Introduction: Amitié féminine from the 16th to the 20th century

Montfort-> INTRODUCTION Amitiéfémininefrom the 16th to the20th century Catherine R. Montfort L' amitié estun sentiment si subtil qu'elle échappe, dès qu'on veut ladéfinir, lajuger, l'expliquer, àtoute définition, àtoutjugement, à toute explicitation. Philippe SoupaultZ, 'Amitié} Ne gâtez pas l'amitié, vous qui avezméprisé l'amour. Mme de Staëlto Mme Récamier.2 With the advent offeminism, literary criticism has devoted a great deal ofattention to the subject ofwomen's relationships in literature and history, be it those between mothers and daughters, sisters, friends or lesbians. However, friendship (including feminine friendship)—as the above quote by Philippe Soupault makes very clear— is such an elusive subject that putting together a necessarily short Special Section of Women in French Studies on the topic oíamitiéféminine is amostdifficult task. The subject is rich and impossible to exhaust and can be approached from many angles, each raising a variety ofquestions.3 In this introduction, I will not attempt a mise aupoint, but rather focus on three fundamental issues relevant to the essays that follow: 1) the discourse on friendship by ancient philosophers, 2) the evolving discourse on friendship and its representation through history, and 3) the discrepancy between discourse and practice. First, as expressed by Aristotle in his Ethique deNicomaque, "Sans amis, nul ne voudraitvivre, même en étant comblé de tous lesbiens," true friendshipwasjudged as the ultimate good by most ofthe ancient philosophers. Such friendship was based on choice, equality, reciprocity and the fusion of two identities. Rediscovered in the sixteenth century, this ideal offriendship was used as a point ofreference by many subsequent thinkers. I mention this well-known point because a collection ofessays on amitié féminine starting at the Renaissance and spanning five centuries cannot totally ignore atradition which continues to play arole in ourpsyche, notwithstanding Carolyn Heilbrun's implicitpleato cometo gripswith the friendships ofwomen: Ifone sets out to survey the annals offriendship (as annals go, a rather short collection), one ends by reading—in Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plutarch, Erasmus, Montaigne, Johnson, Rousseau, Emerson, Thoreau, et al.—ofmale friendships. If the friendships ofwomen are considered at all, and that is rare enough, they intrude into the male account the way a token woman is reluctantly included in a male community.4 Questions arise: How does feminine friendship imitate or diverge from the male tradition? Among the many venues of expression, poems, treatises, maxims, fables, memoirs, correspondences, fiction, which are favored? And, anticipating our second issue, has this choice changed over the centuries? Second, beyondthe ancienttradition,thediscourse on friendship, although steady from the sixteenth century on, diminished in the nineteenth and early twentieth century . It has also evolved with societal changes. Considered a lofty ideal by Montaigne, 4 Womenin FrenchStudies friendship has been viewed with cynicism by many thinkers ofthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,whetheritbeLaRochefoucauld("Quelquerare quesoitlevéritable amour, il l'estmoins que lavéritable amitié"), LaMotheLeVayer ("C'est [...] untrésor qui ne se trouve nulle part"), Montesquieu ("L'amitié est un contrat par lequel nous nous engageons à rendre de petits services à quelqu'un afin qu'il nous en rende de grands"), orHelvétius ("Rien de plusrare que les anciennes amitiés"), as eachbelieved that friendship's source was in "amour-propre" or self-interest. In our own century, Proust also expressed scepticism, and Kafka described the basic loneliness ofman in The Metamorphosis: his hero Gregor is unable to make intimate friends. To these authors, the ancient ideal of friendship is a pipedream. And yet, one notices that friendship is intensely desired in contemporary society as the lyrics ofthe songs from Brassens to the Beatles amply demonstrate. At the same time friendship has been widely commercialized—a commercialization which would be impossible without a deeply rooted desire for it. Every day commodities such the Hallmark cards, soap operas, or even Bon Ami, use the concept or the term to market their product and are symptomatic ofthe importance offriendship intwentieth society lives.5 Hallmark cards, for example, express the sharing ofhappiness when a friend is successful, the sharing ofgriefwhen death strikes, support in time ofneed. With these thoughts as abackdrop on friendship in general, many questions naturally come to mind on...