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Introduction

Editor of Montaigne: Marie de Gournay (1565 - 1645) by Maya Bijvoet

Anatomist of the Heart: Madame de LaFayette by Ronald Bogue

Writer of Fantasy: Madame d'Aulnoy by Glenda K. Mcleod

The Italian Memoralist: Camilla Faa Gonzaga by Valeria Finucci

Woman of Learning: Bathsua Makin by Frances Teague

The Danish Princess: Leonora Christina by Sverre Lyngstad

Introduction

      1) "The seventeenth century witnessed a great surge of literary activity by women. It has been estimated that four hundred women wrote between 1640 and 1700 in England alone and that their writings constituted approximately one percent of the texts published. A large portion of works penned by women in the Early Modern era, as in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, were devotional or religion-political in nature; but the ratio of religious to secular texts became a great deal more balanced as time progressed. Analogously, women scholars, while still considered oddities, did increase in number in the 1600s; the mid- and late seventeenth century therefore witnessed an unprecedented number of women who decided to write polemically and with a collective awareness of their gender in order to address the subject of women's condition and potential, thus partaking in the philosophic/theological debate concerning the spiritual equality of the sexes. Men, too, participated in the debate on both sides of the issue and essays in defense of (or attacking) the female sex proliferated during the period and bear witness to the fervor of the controversy. " page x

      2) "Bathsua Makin and Marie de Gournay both corresponded with Anna Maria von Schurmann; Makin incorporated some of Schurman's ideas into her own pedagogical manifesto; Mme de LaFayette's first published work was a literary portrait of her friend Mme de Sevigne; and Ana Caro composed a eulogy for the preface of Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor's Novelas." page xiii

      3) "Yet this female self-consciousness among seventeenth-century authors is complex and at best ambiguous. Some of the women writers are out-right misogynists when discussing public positions sought by women or public protests for reform voiced by women. Some deliberately embrace a class- rather than a gender-consciousness when faced with controversial issues. Even the passionately vocal defenders of women's right to education is to be limited to the nonpublic, nonprofessional spheres and is only to be pursued if servants can discharge household duties.

      The new self-consciousness about gender is most clearly pronounced in the writings of the polemicists (such as Makin, de Gournay, and Schurmann) and in works of women not members of the aristocracy. Aristocratic women appear to view themselves as aristocrats first and women second; some, like the Duchess of Newcastle, deliberately distance themselves from their lower-class and militantly reformist sisters. The self-consciousness also appears to be more pronounced with successful writers: Aphra Behn, Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor, and Ana Capo, for instance, repeatedly emphasize this awareness of a gender-bond, whereas Camilla Faa Gonzaga, who wrote furtively and produced only one work, does not." page xiv

      4) "What then is the Baroque? In technique it is distinguished by devices of extravagance, inegnuity, playfullness, and exageration. Sometimes relying heavily on sensuous effect, Baroque authors often go to the opposite extreme and favor forms of expression so intellectualized as to approach the abstract. When Baroque art is sensuous, however, it aims not at the careful mimesis typical of Renaissance art but rather at a kind of frankly artifical phantasmagoria. Whether sensuous or stren, Baroque literature characteristically derives its features from a strenuously active intellect - an intellect aware of the contradicitions of experience (above all, the problem of appearance versus reality). Hence Baroque authors extensivelu use the figures of contradiction: irony, paradox, ambiguity, antithesis. Over their work hovers always the faculty of wit (Italian ingegno, Spanish ingenio, French esprit), which the seventeenth century defined as the ability to discern the similarities among apparently dissimilar phenomena.

      Struck by the contradictions of life, Baroque authors thirst for the divine and transcendent unity that they believe must lie beyond those contradictions. Sometimes they seek it in sexual love, sometimes in religious devotion - themes often to be found in the work of the same author. The Baroque is one of the great ages of Western mysticism; at the same time, it is the age in which the scientific world view of Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton definitively ousted that traditional world view - symbolic, poetic, ordered, and hierarchical - that had prevailed since classical antiquity. In an era of such intellectual ferment, it is not surprising that literature itself was keenly intellectual." pages xv - xvi

      5) "The seventeenth century was also a great age of epistolary writings. Mme de Sevigne, perhaps the most prolific epistoliere of the age (there are over fifteen hundred extant letters penned by her) gives us a lively account of the glorious reign of Louis XIV and provides us with her intimate personal views on subjects as diverse as religion, children, gambling, travel, syphilis, medicine, literature, court intrigues, and wars." page xvii

      6) "Even when composing in the traditional genres and forms of Baroque letters, women writers were autodidacts by necessity and often stood outside the mainstream. Unable to attend universities and rarely permitted to join literary societies, they were forced to work in relative isolation - a phenomenon at least partially responsible for the noted independence and "modernity" of their thoughts, forms, and style.

