March 11, 2025 • 24 mins
Most women in 17th century France were faced with a choice: marriage, or a convent. Ninon de l'Enclos chose her own path.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener Discretion advised, get thee
to a nunnery, go farewell. These are Hamlet's famous words
to Ophelia, as the play's titular character begins to succumb
to madness and paranoia. There are probably plenty of Shakespeare
(00:24):
podcasts you could listen to for a more in depth analysis,
and we could spend hours debating whether Hamlet is actually
mad or just pretending. But on a surface level, the
meaning of Hamlet's orders to Ophelia is clear. A convent
is a place where a woman can go to absolve
(00:44):
her sins to conveniently disappear. Joining a convent by force
or coercion or choice, is a hand that fate dealt
many women, both real and fictional, throughout the ages. In
seven seventeenth century France, most upper class women generally had
two choices upon coming of age, become a wife or
(01:09):
become a nun Both would require following rigorous sets of
social rules and accepting a fundamental lack of freedom. But
what about the women who defied that choice. Ninon de
Lanclo was one such woman, and an incredibly unique one
(01:30):
at that. Ninon, a student of philosophy from a young age,
saw both marriage and the convent as a loss of
freedom and resolved to forge a different path for herself.
She became Paris's most celebrated courtesan, all while sharing her
radical ideas in the city's intellectual circles. But as we know,
(01:55):
the consequences of going against the grain are often great
for women, both then and now. Nenon's lifestyle landed her
imprisoned in a convent, and the order to quote get
thee to a nunnery had come from the very top.
For many women, that would be the end of their story,
(02:17):
but Neinon was determined to continue on, and unlike the
story of Ophelia, you'll find that Ninon's life was no tragedy.
I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. Anne Delenchloe
(02:37):
was born in Paris on November tenth, sixteen twenty. Some
sources proposed that her family were minor nobles, while some
other historians insist that they had no noble ties. But
no matter their origin, they were probably not particularly wealthy,
but they were certainly involved in Parisian high society. The
(02:59):
nickname Renan, a traditional French diminutive of Anne, was given
to her by her father, Henri de Lancloux, was an
accomplished lutist and composer, and he taught his daughter to
play the lute from a young age. In addition to
her father's music lessons, Ninon also inherited his philosophical ideas.
(03:21):
He was a neo Epicurean, taking a brief detour to
philosophy one oh one before we continue. Epicureanism, derived from
the teachings of the Greek sage Epicurus, focuses on a
secular pursuit to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. The term
neo Epicurean that you'll hear today came about during the
(03:45):
philosophy's seventeenth century revival. That was Ninon's father's outlook. But
given how unconventional Ninon's life ended up, what was her
mother's perspective? While her father had turned to the Greeks
den d mother was actually a devout Catholic and wished
to impart the strict moral standards of counter reformational Catholicism
(04:09):
on her daughter. Some historians believe her mother's greatest goal
was for her daughter to become a nun, and there
was even a brief period during which a young Ninon
was educated in a convent. Her parents' marriage was one
of convenience, as you might have been able to guess,
given that husband and wife could not have been more
(04:31):
opposed ideologically, you can probably guess whom Ninon ultimately took after.
In addition to embracing her father's libertinism and rejection of religion,
Ninon became something of a musical prodigy in her youth
and performed the lute and clavichord for charmed audiences that
(04:52):
gathered in Parisian salons. At the same time, she also
mastered Spanish and Italian and became an avid reader. There's
an anecdotal account about Nenan in her teenage years that
embodies the way she would challenge convention and authority. As
the story goes, Nenon informed her friends that since women
(05:14):
are tasked with frivolities and men are allotted freedoms they
take for granted. Quote from this moment, I will be
a man for Nonon. It wasn't a declaration about gender identity.
It was a statement about the role she wished to
play in society about her interests and the freedoms she
intended to preserve for herself. Society was only allowing women
(05:39):
at the time to occupy an incredibly narrow space, and
so Nenon would chart a course for herself, attempting to
live with the freedoms that a man would have. It
was Nenon's determination to quote live as a man would
that drove her to find another avenue besides the convent
(06:00):
or marriage, and it was at this time that she
began her famed career, taking a third option, a courtizan.
