In this new study, Elizabeth Goldsmith continues her pursuit of issues treated in her earlier books on conversation, epistolary writing, and the female voice in literature. She examines how French women in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries first came to publish their private life stories; in doing so, she explores what the writers have to say about why they decide to write about themselves, what they choose to write, how they get their stories circulated and printed, and what they do to defend themselves against the threat to personal reputation and credibility that was implied by such public self-exposure. Goldsmith scrutinizes the autobiographical writing of six women, all of whom were, for different reasons, the objects of fairly intense publicity during their lifetime, at the historical moment when the idea of "publicity" via the printed word was still a new concept. Three of the women-Jeanne des Anges, Marie de l'Incarnation, and Jeanne Guyon-were charismatic religious figures whose writings were widely circulated. The other three writers-the sisters Hortense and Marie Mancini, and Madame de Villedieu-are more worldly, but like their spiritual counterparts, they undertook self-publication as a form of conversation with the world, and a way of participating in other forms of public discourse. Publishing Women's Life Stories in France, 1647-1720 considers the different forms that the life writing of these three women took: autobiographies; letter correspondences (which in four of the six cases have never before been published); trial transcripts; testimonials published as part of other authors' works; and written self-portraits that were circulated among friends. Drawing on the work of Michel de Certeau on voice and communities of readers in the 17th century, as well as the work of Roger Chartier and other historians of the book and print culture, Goldsmith retraces the complicated networks of human interaction that underlie these early a
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Discovering New Worlds: Marie de lâIncarnation and the Process of Autobiography
The initial expression of the spiritual is nothing but the decision to leave.
Michel de Certeau
mon coeur dans un cloĂźtre et mon corps dans le monde.
Marie de lâIncarnation
The disparate writings that make up the work of Marie de lâIncarnation are all in some way inspired by the authorâs desire to narrate the story of her lifeâs renewal that began with her departure for the unknown world of Canada in 1639. Most of what she wrote can be said to be autobiographical in that she wrote either to relate her own life and inner development (as in the memoir she titled her Relation and in her correspondence), or to document a specific occasion in which she had been involved (as in her notes from retreats, readings, and teachings). By the time of her death in 1672 her place in French history was secure. Her narratives of life in the newly established missions of Canada were widely read in France in the letters she regularly sent home for circulation and in her contributions to the regular accounts produced collectively by missionaries and sent to France, the Jesuit Relations. As the first female member of a religious order to become a missionary in New France, Marie was a well-known spiritual leader in her lifetime. After her death her life story was presented to generations of Catholic schoolgirls as an exemplary tale of feminine virtue and religious devotion.
Moreover, when we read her autobiographical Relation de 1654 with her epistolary writing, which both she and her son treated as a single work, we can appreciate how she was able to satisfy the narrow definition of spiritual memoirs as authorized by the Church, and at the same time serve as a model to other women of her time who undertook a less orthodox approach to publishing their lives. Marieâs autobiographical voice, and the way in which it was edited by her son and interwoven with his own commentary, which he called âthe filial echoâ of her voice, would serve as a guide to other women who made the decision to write their life stories and who hoped to receive an approval from readers comparable to the response that Marieâs story had enjoyed.
The trajectory of Marie Guyartâs life that would lead her to a position of prominence in the history of Canada and of Catholic spirituality would have been difficult to predict when, in 1616, at the age of 17, she married the silk merchant Claude Martin in the provincial city of Tours. At 19 she was widowed and left alone with her infant son to help manage her brotherâs family business. But an intense period of spiritual self-questioning followed, and within two years of her abrupt initiation into the world of trade Marie was secretly yearning for the refuge of a convent. Finally, at the age of 30, she managed to see her dream realized, and over the strenuous objections of her family (including her young sonâs poignant pleas) she entered the Ursuline convent as a novice. Barely two years later she was professed as a nun.
Marieâs initial âdepartureâ from the world into the circumscribed space of conventual life was the first in a series of leavetakings that she would come to see as patterning her life. The urge to quit her worldly life and focus on what she calls the âinteriorâ life was also what precipitated, or facilitated, Marie de lâIncarnationâs entry into the world of writing. For Marie the act of writing seems always to have been fraught with an attendant anxiety about the vanity of any kind of verbal self-expression. But paradoxically, by moving out of the secular world and committing herself to religious life, in which the rule of modesty and silence would presumably be most strong, Marie found a freedom to write âfrom the heartâ that she had not known before. This paradoxical âinner freedomâ provided to women by cloistered life has been explored in recent years by scholars studying the writings of nuns from the middle ages to the eighteenth century.2 Established in France in the early seventeenth century, the Ursuline order promoted an approach to apostolic faith that was particularly congenial to a blending of the active and the contemplative life. Many Ursuline communities favored the taking of a special vow to promote Christianity through the teaching of young girls.3 Ursuline spirituality and the manifestations of mystical experience as described by Ursuline nuns were to incorporate the apostolic mandate of the order, just as that outward mission was to give heavy weight to the teachings of spirituality or the âinner wayâ to God.4
(After all the inner promptings which the goodness of God had granted me to draw me to true purity of soul, which I could not reach through my own efforts, not having had any director until then, his divine Majesty himself wanted to deliver the coup de grĂące. He pulled me from my ignorance and placed me on his chosen path, taking pity on me: this happened on the eve of the Incarnation of Our Father, in the year 1620, on the 24th of March.)
Walking in the street she is overwhelmed by a sense of her own culpability, and she wanders as though in a trance, until she finds herself in front of the chapel of the Feuillant Fathers, where she enters and pours out her soul to a startled priest:
(When I had finished I saw that the priest was astonished by the way I had introduced myself and poured out my sins in this unusual way, and by my manner which he knew was not normal but out of the ordinary. He spoke to me very gently, saying, âGo home now and come back to see me tomorrow in my confessional.â)
Thus Dom François de Saint-Bernard became Marieâs first religious director, and his âregulationâ of her confessions gave form to her inner explorations, convincing her most importantly of the necessity of dialogue as a means of spiritual advancement. This account is paradigmatic for the historian, dramatizing as it does one individualâs discovery of the power of private confession, at a moment in French history when this practice was just beginning to be widespread.6 Marie situates the point of origin of her religious conversion and spiritual identity in this initial turning to a private space for intimate confession (beginning with Dom Françoisâs directing her to the confessional). The space of the confession-box was in fact a new configuration in Catholic ritual practices at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and Marie took to the new practice of the guided examen de conscience with a zeal that was remarkable to her religious directors.7
(⊠a desire such as mine cannot long remain silent; it repeats itself endlessly and I always have new things to say ⊠Mortify me then, as long as you like, I will not stop telling you of the feelings God gives me, nor will I stop exposing them to your judgment âŠ)
(When he had heard me, he asked me to write to him about Godâs direction of me since childhood, and about all that had occurred during the series of blessings that it pleased his Divine Majesty to bestow on me. I had the permission of my superior; but it repelled me to do it if I did not at the same time write of all my sins and imperfections during my life ⊠so that in this way he would be better able to judge my state. I received permission and did ...
Table of contents
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Introduction
1 Discovering New Worlds: Marie de lâIncarnation and the Process of Autobiography
2 Public Sanctity and Private Writing: The Autobiography of Jeanne des Anges
3 Silent Communications: The Life and Letters of Jeanne Guyon
4 Scripting Errant Lives: The Memoirs of Hortense and Marie Mancini
5 Overheard Conversations: Madame de Villedieuâs Autobiographical Fictions