Gender Imprinting in Montaigne’s Essais

Gender Imprinting in Montaigne’s Essais Robert D. Cottrell I N “ DE LA PRAESUMPTION” (II, 17, 639a),1Montaigne remarks that he speaks and writes the French that is spoken and written in the South of France, adding that it is a “ langage alteré” (Donald Frame translates this as “ a corrupted language” ) that would offend “ les oreilles pures françoises” of those Northern Frenchmen who were born and reared in la langue d ’oïl. After noting that he has no more command of the Perigordian dialect spoken in the countryside around his château than he has of German, he expresses his admiration for the Gascon dia­ lect that is spoken up towards the mountains: “ Il y a bien au dessus de nous, vers les montaignes, un Gascon, que je treuve singulièrement beau, sec, bref, signifiant, et à la vérité un langage masle et militaire plus qu’autre que j ’entende” (639a). These remarks map out a spatial economy that permits Montaigne to distinguish between two sites, a here where the “ I” is located and a there that is inhabited by an “ Other.” The text articulates space by means of a grid composed of two axes: one is horizontal (“ altered” French is spoken in “des contrées de deçà” [639a], that is to say, on this side of the linguistic boundary that separates southern from northern France); the other is perpendicular (Gascon is spoken above us [“ au dessus de nous” ]). In the geography of the text, sites situated along the horizontal axis are similar to or different from each other, but none is superior or inferior to any of the others. When Montaigne wishes to establish a hierarchy of value, he situates sites along the perpendicular, not the hori­ zontal, axis. What is situated “ on high” (one of Cotgrave’s definitions of au dessus) is superior to what is “ down below” or “ underneath.” Situating Gascon “ above” the corrupted French he speaks (“ above” in both a literal and a figurative sense, for Gascon is not only the more admirable of the two languages, it is spoken at a higher geographical alti­ tude, up towards the mountains), Montaigne gives it a paradigmatic status. At the same time, the text registers the difference between Gascon and French in the syntax of gender. Gascon, which is more beautiful, concise and expressive (“ signifiant” ) than French, is a “ langage masle.” In accord with the mechanics of diacriticality that shapes thought and Vol. XXX, No. 4 85 L ’E sprit C réateur language and is powerfully operative in the Montaignian text, French, then, becomes a female language. By inscribing the terms Gascon: French, high:low and male:female into a homogeneous “ geometrical” structure, the text establishes equivalency between high and male on the one hand, and low and female on the other. Montaigne himself seems to have felt the pull of diacriticality, for in the 1580 edition of the Essais the sentence in which Gascon is called a male language is followed by a sen­ tence that ascribes female identity to a language that is contrasted to it, in this case, the Latin he learned as a child: “ Quand au Latin, qui m’a esté donné pour maternel, j ’ay perdu par des-accoustumance la promptitude de m’en pouvoir servir à parler” (639a, my emphasis). The Latin he speaks, his Latin, which has become rusty through lack of use, is, like his French, inferior to Gascon. Here inferiority is explicitly aligned with the maternal, that is to say, with the female.2 Re-reading the Essais, Montaigne, in a c passage, heightened the dia­ critical cast of his remarks and rendered more specific the contrast between a language that is male and a language that, precisely because it is “ other,” figures the female. After the sentence that describes Gascon as “ un langage masle et militaire plus qu’autre que j ’entende,” Mon­ taigne added the phrase, “ autant nerveux, puissant et pertinant, comme le François est gratieus, délicat et abondant” (639c). In the economy of the text, “nerveux,” “ puissant” and “ pertinant,” along with “beau,” “ sec,” “bref,” and “ signifiant” function as cognates of masle.3By con­ trast, “ gratieus,” “ délicat” and “ abondant” function as cognates...