Les intellectuelles et l’amour: Marie de Gournay et Marguerite de Valois

When a woman defined herself as an intellectual in the Renaissance, she could not, even if she wished, detach that role from the cultural expectations conventionally attached to her gender, and most notably from issues of love and sexuality. This point may be illustrated with reference to the attempts of Marie de Gournay and Marguerite de Valois to manage by intellectual means the discourses surrounding their personal lives. Despite the contrasting stereotypes ultimately imposed upon them — “old maid” in Gournay’s case, “whore” in Marguerite’s — the recourse of both women to versions of neo-platonic philosophy is ultimately inseparable from the erotic discourses in which they found themselves pre-inscribed.