Read Online How the French Invented Love by Marilyn Yalom - Free Book Online
Authors: Marilyn Yalom
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Princesse de Clèves is one of the first “psychological” novels ever written, and, in my opinion, it has no equal among seventeenth-century works of fiction. As I explain later, it played a significant role in my life, so much so that I felt personally offended when President Sarkozy, in 2009, dismissed the book as irrelevant to the education of French students. Had I not been five thousand miles away, I would have joined the French protesters who took turns reading it in public as an act of political opposition. As President Sarkozy’s popularity declined among the French, sales of La Princesse de Clèves soared.
This relatively short work has had a multitude of fans worldwide for good reasons. It is a love story, albeit a thwarted one, between a young married noblewoman and her equally noble suitor. It is a marital drama quite unlike any other that had been written until then. It is a story that sometimes strains the reader’s credulity, with overheard conversations and lost letters, but redeems itself as a convincing portrayal of the sentiments felt by women and men as they fall heedlessly in and out of love.
Madame de La Fayette set her novel in the sixteenth century during the reign of Henri II, specifically during the years 1558 and 1559. In this respect, it is a “historical” novel based on real personages and events. Only the Princess de Clèves herself is entirely fictitious and her story, as it intertwines with the lives of others, is a roman in every sense of the word. The seventeenth-century novel still bore the hallmarks of medieval romance in its central preoccupation with the efforts of valorous men to win the hearts of high-born ladies, usually married to someone else. Looking back a hundred years to the time when Diane de Poitiers, the renowned mistress of King Henri II, overshadowed his queen, Catherine de Médicis, the author had found the perfect setting for her tale of nascent love within a web of court intrigue. Yet the shift backward in time fooled no one: La Princesse de Clèves held a mirror to the court of Madame de La Fayette’s own king, Louis XIV. Behind the formal hierarchy and stiff etiquette of court events, there lay a hidden world of secret assignations where men and women abandoned their social roles along with their clothes and wigs. There, the young and the old expressed their inner longing for reciprocal love and reciprocal pleasure.
Even Louis XIV had been known to follow his heart in his youthful love for Mademoiselle de Mancini, jeopardizing his projected marriage with Maria Theresa of Spain. Though he was persuaded to make the political marriage, his subsequent libidinous history included a long list of royal favorites, including his first official mistress, Louise de La Vallière, with whom he had two surviving children. Even more influential were Madame de Montespan, who bore him no less than seven children, and Madame de Maintenon, the governess of these illegitimate children, whom he secretly married during the winter of 1684–1685 after his relations with Madame de Montespan had come to an end and after Maria Theresa had died. Maria Theresa had been a loving wife for more than two decades, accepting her husband’s mistresses with astonishing grace. Louis is known to have said upon her death: “This is the first chagrin she has ever caused me.”
As we have seen, there was a long tradition in France that allowed, even expected, French kings to take sexual partners in addition to their wives. The king was allowed “two bodies”—one considered “divine” that extended in an unbroken line from king to king; the other “human,” all too human. No one but censorious priests objected to the king’s sexual exploits. The number of his liaisons attested to his virility. This attitude has persisted in France long after the demise of the monarchy, spilling over onto presidents, whose extramarital involvements were publicly known and never detrimental to their
This relatively short work has had a multitude of fans worldwide for good reasons. It is a love story, albeit a thwarted one, between a young married noblewoman and her equally noble suitor. It is a marital drama quite unlike any other that had been written until then. It is a story that sometimes strains the reader’s credulity, with overheard conversations and lost letters, but redeems itself as a convincing portrayal of the sentiments felt by women and men as they fall heedlessly in and out of love.
Madame de La Fayette set her novel in the sixteenth century during the reign of Henri II, specifically during the years 1558 and 1559. In this respect, it is a “historical” novel based on real personages and events. Only the Princess de Clèves herself is entirely fictitious and her story, as it intertwines with the lives of others, is a roman in every sense of the word. The seventeenth-century novel still bore the hallmarks of medieval romance in its central preoccupation with the efforts of valorous men to win the hearts of high-born ladies, usually married to someone else. Looking back a hundred years to the time when Diane de Poitiers, the renowned mistress of King Henri II, overshadowed his queen, Catherine de Médicis, the author had found the perfect setting for her tale of nascent love within a web of court intrigue. Yet the shift backward in time fooled no one: La Princesse de Clèves held a mirror to the court of Madame de La Fayette’s own king, Louis XIV. Behind the formal hierarchy and stiff etiquette of court events, there lay a hidden world of secret assignations where men and women abandoned their social roles along with their clothes and wigs. There, the young and the old expressed their inner longing for reciprocal love and reciprocal pleasure.
Even Louis XIV had been known to follow his heart in his youthful love for Mademoiselle de Mancini, jeopardizing his projected marriage with Maria Theresa of Spain. Though he was persuaded to make the political marriage, his subsequent libidinous history included a long list of royal favorites, including his first official mistress, Louise de La Vallière, with whom he had two surviving children. Even more influential were Madame de Montespan, who bore him no less than seven children, and Madame de Maintenon, the governess of these illegitimate children, whom he secretly married during the winter of 1684–1685 after his relations with Madame de Montespan had come to an end and after Maria Theresa had died. Maria Theresa had been a loving wife for more than two decades, accepting her husband’s mistresses with astonishing grace. Louis is known to have said upon her death: “This is the first chagrin she has ever caused me.”
As we have seen, there was a long tradition in France that allowed, even expected, French kings to take sexual partners in addition to their wives. The king was allowed “two bodies”—one considered “divine” that extended in an unbroken line from king to king; the other “human,” all too human. No one but censorious priests objected to the king’s sexual exploits. The number of his liaisons attested to his virility. This attitude has persisted in France long after the demise of the monarchy, spilling over onto presidents, whose extramarital involvements were publicly known and never detrimental to their
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