fACTS AND fICTIONS IN ALL THREE GENRES
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Sevigne in her true colors as a nightmare of a mother. for this was an
extremely physical and prehensile love. Sevigne herself is frequently puz–
zled and confused by the excessive ardor of her passion, and it is a puz–
zlement that often gives her musings an Augustinian depth. She fears
that her passion for her daughter may amount to idolatry, that it threat–
ens to ruin her relationship with God. "My confessor scolded me
severely," she writes to the countess. "He told me that I was an outright
pagan, that 1 set you up as an idol in my heart. In sum, he told me that
I had best give thought to my immortal soul." So severely did her con–
fessor view her idolatry, in fact, that several times he denied her the per–
mission to take communion in Holy Week. Sevigne was clear-headed
enough to see the potential destructiveness of her passion for her daugh–
ter. "We are killing each other," she burst out several times.
It's kind of fun to give a paper at the end of a conference, because you
can work in some of the clements which your colleagues have accreted
over the span of the conference; I'm thinking in particular of Andre Aci–
man's marvelous paper, in which he talked about the Proustian experience
of longing as absence. Sevigne's correspondence is all aboLlt absence. It's
about the delectation of using language as a substitute for the loved one's
presence, for in real life, the women's relations were a total disaster.
When they were together, all hell broke loose. Sevigne continually nagged
the Grignans about her daughter's health, which was very poor, and
about their gambling and their general improvidence. During the count–
ess's stays in Paris, Scvignc's snooping and bullying were so extreme that
the two women often communicated by letter from room to room,
across closed doors, rather than face another violent confrontation.
The tactless inveighing of the mother even interfered in the daughter's
sexual life. Scvigne had a morbid fear of the countess's frequent preg–
nancies. She refused
to
accept the fact that her daughter was deeply in
love with her husband. That was indeed a rare emotion in seventeenth–
century arranged marriages, and one totally foreign to Sevigne's experi–
ence. She constantly pleaded with both spouses to curb their marital
lust. "I implore you, my darling, do not be overconfident about sleep–
ing in separate beds," she writes her daughter. "The temptation is still
there. Have someone else sleep in the same room."
When her daughter has her third pregnancy, Sevigne writes the count,
"Do you think I gave her to you
to
kill her, to destroy her health, her
youth, her beauty? I'll take your wife away from you!" In this eccentric
triangle, which continually recalls the classical mythological archetype
of Demeter and Persephone, it is the courteous, patient, tolerant count
who emerges as the only hero. The analogy to the goddess of fertility
