Madame de Villedieu
Marie-Catherine Desjardins, known as Madame de Villedieu, was a notable figure in 17th-century France, recognized for her contributions to literature and the arts. Born around 1640 into minor nobility in Alençon, she navigated personal challenges, including her parents' separation, which led her to Paris where she was introduced to salon society. There, she displayed her intelligence and began her writing career, marked by her first literary success, the erotic sonnet "Jouissance," published in 1660. Villedieu became a pioneering voice in French theater and an early feminist advocate, being one of the first women to earn a living through her writing.
Her works included poetry, novels such as "Carmente" and "Cléonice," and plays that were well received during her time, including the tragicomedies that captivated audiences including King Louis XIV. Noteworthy among her later publications are "Les Amours des grands hommes," which reimagined historical figures through the lens of love, and her fictional pseudo-autobiography "Mémoires de la vie de Henriette-Sylvie de Molière." After a brief retirement from writing following her marriage, her literary legacy continued to be recognized posthumously. Madame de Villedieu's life and work resonate as an important chapter in the evolution of French literature, highlighting the complexities of love and ambition in her era.
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Madame de Villedieu
Writer
- Born: c. 1640
- Birthplace: Probably in Alençon, France
- Died: 1683
- Place of death: Clinchemare, France
Biography
Marie-Catherine Desjardins, also known as Madame de Villedieu, was born into minor provincial nobility around 1640, probably in Alençon, France. Her father was a lawyer and her mother was an attendant to the duchess of Montbazon. The family, including a second daughter, moved to Normandy around 1650, where Desjardins’s father secured an appointment. By 1655, her parents had legally separated, and her mother took her daughters to the duchess’s home in Paris.
In Paris, Desjardins was exposed to salon society, where she displayed sharp intelligence and ready wit and began to write. Through the duchess, she met Antoine de Boësset in 1658, bearer of the purchased title sieur de Villedieu and the scion of a family of court musicians. The two fell in love and began a passionate affair. In celebration of their relationship and the promise of marriage, Desjardins wrote an erotic sonnet, “Jouissance,"published in 1660, her first known literary success and the beginning of a prolific output.
At the age of twenty, she began to live by herself and was financially independent of her parents. During the next fifteen years, she established herself as a pioneer of the French theater, an early feminist, an important figure in the development of the modern novel, and one of the first women to earn an income from her writing—qualities that caused her to be rediscovered in the twentieth century.
In the early 1660’s, Desjardins published collections of poetry and novels in genres that were popular at the time, the nouvelles historique and nouvelles galantes. Such novels revolved around the hidden fictitious history of a genuine event and included plots about amorous intrigues. In the same decade, Desjardins also wrote three plays, the tragedy Nitétis and the tragicomedies Manlius Torquatus and Le Favory (pb. 1665; The Favorite Minister, pb. 1994). The latter play was successfully presented by Molière’s troupe before King Louis XIV and resulted in the king’s promise of a pension for the author, which she did not receive for many years.
Meanwhile, Desjardins continued her stormy affair with Boësset de Villedieu until 1667, when he married someone else and went to fight in the Thirty Years’ War. In debt, he sold Desjardins’s love letters, which were published in 1668 as Lettres et billets galants. He was killed at the battle of Lille, and afterward Desjardins published under the name Madame de Villedieu. She wrote several more novels in the galante tradition, including Carmente and Cléonice: Ou Le Roman galant.
Villedieu’s best-known works were produced during the last five years of her writing career. In the four-volume farce, Les Amours des grands hommes (1671; The Amours of Solon, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Cato of Utica, D’Andelot, Bussy d’Amboyse, 1673), she fictionalized events in the lives of Solon, Socrates, Julius Caesar, and others to demonstrate how each might have been dominated by love or lust and in the process knocked these classical heroes off their lofty historical pedestals. Villedieu’s greatest work is Mémoires de la vie de Henriette-Sylvie de Molière (1672-1674; The Memoirs of the Life, and Rare Adventures of Henrietta Silvia Molière, 1672- 1677), a fictional, picaresque, and scandalous pseudoautobiography told in the first person. The last work published in her lifetime was Les Désordres de l’Amour (1675; The Disorders of Love: Truly Expressed in the Unfortunate Amours of Givry with Mademoiselle de Guise, 1677), although several titles appeared posthumously.
In 1676, Villedieu finally obtained her long-awaited king’s pension, though it was only half the amount promised, and she retired from writing. The following year she married minor noble Claude-Nicolas de Chaste and bore a son in 1678. When Chaste died in 1679, Villedieu moved to Clinchemore, where she lived with her mother until her death in 1683.