      Scholarship and learning, as well as belles lettres, attracted many women during the seventeenth century. The learned lady, as Natalie Zemon Davis observes, "struggled to establish a role for herself; the female schoolteacher became a familiar figure, whether as spinster or as an Ursuline." Frequently labeled "bluestockings," often distrusted or even ridiculed, women scholars voiced ardent concerns for the position, education, and educability of women: they advocated serious intellectual training and sustained study." page xviii

      7) "While Schurmann is deeply religious and cerebral in the logic in her defense of women, her French contemporary Marie de Gournay is polemical and delightfully irreverent. On the subject of the masculine identity of Christ (and therefore of priests), the Catholic de Gournay argues that Jesus' incarnation as a male had no special distinction bestowed on the male sex, but simply a mater of historic convenience. "If men pride themselves," she ways, "on the fact that Jesus Christ was born of their sex, the answer is that this was necessary for the sake of decency, for if he had been a woman, it would have been impossible for Jesus to go out at all hours of the day and night and mingle with the crowds to convert them and to help save mankind, without creating a scandal, especially in the face of the malice of the Jews." " page xx

      8) "More recently, Merry Wiesner has argued that, for Renaissance and seventeenth -century women, freedom specifically meant the ability to participate in public life. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, for example, wrote in 1656" "Thus by an Opinion, which I hope is but an Erroneous one in Men, we are shut out of all Power and Authority, by reason we are never Imployed either in Civil or Martial Affairs, our Counsels are Despised, and Laugh at the best of our actions are Trodden down with Scorn; by the Over-weening conceit of Men have of Themselves, and through a Despisement of us." Demanding equal education for women, Margaret Cavendish defines freedom as access to the means and tools of power, the opportunity of full participation in public and intellectual life. Her French contemporary Marie de Gournay addresses the question of freedom in broader and psychological terms, a definition that seems to hold true for most seventeenth-century women writers. Freedom, she asserts, is the phenomenon of being taken seriously, of having the opportunity for intellectual and artistic fulfillment and success - aspirations not very different from recent efforts by women scholars to establish a policy of anonymous submissions for publication. In her advocacy of equal opportunities for men and women, de Gournay goes one step further by suggesting that the victims of patriarchal chauvinism are ultimately men as well as women. Concluding her tract, she warns of the dangers presented by the ignorance of prejudice: "Men will find out, moreover, that in order to pay them back, women are seeking to acquire that same fine habit they have of wanting to belittle our sex without even listening to us or reading our writings, for we have listened to them and read their works. They should also remember a dangerous expression of excellent origin: only the less able can live content with their own wisdom, looking over their shoulder at that of others, and ignorance is the mother of resumption." page xxi

      9) footnote page xxii: "6. Eberti's catalog, for example, contains over five hundred essays on learned women."

      also noted "Joan Kelly, "Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes", Signs 84 (1982):5 also 6 " page xxiii

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Editor of Montaigne: Marie de Gournay (1565 - 1645) by Maya Bijvoet

      1) "She was the only woman whose work appeared in the Parnasse Royal of 1635 published in honor of Louis XIII and was among the seventy most famous women of all time celebrated in Jean de la Forge's Circle of Learned Women in 1663." page 3

      2) "As an autodidact and a scholar of international reputation, she became an advocate of women's rights to education and intellectual fulfillment. In France, she was also the most scholarly female critic before Mme de Stael." page 4

      3) "Marie was not a feminist in the modern sense, of course, She was not even so radical as the male feminist Poulain de la Barre (1647 - 1723), whose writings questioned the conventional notion of male superiority with Cartesian rigor and advocated concrete social and political reform. Marie simply made intelligent, highly readable, and entertaining contributions to the debate concerning women's rights and roles. The fifteenth-century querelle des femmes had never really died, and around 1615 it flared up again in full force, ignited by a pamphlet by Jaques Olivier called Alphabet of the Imperfections and Malice of Women." page 7

