Women of Modern France

by Hugo P. Thieme

In order to fully appreciate the mistress of the eighteenth century, her power and influence, her rise to popularity and social standing, the general and accepted idea and nature of the sentiment called love must be explained; for it was to the peculiar development of that emotion that the mistress owed her fortune.

In the eighteenth century love became a theory, a cult; it developed a language of its own. In the preceding age love was declared, it spoke, it was a virtue of grandeur and generosity, of courage and delicacy, exacting all proofs of decency and gallantry, patient efforts, respect, vows, discretion, and reciprocal affection. The ideal was one of heroism, nobleness, and bravery. In the eighteenth century this ideal became mere desire; love became voluptuousness, which was to be found in art, music, styles, fashions—in everything. Woman herself was nothing more than the embodiment of voluptuousness; it made her what she was, directing and fashioning her. Every movement she made, every garment she wore, all the care she applied to her appearance—all breathed this volupté.

In paintings it was found in impure images, coquettish immodesties, in couples embraced in the midst of flowers, in scenes of tenderness: all these representations were hung in the rooms of young girls, above their beds. They grew up to know volupté, and, when old enough, they longed for it. It was useless for women to try to escape its power, and chastity naturally disappeared under these temptations. The young girl inherited the impure instincts of the mother, and, when matured, was ready and eager for all that could enchant and gratify the senses.

True domestic friendship and intimacy were rare, because the husband given to a young girl had passed through a long list of mistresses, and talked—from experience—gallant confidences which took away the veil of illusion. She was immediately taken into society, where she became familiar with the spicy proverbs and the salty prologues of the theatre, where supposedly decent women were present, in curtained boxes. At the suppers and dinners, by songs and plays, at the gatherings where held forth Duclos and others like him, in the midst of champagne, ivresse d'esprit, and eloquence, she was taught and saw the corruption of society and marriage, the disrespect to modesty; in such an atmosphere all trace of innocence was destroyed. She was taught that faithfulness to a husband belonged only to the people, that it was an evidence of stupidity. Manners, customs, and even religion were against the preservation of innocence and purity; and in this depravity the abbés were the leaders.

Such conditions were dangerous and disastrous not to young girls only, they affected the young men also; the latter, amidst this social demoralization, developed their evil tendencies, and, in a few generations, there was formed a Paris completely debauched. Love meant nothing more elevated than desire; for man, the paramount idea was to have or possess; for woman, to capture. There was no longer any mystery, any secret; the lover left his carriage at the door of his love, as if to publish his good fortune; he regularly made his appearance at her house, at the hour of the toilette, at dinner and at all the fêtes; the public announcement of the liaison was made at the theatre when he sat in her box.

There came a period when so-called love fell so low that woman no longer questioned a man's birth, rank, or condition, and vice versa, as long as he or she was in demand; a successful man had nearly every woman of prominence at his feet. The men planned their attacks upon the women whom they desired, and the women connived, posed, and set most ingenious traps and devised most extraordinary means to captivate their hero. As the century wore on and the vices and appetites gradually consumed the healthy tissues, there sprang up a class of monsters, most accomplished roués, consummate leaders of theoretical and practical immorality, who were without conscience. To gain their ends, they manipulated every medium—valets, chambermaids, scandal, charity; their one object was to dishonor woman.

Women were no better; "a natural falseness, an acquired dissimulation, a profound observation, a lie without flinching, a penetrating eye, a domination of the senses—to these they owed their faculties and qualities so much feared at the time, and which made them professional and consummate politicians and ministers. Along with their gallantry, they possessed a calmness, a tone of liberty, a cynicism; these were their weapons and deadly ones they were to the man at whom they were aimed."

There were, in this century, superior women in whom was exhibited a high form of love, but who realized that perfect love was impossible in their age; yet they desired to be loved in an intense and legitimate manner. This phase of womanhood is well represented by Mlle. Aïssé and Mlle. de Lespinasse, both of whom felt an irresistible need of loving; they proclaimed their love and not only showed themselves to be capable of loving and of intense suffering, but proved themselves worthy of love which, in its highest form, they felt to be an unknown quantity at that time. Their love became a constant inspiration, a model of devotion, almost a transfiguration of passion. These women were products of the time; they had to be, to compensate for the general sterility and barrenness, to equalize the inequalities, and to pay the tribute of vice and debauch.