," but it is difficult to know just what this means. Contemporary correspondence and memoirs suggest that collaborative "salon writing" took different forms. Sometimes an author would bring a piece to the group for comments and suggestions; in other cases, several individuals would write a section to be inserted into the work. Zayde, (or Zaide, in modern French versions) with its several interpolated tales, seems to be the one work attributed to La Fayette that would fit the latter method.
During the 1670's La Fayette and La Rouchefoucauld, both in failing health, appear to have worked together on La Princesse de Cleves. Segrais may have helped in the early stages, but he left Paris permanently in 1676. The novel was published anonymously in 1678, and although La Fayette denied authorship for both herself and La Rouchefoucauld, their closest friends believed it to have been their collaborative effort.
In 1680 La Rouchefoucauld died, followed by La Fayette's husband three years later. Her sons were established, her health continued to fail; but La Fayette still went to court and sent reports to Sevigne when her friend was out of town. She also began to write a historical account of this period, but all of it has been lost except for one part that covers less than two years, published after her death as Memoires de la cour de France pour les annees 1688 et 1689.
Another short work, La Comtesse de Tende, was also published posthumously, and attributed to La Fayette six years after its first anonymous printing. Some critics suggest that La Fayette wrote it during the 1650s; others believe that (if the work is indeed hers) it was a later work.
The portrait of Sevigne, the memoir of Henrietta of England, the account of 1688-89, are written solely by La Fayette; in La Princesse de Montpensier, Zayde, and La Princesse de Cleves, we hear her voice (if not alone); we don't know about La Comtesse de Tende. Reading them all will let you hear that voice.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
Portrait of Mme. Sevigne
Histoire de Madame Henriette d'Angleterre
Memoires de la cour de France pour les annees 1688 et 1689
La princesse de Cleves
La princesse de Montpensier
La comtesse de Tende
Zayde, histoire espagnoleInformation about secondary sources.
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1. In English:
(a) Links to the two parts of La Princesse de Montpensier, translated and introduced by Oliver C. Colt. (Here and at #1b. below you can also search for all uses of a particular word.)
(b) Links to the individual chapters of La Princesse de Cleves. (And at another site, an abbreviated 1777 version, of interest for the anonymous translator's brief introduction "To the Reader," defending the work against the accusation "that it contains no moral.")
(c) La Comtesse de Tende, translated by Christy Sheffield Sanford.
2. In French:
(a) From the Bibliotheque Nationale, four works (La Princesse de Montpensier; Zayde, histoire espagnole; La Princesse de Cleves; and La Comtesse de Tende), from a 1999 edition by Alain Niderst. (And elsewhere, The 1670 title-page of the first part of Zayde, "par Monsieur de Segrais.")
(b) For individual works: at one site, links to the four parts of La Princesse de Cleves (with the 1678 title page); at another, La Comtesse de Tende.
(c) Click on "Mme. de La Fayette" for a passage from La Fayette's 1659 pen-portrait of Madame Sevigne (for some of the portrait in English, see below, under "In print").
(d) In this edition of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld's Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, see "Lettres relatives aux maximes" near the bottom of the page; there, at #37 and #38 are two 1663 letters from La Fayette to Madame de Sable on Rochefoucauld's maximes, then circulating in manuscript.
3. Link to Chapter 7, "Madame de La Fayette," of Amelia Gere Mason's 1891 The Women of the French Salons; the chapter discusses her life and writing, and includes Mason's translation of excerpts from La Fayette's letters. At Ch. 6, use your browser's search function to go to "Fayette" for passages from LaFayette's portrait of Madame Sevigne.
4. Essays, etc:
(a) A 2006 essay on La Fayette, by Joan DeJean, followed by a list of editions of the writings (for information on studies by DeJean, see "Secondary sources").
(b) A more detailed 2005 biographical essay, by Jan Pendergrass: it is followed by an annotated bibliography of critical studies.
(c) Paul Brians' 1997 "Study Guide" to La Princesse de Cleves.
