Dressing and Undressing the Princess of Cadignan: Female Drapery/narrative Striptease

That storytelling is a time-honored means of inciting passion is clear if one considers only Ovid's advice in Ars Amatoria, Dante's Paolo and Francesca episode in The Divine Comedy, and the effect of hearsay and interpolation in The Princess of Cleves. That is, even the canonical works of western literature make clear that the exchange of a narrative may arise from and engender sexual politics; but the frequency with which the nineteenth-century French story actually depicts the narrative encounter as the occasion of confrontation between the sexes inspires a sense of the coincidence of gender and genre, of a necessary relationship between the two. (1) In Balzac's "Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan" the author's presentation of his heroine as a narrative artist indicates that storytelling is on the agenda--the plot is concerned with the "fiction" recounted by the Princess in her successful campaign to ensnare a man, an impressive feat since her raw material is a past both unscrupulous and lurid: Says the narrator, "elle etait un vrai don Juan femelle, a cette difference pres que ce n'est pas a souper qu'elle eut invite la statue de pierre, et certes elle aurait eu raison de la statue" (982). (2) Thus, the issue of gender is also thematically foregrounded, as a plot summary will further clarify. Following the July Revolution of 1830, Diane, Princess of Cadignan, is living in Paris in the seclusion necessitated by reduced circumstances. Having experienced many previous love affairs, she is challenged by her friend, Mme d'Espard, to compete with her for one last, enduring love; the target proposed is an illustrious writer, d'Arthez, who, it happens, was the best friend of a now deceased Republican who had loved Diane from afar. In order to conquer d'Arthez, the Princess reveals the story of her past affairs so adroitly that she appears a complete victim of circumstances, emerging "virgin and martyr"--to use her words--in his eyes. (3) Finally, at a dinner for d'Arthez concocted by the duplicitous Mme d'Espard and attended by several of the Princess's embittered former lovers, d'Arthez argues against their defamatory attacks and his love proves invulnerable to calumny. The Princess returns his love and they live happily ever after, far from the eyes of the world. In this story, the woman is the supreme artist who triumphs over a great male writer and is admired for her victory in spite of the narrator's assurances that she is an unprincipled liar. However, although in this tale the innocent virgin is the man, and the seducer who "makes the pitch" and who must lie about the past is the woman, the story does not simply portray a role reversal but instead exploits the negative stereotypes associated with the strictly feminine to offer, it seems, a model for the process of narrative signification. Early in the story, the narrator establishes that Diane is representative of her sex in being deceptive, manipulative, and inconstant. Of her great friendship with Mme d'Espard we are told that "pour faire les amities sinceres et durables entre femmes il faut qu'elles aient ete cimentees par de petits crimes" (967). Elsewhere the narrator refers to the two as "ces deux fines couleuvres" and remarks that Diane avoids a certain subject of conversation with her supposedly dearest friend as carefully as she would avoid wearing a yellow dress: "Diane d'Uxelles se gardait comme de porter une robe jaune, de parler de d'Arthez" (998). The duplicity fundamental to the speech of the female sex is, moreover, categorically pronounced: "Les femmes savent donner a leurs paroles une saintete particuliere" (972), they can impart to their words something "qui etend le sens des idees et leur prete de la profondeur;" (973) and, the narrator continues, "si plus tard leur auditeur charme ne se rend pas compte de ce qu'elles ont dit, le but a ete completement atteint" (973). This remark follows an earlier reflection on the female's deployment of visual effects to prevaricate and to seduce: Il est des visages de femmes qui trompent la science et deroutent l'observation par leur calme et par leur finesse; il faudrait pouvoir les examiner quand les passions parlent, ce qui est difficile; ou quand elles ont parle, ce qui ne sert plus a rien: alors la femme est vieille et ne dissimule plus. …