Décolletage disputes in early modern France
2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0268117x.2023.2241422
ISSN2050-4616
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Studies
ResumoABSTRACTThis article looks at moralistic reactions to the fashion of décolletage during the seventeenth century in France. No previous research has focused on this specific movement, the scope of which is larger than has previously been acknowledged. A series of publications and sermons took aim at plunging necklines, particularly in church settings. Far from being isolated and discrete episodes, the wave of sermons and works condemning the fashion may be contextualised as part of a concerted campaign initially orchestrated by the secretive Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement. The anti-décolletage rhetoric coincides with the increasing participation and presence of women in culture and society and may be interpreted as an attempt to regulate female agency. The article concludes that this body of clerical works established a blueprint of victim-blaming that has proved to be enduring. Moreover, it gave such sentiments the stamp of religious respectability.KEYWORDS: Fashionseventeenth centurydécolletagesalonsmoralistsfeminism AcknowledgementsI am grateful to feedback from members of the roundtable group organised by Héléne Bilis at the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies 41st annual conference, October 2022, in Reykjavik, Iceland. I appreciate the helpful suggestions of Nicholas Hammond and Bruce Hayes who read earlier draft versions of this article. I am thankful for a short-term fellowship at the Clark Library, UCLA, during which I first read Boileau’s treatise in its entirety. Finally, I am indebted to generous internal funding from the University of Kansas: the Jessie Marie Senior and Ann Cramer Root Professorship in French & Italian, a Hall Center Faculty Research Travel Grant, and a KU International Affairs International Travel Fund for Humanities Research were all crucial in funding a research trip to Paris during summer 2022 to work on this project.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 This attribution was made in his lifetime and is generally accepted. See, for example, Magne, Bibliographie générale, I, 11. The theme of the work (concerning immodest touching and flagellation, hinting at a fascination with carnal sins), its extensive use of Patristic sources, and its stylistic quirks (such as occasional humour) all tend to confirm his authorship. The publisher of the first edition consolidates the case for Boileau, for François Foppens was well-connected with French writers and widely respected for publishing high-quality religious work and emblem books for the European market; Saunders, The Seventeenth-Century French Emblem, 161.2 An edition dated 1680 does not list the publisher but is the same text as the 1677 revised edition although with different pagination (the 1675 edition contains 110 pages; the 1677 has 116 pages; the 1680 edition totals 113 pages). All citations in this article to Boileau’s work are taken from the second edition.3 On the contemporary debates in England, for example, see Bendall, Shaping Femininity, 211-19.4 Printed examples were a primary method for disseminating the latest Paris fashion trends; see Davis ‘Habit de qualité’.5 DeJean, Tender Geographies, 151. Kunzle, Fashion and Fetishism, 81. Strictly speaking, the noun should be mastophobe rather than mammaphobe.6 De l’abus des nudités de gorge 1677, ed. Combet, 6.7 ‘[W]omen, regardless of religion, face rules all of the time regarding how much (or how little) of their bodies they must cover’; ‘there are extensive rules dictating how much of their bodies women need to cover. At the same time, there are also rules against women covering too much’, Yodanis, Getting Dressed, 28, 30.8 Arena and Manuali, Reflections of the Breast, 9-10.9 Darmon, Femme détestée, 70.10 Juvernay, Discours particulier, 43.11 Wirth, L’Image du corps, 81.12 Renaudin, ‘Du monde au balcon’, 166.13 Yalom, A History of the Breast, 51.14 Estienne, Remonstrance charitable, 22.15 Edwards, How to Read a Dress, 26.16 De Pringy, Les differens caracteres des Femmes du Siecle.17 Minois, La Cabale des dévots, 181, 185.18 D’Argenson, Annales de la Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, 51-52.19 Polman, Le Chancre ou couvre-sein feminin.20 Juvernay, Discours particulier, 53.21 René, La Parure des Dames, sig. C2v-C3r.22 Bouvignes, Miroir de la vanité, 54.23 Avis aux femmes, 2.24 Du Tremblay, Nouveaux essais de morale, 89.25 Bohanan, Fashion Beyond Versailles, 14.26 ‘[S]ex and gender lay at the heart of the reign of la mode, with the legacy of original sin explaining why men and women followed fashions’, Jones, Sexing La Mode, 14.27 ‘Ce n’est pas un attachement à ce qui est parfait, mais à ce qui est couru, à ce qui est à la mode’ [‘It is not an attachment to what is perfect, but rather to what is popular, what is fashionable’], La Bruyère, Les Caractères, 311.28 Guilloré, Retraite pour les dames, 84.29 Du Tremblay, Nouveaux essais; Vassetz, Traité contre le luxe des coeffures; Dupradel, Traité contre le luxe.30 Clavigny, Raisons qui condamnent le luxe, 61.31 ‘C’est aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles que la France, devient, avec puissance et éclat, le modèle de la civilisation et du luxe. Capitale de l’Europe française, Paris est le centre de gravité de ce nouveau monde et la Cour est le symbole de son raffinement et de son rayonnement. L’essor du luxe est alors favorisé par le développement de l’industrie et du commerce et par l’invention de nouvelles techniques de production’ [‘It was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that France became, with power and splendour, the model of civilization and luxury. As the capital of French Europe, Paris was at the heart of this new world, and the Court was the symbol of its refinement and influence. The growth of luxury was aided by the development of industry and commerce and the invention of new production techniques’], Pavy-Guibert and Poulet, ed, ‘Introduction’, Contre le luxe (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle), 7–8.32 Scott, ‘Masculinité et mode’, 85-86.33 Blum, Histoire du costume, 19.34 Capuchin friar Nicolas de Dijon recounts this in a sermon, though it is interesting that he has recourse to his contemporary monarch’s father, a possible criticism of Louis XIV by comparison: ‘[Louis XIII] ayant pris en sortant de table une gorgée de vin dans sa bouche, il la cracha dans la gorge de cette malhonnête dame. Voilà le châtiment et la confusion que sa vanité lui attire’ [Louis XIII having taken a sip of wine in his mouth as he left the table, spat it out on the bosom of this dishonest lady. Behold the punishment and confusion that her vanity brought her’], Sermon V, Migne, Collection intégrale et universelle, vol. 17, col. 343-372 (col. 371).35 Bayley, French Pulpit Oratory, 146.36 Jean Lejeune, Sermon 25, Migne, Collection intégrale et universelle, vol. 5, cols. 689-700 (col. 696).37 Philalèthe, De la modestie des habits, 44.38 Carras, Thou Art the Man, 103. Koenig cautions that the scriptural narrative contains many gaps and we are not told, for example, if she is fully naked, partially or fully immersed, nor whether the monarch has a clear view or only glimpses of her: Bathsheba Survives, 12–13.39 Owens, ‘Pollution and Desire in Hans Baldung Grien’, 184.40 Hub, ‘Aristotle’s Bloody Mirror’.41 Owens, 197.42 Classen, The Colour of Angels, 78.43 ‘Like paired lips and eyes, they [nipples] were pictured as another set of female double adornments’, Hollander, Seeing through Clothes, 199.44 ‘C’est donc un point particulièrement sensible du corps vêtu, où le regard est par conséquent irrésistiblement attiré, capté’ [‘It is therefore a particularly sensitive point on the clothed body, a focal point that draws and holds the eye’], Blanc, Parades et parures, 195.45 ‘During the Renaissance, the nude bust became popular in the visual arts and corresponded to the shift in beauty ideals. This shift now viewed the décolletage as part of the face. Some courtesans were known to apply cosmetics normally used for faces on their breasts as another way of enhancing and drawing attention to them’, Parks, ‘Décolletage’, 94.46 Benedicti, La Somme des pechez, 518.47 ‘Le décolleté est à mes yeux l’attribut vestimentaire emblématique de la forme simple de la séduction (les femmes comme les hommes en portent), là où le style du look évoque une forme complexe de séduction, et renvoie potentiellement à un tempérament’ [‘In my view, décolleté is the item of clothing that is emblematic of the simple form of seduction (both women and men wear them), whereas when the style of a look suggests a complex form of seduction, it has the potential to refer to temperament’], Mathé, Le Corps à sa façon, 170.48 McCloud, Understanding Comics, 31-33.49 Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image, 230-31.50 Hunt, A Complex Delight, 57-68.51 Estienne, Remonstrance charitable, 1-2.52 Avis aux femmes et aux filles, 1.53 Bouvignes, Miroir, 44.54 Desnoyers, ‘Satyre contre l’indécence des questeuses’, sig. Ir.55 ‘je m’y préparai comme à la fête qui devait me montrer en spectacle [‘I prepared myself as for a feast to show me off’], Choisy, ‘Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme’, 439.56 Polman, Le Chancre, 59.57 Du Barry, ‘Lettre de Paulin à sa Niece l’aymée’, 91.58 Texier, Sermons pour tous les dimanches de l’année, I, 151.59 ‘[F]or men of the church, especially, the unnatural styles of the day, such as the extreme décolletage currently in vogue, could only be the work of the devil—making fashionable women the agents of evil, Ray, ‘Fashion as Concept and Ethic’, 96.60 Décolleteuse is my own neologism.61 René, Parure des Dames, 5-6.62 Philalèthe, De la modestie des habits, 44.63 Le Fleau des putains et courtisannes, 12.64 Philalèthe, De la modestie des habits, 44.65 Giallongo, The Historical Enigma of the Snake Woman, 172.66 Bynum, Jesus as Mother, 133-35.67 Edwards, ‘The Mother of All Femmes Fatales’, 36.68 Simkin, Cultural Constructions of the Femme Fatale, 20.69 Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, thesis II ‘The Monster Always Escapes’, 3-6.70 [L. S. Rolet?], Le Tableau des piperies des femmes Mondaines. Ou par plusieurs histoires se voyent les ruses et artifices dont elles se servent (Paris: Jean Denis, 1632), 46r-v.71 Remaury, Le Beau sexe faible, 74.72 Du Barry also evokes the dangers of décolleteuses catching chills; Mort de Paulin, 60.73 Taylor, ‘Pity and also Horror’, 111.74 Le Brun, ‘Cancer serpit’, 15-16. Le Brun records 13 cases of breast cancer among Visitandine nuns during the period.75 Caillet, Le Tableau du mariage, 221.76 Grenaille, La Mode ou charactere de le la Religion, 11.77 ‘One need not dig deeply into seventeenth-century documents to find an association between sacred space and cleanliness and purity, or to find references that associated women with dirt and impurity’, Farr, Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy, 48.78 ‘Embodying both desire and dread, such emblems of animality or serpentine otherness can serve both to reflect the alienation of the desiring subject and to mirror his ambivalence. Beautiful and hideous, beloved and terrifying, heavenly and infernal, divine and monstrous, the lady as Medusa or basilisk is a study in contradictions’, Frelick, ‘Woman as Other’, 285.79 Creed, The Monstrous-Feminine, 1-5.80 Bouvignes, Miroir de la vanité, 44.81 ‘il vit un sein decouvert, ce qui occupa tellement son imagination, qu’aprés plusieurs resistances, au lieu de communier, il consentit à la tentation, et commit à même temps un peché mortel dans l’Eglise’ [‘he saw an uncovered bosom, which so filled his imagination that, after much resistance, instead of receiving communion, he gave in to temptation, and at the same time committed a mortal sin inside the church’], Bouvignes, Miroir de la vanité, 65.82 La Courtisane déchiffrée, 173-4. The author uses the stories of Bathsheba (168-9) and Jezabel (172) as examples of biblical femmes fatales.83 On the conflation of street walkers and stage actresses, see Scott, Women on the Stage in Early Modern France, 44-55.84 La Meschanceté des filles, 36.85 Sommella, La Mode au XVIIe siècle, 29-31. Choisy, ‘Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme’, 62.86 Olivier, Alphabet de l’imperfection et malice des Femmes, 55.87 Baro, La Clorise, pastoral, IV, 1.88 François de Toulouse, ‘Sermon LXXIX Des confréries du Saint-Sacrement’, Migne, Collection intégrale et universelle, vol. 11, col. 772-85 (col. 781).89 Pipet, Instructions chrétiennes, 554.90 ‘The use of a sexual assault victim’s clothing can create a sense that she was “asking for it” and that the perpetuator acted in a normal -noncriminal- manner. In this sense, women’s provocative clothing is understood as provoking men to sexual acts for which they should not be held criminally responsible’, Robson, Dressing Constitutionally, 77.91 Weedon and Hallak, ‘Feminist Poststructuralism’.92 See Fairchild, ‘‘But Look at What She Was Wearing!’, 22-32.93 ‘les filles et femmes mondaines, descouvrans leur sein’ [‘worldly girls and women, revealing their breasts’], Juvernay, Discours particulier, 44; ‘Femmes Mondaines, que le luxe tient captives’ [‘Worldly women, held captive by luxury’], Bouvignes, Miroir, sig. a2v- a3r; ‘ô femmes mondaines’, Boileau, 8. Abbé Vasetz asks rhetorically: ‘Ne remarque-t’on pas dans toute la conduite d’une femme mondaine, et dans son entretien une suite continuelle de crimes?’ [‘Isn’t it noticeable that a worldly woman’s behaviour and conversation constitute nothing other than a continual series of crimes?’], Traité contre le luxe des coeffures, 52.94 ‘Les hommes sçavent combien il est dangereux de regarder un beau sein; les femmes coquettes sçavent combien il leur est avantageux de le montrer’ [‘Men know how dangerous it is to look at a beautiful breast; coquettish women know how advantageous it is to show it off’], Boileau, 59-60.95 ‘Les hommes font bien de la difference entre une courtisane, ou une coquette et une épouse; ils ayment ces nuditez en celles qu’ils regardent comme des courtisanes ou des coquettes’ [‘Men know the difference between a courtesan or a coquette and a wife; they like uncovered flesh only in those they consider as courtesans or coquettes’], Boileau, 96.96 ‘L’idée première est toujours que la coquetterie est tout entière tournée vers le dehors: parure qui culmine facilement dans un étagale immodérée, dans l’exhibition’ [‘The main idea is always that coquetry is entirely outward-looking: adornment that easily culminates in immoderate display, in showing off’], N’Diaye, La Coquetterie ou la passion du détail, 7.97 ‘La coquetterie est le fond de l’humeur des femmes. Mais toutes ne la mettent pas en pratique, parce que la coquetterie de quelques-unes est retenue par la crainte ou par la raison’ [‘Coquetry is the essence of a woman’s constitution. But not all of them put it into practice, because for some, coquetry is held back by fear or by rational thought’], Plazenet, ed., Réflexions ou sentences, 164 (maxime 241).98 La Politique des coquettes, 57.99 Sommovigo, ‘Un petit cercle de femmes’, 131.100 Viennot studies this ‘féminisation du public’ (‘move to a female audience’), La France, les femmes et le pouvoir, 42.101 De Fitelieu, La Contre-mode (Paris: Edme Pepingue, 1642), 15.102 Duggan, Salonnières, Furies, and Fairies, 43.103 Juvernay, Le Foudre foudroyant, 91.104 Julien Loriot, ‘Du sixième empêchement à la pénitence’, Migne, Collection intégrale et universelle, vol. 31 cols. 286-301 (col. 295).105 The prelate emphasised that Princess Henriette d’Angleterre ‘méprisait ces froides et dangereuses fictions’ [‘disdained these cold and dangerous fictions’], Bossuet, ‘Oraison funèbre d’Henriette d’Angleterre’, 167.106 Tableau des piperies, 45r-v.107 Courtin, Nouveau traité de la civilité, 83.108 ‘Ordonnance de Messires les Vicaires generaux de l’Archevesché de Toulouse, le Siege vacquant Contre la nudité des bras, des épaules, et de la gorge, et l’indecence des habits des femmes et des filles’ [Ordinance of the Vicars General of the Archdiocese of Toulouse, during the vacancy of the See, Against the nudity of the arms, shoulders, and bosom, and the indecency of the dress of women and girls’], provided in full at the end of the second edition of Boileau’s De l’abus, 111-16 (115).109 Les Decrets du Concile provincial de Tours, 75r.110 ‘I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?’, Job 31:1 (King James Version).111 Leibacher-Ouvrard, ‘Voiles de sang et amazones de Satan’, 260.112 Nicolas de Dijon, ‘Sermon V’, col. 368.113 Senior, ‘The Pulpit and the Confessional’, 247.114 De Boer, The Conquest of the Soul, 91. Bilinkoff cautions that, although ‘[s]ome might assume that confession then, as in more modern times, took place once a week and in an enclosed box or confessional. In fact, written and visual evidence suggests an extraordinary wide array of customs and practices, at least well into the eighteenth century’, Related Lives, 20.115 De Boer, The Conquest of the Soul, 106.116 Barthes, Système de la Mode, 13-15.117 Oddo, ‘De la modestie à la mode dévote’.118 Thiers, Traité de la Clôture des religieuses, 369.119 See Woshinsky, Imagining Women’s Conventual Spaces in France, 1, 88, 207, 281.120 Velasco, Lesbians in Early Modern Spain, 98.121 Griffey, ‘Introduction’, Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe, 21.122 Arthur, ‘Dress and the Social Control of the Body’.123 Goldsmith, ‘Publishing Passion’, 440.124 Offen, The Woman Question in France, 4.125 Goldstein, ‘Mouches Volantes’, 246.126 Burman and Fennetaux, The Pocket, 30, 194.127 Menninghaus, ‘Caprices of Fashion in Culture and Biology’, 146.128 Tableau des piperies, 32r-v.129 Préaud, ‘“Femme de qualité en steinkerque et falabas”’.130 Bertrand, Dictionnaire universel, vol. IV, col. 473.131 Schiebinger, ‘Taxonomy for Human Beings’, 15.Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the Hall Center Faculty Research Travel Grant; Jessie Marie Senior Cramer & Ann Cramer Root Professorship; KU International Affairs International Travel Fund for Humanities Research. Please consult the Acknowledgements above.
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