(d) "Novel Upbringings: Education and Gender in Choisy and La Fayette" (2006), by Joseph Harris compares the education of the protagonists in La Princesse de Cleves and "Histoire de la Marquise-Marquis de Banneville," a c.1695 tale by Francois-Timoleon de Choisy (probably in collaboration with Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier, and Charles Perrault).
(e) "Epistolary Intercourse in La Comtesse de Tende" (1994), by Jaymes Anne Rohrer, discusses the significance of letters written by that novel's characters.
(f) In this alphabetical listing, go to "M" and the 1989 collection, Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy; there see Naomi Schor's essay, "The Portrait of a Gentleman: Representing Men in (French) Women's Writing," in which La Princesse de Cleves is discussed as the first of three works that present scenes in which men observe a women looking at a man.
(g) In the same list as above, go to Aristocratic Experience and the Origins of Modern Culture (1993), by Jonathan Dewald. In Chapter 6, "The Meanings of Writing," Dewald (although most of his examples are of male writers) discusses the reasons for and the effects of the writing --- both published and merely circulated --- done by members of the nobility like La Fayette.
(h) A link to the text of Helen Stott's translation, Portraits of Women, by C. A. Sainte-Beuve; there go to near the end (p. 170) for Sainte-Beuve's 1836 essay on La Fayette, which discusses most of the works and includes passages from Histoire de Madame Henriette d'Angleterre and from letters by La Fayette. You can also download the book as a PDF file.
5. Reviews (for excerpts from the translation, see "In print"; for information on the study's treatment of La Fayette, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Christie Sample Wilson on Nicholas D. Paige's 2006 translation, Zayde: A Spanish Romance.
(b) Katharine J. Hamerton on Faith Evelyn Beasley's 2006 study, Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-century France: Mastering Memory. And Beasley's response to Hamerton's review.
6. Information at French sites:
(a) A chronology of La Fayette's life.
(b) A Madame de La Fayette site, with a contemporary portrait and links to brief essays by Roger Duchene.
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[An appendix in Frances Mossiker's biography of Madame Sevigne gives Mossiker's translation of La Fayette's portrait of Sevigne published in the 1659 Divers portraits. (See the book's table of contents online.)].
Mossiker, Frances. Madame de Sevigne: a life and letters.
New York: Knopf, 1983. (xviii, 538 p., [8] p. of plates: ill.,
ports.)
LC#: PQ1925 .M64 1983; ISBN: 0394414721
Includes index. Bibliography: p. 525-528
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"If I am unknown to you, you are not unknown to me."
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[In her last letter to Sevigne in 1692, La Fayette would write, "Believe me, my dearest: you are the person in the world I have most truly loved." In the portrait requested by Montpensier for her 1659 collection, La Fayette uses the persona of a man writing to a woman. The opening:]
All those who undertake the portrayal of fair ladies usually break their necks to please them with flattery, without ever daring to mention their defects.... I am in despair at having only agreeable things to say, for it would give me great pleasure, if having reproached you with a thousand faults, I found myself this winter, as well received by you as a thousand others who have spent their lives in adulation.
...[I]t is certain that...when one listens to you talk, one is oblivious to your imperfections; one loses sight of the fact that your features are not entirely regular; one credits you with a flawless beauty. You can see that if I am unknown to you, you are not unknown to me.... [p.521]
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"...Mme. de La Fayette as the only beneficiary."
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[In praising Sevigne, La Fayette reveals something of their relationship:]
You are responsive to glory and ambition, but no less so to pleasure, and pleasure would seem to have been devised expressly for your benefit....
You are, by nature, tender and passionate but, to the shame of our sex, that tenderness has availed you naught, and you have confined it to your own --- with Mme. de La Fayette as the only beneficiary. Ah, Madame, if there had been some man fortunate enough not to have been found unworthy of the treasure which she enjoys, and had he not made every effort to possess it, he would deserve to suffer all the distress to which love subjects those who fall beneath its sway....
