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Authors: Marilyn Yalom
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The future Madame de La Fayette became well versed in the bedroom ploys of the French elite when she was maid of honor to Louis XIV’s mother, Anne of Austria. Then, through her marriage to the Comte de La Fayette in 1655, she had continued familiarity with court life, although she and he also lived at his far-distant estate in Auvergne. At the time of her marriage, she was twenty-one and no longer a “young” bride, since it was common for noblewomen to be married off in their late teens, before they had any chance of becoming corrupted by would-be seducers. And like most women of her class, she was married to an older man. Arranged marriages among the nobility, like those of Madame de La Fayette in real life and the Princess de Clèves in fiction, were the norm well into the early twentieth century. Parents sought unions for their sons and daughters in the interest of fortune, title, and family connections. One did not expect to marry for love.
So, in the novel, when the future Princess de Clèves, barely sixteen, is offered the Prince de Clèves as a suitable match, she does not find him unacceptable, even though she does not love him. For one thing, she has never felt those delicious internal stirrings that the French aptly call troubles . She has lived a protected life under the guidance of her widowed mother, Madame de Chartres, a woman of known distinction and virtue. Madame de Chartres had not only sought to cultivate her daughter’s wit and beauty—the two qualities considered necessary for a marriageable woman—she had also tried to make her “virtuous.” Female virtue consisted mainly in shunning the practices that led to sexual entanglements. Madame de Chartres warned her daughter of love’s dangers, however attractive they were made to appear: she spoke to her of “men’s insincerity, of their deceptions and infidelity, of the disastrous effects of love affairs on conjugal life,” and she argued convincingly for “the only thing that can ensure a woman’s happiness,” namely, reciprocal love between husband and wife.
The young woman’s first appearance at court produced a sensation. The Prince de Clèves was struck by her beauty and modest behavior, and fell in love with her on the spot. This was the classic coup de foudre , love at first sight, that enters through the eyes and travels immediately to the heart and other unmentioned organs.
Other love-struck rivals presented themselves, but events conspired to leave the field open to the Prince de Clèves. He managed to find an occasion to speak to her of his passion in a suitably respectful manner. “He begged her to let him know what her feelings were for him and told her that his own were of a kind that would make him eternally unhappy if she obeyed her mother’s wishes only out of duty.”
All this high-flown language centers on one question: “Do you love me?” It is still a question that causes anxiety on the part of the person who asks, as well as the person obliged to answer. “Loves me, loves me not” cannot be determined by plucking daisy petals. It is something one feels in a rush of hormones when one is very young, and even when one is supposedly mature. Mademoiselle de Chartres does not yet know what love feels like. She tells her mother that she would marry Monsieur de Clèves “with less reluctance than another man, but that she felt no particular attraction for his person.”
Madame de Chartres accepted the prince’s proposal for her daughter and had no reason to believe that she was giving her a husband she could not love. In this respect, the union was not unlike traditional marriages in India, where many parents still choose spouses for their children and hope that the bride and groom will come to love each other in time. Most young people today in the West assume they will choose their own mates on the basis of the shared love they have already known, whereas in arranged marriages you are given someone
The future Madame de La Fayette became well versed in the bedroom ploys of the French elite when she was maid of honor to Louis XIV’s mother, Anne of Austria. Then, through her marriage to the Comte de La Fayette in 1655, she had continued familiarity with court life, although she and he also lived at his far-distant estate in Auvergne. At the time of her marriage, she was twenty-one and no longer a “young” bride, since it was common for noblewomen to be married off in their late teens, before they had any chance of becoming corrupted by would-be seducers. And like most women of her class, she was married to an older man. Arranged marriages among the nobility, like those of Madame de La Fayette in real life and the Princess de Clèves in fiction, were the norm well into the early twentieth century. Parents sought unions for their sons and daughters in the interest of fortune, title, and family connections. One did not expect to marry for love.
So, in the novel, when the future Princess de Clèves, barely sixteen, is offered the Prince de Clèves as a suitable match, she does not find him unacceptable, even though she does not love him. For one thing, she has never felt those delicious internal stirrings that the French aptly call troubles . She has lived a protected life under the guidance of her widowed mother, Madame de Chartres, a woman of known distinction and virtue. Madame de Chartres had not only sought to cultivate her daughter’s wit and beauty—the two qualities considered necessary for a marriageable woman—she had also tried to make her “virtuous.” Female virtue consisted mainly in shunning the practices that led to sexual entanglements. Madame de Chartres warned her daughter of love’s dangers, however attractive they were made to appear: she spoke to her of “men’s insincerity, of their deceptions and infidelity, of the disastrous effects of love affairs on conjugal life,” and she argued convincingly for “the only thing that can ensure a woman’s happiness,” namely, reciprocal love between husband and wife.
The young woman’s first appearance at court produced a sensation. The Prince de Clèves was struck by her beauty and modest behavior, and fell in love with her on the spot. This was the classic coup de foudre , love at first sight, that enters through the eyes and travels immediately to the heart and other unmentioned organs.
Other love-struck rivals presented themselves, but events conspired to leave the field open to the Prince de Clèves. He managed to find an occasion to speak to her of his passion in a suitably respectful manner. “He begged her to let him know what her feelings were for him and told her that his own were of a kind that would make him eternally unhappy if she obeyed her mother’s wishes only out of duty.”
All this high-flown language centers on one question: “Do you love me?” It is still a question that causes anxiety on the part of the person who asks, as well as the person obliged to answer. “Loves me, loves me not” cannot be determined by plucking daisy petals. It is something one feels in a rush of hormones when one is very young, and even when one is supposedly mature. Mademoiselle de Chartres does not yet know what love feels like. She tells her mother that she would marry Monsieur de Clèves “with less reluctance than another man, but that she felt no particular attraction for his person.”
Madame de Chartres accepted the prince’s proposal for her daughter and had no reason to believe that she was giving her a husband she could not love. In this respect, the union was not unlike traditional marriages in India, where many parents still choose spouses for their children and hope that the bride and groom will come to love each other in time. Most young people today in the West assume they will choose their own mates on the basis of the shared love they have already known, whereas in arranged marriages you are given someone
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