Crossing Borders with Mademoiselle de Richelieu: Fiction, Gender, and the Problem of Authenticity

Crossing Borders with Mademoiselle de Richelieu: Fiction, Gender, and the Problem ofAuthenticity Carolyn Woodward In 1744, a romp ofa textwas published in London: THETRAVELSAND ADVENTURES OFMademoiselle de RICHEUEU. COUSIN to thepresent DUKE ofthat NAME. Who made the Tour ofEUROPE, dressed in Men's Cloaths, attended by herMAR)LUCYas her Valet de Chambre. Now done into ENGLISH from the LADY'S own MANUSCRIPT.1 In this ostensible translation, Mademoiselle de Richelieu en travesti makes her tour of Europe, commenting along die way on architecture and landscapes, manners and mores. One adventure for Mademoiselle is die writing of her book, in which she travels not only across Europe but also into die heart ofanother Mademoiselle, widi whom, after a series ofsprightly, gender-bending adventures, she setdes down to live in bliss ever after.2 Although travel as a motif provides a sort of coherence, pastiche appears to have been die governing mode of composition, 1 This is text from die tide page ofdie Üireerolume duodecimo edition published in 1744 by Mary Cooper, which is die first London edition. References are to diis edition. 2 To date, published articles on MademoiselledeRichelieuare: Woodward, "1My HeartSo Wrapt': Lesbian Disruptions in Eighteendi-CenturyBritish Fiction," Signs 18:4 (1993), 838-65; Susan Lamb, "'Be Such a Man as G: Mademoiselle Makes die Tour ofEurope in Men's Qotíies," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 27(1998), 75-102; and Susan S. Lanser, "The Audior's Queer Clothes: Anonymity, Sex(uality), and The Travels and Adventures ofMademoiselle de Richelieu," TheFacesofAnonymity:AnonymousandPseudonymousPublicationfrom theSixteenth tothe Twentieth Century, ed. Robert Griffin (NewYork: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 81-102. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 16, Number 4,JuIy 2004 574 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION and die text exhibits a marked formal instability, romping, as itwere, across several types offiction, witiiout regard to generic boundaries: orthodox travel narrative gives way to picaresque adventures and same-sex romance, inset stories construct scenes of heterosexual passion and strife, and miscellaneous insertions of self-conscious artifice remind the reader of a writer's presence. This textual instability mirrors a balancing actplayed outby die lovers Alidiea and Arabella, in which representations ofsame-sex eroticism suggest an incongruence between desire and language. Furdiermore, travel is a motif in more than one sense. Alidiea and Arabella travel, die text travels across several generic boundaries, and die manuscript itself travels from ostensible French composition to putative translation into English and dien print publication in London and Dublin. In several ways, Mademoiselle de Pdchelieu is an anomaly, and die conclusion of this article addresses some perplexing questions about audienticity, anomaly, and whatwe may learn from study ofdiis oddly compelling text. Some seventeendi-centuryFrench women's fiction included genderbending picaresque adventures diat inspired imitations and parodies as late as 1835, when Théophile Gautier constructed in Mademoisellede Maupin ayoung woman who wants to see life and so cross-dresses and eventually takes in a young woman who herself cross-dresses. In diis type ofpicaresque, die freedom ofmovement and expression oftravel narrative is overlaid widi gender play.3 But ifMademoiselle de Pdchelieu follows from these adventures, itmakes a newpicaresque grounded in witty feminist polemic and expressive of erotic love and romance between women diatopens intoways ofdunkingheretofore unwritten.4 3 In MademoiselledeMaupin, diesexuallyambivalentThéodorewrites in adiary: "In trudi, neidier sex is reallymine; ... I belong to a uiird sex, asex apart, which has asyet no name."Théophile Gautier, MademoiselledeMaupin, trans.JoannaRichardson (Harmondswordi: Penguin, 1981), p. 330. Ofparticularinterestis MémoiresdelaviedeHenriette-SylviedeMolière (1671-74), byMme de Vïlledieu (Marie Catherine Hortense Desjardins), who constructs Henriette-Sylvie as a daring adventurer, often cross-dressing in order to cross into territories of male privilege, including die privilege ofmakinglove to women. (I thankAuroraWolfgangfor introducing me to bodi texts.) Some partsofCharlotte Charke's Narrativeare roguishlypicaresque in diis way. Charke, ANarrativeoftheLifeofMrs. CharlotteCharke (1755; reprint, Gainesville: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1969). In CathyDavidson'sanalysisoffemale picaresque inAmerican colonial literature,she notesfeatures diatalso occurin MademoiselledeRichelieu: cross-dressing, freedom ofmovement, and political overtones. Davidson observes, though, diatin die textsshe reads, die picaraultimately (or, often, all along) reveals herstereotypicallyfeminine nature and so does not direaten die status quo. Revolution and the Word: The Rise oftheNovel in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 179-92. 4 In...