Madame de La Fayette
Madame de La Fayette, born Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne in 1634, was a prominent French novelist and a key figure in the evolution of the modern novel. Growing up in the aristocratic circles of Paris, she was educated in literature and languages, developing a network of influential friends, including the revered Madame de Sévigné. After marrying François Motier, comte de La Fayette, she divided her time between their estates and Paris, where she became immersed in the cultural life of the court and salons.
La Fayette is best known for her groundbreaking works, particularly "The Princess of Clèves," which explores complex themes of love and morality through its protagonist's inner struggles. This novel, published anonymously in 1679, has been recognized for its psychological depth and narrative sophistication, marking a departure from the heroic romances of the time. Her other notable works include "La Princesse de Monpensier" and "Zaïde," demonstrating her ability to weave historical context into compelling narratives.
Despite her significant contributions to literature, La Fayette often published her works anonymously or under male pseudonyms, leading to debates regarding authorship and the nature of her writing process. Her legacy endures through her innovative storytelling and keen observations of 17th-century French society, providing insights into the life and culture of her era.
Madame de La Fayette
French writer
- Born: March 18, 1634 (baptized)
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Died: May 25, 1693
- Place of death: Paris, France
La Fayette, a prominent figure in Parisian literary salons, wrote heroic and historical novels, a biography of Henrietta Anne of England, and other works. Her The Princess of Clèves has been hailed as the first modern French novel.
Early Life
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, later known as Madame de La Fayette (mah-dahm deh lah-fah-yeht), grew up in the fashionable Parisian district of Saint-Germain. She was baptized in the neighborhood church of Saint-Sulpice. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, a military engineer and member of the lower nobility, died in December of 1649, when La Fayette was only fifteen years old. Her mother, Isabelle Pena, the daughter of a royal physician, remarried the following year. Under the guidance of a mentor, La Fayette learned the rudiments of Latin and Italian, read works by Petrarch and by Torquato Tasso, and associated with poets and literati at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, hosted by the marquise de Rambouillet, and other locales. She became close friends with Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, better known as Madame de Sévigné, and became acquainted with the French novelist Madeleine de Scudéry, whose works were popular at the time.
Probably around 1651, at the age of seventeen, La Fayette became one of Queen Anne of Austria’s handmaidens. As a result of her stepfather’s involvement in the Wars of the Fronde (1648-1653), she was forced to leave the capital in 1653 and spend most of the following year in Anjou. On February 15, 1655, at the age of twenty, she married François Motier, comte de La Fayette, a widower almost twice her age, and accompanied him to his estates in Auvergne. Accustomed to the intellectual charms of Parisian high society, however, she grew weary of life in the province and returned with her husband to the French capital, giving birth there to two sons, the first in 1658 and the second in 1659.
After November, 1561, she and her husband, to a large extent, led separate lives. He managed the estates in Auvergne while she looked after their interests in Paris. With infinite discretion, she also cultivated her talent as a writer.
Life’s Work
Following her return to Paris in 1658, Madame de La Fayette assumed a prominent role amid the Parisian aristocracy. She was again seen at court; attended cultural salons in the company of her mentor, scholar Gilles Ménage; and hosted similar gatherings in her own spacious residence at Rue Férou.
Her first published work, a brief descriptive portrait of her friend Madame de Sévigné, appeared under her own name in Divers portraits (pb. 1659), a collection of fifty-nine literary portraits commissioned for publication by the duchess de Montpensier, Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans. All of La Fayette’s subsequent writings, letters excluded, circulated either anonymously or under the name of a male “coauthor,” leaving historians with the difficult task of determining not only what works to attribute to her but also the extent of her authorship in each. Prominent guests at her house—Ménage, poet Jean Regnault de Segrais, scholar and prelate Pierre-Daniel Huet, and writer François de La Rochefoucauld —assisted her by appraising, proofreading, and correcting her drafts, and perhaps, to some extent—as extant manuscript documents suggest—by teasing out some of her ideas on paper. All this was, however, common practice for both men and women writers of the period.
By the time La Fayette began writing, the French nouvelle (prototype of the modern novel or novella) was already in the process of supplanting the heroic romance as a dominant form of narrative prose fiction. Plausibility was a prime concern among theorists of the modern novel. Her friend Segrais, theorist and author of Les Nouvelles françaises (pb. 1656-1657; French novels), recommended looking to history and, in particular, to recent French history, for inspiration and guidance. Published anonymously in 1662, La Fayette’s first novella, La Princesse de Monpensier (The Princess of Monpensier , 1666) did just that. Recounting the tragic fate of an unhappily married woman and her adulterous passion, this novella is set during the turbulent events of the French Wars of Religion one century earlier. Readers and critics readily presumed that hidden beneath the veneer of this historical romance was a chronicle of contemporary society.