Your heart, Madame, is doubtlessly a treasure of which no man is deserving; there has never been a heart so generous, so ardent, so faithful. There are people who suspect that you do not always allow it to be seen in its true colors, although on the contrary, you are so used to harboring in it no sentiment which is not honourable that you sometimes allow a glimpse of that which it would be more prudent to conceal. [p.522]
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Histoire de Madame Henriette d'Angleterre; Memoires de la cour de France pour les annees 1688 et 1689
[In 1929, Joan M. Shelmerdine translated La Fayette's biography
of Henrietta of England and the surviving portion of La Fayette's
historical memoir, which covers all of 1688 and part of 1689.
Shelmerdine's introduction describes the two works; the notes
are minimal, but there is a useful combined index and biographical
glossary:]
La Fayette, Madame de (Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne).
The secret history of Henrietta, Princess of England: first wife
of Philippe, duc d'Orléans; together with, Memoirs of
the court of France for the years 1688-1689; translated with
an introduction by J.M. Shelmerdine. New York: E.P. Dutton &
Co, 1929. (xxix, 264 p., illus)
LC#: DC130.O72 L21
[Reprinted 1993: ISBN: 0865274096]
Histoire de Madame Henriette...
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"Do you not think... they would make a fine story?"
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[Even before Charles II regained the English throne in 1660, a marriage had been arranged between his sister, Henrietta, and Louis XIV's brother, Philippe. Neither husband or wife saw the marriage as anything but a inconvenience, one which was needed to cement the uncertain relation between France and England. In the preface, written after 1683, La Fayette tells of the work's origin:]
In the year 1664, the Comte de Guiche was exiled. One day, while telling me some quite extraordinary instance of his passion for her: "Do you not think," she [Henrietta] said, "that if all that has happened to me, and the matters pertaining thereto, were written down, they would make a fine story? You write well," she added; "write, and I will supply you with plenty of recollections."
I entered with pleasure into the scheme, and we devised the plan of our story, just as it will be found in this book.
For some time, whenever I found her alone, she would relate to me private matters of which I was ignorant; but the whim soon left her, and what I had begun lay by for four or five years, without her ever giving it a thought. [p.3]
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"...to twist the truth that it might be clearly understood,
and yet...."
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[But in 1669, whe Henrietta was nearing the birth of a daughter, and so confined to her home:]
She remember the project of the story, and told me she would have me take it up again. Then she narrated the rest of the facts she had previously begun upon, and I again set myself to the task, showing her each morning what I had written upon her recollections of the previous night. She was well-pleased with my work.
It was by no means an easy matter, in certain places, so to twist the truth that it might be clearly understood, and yet in no way offensive or disagreeable to the Princess. [pp.3-4]
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"...as much disposed to the pursuit of women as the King
was averse...."
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[At the start of her story, La Fayette gives a series of rather acerbic portraits, to "describe in one or two words the persons of the royal household, the ministers..., and the ladies who could aspire to the King's good graces" (p.8). This is her portrait of Philippe, in which she compares his sexual orientation with that of his determinedly heterosexual brother:]
Monsieur, the King's only brother, was...by inclination as much disposed to the pursuit of women as the King was averse to them. He was well-made and handsome, but with a stature and type of beauty more fitting to a princess than a prince: and he had taken more pain to have his beauty admired of all the world than to employ it for the conquest of women, despite the fact that he was continually among them. His vanity, it seemed, made him incapable of affection, save for himself. [p.10]
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"...were he but a little less sparing of the wit...."
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[And on Louis XIV, never known for his interest in intellectual matters:]
He... will doubtless be found one of the greatest kings there has ever been, one of the most honest in his kingdom, and, it might be added, the most perfect, were he but a little less sparing of the wit that Heaven gave him, allowing it a greater freedom and confining it less closely with the majesty of his station. [p.12]
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"...did not seem likely to attract a princess as young as
Madame."