      4) "In The Equality of Men and Women and The Ladies' Grievance, Marie, somewhat prudishly perhaps, completely avoids the medical and biological aspects of the problem and in fact underplays - if not altogether ignores the physical differences between the sexes. Instead, she focuses on the theological questions and searches the philosophers for evidence in favor of Eve's equality, for ideas to counter the low regard in which women's intelligence was generally held. Since the vast majority of the female population of France at the time was completely illiterate, it is no wonder that women were equated with ignorance, incompetence, and mere physicality. Marie herself, however, provided living proof that education could make a woman intelligent, rational, articulate, and also independent. As opposed to many other advocates of women's rights, Marie de Gournay does not claim that women are superior to men; she believes that, given the same opportunities, privileges, and education usually granted to men, women can equal men's accomplishments. The discrepancy in intelligence and achievements between men and women results from differences in education, circumstances, and attitudes, not form an inherent, predestined, intellectual inequality. While these ideas are almost completely commonplace today, they were still outlandish in Marie's time, and she needed to enlist the support of all great minds ancient and modern to make a legitimate case for them.

      The Equality of Men and Women was first printed in 1622." page 8

      5) Marie believed that "Since all the great minds of the past and present acknowledge the merits of women, those men who do not must lack intelligence." page 9

      6) "When Marie de Gournay gets very angry, she writes great prose. In the much shorter and more vehement tract The Ladies Grievance, written in 1626, who gives full rein to her satirical talent. . . . Her essay ends on an ominous note: one day women will have their revenge. Since they have read the books written by men and know their minds, they also know how little it takes to rise above them." page 10

      7) "This deep religious feeling was alien to Marie de Gournay. Anna Maria van Schurmann was undoubtedly a greater scholar, with more modesty and tact than Marie de Gournay, but she lacked the imagination and the fire which make much of Marie's writing so appealing." page 12

From The Equality of Men and Women (1622)

      1) "Yes, for some men it is not even enough to place themselves above women; they also judge it necessary to limit women's activities to the distaff and to the distaff alone. But women may take solace in the fact that this disdain comes only from those men they would least want to resemble, people who, if they belonged to it, would lend probability to the ugly things vomited about the female sex, and who feel in their hearts that they have nothing to recommend themselves but the fact that they belong to the other. They have heard it blazoned out in the streets that women lack dignity and intelligence, and their eloquence triumphs when preaching these maxims, especially since dignity, organs, and temperament are such handsome words. These men have not learned, on the other hand, that the most important quality of an inept person is to rely on popular belief and hearsay. See how such minds compare the two sexes: for them, the highest point of excellence to which a woman may aspire is to resemble the most ordinary of men. It is difficult for us to imagine that a great woman could call herself a great human being as to acknowledge that a man could rise to the level of a god. These men are braver that Hercules himself, for he defeated twelve monsters in twelve battles, while they undo half the world's population by one single word. Yet who will believe that people who strive to elevate themselves and strengthen their position through the weakness of others are capable of elevating and strengthening themselves on their own?" pages 15- 16

      2) "Even though men in many places have deprived our sex of its share of the best advantages, this larceny and the suffering it causes is clearly due to the difference in physical strength rather than to a lack of mental capacities or moral worth on our part." part 19

      3) "Hence, if Saint Paul, to continue my journey through the testimonies of holy men, excludes women from the priesthood and forbids them to speak in the Church, he clearly does not do this out of contempt for women but rather out of fear that they would lead some men into temptation if they showed so publicly and openly the beauty and grace they have in greater measure than men, which would be inevitable when ministering and preaching." page 20

      4) "If men pride themselves on the fact that Jesus Christ was born of their sex, the answer is that this was necessary for the sake of decency, for if he had been a woman, it would have been impossible for Jesus to go out at all hours of the day and night and mingle with the crowds to convert them and to help save mankind, without creating a scandal, especially in the face of the malice of the Jews." " page 22

      5) "Suppose we believed that the Scriptures indeed order woman to submit to the authority of man because she cannot think as well as he can, see here the absurdity that would follow: women would be worthy of having been made in the likeness of the Creator, worthy of taking part in the holy Eurcharist, of sharing the mysteries of the Redemption, Paradise, worthy of the vision, even possession, of God, but not of the status and privileges of men. Wouldn't we be saying then that men are more precious and sacred than all these things, and wouldn't that be the most grievous blasphemy?" page 23