I find the word courtizan interesting because as a culture
we have found no shortage of both euphemisms and derogatory
terms for sex workers. But to me, courtesan conveys something specific.
(06:24):
There's some sophistication there, in my opinion. A little Glamour
Miriam Webster describes courtesan as quote a female sex worker
with a courtly, wealthy or upper class clientele. The word
first appears in the mid fifteen hundreds, driving from the
Middle French courtisan, literally meaning woman of the court. Many
(06:48):
courtesans came from poorer backgrounds and began their careers as
more lower class prostitutes. While others came from more well
off backgrounds and became courtesan's too improve their social and
political currency. Courtesans were expected to be artistically and or
intellectually engaging. Their primary job was, of course, companionship and
(07:13):
usually sexual pleasure for their benefactors, but it was nearly
equally important that they entertained through other avenues. Nenon was
neither wealthy nor poor, and she likely saw a courtizan
as a path to both financial and social independence. Her
personal philosophy also must have contributed to her decision. Unlike
(07:36):
the vast majority of her contemporaries, Nonon did not see
sex as an immoral act, as she would later write, quote,
oh you mortals who rely so much on the power
of your virtue. No matter how great your strength may be,
there are moments when the most virtuous person becomes the weakest.
(07:58):
The reason for this strange fact is that nature is
always pursuing us. It is always aiming to achieve its ends.
The desire for love in a woman is a substantial
part of her natural constitution. Her virtue has only been
patched on. This outlook goes hand in hand with her
rejection of the Christian Church's teachings. If desire is not
(08:23):
inherently sinful, then repentance is not the point of existence.
Nenon's first step to begin her new life was to
acquire her own residence in Paris, which she likely did
using inheritance from the recent death of her father. She
settled on a straight in the fashionable quarter of the Marae.
(08:44):
The neighborhood was the heart of many of Paris's most
esteemed intellectual circles, where men and women would gather to
engage with new, often bohemian ideas. Just as Nenon had
charmed parias society with her lute years earlier, she soon
captivated its attention. Yet again. She gained a reputation for
(09:09):
being different from other courtesans at the time because of
her openly independent nature. As Ninon's French biographer, Roger Duchamp
put it roughly translated into English, Nana earned her living
by having sex. Having sex was not her life. She
was known for her strict boundaries. She would be the
(09:29):
one to determine when a relationship started and ended. It
wasn't unusual for a courtesan to gain enough social currency
that she could afford to exert that control choosing which
lover she took instead of the other way around. But
Nenon seems to have reached that point quicker than most,
As the famed memoirrist San Simon wrote of her quote,
(09:51):
Neno always had crowds of adorers, but never more than
one lover at a time, And when she tired of
the present occu, she said so frankly, and took another.
Yet such was the authority of this wanton that no
man dared fall out with his successful rival. He was
only too happy to be allowed to visit as a
(10:14):
familiar friend. We don't have a clear timeline of when
her relationships with her various benefactors started or ended, but
we do know their names. Her most famous lovers included
the king's cousin, the General Louis the second de Bourbon,
otherwise known as Legrand Conde, as well as Francois duc
(10:36):
de la Roche Fouquet, member of one of the most
illustrious French noble families and a published writer and frequent
salon fixture himself. Among her spurned petitioners was Cardinal Richelieu,
the chief minister to Louis the thirteenth, known for accumulating
an enormous amount of power and influence in both the
(10:58):
Catholic Church and French monarchy. His rejection speaks to the
weight of Nenon's social currency as well as her goals.
If she simply sought to acquire wealth and power, why
would she have refused one of France's most powerful figures.
We don't know her specific reasons for refusing where she
(11:19):
lose advances, but we can probably imagine that Nenon might
have taken issue with his censorship of the press and
his consolidation of power away from the nobility her clientele,
family and friends. Years into her career, Nenon found herself
facing a new and different sort of relationship. In sixteen
(11:42):
fifty two, when she would have been in her early thirties,
she was pursued by a well known nobleman, Louis de Mornay.
De Mournay gets a mention in sin Simon's memoirs as well,
where he's simply described as making quote a lot of
noise with women. Quote. I'm not sure if that's literal
(12:03):
or metaphorical, but it's no surprise then that he was
married when he and Nenon began a relationship. The couple
actually had a son together Louise, and for three years
the three of them lived together in the country, where
Nenon studied and the nobleman hunted while they both cared
(12:23):
for their son. However, Nenon wasn't suited for the quiet
country life, and she ultimately wasn't suited for de Mornay,
a man with ultimately boring, fairly conventional, and low brow interests.
Nenon returned to Paris in sixteen fifty five, and her
son seems to have stayed at court. We don't know
(12:47):
for sure what kind of relationship Neinon had with him
throughout the rest of her life. Returning to her previous career,
as it turned out, wouldn't be as smooth as she
might have hoped. Was used to ending relationships on her terms,
but de Mournay appears not to have gotten that message
(13:08):
when she refused to return to him despite his pleas
he fell into a fever. To console his distress, she
cut off her hair and sent the curled locks to
his bedside. It didn't do much to appease her scorned
ex lover, but it did evidently start a trend. Women
(13:29):
across Paris began to sport bobbed hair. A la Neinont. Eventually,
like all of her other former lovers, de Mournay forgave
Nenon and they settled into a friendship. It wasn't just
hairstyles that were changing in Paris the Frond. The two
(13:51):
short wars between the French nobility and Louis the Fourteenth's
regency government further asserted the power of the monarchy, and
Cardinal Mazarin Young Louise Minister and Richilieu's successor. With this
assertion came a wave of conservatism, and conservatives famously don't
(14:13):
favor openly atheist courtesans. It was only a year after
Ninon's return to the city in sixteen fifty six that
the Queen Mother of France, Anne of Austria, was petitioned
by a group of Ninon's detractors aka those who might
have been jealous of her status, wary of her philosophy,
(14:35):
or both to silence her. The petition ultimately led to
Nenon's imprisonment in a convent home to many quote wayward
women of the seventeenth century. While there were those who
joined the convent voluntarily, the French convent primarily functioned as
an alternative to prison for rebellious women. Minon had designed
(15:00):
a life for herself, specifically to circumvent the choice between
marriage or convent, but in the end she was still
sentenced to the latter. The writing of Ninons that has
survived is philosophical, not diaristic, so we're left to imagine
how she must have felt confined to those walls. As
(15:23):
we know, Ninana was not faded to stay at the
convent for long. The story goes that her savior was
actually not, as you might have been expecting, one of
her many powerful lovers, but a kindred spirit, Christina, the
exiled Queen of Sweden, who we actually discussed in the
early podcast episode Queen Christina removed her own crown. You
(15:46):
can see why the monarch who described herself as having
quote an insurmountable distaste for marriage as well as quote
for all the things that females talked about and did,
would be impressed by ninon convictions. Christina often woren't masculine clothing,
she barely combed her hair, and cared far more about
(16:07):
her studies than she did running a country. She was
just a reminder at been a while since the episode.
Ultimately forced to abdicate her throne for her refusal to
marry and intend to convert to Catholicism. Christina was only
in her twenties when she abdicated, and so much of
her life after the throne was spent traveling Europe. During
(16:29):
her time in Parisian society, she likely heard much about
Nina's rise and fall and decided to visit her in
the convent. Their conversation must have made an impact and
sounds like an off Broadway play waiting to happen. Christina
swiftly intervened and Ninon was set free. In sixteen fifty nine,
(16:52):
a pamphlet began to circulate around Paris, wonderfully entitled The
Coquette Avenged. It was a short work, but it boldly
described the possibility of living a good, fulfilling life outside
the constraints of religion. While it's not a certainty, the
work has long been attributed to Nenan, and it's believed
(17:15):
to have been written during her time in the convent,
proving that her imprisonment only further cemented her beliefs and convictions.
After her brief stay with the nuns, Nenon returned to
being a courtesan, but in the sixteen sixties, she would
ultimately say goodbye to that part of her life and
(17:37):
dedicate herself to her literary circle. While Nonon had attended
and hosted numerous salons in her time, in sixteen sixty
seven she established her regular salon at the Hotel de
Sagon in Paris, which would continue to meet for the
rest of her life. Her guests were some of the
(17:57):
city's most prominent intellectuals, artists, and political thinkers. The most
famous names among her friends include Saint Simon, the memoirist
we've quoted several times now, Mollieri, the iconic playwright, and
the woman known as Madame Scarone, who actually secretly married
Louis the fourteenth following the death of Queen Maria. Theresa.
(18:20):
Nenan's surviving philosophical work comes from her letters to another
attendee of her salons, a man named Charles de Sevigner,
an aristocrat and the son of Madame de Sevigner, who's
remembered to this day as a seventeenth century literary icon.
For her own letter writing, Nenon appears to have taken Charles,
(18:42):
twenty eight years her junior, under her wing, or, in
her own words, quote you ought to be aware of
the fact that when a woman has lost the freshness
of her first youth and takes a special interest in
a young man, everybody says she desires to make a
worldling of him. You know the malignity of this expression.
(19:03):
I do not care to expose myself to its application.
All the service I am willing to render you is
to become your confidante. You will tell me your troubles,
and I will tell you what is in my mind.
Likewise aid you to know your own heart and that
of a woman. End quote. Charles, in his youthful ignorance,
(19:24):
had found himself struggling to find a woman that returned
his affections. Ninon became something of his dating guru. As
you can probably guess, her advice to him wasn't the
kind of sound bites you can hear on TikTok from
dating experts, but rather a reflection of her philosophical beliefs
regarding sex, gender, and the nature of humans themselves. In
(19:47):
one letter, she writes, quote, it is not because you,
referring to both Charles and men at large quote, possess
superior qualities that you are an agreeable companion to be
in I raced with outstretched arms. You must be sympathetic,
amusing important to the pleasure of others. I warn you
that you cannot succeed in any other manner, especially with women.
(20:12):
Now tell me what would you like me to do
with your learning, with the geometry of your mind, and
with the exactitude of your memory, Dear marquise, if you
have such advantages, if you have no personal charm to
balance your austerity, you will not please women. I can
vouch for that, far from pleasing them, you will seem
(20:34):
to them like an intimidating critic. You will so constrain
them that any pleasure they might have enjoyed in your
presence will be banished. In other words, don't be all
head and no heart. While this is surely a bit
of tough love, it's also a blatant disavowal of conventional
(20:57):
gender roles. Relationships, then, On argue, cannot work when a
man is expected to only be the head and the
woman only the heart. What is love without reciprocity. While
Nanon encouraged men to work on their charm, she began
to further encourage fellow women to work on their minds.
(21:19):
Her Salon began hosting lectures, and at each one men
paid a fee, while women were admitted for free the
original Ladies Night. By this point in her life, Nenon
was approaching her eighties. I am of your opinion, she
wrote in a letter that wrinkles are a mark of wisdom.
(21:39):
That series of letters, the last written works we have
of Ninon's, add a new face to her philosophy, which
is her thoughts on aging and mortality. While she complained
of physical discomforts and transformations, she was not dismayed by
changes in her appearance. The soul and the mind, she believed,
(22:00):
shown far brighter than beauty. Ninon de L'encloude died of
natural causes in Paris in seventeen o five, at eighty
four years old. In a letter to a friend written
not long before her death, she wrote, quote, your life
has been too illustrious not to be lived in the
same manner until the end. Do not permit hell to
(22:21):
frighten you. Pronounce the word love boldly, and that of
old age will never pass your lips. That's the story
of the life of Ninon de l'ancloux. But keep listening.
After a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit
more about her lasting literary legacy. Nenon's legacy in the
(22:50):
literary world might have been far greater than she would
ever be able to know. After her death, she still
sought to encourage education, and she gave some money in
her will to the promising nine year old godson of
a friend. The boy seemed like he had potential. Maybe
he had something dazzling about him, or maybe Nanon was
(23:12):
just trying to be nice. The boy, whose name was
Francois Marie ar Away, would use the money to buy books.