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[As Philippe was called "Monsieur" by virtue of being brother to the king, so Henrietta was called "Madame." La Fayette, 10 years older than the 17-year-old Henrietta, has described four of the five women who attended Madame in Paris in the first months after her 1661 marriage; then she speaks of herself in the third person as "the other lady":]
The other lady had pleased her by good luck, for, though she was thought to be not without merit, it was apparently of such a serious kind, that it did not seem likely to attract a princess as young as Madame. Nevertheless, this lady had proved agreeable to her, and, for her own part, had been so touched by Madame's wit and merit, that she pleased her ever after by the affection she displayed.
All these persons spent the afternoons with Madame. They had the honor of following her when she rode; then, when they had returned from taking the air, there was supper at Monsieur's; after supper all the men of the court would appear, and the evening be spent in various amusements, at the play, in gaming, at music or dancing.... [pp.31-32]
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"It may be said she observed no measure at all."
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[Philippe and Henrietta went that summer of 1661 to Fontainebleau to be with Louis and his court. La Fayette needed to use all her wit to "twist the truth" in order to tell of the relationship that soon developed between the king and his sister-in-law:]
The King's affection for Madame soon began to make a stir....
...Madame was tired of boredom...; she was filled with joy at having won over the King.... All this diverted her so completely from the prudent measures they [her mother and mother-in-law] would have her take, that it may be said she observed no measure at all. [p. 33]
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"She believed he did not please her save as a brother-in-law."
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[As in her novels, La Fayette focuses on her characters' self-knowledge --- and lack of it:]
...[S]he thought of nothing but to please the King as a sister-in-law. I think she pleased him in another way; I think, too, that she believed he did not please her save as a brother-in-law, though it may be that he pleased her more; however, since they were both extremely amiable, both born with gallant dispositions, and met every day in the midst of pleasures and amusements, it seemed clear to every eye that they had for each other the charm that commonly precedes the greatest passions....
Yet the King and Madame, without any explanation between themselves as to their feeling for each other, continued to live in such a way that no one could doubt but that it was something more than friendship.
The gossip grew louder; and the Queen Mother and Monsieur spoke so strongly to the King and Madame, that they began to open their eyes, and perhaps to make the reflections they had not yet made: in brief, they resolved to put a stop to all this chatter, and, whatever their reason might be, they agreed between themselves that the King should play the lover to somebody at court. [pp.33-35]
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"It could not, perhaps, be said that she felt... jealousy,
but...."
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[To distract his mother, Louis "played the lover" to an attendant of Henrietta's, Louise de la Valliere, and he played so well that he fell in love (La Valliere would become his first official mistress):]
Madame saw with some dismay that the King was growing genuinely attached to La Valliere. It could not, perhaps, be said that she felt what is actually called jealousy, but she would have been very pleased had there been no true passion in it, and had he still kept for herself that kind of attachment which, though shorn of the violence of love, has yet its tenderness and charm. [p.36]
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"This had for her all the charm of a novel."
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[With Louis occupied and her husband both uninterested and uninteresting, Henrietta began a flirtation with a courtier, the Comte de Guiche:]
Madame, who showed some timidity in speaking seriously, showed none in affairs of this kind; she did not foresee the consequences, and this had for her all the charm of a novel....
The Comte de Guiche, who was young and bold, thought nothing so pleasant as taking the gravest risk; and Madame and he, though they had no real passion for each other, exposed themselves to the greatest dangers.... [p.49]
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"Her position was more desirable than it had ever been."
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[The rest of that part of the Histoire completed during Henrietta's lifetime is taken up with the intrigues surrounding the flirtation with Guiche (even La Fayette seems to get a bit bored with all the details). The last part of the work is more powerful; it deals with Henrietta's death in 1670, just after she had arranged a treaty between Louis and her brother, Charles II of England:]
Madame had come back from England in all the pride and pleasure that can accrue from a voyage undertaken in friendship and attended by political success. ...[A]t 26 years old she saw herself the links between the two greatest kings of our century: she had in her hands a treaty whereon the fate of a part of Europe depended....
In brief, her position was more desirable than it had ever been, when death, with the suddenness of a thunderclap, put an end to this so splendid life, and deprived France of the most amiable Princess that has ever lived. [p.92]
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"With a malice common to humanity...."
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[A few days after her return from England, Henrietta became ill; she died within 17 hours, believing that she had been poisoned. Because of her strained relations with her husband, it was Philippe whom all wondered about. La Fayette was with the princess as she died and describes it all in detail; when Henrietta first said she had been poisoned, her friend too wondered:]
I was standing by Monsieur's side, between the bed and the wall: and though I did not believe him capable of so great a crime, the shock was such, that with a malice common to humanity, I observed him carefully. He seemed neither embarrassed or upset at Madame's thought: ...he concurred in Madame's opinion that oil and counter-poison should be sought, to banish from Madame's mind so distressing an idea. [p.97]
Memoires de la cour de France...
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"...a state of perfect tranquillity."
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[Almost 20 years later, in the extant part of her historical memoir, La Fayette begins with the nation at peace and everyone happy. Her contemporaries would recognize the irony: by the time she wrote, Louis' 1688 invasion of the Palatine had led to war, the beginning of his and France's decline. But at the start of 1688:]
France was in a state of perfect tranquillity; she knew no arms other than the implements needful for breaking up the ground and for building. [p.129]
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"He had had shown no great signs of assisting Fortune."
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[Much of the Memoires tells in some detail of the troop movements and the battles of the first two years of the war. Even here, La Fayette's dry humor comes out amid her serious reporting. On a young man killed on the Rhine in 1688:]
...[H]e had been an honest lad, and well established, though he had had shown no great signs of assisting Fortune in his own advancement. It seemed rather as if Fortune had come to seek him, and she would doubtless have dragged him from a very mediocre state, and raised him to great opulence, without the smallest flourish of her trumpets. He was killed by cannon-fire.... [p.159]
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"Other rewards would be more expensive."
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[Running out of money to pay his troops, in mid-1688 Louis decided to increase the number of those awarded the cordon bleu, the insignia of the "Knights of the Holy Ghost"; until now it had been a high honor given to only a few:]
...[H]is Majesty declared that he was resolved to hold an investiture of Blue Ribbons. There was a large number of promotions: seventy-three, in fact.
Those who had taken part in the war had a considerable share in them, for it was seen that their services would be required again, and that other rewards would be more expensive. [p.169]
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"...a somewhat burlesque digression."
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[And at the beginning of 1689, Louis had even less money and gave out even more cordon bleus;]
I cannot refrain from telling here how the honour was received by two persons of very different character, the one being M. de Boufflers and the other the Marquis d'Huxelles. The first received it most humbly, thanking God and the King for the continual blessings they had showered upon him; and in his acknowledgement he addressed the most fervent expressions of gratitude to the King and to M. de Louvois [the Minister of War].
The second gentleman addressed his thanks to M. de Louvois alone, at the same time begging the courier to tell him whether the Order prevented him visiting the tavern and other such places; if it did, he would send it back.
I should add that these two men of such diverse character are both among the most honest of people. But this is a somewhat burlesque digression. [pp.184-85]
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"He has renounced three kingdoms for a Mass."
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[In 1688, James II (King of England, Scotland, and Ireland) lost his throne. Suspected of sympathizing with Catholicism and with France, he had to flee England, barely escaping arrest, and finally reaching France:]
The King of England was at Saint-Germain, receiving the respects of the whole of France; the Ministers were the first to visit him. The Archbishop of Rheims, brother of M. de Louvois, who saw him coming from Mass, remarked in ironical tones: "There goes a very good man; he has renounced three kingdoms for a Mass;" a fine reflection in the mouth of an Archbishop. [p.192]
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"...always the same..."
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[Whe she speaks of life at court rather than war, the 54-year-old La Fayette's view of court life seems more jaded than that of the young woman who had been with Henrietta during the 1660s:]
As concerns the court of France, everything was just as usual. There is a certain routine that never changes: always the same pleasures, always at the same hours, and always with the same people. [p.182]
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"Now that we are pious...."
