"Tout mon office:" Body politics and family dynamics in the verse epitres of Marguerite de Navarre

Renaissance Quarterly, Winter, 2001 by Leah Middlebrook

"Voyla tout mon office."

--Marguerite de Navarre, Epitre 12 (16) (1)

Among the writings of Marguerite de Navarre, the intimate epitres she exchanged with her mother, Louise de Savoie, and brother, Francois I are relatively unknown. Of moderate literary interest, these poems are most important for the insight they provide into the role of the princess in the complex negotiation of gender and power that was necessary when women sought powers of rule. The epitres reveal a "division of labor" in the representation of femininity: through the symbolism of the family "trinite" the family distanced Louise from the constraints of gender and embodied existence, displacing the physical and symbolic burden of female flesh onto Marguerite.

Literary scholars and historians may have slightly different views of Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549). To one group, she is a crucial Renaissance writer, the author of works such as the Heptameron and the Mirror of the sinful soul. To the other, she is the sister of Francois I (1494-1547), remembered as an advocate of religious tolerance and reform, and perhaps for her work as a diplomat (Marguerite traveled extensively on behalf of the Crown, and participated in the negotiation of a number of treaties important to France). (2) From the standpoint of the twenty-first century however, the nature of Marguerite's talents makes her more than the sum of these two parts. Because her agency and political skill were combined with a literary gift that allowed her to give voice to her exploits, as well as to her deeper feelings on a range of topics, from courtly manners to her spiritual quest, she is a tremendously important figure in the study of the subjectivity of female authority in the early modern era. (3)

This view is only strengthened when one reads the intimate verse epitres Marguerite exchanged with her mother, Louise de Savoie (1476-1531), and brother, Francois. Occasional pieces, often written to accompany a gift, the tone of the epitres is spontaneous, and they are generally less polished than other pieces composed by the family members. Perhaps for this reason they are rarely published, and are often overlooked in discussions of Marguerite s more serious writings. (4)

However, the epitres are of considerable import to scholars interested in the roles played by women in the politics of sixteenth-century Europe, for a number of reasons. Most obviously, the poems contain numerous references to historical events that took place during the early years of Francois's reign. Thus they shed light on the private opinions of Marguerite and Louise regarding political events such as the Spanish captivity of the French princes (1527-1530) and the "Ladies' Peace" of 1529. (5) In addition, poems such as epitre 12 ("Le groz ventre trop pesant et massif"), epitre 13 ("La chose entiere estant inseparable"), epitre 14 ("Ce m'est tel bien de sentire l'amitye") and epitre 9 ("Il m'est advis, Madame, que je offense, "written after the other poems, in 1530 (6)) portray Marguerite's relation to her own femininity in language that is direct, striking, and thus highly unusual in the writing of a woman of her era and rank.

More is to be gleaned from this than enhanced insight into a noblewoman's existence. The epitres prove highly suggestive on the issue of the symbolic fashioning of female authority -- in this case, the authority of Louise, the seemingly all-powerful Madame Mere du Roi and Regent of France (1515-16 and 1523-27). Marguerite situates her reflections on female life in the context of an important symbolic construct, the Valois trinite, or the idea, embraced by Louise, Francois and Marguerite, and elaborated in a rich iconography, that they were one soul joined by Divine love and incarnated in three separate bodies. (7) As she weighs the differences between her mother and herself, Marguerite exposes the degree to which her place in the trinite depended on her ability to embody youthful royal femininity, a role which created a sharp contrast between herself and the imagery through which her mother was portrayed as a latter-day Virgin, the figure of prudence and wisdom. The emphatic nature of the distinction as it is described by Marguerite, considered in the context of the ambition shown by Louise as she steered both Francois towards the throne and herself to broad powers of rule at his side, opens the way towards a new understanding of the trinite symbolism: Not only did it work to exalt the royal family through the links it fashioned between them and the Divine; it also set in place a means to displace associations with the body and sexuality from the Regent onto her daughter. (8) Given the misogynist climate of early modern Europe, one can see why Louise and her advisors would be interested in this. It was essential that women who sought power in sixteenth-century Europe cultivate images of themselves as paragons of chastity and moral prudence, and to offset Louise's continence with the figure of a comely, marriageable princess would have been appealing (and appropriate, since Marguerite was, at least in the early years of the trinite, groomed for marriage as was any noble lady) -- at least to Louise and Francois. Fo r Marguerite, the role as the family's "little corner" came at a cost. The profound, anguished, identification with the body expressed in the epitres speaks to the subjective price she paid to the trinite and the poems therefore shed light on aspects of her other writings: the mortal self-abnegation and the recoil from the body displayed in the religious poetry, for example, or the complex mother-daughter relationships in tales such as Story Ten of the Heptameron. But in allowing us a way in which to think through a role for the princess in the fashioning and display of the authority of a Regent, the epitres may prove to speak beyond the specific circumstances of the early Valois reign, and this is where they are of greatest significance. (9)