From The Ladies Grievance (1626) by Marie de Gournay (1565 - 1645)

      1) "Let me add to this that not only the lower ranks among the literati stumble like this, putting down women, for even among the authors, alive and dead, who have acquired quite a literary reputation in this century, sometimes with very serious works, I have known some who thoroughly despised all books written by women without even bothering to read them to see of what stuff they are made, and without wanting to find out first whether they themselves could produce books worthy to be read by all kinds of women. This indeed is ca convenient habit, in accordance with popular taste which enhances the brilliance of their intelligence. For in order to be respected by general opinion, that many-headed beast, especially at court, all a man needs to do is despise a few people here and there and swear that as far as he is concerned he is the prime del monde, just like that poor fool who thought she was a picture of beauty and ran through the streets of Paris with hands on her hips, shouting: "Come and see how pretty I am." " page 25

      2) "But we do know several women who would never pride themselves on such a small accomplishment as outshining men. . . " page 26

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Anatomist of the Heart: Madame de aFayette by Ronald Bogue

      1) "This cool, reasonable woman was one of her century's most penetrating chroniclers of the sufferings of passion and the heart's self-deceptions. She was acutely aware of the need to shield one's psychological being from the scrutiny of the world, since in all her fiction it is her heroines' failure to hide their inner selves from others that leads to their downfall." page 64

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Writer of Fantasy: Madame d'Aulnoy by Glenda K. Mcleod

      1) "Finally, though her historical novels, memoirs, and fairy tales clearly manifest a subversive and surprising vein of social criticism, this important aspect passed virtually undetected until quite recently while critical commentary focused instead upon long-dead scandals and questions of possible plagiarism." page 91

      2) "In just over a decade, twenty-eight volumes flowed from her pen, a collection including novels, novelles, fairy tales, histories, edifying verse, travel books, memoirs, and a collection of letters." page 93

      3) "If viewed chronologically, this body of work demonstrates that Mme d'Aulnoy was in fact a surprisingly innovative writer who explored not only different genres but also the potential for feminine characterization inherent in those genres. If some of her works betray unmistakable signs of hasty composition, others clearly indicate her abundant talent and energy and the subtle but emphatic social critique that suffuses her work." page 93

      4) "Her works evince humor, a talent for rapid narration and parody, and an ability to analyze the emotions with delicacy and finesse. Moreover, in her characterization of women, she raised one of the first voices to protest a coral code that would deny individual liberty." page 98

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The Italian Memoralist: Camilla Faa Gonzaga by Valeria Finucci

      1) "The narrative has yet to receive critical attention, although some studies may be forthcoming. Costa-Zalessow has recently called it "the first female autobiography in Italy." " page 121

      2) "Camilla Faa had been back at court for nine months when Duke Fernando saw her for the first time. The date was September 1615, and he was preparing for his investiture as ruler of Mantua, a ceremony which took place with great pomp in January of the following year. Camilla was sixteen and a "nobilis et venustissima puella" with "rara pulchritudine." The rest is tersely narrated in her memoir. Fernando and Camilla secretly married on February 19, 1616. The news of their nuptials stirred disbelieved and controversy at court. Such a nonpolitical tie was not only unusual but also dangerously open to public criticism and legal review. To assuage Ardizzino's concern about his daughter's future, the duke gave Camilla the marquisate of Mombaruzo, a property which later proved valuable by providing her with a steady income. Harmony between the two was short-lived, though not for personal reasons. Faced with the harsh realities of politics on the peninsula, Fernando knew that he needed strong allies if he wanted to retain his power. He was also pragmatic enough to see the wisdom in his courtiers' insistence on a political marriage to solve his political problems. Although worried about Camilla's future (she was pregnant at the time), he slowly started to distance himself. next, he petitioned the Vatican to have their marriage annulled and to receive dispensation to wed the woman chosen for him, his niece Caterina de' Medici. Besides her large dowry, he sought the support of her powerful family in order to win his new war against the Savoy to reconquer the Monferrato. " page 122 (To make a long story short, they divorced and Fernando married two months after his son was born and a few days after his divorce was final. Camilla was forced to either marry a courtier or to go into a convent. She choose to go into the convent. Her autobiography was written at the request of the Mother Superior who was curious to know her story.)