If that name doesn't sound familiar, it's probably because he's
far better known today by his pen name Voltaire. Nobel
(23:36):
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild
from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz,
with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender,
Amy Hit and Julia Milani. The show is edited and
produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il Kaali
(23:59):
and Exis executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener Discretion advised, get thee
to a nunnery, go farewell. These are Hamlet's famous words
to Ophelia, as the play's titular character begins to succumb
to madness and paranoia. There are probably plenty of Shakespeare
(00:24):
podcasts you could listen to for a more in depth analysis,
and we could spend hours debating whether Hamlet is actually
mad or just pretending. But on a surface level, the
meaning of Hamlet's orders to Ophelia is clear. A convent
is a place where a woman can go to absolve
(00:44):
her sins to conveniently disappear. Joining a convent by force
or coercion or choice, is a hand that fate dealt
many women, both real and fictional, throughout the ages. In
seven seventeenth century France, most upper class women generally had
two choices upon coming of age, become a wife or
(01:09):
become a nun Both would require following rigorous sets of
social rules and accepting a fundamental lack of freedom. But
what about the women who defied that choice. Ninon de
Lanclo was one such woman, and an incredibly unique one
(01:30):
at that. Ninon, a student of philosophy from a young age,
saw both marriage and the convent as a loss of
freedom and resolved to forge a different path for herself.
She became Paris's most celebrated courtesan, all while sharing her
radical ideas in the city's intellectual circles. But as we know,
(01:55):
the consequences of going against the grain are often great
for women, both then and now. Nenon's lifestyle landed her
imprisoned in a convent, and the order to quote get
thee to a nunnery had come from the very top.
For many women, that would be the end of their story,
(02:17):
but Neinon was determined to continue on, and unlike the
story of Ophelia, you'll find that Ninon's life was no tragedy.
I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. Anne Delenchloe
(02:37):
was born in Paris on November tenth, sixteen twenty. Some
sources proposed that her family were minor nobles, while some
other historians insist that they had no noble ties. But
no matter their origin, they were probably not particularly wealthy,
but they were certainly involved in Parisian high society. The
(02:59):
nickname Renan, a traditional French diminutive of Anne, was given
to her by her father, Henri de Lancloux, was an
accomplished lutist and composer, and he taught his daughter to
play the lute from a young age. In addition to
her father's music lessons, Ninon also inherited his philosophical ideas.
(03:21):
He was a neo Epicurean, taking a brief detour to
philosophy one oh one before we continue. Epicureanism, derived from
the teachings of the Greek sage Epicurus, focuses on a
secular pursuit to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. The term
neo Epicurean that you'll hear today came about during the
(03:45):
philosophy's seventeenth century revival. That was Ninon's father's outlook. But
given how unconventional Ninon's life ended up, what was her
mother's perspective? While her father had turned to the Greeks
den d mother was actually a devout Catholic and wished
to impart the strict moral standards of counter reformational Catholicism
(04:09):
on her daughter. Some historians believe her mother's greatest goal
was for her daughter to become a nun, and there
was even a brief period during which a young Ninon
was educated in a convent. Her parents' marriage was one
of convenience, as you might have been able to guess,
given that husband and wife could not have been more
(04:31):
opposed ideologically, you can probably guess whom Ninon ultimately took after.
In addition to embracing her father's libertinism and rejection of religion,
Ninon became something of a musical prodigy in her youth
and performed the lute and clavichord for charmed audiences that
(04:52):
gathered in Parisian salons. At the same time, she also
mastered Spanish and Italian and became an avid reader. There's
an anecdotal account about Nenan in her teenage years that
embodies the way she would challenge convention and authority. As
the story goes, Nenon informed her friends that since women
(05:14):
are tasked with frivolities and men are allotted freedoms they
take for granted. Quote from this moment, I will be
a man for Nonon. It wasn't a declaration about gender identity.
It was a statement about the role she wished to
play in society about her interests and the freedoms she
intended to preserve for herself. Society was only allowing women
(05:39):
at the time to occupy an incredibly narrow space, and
so Nenon would chart a course for herself, attempting to
live with the freedoms that a man would have. It
was Nenon's determination to quote live as a man would
that drove her to find another avenue besides the convent
(06:00):
or marriage, and it was at this time that she
began her famed career, taking a third option, a courtizan.
