"..It's something that everybody needs.." - Lowman Pauling & Ralph Bass.
If only there were a reliable map to affairs of the heart, its cartographer would become wealthy and rightly so.
The road to love begins, according to Madeleine de Scudery, at the city of Nouvelle amitié or New Friendship (at the bottom of the map). There are three tributaries to the River of Love which flows up the map’s center; respect, esteem, and affection. Along the Inclination River, are various way stations such as Fresh Eyes, Love Letter, Big Heart, and Generosity. On the opposite shore, Complacence, Little Care, Attendance, and Obeisance, offer alternatives of passion and virtue.
Marriage was not included in Scudery’s cartography, doubtless, because she saw emancipation from matrimony as the only freedom available for women in her time. She not only chose not to marry but managed to free herself from the burdensome guardianship of her brother Georges. Madeleine had been forced to leave her beloved Paris for three years from 1644-47 when Georges was appointed the governor of the Fort of Notre-Dame -de-la-Garde in Marseilles. In keeping with this view, at the top of the map is the terre inconnu of the Perilous Sea., deviating from New Friendship cab lead a woman to only bring a woman to Indiscretion, Perfidy, and Wickedness.
Madeline de Scudéry (1607–1701) created this Carte du tendre, a map of love, as a game to amuse her Parisian friends. Her salon, the Société du samedi (Saturday Society) held at her home in the rue de Beauce was attended The map rpoved so popular that Scudery incorporated it in the first volume of her novel Clélie, histoire romaine, published in 1654. Caught between the Sea of Enmity and the Lake of Indifference, it is no wonder that a woman might feel trapped between Scylla and Charybdis. Another unpleasant watery fate.
In the Paris of Scudery’s day, women were attempting to become accepted as authors in the (male) literary world. The Precieuses, as these women were called, were ridiculed by men, notably by Moliere in his very first play Les precieuses ridicules (1659). It was hardly a model of subtlety. As if that were not enough to banish the women, Moliere took another poke at them in 1672 with Les femmes savantes or The Clever Women. Make no mistake about this, the stakes were high. Reputation is a form of gold in the republic of letters. Not only did these women, found mostly at royal court and in the salons of Paris, mean to attain the status of authors, they were at pains to replace the male concept of love – where the man gets to choose and the woman can merely assent or retreat (if she’s lucky). One reason that the Lake of Indifference is so large is that even today, we women keep watering it with our tears.
Madeleine de Scudery was born at Le Havre on the coast of Normandy, where her father was the port captain; her brother Georges would later hold a similar post in Marseilles. Left fatherless at age six and motherless shortly thereafter, Madeline and her brother were sent to live with an uncle. An enlightened man, he allowed the girl to receive a broad education including such non-traditional subjects as writing, Greek, and Latin. The girl was also free to study on her own, applying herself with zest to such like agriculture and medicine. After her uncle died in 1637, it was Madeleine who established a home for herself and Georges in Paris. He became a playwright and Madeleine wrote novels, including Artamène, which weighs in more than two million words, possibly the longest novel ever published.
For further reading: Precious Women by Dorothy Ann Liot Backer, New York, Basic Books: 1974.
Images:
1. Madeleine de Scudery - Carte du tendre, 1654, Bibliotheque nationale de france, Paris.'
2. Jean-Antoine Watteau - Sitting Couple, c. 1718, Aramnd Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles.