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

Renaissance Quarterly, Winter, 2001 by Leah Middlebrook

Cent foiz le jour je vous contemple et pense

Que vous avez maintenant la presence

De voz troys filz et d'une dame aussi

Que nommeray vostre fille Sanssi,

Me souhaictant en vostre compagnie,

Dont je ne puys d'esprit estre bannye,

En y pensant, a bon droict j'en souspire,

Et, d'un desire tres ardant, je desire

De pouvoir estre, en quelque coing et angle,

Ung petit point de ce parfaict triangle.

(61, 68-91) (45)

The melancholy reference to Eleanor as the daughter "not-so" in these lines (fille sans-ci) belies the trinite's message of their triumphant une consentement. Physically distant, Marguerite views herself as supplanted. As if to recapture her family's loyalty, she lists the sorrows and dangers she has suffered for her mother and brother:

Las! quant je pense a la saison passee,

Tousjours malheur m'a tres fort avancee

Cinq ans y a que vous vyz en ce lieu,

N'ayant secours ne medecin que Dieu,

En maladie, helas! si tres extreme,

Que d'y penser j'en deviens pasle et blesme.

Ung an apres, pour heureux avantaige,

Je fiz d'Espaigne en travail le voyaige,

Ou me faillut comme en paste courir;

Et la trouver su le poinct de mourir

Celluy qui seul, au temps de la misere,

M'estoit mary, pere et tres ayme frere (46)...

(62, 93-105) (47)

But in fact, the era of the trinite is, as Marguerite herself admits, of a past season.

MATERNITY

If Louise, and, to a lesser extent, Francois, felt less of a need for the trinite as the family consolidated its hold on power, changes in Marguerite's own life also affected her relation to the family scheme, particularly as the family daughter became a mother herself, in 1528. In epitre 12, Marguerite paints a striking portrait of the crisis brought about by her maternity. Written to Francois from Navarre, during the final weeks of her first pregnancy (with daughter Jeanne de Navarre), Marguerite contrasts maternity as it is experienced in the "little corner" of the trinite -- a purely physical phenomenon of swelling, of pain and of constrictions both bodily and spiritual -- with the mythic view of motherhood the family elaborated for Louise, only to find that the comparison yields an unthinkable impasse in her ability to view herself as a mother-to-be.

The poem is a short piece, apparently sent to Francois accompanied by a rock, a gift which Marguerite claims as her portrait at a moment of anguish during her "exile" in her husband's lands in Navarre ("Ce dur chaillou, monsieur, je vous envoye, / Que j'ay trouve en ce desert sans voye"; (77, 25-26)). (48) The stone establishes the tone of the communication. As Marguerite meditates on what to write her brother, the physical and psychological barriers presented by her swollen belly, to both movement and the sorts of action she has taken previously on behalf of the Crown, lead her to consider the gulf that separates her experience from that of Louise in her role as Madame Mere du Roi. The result is a curious anecdote about the goddess Ceres and a rock. (49)

The poem opens with a humorous description of Marguerite's belly. It has grown so large, she writes, that it blocks pen from paper: