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| Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin |
It
happens more often than I’d like to admit: despite writing an entire
dissertation on cross-dressing women in British literature and culture of
the long eighteenth century, I find I’ve overlooked a prominent female
cross-dresser. Today’s case is that of Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin,
and one of Charles II’s many mistresses.
Mancini’s
flamboyant, exciting, and at times perilous life has been documented and
described not only in books, like her biography The Mazarin Legacy,
by Toivo David Rosvall and in Elizabeth C. Goldsmith’s The King’s
Mistresses, but also in various wonderful blog posts on the blogs Two Nerdy History Girls, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, Wonders and Marvels, as well as MadameGuillotine.
I,
however, learned about Mancini just today as I was considering including Mary
Astell, the “first British feminist”, in the Month of Dangerous Women on my own
blog. Astell’s Some Reflections UponMarriage was written in direct
response to the case of the Duchess of Mazarin and her husband’s suing for
divorce after many years of separation.
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| Protofeminist Mary Astell |
Astell’s
opinion of the case is tinged with condemnation of Mancini’s behavior; Astell
was, after all, a rather conservative feminist. She writes that “Had Madam Mazarine's
Education made a right improvement of her Wit and Sense, we should not have
found her seeking Relief by such imprudent, not to say Scandalous Methods, as
the running away in Disguise with a spruce Cavalier, and rambling to so many
Courts and Places, nor diverting her self with such Childish, Ridiculous, or
Ill-natur'd Amusements, as the greatest part of the Adventures in her Memoirs
are made up of.”
Oh
yes, did I mention? Mancini published her memoirs…I can’t wait to get my hands on those!
In
any case, however, to return to Astell, I was intrigued, naturally, by her
claims. Some quick research into the life of Mancini revealed not only
that she frequently cross-dressed as a man, but also that she openly had lovers
of both sexes and, at one point, engaged in a duel with swords with Anne
Lennard, Countess of Sussex, the illegitimate fifteen-year-old daughter of
Charles II by another of his mistresses, Barbara Villiers. Lennard was most
likely also one of Mancini’s female lovers at court.
Whatever
Astell thought of Mancini and her “ill-natured amusements,” Hortense Mancini
reminds us that there were women in the past who lived life fully, dangerously,
and dashingly, with little regard to what the rest of the world thought of
them. This is not to say that Astell was wrong about everything either.
Astell’s thoughts on marriage and divorce reveal a woman far beyond
her time, one who believed that
“To
be yoak'd for Life to a disagreeable Person and Temper; to have Folly and
Ignorance tyrannize over Wit and Sense; to be contradicted in every thing one
does or says, and bore down not by Reason but Authority; to be denied ones most
innocent desires for no other cause, but the Will and Pleasure of an absolute
Lord and Master, whose follies a Woman with all her Prudence cannot hide, and
whose Commands she cannot but despise at the same time she obeys them, is a
misery none can have a just Idea of, but those who have felt it.”
Clearly
Astell believed that men and women should have simpler, more direct recourse to
divorce in cases where the relationship is of no benefit to one or both of
sides of it. In the Reflections, as well as in her Serious
Proposal to the Ladies, Astell eviscerates many of the common marital
practices of her time period while advocating for greater educational
opportunities for women.
For
these reasons, this week’s contribution to the Dangerous Women series is a
double-whammy. Hortense Mancini and Mary Astell were both “dangerous women” by
my definition—they dared to step beyond the “traditional” role of women, to
assert themselves as independent, free-thinking individuals, and to challenge
society’s expectations for their sex.
The
lives of these women and their writings also made me think about the different
feminisms and forms of female empowerment that women espouse today. Feminism is
still stigmatized in our society—as are women of strength, independence, power,
and intelligence.
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| Another early feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, believed like Astell that
women needed education in order to empower themselves and their countries. This quotation of hers, however, is ambiguous enough to encompass a variety of different ways in which women today might gain "power over themselves." |
Mancini
epitomizes women who live as they wish, who use their relationships with men to
facilitate and support their lives and interests, who live freely but perhaps
without knowledge of or interest in academic debates on feminism. Conversely,
Astell epitomizes women who believe that if women want equality and respect,
they must be educated, intelligent, and aware of how their behavior may at
times contribute to their oppression.
These
are only two attitudes, of course, towards female empowerment and feminism, and
many men and women’s ideas may fall somewhere in between. Further, many of us
draw on both of these women’s attitudes during our everyday lives. I don’t
think these ideas and attitudes have to be opposed to each other, either.
Contemporary feminism emphasizes choice, and I choose to admire both Mancini
and Astell for their determination, intelligence, independence and panache,
however they ultimately chose to express themselves.
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