I find the word courtizan interesting because as a culture
we have found no shortage of both euphemisms and derogatory
terms for sex workers. But to me, courtesan conveys something specific.
(06:24):
There's some sophistication there, in my opinion. A little Glamour
Miriam Webster describes courtesan as quote a female sex worker
with a courtly, wealthy or upper class clientele. The word
first appears in the mid fifteen hundreds, driving from the
Middle French courtisan, literally meaning woman of the court. Many
(06:48):
courtesans came from poorer backgrounds and began their careers as
more lower class prostitutes. While others came from more well
off backgrounds and became courtesan's too improve their social and
political currency. Courtesans were expected to be artistically and or
intellectually engaging. Their primary job was, of course, companionship and
(07:13):
usually sexual pleasure for their benefactors, but it was nearly
equally important that they entertained through other avenues. Nenon was
neither wealthy nor poor, and she likely saw a courtizan
as a path to both financial and social independence. Her
personal philosophy also must have contributed to her decision. Unlike
(07:36):
the vast majority of her contemporaries, Nonon did not see
sex as an immoral act, as she would later write, quote,
oh you mortals who rely so much on the power
of your virtue. No matter how great your strength may be,
there are moments when the most virtuous person becomes the weakest.
(07:58):
The reason for this strange fact is that nature is
always pursuing us. It is always aiming to achieve its ends.
The desire for love in a woman is a substantial
part of her natural constitution. Her virtue has only been
patched on. This outlook goes hand in hand with her
rejection of the Christian Church's teachings. If desire is not
(08:23):
inherently sinful, then repentance is not the point of existence.
Nenon's first step to begin her new life was to
acquire her own residence in Paris, which she likely did
using inheritance from the recent death of her father. She
settled on a straight in the fashionable quarter of the Marae.
(08:44):
The neighborhood was the heart of many of Paris's most
esteemed intellectual circles, where men and women would gather to
engage with new, often bohemian ideas. Just as Nenon had
charmed parias society with her lute years earlier, she soon
captivated its attention. Yet again. She gained a reputation for
(09:09):
being different from other courtesans at the time because of
her openly independent nature. As Ninon's French biographer, Roger Duchamp
put it roughly translated into English, Nana earned her living
by having sex. Having sex was not her life. She
was known for her strict boundaries. She would be the
(09:29):
one to determine when a relationship started and ended. It
wasn't unusual for a courtesan to gain enough social currency
that she could afford to exert that control choosing which
lover she took instead of the other way around. But
Nenon seems to have reached that point quicker than most,
As the famed memoirrist San Simon wrote of her quote,
(09:51):
Neno always had crowds of adorers, but never more than
one lover at a time, And when she tired of
the present occu, she said so frankly, and took another.
Yet such was the authority of this wanton that no
man dared fall out with his successful rival. He was
only too happy to be allowed to visit as a
(10:14):
familiar friend. We don't have a clear timeline of when
her relationships with her various benefactors started or ended, but
we do know their names. Her most famous lovers included
the king's cousin, the General Louis the second de Bourbon,
otherwise known as Legrand Conde, as well as Francois duc
(10:36):
de la Roche Fouquet, member of one of the most
illustrious French noble families and a published writer and frequent
salon fixture himself. Among her spurned petitioners was Cardinal Richelieu,
the chief minister to Louis the thirteenth, known for accumulating
an enormous amount of power and influence in both the
(10:58):
Catholic Church and French monarchy. His rejection speaks to the
weight of Nenon's social currency as well as her goals.
If she simply sought to acquire wealth and power, why
would she have refused one of France's most powerful figures.
We don't know her specific reasons for refusing where she
(11:19):
lose advances, but we can probably imagine that Nenon might
have taken issue with his censorship of the press and
his consolidation of power away from the nobility her clientele,
family and friends. Years into her career, Nenon found herself
facing a new and different sort of relationship. In sixteen
(11:42):
fifty two, when she would have been in her early thirties,
she was pursued by a well known nobleman, Louis de Mornay.
De Mournay gets a mention in sin Simon's memoirs as well,
where he's simply described as making quote a lot of
noise with women. Quote. I'm not sure if that's literal
(12:03):
or metaphorical, but it's no surprise then that he was
married when he and Nenon began a relationship. The couple
actually had a son together Louise, and for three years
the three of them lived together in the country, where
Nenon studied and the nobleman hunted while they both cared
(12:23):
for their son. However, Nenon wasn't suited for the quiet
country life, and she ultimately wasn't suited for de Mornay,
a man with ultimately boring, fairly conventional, and low brow interests.
Nenon returned to Paris in sixteen fifty five, and her
son seems to have stayed at court. We don't know
(12:47):
for sure what kind of relationship Neinon had with him
throughout the rest of her life. Returning to her previous career,
as it turned out, wouldn't be as smooth as she
might have hoped. Was used to ending relationships on her terms,
but de Mournay appears not to have gotten that message
(13:08):
when she refused to return to him despite his pleas
he fell into a fever. To console his distress, she
cut off her hair and sent the curled locks to
his bedside. It didn't do much to appease her scorned
ex lover, but it did evidently start a trend. Women
(13:29):
across Paris began to sport bobbed hair. A la Neinont. Eventually,
like all of her other former lovers, de Mournay forgave
Nenon and they settled into a friendship. It wasn't just
hairstyles that were changing in Paris the Frond. The two
(13:51):
short wars between the French nobility and Louis the Fourteenth's
regency government further asserted the power of the monarchy, and
Cardinal Mazarin Young Louise Minister and Richilieu's successor. With this
assertion came a wave of conservatism, and conservatives famously don't
(14:13):
favor openly atheist courtesans. It was only a year after
Ninon's return to the city in sixteen fifty six that
the Queen Mother of France, Anne of Austria, was petitioned
by a group of Ninon's detractors aka those who might
have been jealous of her status, wary of her philosophy,
(14:35):
or both to silence her. The petition ultimately led to
Nenon's imprisonment in a convent home to many quote wayward
women of the seventeenth century. While there were those who
joined the convent voluntarily, the French convent primarily functioned as
an alternative to prison for rebellious women. Minon had designed
(15:00):
a life for herself, specifically to circumvent the choice between
marriage or convent, but in the end she was still
sentenced to the latter. The writing of Ninons that has
survived is philosophical, not diaristic, so we're left to imagine
how she must have felt confined to those walls. As
(15:23):
we know, Ninana was not faded to stay at the
convent for long. The story goes that her savior was
actually not, as you might have been expecting, one of
her many powerful lovers, but a kindred spirit, Christina, the
exiled Queen of Sweden, who we actually discussed in the
early podcast episode Queen Christina removed her own crown. You
(15:46):
can see why the monarch who described herself as having
quote an insurmountable distaste for marriage as well as quote
for all the things that females talked about and did,
would be impressed by ninon convictions. Christina often woren't masculine clothing,
she barely combed her hair, and cared far more about
(16:07):
her studies than she did running a country. She was
just a reminder at been a while since the episode.
Ultimately forced to abdicate her throne for her refusal to
marry and intend to convert to Catholicism. Christina was only
in her twenties when she abdicated, and so much of
her life after the throne was spent traveling Europe. During
(16:29):
her time in Parisian society, she likely heard much about
Nina's rise and fall and decided to visit her in
the convent. Their conversation must have made an impact and
sounds like an off Broadway play waiting to happen. Christina
swiftly intervened and Ninon was set free. In sixteen fifty nine,
(16:52):
a pamphlet began to circulate around Paris, wonderfully entitled The
Coquette Avenged. It was a short work, but it boldly
described the possibility of living a good, fulfilling life outside
the constraints of religion. While it's not a certainty, the
work has long been attributed to Nenan, and it's believed
(17:15):
to have been written during her time in the convent,
proving that her imprisonment only further cemented her beliefs and convictions.
After her brief stay with the nuns, Nenon returned to
being a courtesan, but in the sixteen sixties, she would
ultimately say goodbye to that part of her life and
(17:37):
dedicate herself to her literary circle. While Nonon had attended
and hosted numerous salons in her time, in sixteen sixty
seven she established her regular salon at the Hotel de
Sagon in Paris, which would continue to meet for the
rest of her life. Her guests were some of the
(17:57):
city's most prominent intellectuals, artists, and political thinkers. The most
famous names among her friends include Saint Simon, the memoirist
we've quoted several times now, Mollieri, the iconic playwright, and
the woman known as Madame Scarone, who actually secretly married
Louis the fourteenth following the death of Queen Maria. Theresa.
(18:20):
Nenan's surviving philosophical work comes from her letters to another
attendee of her salons, a man named Charles de Sevigner,
an aristocrat and the son of Madame de Sevigner, who's
remembered to this day as a seventeenth century literary icon.
For her own letter writing, Nenon appears to have taken Charles,
(18:42):
twenty eight years her junior, under her wing, or, in
her own words, quote you ought to be aware of
the fact that when a woman has lost the freshness
of her first youth and takes a special interest in
a young man, everybody says she desires to make a
worldling of him. You know the malignity of this expression.
(19:03):
I do not care to expose myself to its application.
All the service I am willing to render you is
to become your confidante. You will tell me your troubles,
and I will tell you what is in my mind.
Likewise aid you to know your own heart and that
of a woman. End quote. Charles, in his youthful ignorance,
(19:24):
had found himself struggling to find a woman that returned
his affections. Ninon became something of his dating guru. As
you can probably guess, her advice to him wasn't the
kind of sound bites you can hear on TikTok from
dating experts, but rather a reflection of her philosophical beliefs
regarding sex, gender, and the nature of humans themselves. In
(19:47):
one letter, she writes, quote, it is not because you,
referring to both Charles and men at large quote, possess
superior qualities that you are an agreeable companion to be
in I raced with outstretched arms. You must be sympathetic,
amusing important to the pleasure of others. I warn you
that you cannot succeed in any other manner, especially with women.
(20:12):
Now tell me what would you like me to do
with your learning, with the geometry of your mind, and
with the exactitude of your memory, Dear marquise, if you
have such advantages, if you have no personal charm to
balance your austerity, you will not please women. I can
vouch for that, far from pleasing them, you will seem
(20:34):
to them like an intimidating critic. You will so constrain
them that any pleasure they might have enjoyed in your
presence will be banished. In other words, don't be all
head and no heart. While this is surely a bit
of tough love, it's also a blatant disavowal of conventional
(20:57):
gender roles. Relationships, then, On argue, cannot work when a
man is expected to only be the head and the
woman only the heart. What is love without reciprocity. While
Nanon encouraged men to work on their charm, she began
to further encourage fellow women to work on their minds.
(21:19):
Her Salon began hosting lectures, and at each one men
paid a fee, while women were admitted for free the
original Ladies Night. By this point in her life, Nenon
was approaching her eighties. I am of your opinion, she
wrote in a letter that wrinkles are a mark of wisdom.
(21:39):
That series of letters, the last written works we have
of Ninon's, add a new face to her philosophy, which
is her thoughts on aging and mortality. While she complained
of physical discomforts and transformations, she was not dismayed by
changes in her appearance. The soul and the mind, she believed,
(22:00):
shown far brighter than beauty. Ninon de L'encloude died of
natural causes in Paris in seventeen o five, at eighty
four years old. In a letter to a friend written
not long before her death, she wrote, quote, your life
has been too illustrious not to be lived in the
same manner until the end. Do not permit hell to
(22:21):
frighten you. Pronounce the word love boldly, and that of
old age will never pass your lips. That's the story
of the life of Ninon de l'ancloux. But keep listening.
After a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit
more about her lasting literary legacy. Nenon's legacy in the
(22:50):
literary world might have been far greater than she would
ever be able to know. After her death, she still
sought to encourage education, and she gave some money in
her will to the promising nine year old godson of
a friend. The boy seemed like he had potential. Maybe
he had something dazzling about him, or maybe Nanon was
(23:12):
just trying to be nice. The boy, whose name was
Francois Marie ar Away, would use the money to buy books.
If that name doesn't sound familiar, it's probably because he's
far better known today by his pen name Voltaire. Nobel
(23:36):
Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild
from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz,
with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender,
Amy Hit and Julia Milani. The show is edited and
produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il Kaali
(23:59):
and Exis executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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