Madeleine de Scudery makes many arguments in her works’; I believe the most important one was for the equality of women. From her conversational writing to her more fictitious novels, de Scudery lets it be known that woman should pursue activities outside of the “private sphere.” In the larger debate of equality between the sexes, there are many, including Jean–Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau embrace the idea that women are lesser than men and should be restricted to the “private sphere.” The private sphere is where the focus on their duties to being a wife and mother. Woman are less reasonable than men and should be loving, respectful, and utilitarian to their husbands. This was common thought during both Scudery and Rousseau’s time. Women were meant to be seen and not heard. Their usefulness and beauty were admired, not their conversation or wit. Rousseau believed women to be weak, except for the strength of their charm or beauty. Scudery, on the other hand, believed women were more than just looks; they could do whatever they set their minds to. They were just as good as men, maybe even more resilient at times.
In “The Story of Sapho” by Madeleine de Scudery, Scudery uses the beloved female figure of Greek Sappho as her main character. Scudery’s Sapho is a strong, learned woman who encourages another female character, Erinne, to overcome her reservation about being a woman writer. Scudery uses Sapho as almost a mirror of herself. Although Sapho conceals her own learning due to modesty, she encourages Erinne to overcome hers. Scudery writes of Sapho’s explanation to Erinne, “Those who say that beauty is women’s part and that arts and letters…belong to men…and that we have no part in them are equally far from both justice and truth.” (de Scudery 137) Scudery argues through Sapho that if this were the way nature had made the sexes, then all women would have been made beautiful. Men would have been made to learn and be called to conquer through war. She argued a difference between men and women that men were born to go to battle, but the arts were purely for anyone with a mind for it, which can certainly be women.
Scudery goes on to talk about any differences in judgment and the ability to reason between women and men. Continuing the conversation of Sapho and Erinne, she examines the hypocrisy of those that allow women intelligence or imagination while insisting they are not capable of good judgment. Sapho questions whether the judgment can exist without these qualities stating, “When their imaginations don’t show them things as they are when their minds have not a perfect understanding…how should their judgment be just, give such false foundations?” (de Scudery 139) Scudery seems to aim at explaining that both sexes are created with an equal amount of these qualities because they are not able to be separated in the way many have conceived them to be. It seems good judgment and reason is a more masculine attributes, not to be had by women.
The previously mentioned “private sphere” encompassed not only motherhood but also love and emotion. The “public sphere” was for men, and it was governed by this type of judgment and reason. In the context of the public sphere, “love” was seen as a duty. The love of one’s country, the love of power, or the love of what is just. Scudery wove together a new notion of love, a tender love. She transforms the idea of romantic love into what should be the foundation of a marriage. While tender love could be held between members of the same sex, opposite of the previously idealized masculine friendship. In Karen Green’s paper, “Madeleine de Scudery on Love and the Emergence of the “Private Sphere,” Green writes about Scudery’s idea of love as a conquest, “…Glory associated with the conquest of love, which is sweeter and more ennobling than the public glory that accompanies military conquest.” (Green 280) This explains Scudery’s argument that love can emulate a battle. It takes work and effort, and it is not a frivolous feminine quality in the private sphere. Like the roads to battle, it is not a well-paved path; rather, some hills and valleys must be overcome. Scudery melds the attributes of the sexes together to bring equality to women in that they are capable of strength and resiliency just as men are on the battlefields.
Madeleine de Scudery built a “feminist utopia” using a map she named “La Carte de Tendre,” which appeared in the first volume of Clelie. It began as a game in her salon and mirrored the paths to tender friendship, or the opposite, according to Scudery. It depicted the tumultuous landscape of emotional relationships, especially to Scudery herself. This “utopia” was an orderly matriarchy with Scudery as the Queen. In Gloria Feman Orenstein’s article “Journey through Mlle de Scudery’s Carte de Tendre: A 17th-Century Woman’s Dream/Country of Tenderness,” she writes of the unique qualities of Scudery, La Carte de Tendre and it’s subsequent relation to women’s equality in salon culture. Her ability to influence culture and her salon gave Scudery an advantage. According to Orenstein, “Her salon-state…had a benevolent female monarch at its head, so that she could ensure respect for female dignity and intellectual freedom, and protect her own sex from slander.” (Feman Orenstein 6) Scudery valued women and devoted her work to equality and expressing the emotion of love and tenderness to her sex. She believed in the agency and intellectual power of women without the support of the male sex.
Works Cited
de Scudery, Madeleine. The Story of Sapho. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Feman Orenstein, Gloria. “Journey through Mlle de Scudery’s Carte de Tendre: A 17th-Century Salon Woman’s Dream/Country of Tenderness.” Femspec; San Francisco, vol. 3, no. 2, 2002, pp. 53–65, doi:https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/journey-through-mlle-de-scuderys-carte-tendre/docview/200049409/se-2. Proquest.
Green, Karen. “Madeleine de Scudéry on Love and the Emergence of the “Private Sphere.”.” History of Political Thought, vol. 30, no. 2, 2009, pp. 272–85, doi:http://www.jstor.org/stable/26224101. JSTOR.