Mme de Graffigny and the Archduchess: Indirect Correspondence between the Court and 'le monde'
This essay examines two very different three-way correspondences in which private letters operate in a semi-public sphere and in which the relationship between private conduct and public image is at stake. Both involve the daughters of Maria Theresa of Austria (1717–1780): first, the epistolary tria...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Catalan |
| Published: |
Liverpool University Press
2024-11-01
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| Series: | Modern Languages Open |
| Online Access: | https://account.modernlanguagesopen.org/index.php/up-j-mlo/article/view/519 |
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| Summary: | This essay examines two very different three-way correspondences in which private letters operate in a semi-public sphere and in which the relationship between private conduct and public image is at stake. Both involve the daughters of Maria Theresa of Austria (1717–1780): first, the epistolary triangle formed by the prominent French writer Mme de Graffigny, her friend Mme Copineau and Archduchess Maria Elisabeth; and, second, that of Maria Theresa, the dauphine and then queen of France Marie-Antoinette, and the Austrian ambassador to Paris, Florimond Claude, comte de Mercy-Argenteau. Juxtaposing these two sets of exchanges highlights two opposing approaches to epistolary trickery for didactic purposes; their differences point to the intricate interactions that took place between the culture of le monde and that of royal courts in the eighteenth century. During Copineau’s tenure as Maria Elisabeth’s governess, Graffigny and Copineau developed what they called ‘notre petite intrigue’: in her letters to Copineau, Graffigny indirectly addressed the archduchess. By pretending to discuss between themselves Maria Elisabeth’s reputation and that of other ladies, Copineau and Graffigny sought to initiate Maria Elisabeth into eighteenth-century sociability and accordingly to teach the archduchess to manage her vivacious wit, to suppress her habit of criticising others and, in essence, to learn how to behave properly in society. Among the copious advice that Maria Theresa sent to her daughter in France every month, we find the same message that Graffigny tried to communicate to Maria Elisabeth: that one must participate with dignity in social exchange and avoid criticising others. However, Maria Theresa considered royal women to be above the circulation of reputations in le monde: rather, sociability had to be part of court spectacle representing power. Therefore, in place of the carefully managed semi-publicity and semi-privacy that one encounters in sociable correspondences and that Graffigny and Copineau so effectively manipulated, one finds in Maria Theresa’s didactic correspondence the secrecy associated with absolute monarchy: Mercy-Argenteau and Maria Theresa famously wove around the unwitting Marie-Antoinette a web of epistolary surveillance. These two exchanges accordingly show the full complexity of how eighteenth-century letter-writers managed the ambivalence of epistolary writing: both privacy and publicity could be staged and could take on multiple layers of meaning as letters moved between the court and le monde. |
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| ISSN: | 2052-5397 |