“L’horreur de mon exemple” in Marie de Gournay’s Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne (1594)

“L’horreur de mon exemple” in Marie de Gournay’s Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne (1594)1 Cathleen M. Bauschatz S TUDY OF THE EXEMPLUM in French Renaissance literature has received new life with the appearance of John Lyons’ Exemplum: The Rhetoric o f Example in Early Modern France and Italy.2 Among other things, Lyons shows the importance of the exemplum tradition in the development of the seventeenth-century novel from the sixteenth-century novella. The authors of fiction he treats, Marguerite de Navarre and Marie de La Fayette, demonstrate a chronological change in the use of exemplum, reflecting a sort of crisis in the perceived relation­ ship between writer and reader, as well as in the belief that examples can teach, and if so, how. Interestingly, these two authors are women, who appear largely to write for and about women, whereas the other prose authors Lyons discusses, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Descartes and Pascal, write primarily for and about men, using non-fictional genres. Although Lyons does not suggest this, one reason for the ambiguity in Marguerite de Navarre’s and Mme de La Fayette’s treatment of exemplum may be that they are women writers, as well as writers of fiction. A third Renaissance woman writer of fiction, situated between Mar­ guerite and La Fayette, is Marie de Gournay (1565-1645). Known prin­ cipally for her non-fictional works, Gournay did also write a novel, Le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne (1594), so named because it is dedicated to Montaigne in memory of a walk they took together (in 1588) when discussing the story on which the book is based.3Gournay’s novel provides additional evidence for Lyons’ theory that the changing use of example is one of the barometers for detecting the shift from novella to novel, at the end of the French Renaissance. But her novel also displays an uneasiness with the authoritarian discourse of exemplarity, which may be typical of women writers. Marie de Gournay’s Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne, an “ histoire tragique,” is a story of seduction and betrayal.4At the crucial moment when the hero, Leontin, seduces the heroine, Alinda, she pours out a sort of rhetorical declamation, a monologue addressed to herself but also, apparently, to future generations of women: Vo l . XXX, No. 4 97 L ’E sprit C réateur Sera-t-il dit que je trahisse mon pere, moy fille, moy, dy-je, Alinda? Que je trahisse la liberté du Roy, moy tant honoree que d’estreesleüe pour sa rançon ... Est-il dit que ce soit à jamais sur l’horreur de mon exemple que les meres instruiront leurs filles à fuir le mal? (p. 13v) Rather than pondering only her own destiny, at this point, the character Alinda, like the narrator Gournay herself, considers “ what people will think,” and extends this concern to future generations of women, seem­ ingly aware that she is a character in a (fictional) narrative, whose behavior will be scrutinized and evaluated.5Not only will this behavior be judged, but it will also be weighed as a positive or negative example to other women. Alinda’s sense of her responsibilities as a princess extends, in Gournay’s narrative, to an awareness of her participation in a fictional world of tragic heroines like Ariadne and Dido, whose experience she (Alinda) would not have known (she is Persian), but to whom Gournay constantly compares her.6 The presence of Ariadne and Dido in the Proumenoir is a key to interpreting the role which Gournay apparently expected Alinda to play, both within the story and for women readers. We are never allowed to forget that, like Ariadne and Dido, Alinda is a princess and a literary character, and thus carries the responsibilities which accompany both.7 She should provide a model or an exemplum, like the superior women of the past described by Christine de Pisan or Boccaccio.8But unlike those superior women of the past, Alinda’s experience must be studied for what it shows women readers not to do. When Léontin leaves Alinda for another woman, Alinda learns a lesson which many have learned before her: Aussi cognoissoit elle combien les promesses d’espouser...