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Woman of Learning: Bathsua Makin by Frances Teague

      1) "In 1659 a new book appeared in London: The learned Maid, or Whether a Maid May be a Scholar?: A logical exercise, Clement Barksdale's translation of De Ingeniis Muliebris (1641) by Anna Maria von Schurman, the finest woman scholar in Europe and a correspondent of Makin. Makin had evidently read the original Latin book with enthusiasm, for she and Schurman had written (in Greek) since 1640." page 290

      2) "Makin simply sidesteps any question of the propriety of a woman's writing a pamphlet; the use of the male persona allows her considerable freedom." page 291

      3) "Here is a good example of Makin's use of the inverted argument: if antifeminists have argued that women are fundamentally less virtuous than men, so be it - all the more reason to educate women! A long section follows (pp. 8 - 22) in which the persona catalogues the women who have excelled in learning. Languages, oratory, philosophy, mathematics, poetry, and divinity are included in this section; the examples of learned women come from the Bible and classical literature, as well as from medieval and Renaissance Europe." page 291

      4) "Among the many other notable European women, Makin mentions a few names repeatedly: Rosuida (Hroswitha), Elizabeth of Schonangia, Constantia and Baptista Sforza, Queen Christina of Sweden, Lady Jane Grey, and Queen Elizabeth of England." page 292

      5) "It is not the wicked nature of women that necessitates their education, but the noble nature of men. "Had God intended Women onely as a finer sort of Cattle, he would not have made them reasonable. Bruits, a few degrees higher than Drils [mandrills] of Monkies, (which the Indians use to do many Offices) might have better fitted some mens Lust, Pride, and Pleasure; especially those that desire to keep them ignorant to be tyrannized over" (p. 12). In short, men who are opposed to the education of women would probably enjoy bestiality with apes; decent men, however, recognize that women are reasonable creatures who can and should be taught. Good men deserve educated wives.

      The Essay goes on to detail the advantages of education for women. Women who have been taught are able to keep themselves if they must, as some wives had to do in the Civil War and as poor spinsters or widows must do. Furthermore, education keeps women contented at home, protects them against heresies, and enables them to help their husbands. One of the greatest benefits that would arise from educating women is that children would b e educated, learning from their mothers or nursemaids. (One notes that, by this point of the essay, Makin's earlier concession that only rich women of good parts be educated has gone by the board. Instead she envisions educated women in all walks of life - from the finest lady to the lowly nursery maid.) She ends the section by arguing that if women are improved by education, their families and nation will be better also." pages 292 - 293

      6) "She was clearly a remarkable teacher: her pupil, the Princess Elizabeth, mastered five languages in the middle of a threatening civil war; she was able to teach both a countess and her daughter, giving all parties satisfaction. In her own lifetime and after, Makin was mentioned by contemporaries as a model of learning." page 293

      7) "Her writing has more than historical value, however. The sharp wit and ironic arguments of the Essay have merit in themselves. Her arguments remain fresh, and she anticipates modern feminist scholars by looking to history for the example of other learned women. To find herself in such a volume as this would have given her great joy." page 293

From An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673)

      1) "If there be any persons so vain, and yet pleased with this Apish kind of Breeding now in use, that desire their Daughters should be outwardly dressed like Puppets, rather than inwardly adorned with Knowledge, let them enjoy their humour; but never wonder if such Marmosets married to Buffoons, bring forth and breed up a generation of Baboons, that have little more with than Apes and Hobby-Horses. I cannot say enough against this Babbarous rudeness, to suffer one part, I had almost said the better part, of ourselves to degenerate (as far as possible) into brutality." page 296

      2) "Object: Women are of softer Natures, more delicate and tender Constitutions, not so fixed and solid as Men.

      Answer: If their Natures are soft, they are more capable of good Impressions; if they are weak, more shame for us to neglect them, and defraud them of the benefit of Education, by which they may be strengthened." page 298

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The Danish Princess: Leonora Christina by Sverre Lyngstad

      1) "When Leonora Christian's Memory of Sorrow was discovered in 1868 by the Austrian count Johann Waldstein, a descendant of her youngest son, Leo, and published the following year, a writer of the first rank appeared overnight in Danish literature." page 377

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