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[La Fayette praised St. Cyr, Madame de Maintenon's newly founded school near Versailles, established for impoverished girls of the nobility, but she foresaw the dangers that soon would almost destroy it:]
But there are times when the best of institutions will degenerate; and this establishment, which, now that we are pious, is the abode of holiness and virtue, might very well, one day, become a haunt of debauchery and vice. For to think that three hundred young girls, who remain there until they are twenty years of age, and who have at their very gates a court full of dissolute men, especially when the King's authority is no longer exercised over it; to think, I repeat, that young girls and young men could be at such close quarters, and not scale the walls, is scarcely reasonable. [pp.195-96]
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"Monsieur had been fond of her, of course, but...."
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[In 1689 the Queen of Spain, the daughter of Henrietta and Philippe, died. La Fayette's view of Philippe had not changed since the 1660s:]
Monsieur's affliction was as deep as he is capable of feeling....
Monsieur had been fond of her, of course, but he was chiefly flattered to have a Queen for his daughter, and the Queen of so great a kingdom as Spain. In truth, the manner of her death added somewhat to his affliction, for she died of poison. [p.205]
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"Her mother... died the same death."
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[In Histoire de Madame Henriette, when speaking of Henrietta's death, La Fayette had been careful not to commit herself to an opinion as to whether her friend had been poisoned. Here she seems to take a stronger stand:]
At the time of her demise she [the Queen of Spain] was six months older than the late Madame, her mother, had been, who died the same death and whose fortunes had not been dissimilar. [p.206]
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La princesse de Cleves; La princesse
de Montpensier; La comtesse de Tende
[There are many easily available translations of La princesse de Cleves; one advantage of Terence Cave's 1992 version is that the book also includes his translation of La princesse de Montpensier and La comtesse de Tende. Cave's introduction focuses on Cleves, but he gives helpful notes to all three works. The book includes a chronology of Lafayette's life and a glossary of historical figures named in Cleves:]
La Fayette, Madame de (Marie-Madeleine Pioche de LaVergne).
The princesse de Cleves; The princesse de Montpensier; The comtesse
de Tende; translated with an introduction and notes by Terence
Cave (Oxford world's classics). Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999. (xxxvii, 235, [11] p.)
LC#: PQ1805.L5 A23 1992; ISBN: 0192837265
Includes bibliographical references
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"...distinctions being beyond her comprehension."
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[Brief passages from each of the three novels. First, from La princesse de Cleves, on the arranged marriage of the very young. Mlle. de Chartres has been offered marriage by the Prince de Cleves (after her mother had failed to arrange a marriage with a higher-ranking prince):]
She reported the conversation to her mother, who told her that M. de Cleves was so distinguished, and so full of good qualities... that, if her daughter felt an inclination to marry him, she would gladly consent. Mlle. de Chartres replied that she had perceived his good qualities, that she would even marry him with less reluctance than another man, but that she felt no particular attraction for his person.
The very next day, the Prince had the proposal delivered to Mme. de Chartres. She accepted it, and was troubled by no fear that she was giving her daughter... a husband whom she could not love....
[Once engaged, the Prince soon saw that Mlle. de Chartres had "no particular attraction" for him, although she was always kind; when he spoke to her about it:]
Mlle. de Chartres did not know what to reply, these distinctions being beyond her comprehension. M. de Cleves saw only too well how far she was from having the kind of feelings that would satisfy him, since it seemed to him that she did not even understand what they were. [pp.19-21]
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"We are very weak when we are in love."
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[From La princesse de Montpensier, on the effect of love on loyalty. Although the Comte de Chabanne is in the service of the Prince of Montpensier, he has fallen in love with the prince's wife and in order to be near her, is willing to help her communicate with the man she loves, the Duc de Guise:]
His passion, being the most extraordinary in the world, it produced the most extraordinary effect: it persuaded him to deliver to his mistress the letters of his rival.
[When Chabanne despairs of winning the princess and leaves, she calls him back:]
She could not make up her mind to let him go, not only because she regarded him as her friend, but also in the interests of her love, to which he was indispensable; she therefore sent him a message saying that she absolutely must speak to him once more, after which she would leave him free to do as he pleased.
