While still in her teens, Marie discovered the writings of the as-yet unknown Montaigne, became his devoted follower, and yearned to meet him. While in Paris with her mother in 1588, she learned that Montaigne was also there, wrote him a letter, and was asked to meet him. Although their relationship remained platonic (he was about 32 years her senior), they became close and she became his "adopted" daughter. After his death in 1592, Marie edited his works, the work for which she was best remembered until this century. She also produced one short novel, translations from Latin, numerous poems, essays on the French language, poetry, theory of translation, education, morality, education, and critical analysis of contemporary writers, and two feminist tracts, "The Equality of Men and Women" (1622) and The Ladies' Grievance (1626). Never married, Marie depended on income from writing.

      French women had been part of the debate on the woman question for two centuries, since Christine de Pizan had published Book of the City of Ladies in 1405. The defense of woman had become its own literary form: list of exemplary women from antiquity to the present time, woman-friendly interpretations of scripture, and logical reasons for supporting the inherent humanness of women. In "The Equality of Men and Women," de Gournay pioneered a new approach to the debate by appealing to the authority of ancient and modern philosophers (Plutarch, Seneca, Erasmus, Politian, and Castiglione) and the Church fathers, as well as scripture. If such revered men of the past and present acknowledged the merits of women, any man who did not recognize women's merit must himself lack intelligence. Like other women before her, de Gournay attributes women's apparent mental inferiority to men to women's lack of education, believing that men and women are inherently alike, except in the matter of reproduction. Women, like men, were made in the image of God, and Saint Paul excluded women from active participation in the church because he feared that their charms would distract men from their devotion to God.

      In The Ladies' Grievance, de Gournay gives full reign to her frustration over not being taken seriously as an intellectual. She rails against men who refuse to engage women in truly intellectual conversations and men who replace reasoning with gestures of politeness. She speculates that men do so to mask their fear that women are indeed their intellectual equals.

      How well previous generations of feminist thinkers were aware of one another and supported one another is open to debate. From Anna Maria van Schurman's collected writings published in 1638, we know that a small community of feminist thinkers developed during de Gournay's lifetime. Bathsua Makin, Anna Maria van Schurman, and Marie de Gournay corresponded with one another.¹

      From "The Equality of Men and Women" (1622)

      "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?"

      From "The Ladies Grievance" (1626)

      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 a 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."

1. Wilson, p. xiii, p 167

References:

      Katharina M. Wilson and Frank J. Warnke (eds.), Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century [Athens: U. of Georgia Press, 1989]

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