CLOTHING "DAME HELISENNE": THE STAGING OF FEMALE AUTHORSHIP AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE 1538 ANGOYSSES DOULOUREUSES QUI PROCEDENT D'AMOURS

Romanic Review, Nov 2001 by Chang, Leah L

Dame Helisenne also writes the second Partie, the text tells the readers, but she adopts the voice of Guenlic. This section recounts the lover's exotic adventures with his friend Quezinstra in search of Dame Helisenne, which continue into the third Partie, again composed in Guenelic's voice. Guenelic finds Dame Helisenne languishing in her tower, frees her, and dies after recounting his tale to her. In an epilogue to the third part, the text shifts to the voice of Quezinstra, who narrates the death of Dame Helisenne from her own torments and explains how he published the little book wrapped in white silk that Helisenne left behind; the copy of the Angoysses Douloureuses that the reader now holds is presumably the result of his efforts.

The Cloak and the Book

The white silk covering the book that Quezinstra finds after Dame Helisenne's death invites the reader to connect the book's production to the clothing of the protagonist's body. In particular, the book's white wrapping recalls a scene in the first Partie in which Dame Helisenne drapes herself in a sumptuous white cloak to go to church, where she hopes to meet Guenelic and continue their amorous exchanges. It is the only time when the reader is permitted to see Dame Helisenne as a clothed female form in any detail.7 Her attractive body is a source of personal identity in the story, and in early scenes in the text, observers seem to see through her clothes, focusing immediately on the beauty of her body:

Quand me trouvoye en quelque lieu, remply de grand multitude de gens, plusieurs venoient entour moy pour me regarder (comme par admiration) disans tous en general, voyez la, le plus beau corps que je veis jamais. Puis apres, en me regardant au visaige, disoient, elle est belle: mais il n'est a accomparer au corps. (100)

Even after dressing later in the white cloak and a rich, red satin robe, Dame Helisenne's clothes are penetrated by her admirers: "Voyez la, la creature excedant et oultrepassant toutes aultres en formosite de corps"(123). Her observers are enchanted by what they cannot see - her exiquisitely beautiful body is in fact hidden under the clothes - while they consider her exposed face attractive, but nothing special.

However, in the crucial moment in which it appears, the white cloak acts as a marker of Dame Helisenne's body for an audience of which both she and her husband are acutely conscious. Knowing that she pines for Guenelic, Dame Helisenne's husband orders her to dress elegantly for an excursion:

IL est demain le jour d'une feste solennele, parquoy je veulx et vous commande que vous accoustrez triumphamment, affin que vous assistez au temple avec moy, car doresnavant ne vous sera permis de sortir de la maison, sinon en ma compaignie, car je veulx veoir quelle contenance sera la vostre en ma presence, par ce que je suis certain que vostre amy se y trouvera. (122)

Helisenne explains that her husband felt sorry for her sufferings,8 but the reader detects an alterior motive to her husband's request: he wants to use her clothes to prove publicly the purity of her body (about which he is growing increasingly skeptical) and to show her off. Dame Helisenne is quite ready to submit to this test, not only because her clothing lets her revel in her physical beauty - always a source of personal pride - but because the trip actually gives her the opportunity to see Guenelic: "Tel propos me tenoit mon mary, auquel ne feiz aulcune response, mais tins silence, nonobstant que tacitement grand joye et hilarite m'estoit irrigee, emanee, et exhibee, au moyen de l'esperance future de la veue de mon amy" (122). The text details the dressing scene and its pleasurable effect on both the protagonist and her husband: