Memoirs by Marie Mancini and Hortense Mancini (review)

Book Reviews209 Mancini, Marie and Hortense Mancini. Memoirs. Ed. and trans. Sarah Nelson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp [i]-xxviii; 110. ISBN 0-226-50278-73. $60.00 (Cloth). ISBN 0-226-50279-3. $24.00 (Paper). Two aristocratic women, well-born into a world of privilege, potentially filled with amusement and the many joys that their background offers, seek freedom from unhappy marriages and from the limitations forced upon them. The niece of Cardinal Mazarin, Marie Mancini, having been King Louis XIVs first true love and his mistress for over two years, seems destined to a happy life. The king's marriage to the infanta Marie-Therese of Spain in 1550 crushes her dreams, however, and in 1661 her marriage as well as that of her sister, Hortense, to well-positioned nobles seal their fates. Sarah Nelson's edition, with its thorough history of the publication of their memoirs, as well as thoroughly researched footnotes to detail the many names peppering their accounts, proves very informative, especially to any scholar researching this time period. Hortense's memoir was the first piece of lifewriting by a Frenchwoman published under her own name and during her lifetime. Marie writes in reaction to various faux memoirs written by others who highlight the more scandalous aspects of her attempts to seek financial and personal freedom from her husband. Both women write to set the record straight, so to speak, to justify both their actions and their demands to live apart from their husbands with some kind of true independence. According to Sarah Nelson, in publishing these memoirs: "the authors claim and exercise the right to define their own public image" (2). Each sister's voice resonates authentically throughout her writing. Hortense strives to save some of her dowry from her husband's misspending, so that her son remains protected. Marie's stubbornness, quick temper, and directness come forth as she describes her various errors of judgment that bring further restrictions. Both women travel from convent to convent, seeking protection and some semblance of freedom. Marie's desperate desire for permission to leave the convent once a week seems eminently reasonable to a modern female reader, but results in her continual movement from refuge to refuge seeking the opportunity to be herself within their closed walls. Both sisters, but especially Marie, compellingly tell of the dangers of travel, of the fear of being forced to return to their onerous husbands. While some readers may desire to learn of the sisters' adventures of the heart—footnotes indicate that Hortense seems to have had an illegitimate child during this time, and delineate Marie's husband's frequent alliances as well— the memoir themselves are quite discreet. Both women must swallow their pride as they suffer the indignities of the social necessity of being kind to a past or present mistress of their husband or a noble who has hindered their travels. The silences ofthe memoirs prove intriguing to the modern reader. Memoirs is the thirteenth volume in a series from University of Chicago Press, entitled The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe and edited by Margaret 2 1 0 Women in French Studies L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. The series' introduction surveys the traditional views of women's nature, revealing how the "other voice" serves to challenge assumptions. The series editors present a succinct and compelling history of the emergence of this other voice from 500 B.C.E. through 1700. If the other volumes contain equally compelling voices that are researched this thoroughly, this series will become a must-read for scholars ofthe early modern period. E. Nicole MeyerUniversity of Wisconsin-Green Bay ...