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Women of Modern France
Paperback
French HistoryGeneral World History
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Publisher: Martes
Pages: 328
Weight: 0.97
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
oman in politics
Frenchwomen of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, when
studied according to the distinctive phases of their influence, are best divided
into three classes: those queens who, as wives, represented virtue, education,
and family life; the mistresses, who were instigators of political intrigue, im-
morality, and vice; and the authoresses and other educated women, who
constituted themselves the patronesses of art and literature.
This division is not absolute by any means; for we see that in the sixteenth
century the regent-mother (for example, Louise of Savoy and Catherine de'
Medici), in extent of influence, fills the same position as does the mistress
in the eighteenth century; though in the former period appears, in Diana of
Poitiers, the first of a long line of ruling mistresses.
Queen-consorts, in the sixteenth as in the following centuries, exercised but
little influence; they were, as a rule, gentle and obedient wives-even Cather-
ine, domineering as she afterward showed herself to be, betraying no signs
of that trait until she became regent.
The literary women and women of spirit and wit furthered all intellectual
3 HUGO P. (HUGO PAUL) THIEME
and social development; but it was the mistresses-those great women of po-
litical schemes and moral degeneracy-who were vested with the actual im-
portance, and it must in justice to them be said that they not infrequently
encouraged art, letters, and mental expansion.
Eight queens of France there were during the sixteenth century, and three of
these may be accepted as types of purity, piety, and goodness: Claude, first
wife of Francis I.; Elizabeth of France, wife of Charles IX.; and Louise de
Vaudemont, wife of Henry III. These queens, held up to ridicule and scorn
by the depraved followers of their husbands' mistresses, were reverenced by
the people; we find striking contrasts to them in the two queens-regent,
Louise of Savoy and Catherine de'Medici, who, in the period of their power,
were as unscrupulous and brutal, intriguing and licentious, jealous and re-
vengeful, as the most wanton mistresses who ever controlled a king. In this
century, we find two other remarkable types: Marguerite d'Angoulême, the
bright star of her time; and her whose name comes instantly to mind when
we speak of the Lady of Angoulême-Marguerite de Navarre, representing
both the good and the doubtful, the broadest sense of that untranslatable
term femme d'esprit.
The first of the royal French women to whom modern woman owes a great
and clearly defined debt was Anne of Brittany, wife of Louis XII. and the
personification of all that is good and virtuous. To her belongs the honor of
having taken the first step toward the social emancipation of French women;
she was the first to give to woman an important place at court. This prece-
dent she established by requesting her state officials and the foreign ambas-
sadors to bring their wives and daughters when they paid their respects to
her. To the ladies themselves, she sent a royal command, bidding them
leave their gloomy feudal abodes and repair to the court of their sovereign.
Anne may be said to belong to the transition period-that period in which
the condition of slavery and obscurity which fettered the women of theMid-
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