We are very weak when we are in love. The Comte de Chabanne returned and in less than an hour the beauty of the Princesses de Montpensier, her wit, and a few flattering words made him a more abject servant than he had ever been; he even gave her some letters from the Duc de Guise which he had just received. [pp.178-79]
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"...belief exacts too high a price."
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[From La comtesse de Tende, on the value of self-deception. When the Comte de Tende has strong evidence that his wife loves another:]
He... thought he saw the truth; yet there still remained in his mind that trace of doubt which our self-regard always allows us in cases where belief exacts too high a price.
[But when he reads a letter from his wife confessing to her adultery:]
It is difficult to imagine the the thoughts that came into his mind at that moment.... Jealousy and well-founded suspicions ordinarily prepare husbands for their misfortunes; it may even be that they always have their doubts; yet they are spared the certainty afforded by an open confession, which it is beyond our capacity to comprehend. [pp.201-203]
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[Nicholas D. Paige has translated the 1670-71 Zayde, histoire espagnole. Paige's introduction shows how La Fayette treats the romance genre differently from her predecessors. The notes are detailed and the bibliography appears to include all earlier studies. One note (p.165) quotes a fragment in the hand of La Rochefoucauld, perhaps illustrating the collaborative process by which the work was written. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
La Fayette, Madame de (Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne).
Zayde: a Spanish romance; edited and translated by Nicholas D.
Paige (The other voice in early modern Europe). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2006. (xxix, 210 p.: ill., maps)
LC#: PQ1805.L5 A7813 2006; ISBN: 0226468518, 0226468526
Includes bibliographical references
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"He gave himself over to reflecting upon his misfortunes."
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[Zayde is a romance, with all the intrigue and adventures that would be expected, but the main story is of Consalve, a young Spanish prince of the 900s who has been deceived by those he loved and who so determines to off to live in solitude. La Fayette never seems to take Consalve with quite the degree of seriousness with which he takes himself:]
...Consalve immersed himself in a seclusion he vowed never to leave; and... he gave himself over to reflecting upon his misfortunes, with for sole consolation the idea that he had known the last of them. But Fortune would show him that she searches even the remotest wilderness for those whom she is bent on persecuting. [p.41]
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"He thought himself struck down by... suffering unknown
to other men."
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[When Consalve meets a young woman, Zayde, with who he cannot speak because they share no language, he of course falls in love. He misinterprets every gesture and action his beloved makes and so falls prey to jealousy:]
One cannot begin to express what these thoughts produced in Consalve, nor the disturbance that jealousy brought to a heart whose love was still unacknowledged. He had already been in love; he had never, however, been jealous. This new unfamiliar passion made itself felt within him for the first time, and with such violence that he thought himself struck down by a kind of suffering unknown to other men. It seemed to him that he had experienced all the trials life had to offer, and yet now he felt something crueler still. [pp.46-47]
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"If he had not been so predisposed toward this manner of
thinking...."
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[Zayde of course loves Consalve quite as much as he loves her, and she tries very hard to overcome the language barrier to tell him so:]
Given that she could not make herself understood through words, it was almost through glances alone that she explained to Consalve a bit of what she had to say; there was something so beautiful and passionate in these glances, however, that Consalve was struck to the core.
"Lovely Zayde," he would say, "is that how you look at men you don't love? If so, what do you keep in reserve for the lucky lover I'm unlucky enough to remind you of?"
If he had not been so predisposed toward this manner of thinking, he would never have thought himself so unlucky; and Zayde's actions ought not to have persuaded him that all she felt for him was indifference. [p.82]
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"...the pleasures that other lovers know only... in isolated
moments."
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[After much delay and several battles, the lovers finally learn each other's languages. After this scene there will still remain the problem of Zayde's Moorish father's refusal to marry her to a Christian, but the father (in the inevitable logic of romance) will decide to himself become a Christian, and the lovers' wedding will be "celebrated with all the gallantry of the Moors and all the refinement of Spain":]
To learn that Zayde loved him, to discover signs of tenderness in what he had taken for signs of of indifference --- this made for an excess of happiness that transported him out of his senses, and that let him taste all at once the pleasures that other lovers know only intermittently, in isolated moments. [p.181]
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[The section of Roland Racevskis' study that deals with La Fayette looks first at the publication and contemporary criticism of La princesse de Cleves, and then provides a close reading of passages from that novel to discuss the treatment of time by the characters and by the narrator, and what that treatment reveals about the work's meaning. All quoted passages are given in the original and in translation; Racevskis' notes are useful in summarizing earlier French critical studies. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Racevskis, Roland. Time and ways of knowing under Louis XIV:
Moliere, Sevigne, Lafayette (The Bucknell studies in eighteenth-century
literature and culture). Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press;
London: Associated University Presses, c2003. ( 216 p.: col.
ill.)
LC#: PQ245 .R33 2003; ISBN: 0838755194
Includes bibliographical references (p. 204-209) and index
--------------------
[Anne Green's study looks at all of Lafayette's work, focusing on the tension between silence and speech in each of the works and on what that reveals about the author. Quotations are not translated, but their meaning is usually made clear in the discussion. Notes and bibliography lead to earlier studies:]
Green, Anne. Privileged anonymity: the writings of Madame
de Lafayette (Research monographs in French studies;1). Oxford:
Legenda, 1996. (93 p.)
LC#:PQ1805 .L5 G73 1996; ISBN:1900755009
Bibliography: p. 85-89. Includes index.
--------------------
[Faith Evelyn Beasley's study of the representation of 1600s salon culture over the centuries includes a discussion (pp. 134-47) of Zayde as a defense of collaborative "salon writing," in that the voices of all the characters are needed to reveal the "true" story. Beasley also describes the relationship of the novel to Pierre-Daniel Huet's treatise, Sur L'origine des romans, which prefaced Zayde at its publication in 1669. Quoted passages of both works are given in Beasley's translation and in the original. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Beasley, Faith Evelyn. Salons, history, and the creation of
seventeenth-century France: mastering memory (Women and gender
in the early modern world). Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, c2006. (xii, 345 p.)
LC#: DC121.7 .B43 2006; ISBN: 0754653544
Includes bibliographical references (p. [326]-336) and index
----------------------
[Beasley's earlier book contains two useful chapters on La Fayette, one on Histoire de Madame Henriette d'Angleterre and another on La princesse de Cleves' use of history. The notes and bibliography are detailed, and the original if given for all translated passages:]
Beasley, Faith Evelyn. Revising memory: women's fiction and
memoirs in seventeenth-century France. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, c1990. (x, 288 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ637.A96 B43 1990; ISBN: 0813515858
Includes bibliographical references (p. [275]-282) and index
----------------------
[Harriet Stone's study includes a chapter discussing Zayde
and La princesse de Cleves, which presents the earlier
novel as a preparation for the later work's treatment of the
difficulty in distinguishing between appearance and reality in
one's knowledge of others and of self. Stone gives her own translation
and the original of all quoted passages:]
Stone, Harriet Amy. The classical model: Literature and knowledge
in seventeenth-century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1996. (xviii, 234 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ245 .S78 1996; ISBN: 080143212X
Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-226) and index
---------------------
[This collection includes Joan DeJean's "The (Literary)
World at War, or What Can Happen When Women Go Public,"
which reports on contemporary readers' to the publication of
La princesse de Cleves. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Going public: women and publishing in early modern France / edited
by Elizabeth C. Goldsmith and Dena Goodman (Reading women writing)
. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. (249 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ149 .G65 1995; ISBN: 080142951X, 0801481651
Includes bibliographical references and index
---------------------
[One chapter in DeJean's 1991 study includes her translation of some passages from letters, which reveal La Fayette's views of authorship and collaborative writing. The opening chapter is a useful discussion of "salon writing" :]
DeJean, Joan E. Tender geographies: women and the origins
of the novel in France (Gender and culture). New York: Columbia
University Press, c1991. (xii, 297 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ637.W64 D4 1991; ISBN: 0231062303
Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-284) and index
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Updated 05-03-08