Her following novel, Zaïde, une histoire espagnole (pb. 1669 and 1671; Zayde, a Spanish History , 1678), is a heroic romance set in medieval Spain. Its pages are full of chivalric episodes, digressions, and improbable events common in the baroque novel. Although the work appeared under Segrais’s name, with no mention of La Fayette’s central role, documents suggest it was indeed the product of collaboration between La Fayette and her entourage.
In The Princess of Clèves (1679), La Fayette’s masterpiece of fictional prose, a faithful wife torn between reason and passion naively confesses to her husband her attraction to another man. Such an idea had surfaced already in a nouvelle by Marie-Cathérine Desjardins (Madame de Villedieu) some three years earlier, yet the success of La Fayette’s version was far greater. In the months following the anonymous publication of The Princess of Clèves, readers and critics avidly debated in various public forums its tantalizing moral issues and pioneering aesthetic qualities. As in The Princess of Monpensier, the action takes place in sixteenth century France. In this case, however, La Fayette enhanced the psychological complexity of her characters and developed the art of suggestion through abstract language and symbols. Published anonymously, it was not unti1 1780 that The Princess of Clèves appeared for the first time with La Fayette’s name, and it was the last work to be published during her lifetime, albeit without her name.
In 1680, she mourned the loss of her dear friend, La Rochefoucauld, and four years later that of her husband. At the time of her own death in 1693, few beyond her circle of friends and literary acquaintances suspected that La Fayette would come to be remembered as one of France’s most innovative novelists. Works attributed to her posthumously include the anonymously published novella La Comtesse de Tende (pb. 1718; The Comtesse de Tende , 1992), Histoire de Madame Henriette d’Angleterre (wr. 1664-1669, pb. 1720; Fatal Galantry: Or, The Secret History of Henrietta, Princess of England , 1722), and Mémoires de la cour de France pour les années 1688 et 1689 (pb. 1731; Memoirs of the Court of France for the Years 1688-1689 , 1929). A modern editor of her works, Roger Duchêne, considers the latter work apocryphal. Her correspondence, consisting of some 250 extant letters, provides valuable insight into the culture of Parisian salons.
Significance
For various reasons—aesthetic qualities, narrative techniques, moral and philosophical concerns, questions of authorship, and historicity, to name a few—Madame de La Fayette’s novels, historical memoirs, and letters have intrigued generations of readers and critics. Turning to the collaborative model of salon writing common in her day, she produced highly refined fictional works capable of appealing to readers on their own merit. As a memorialist and a letter writer, she had firsthand knowledge of many of the people and events she described, so she offers unique insight into Parisian salon culture and life at court.
Her attention to historical detail and emphasis on subtle character analysis in The Princess of Clèves greatly contributed to its stunning success and led the way in the transition from heroic romance to the modern novel. Generations of students and scholars have debated, and will likely continue to debate in the foreseeable future, the plausibility of the princess’s singular confession and the reasons for her ultimate refusal to marry the man she loved. The novel’s underlying dichotomy of reason and passion, a typical theme in classical French theater and poetry, places La Fayette’s masterpiece in the philosophical mainstream of seventeenth century European literature.
Bibliography
Beasley, Faith Evelyn. Revising Memory: Women’s Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990. In chapter 3, Beasley examines La Fayette’s activity as a memoirist, and in chapter 5, she discusses how, as a novelist, La Fayette challenged the normative poetic concept of “plausibility.”
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Voices of Shadows: Lafayette’s Zaïde.” In Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early-Modern France, edited by Elizabeth C. Goldsmith and Dena Goodman. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995. Beasley suggests that the multiplicity of narrative voices in Zayde reflects the collaborative model of writing practiced in the literary salons of Paris.
Beasley, Faith E., and Katherine Ann Jensen. Approaches to Teaching Lafayette’s “The Princess of Clèves.” New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1998. Contributions from eighteen specialists in this volume offer a wide spectrum of views and analyses focusing on La Fayette’s novel.
DeJean, Joan. Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. In chapter 3, Dejean describes the collaborative practice of “salon writing” during La Fayette’s time.
Green, Anne. Privileged Anonymity: The Writings of Madame de Lafayette. Oxford, England: Legenda, 1996. Green focuses on La Fayette’s work as a novelist as well as historian.
Haig, Stirling. Madame de Lafayette. New York: Twayne, 1970. This work provides an overview of La Fayette’s life and work.
Henry, Patrick, ed. An Inimitable Example: The Case for the Princesse de Clèves. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993. In this volume, fourteen specialists discuss various aspects of La Princesse de Clèves.
Lyons, John D., ed. The Princess of Clèves: Contemporary Reactions, Criticism. New York: Norton, 1994. Articles by eleven literary historians accompany this English translation of La Princesse de Clèves.
Racevskis, Roland. Time and Ways of Knowing Under Louis XIV: Molière, Sévigné, Lafayette. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2003. In chapter 4, Racevskis discusses the perception of time in La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves.