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COPYRIGHT 2004 Modern Humanities Research Association
The two works which made Mme de Graffigny famous in her own time are very different. The Lettres d'une Peruvienne (1747, revised edn 1752) is a novel consisting of letters composed by a fictional Inca princess. Cenie (1750) is a theatrical 'comedie sdrieuse' with a domestic setting. For us they are also very different in quality and interest: the Lettres d'une Peruvienne has recently generated a huge amount of critical interpretation, whereas Cenie has not. My main argument is that they tell the same story. It is the story of a woman fallen from her high estate and separated from her betrothed. This occurs through no fault of her own; blame lies partially with some military event. After years of fidelity on her part, the betrothed, assisted by another admirer, comes to her again. Here the story splits: the couple are reunited, or she finds a retreat (though in fact both endings exist for each work). The betrothed is faithful in Cenie, which we might see as the exemplary, public version of the story. In the private letters of the other work he is not faithful. While the former is Graffigny's wish, the latter is her distressing experience. Shortly before she began planning the two works, she had finally accepted that the man to whom she had been passionately attached for one-and-a-half decades had left her. The later years of her long affair with Desmarest are chronicled in Graffigny's remarkable correspondence with her friend and confidant Devaux. Her private letters also tell a story, in the double sense that they offer a chronicle of events and feelings, and that they show us the meanings that she made of them--the beginning of the mythifying process which will find literary form. The story that she tells in her two major works, and others too, proceeds from her own.
The titles Lettres d'une Peruvienne and Cenie both announce a feminine principle. They also both imply a female protagonist. The protagonist of the novel is indeed the 'Peruvian' and letter-writer Zilia. We do not know Zilia's age, but at the start she is just old enough to leave the Temple of the Virgins for her marriage--presumably fifteen or sixteen. The eponymous Cenie is about the same age, as we are told that it is 'quinze ans' since her birth (I. 8). (1) But the play's central protagonist is arguably not Cenie but her governess, Orphise. Graffigny in her correspondence, over many years of composing and revising the play, refers to it as La Gouvernante. The title was changed--and the name 'Cenie' substituted for 'Lucile'--only months before the first performance. The name 'Orphise', on the other hand, is one of only two to survive through all the changes. In 1747 Graffigny summarized the play's central situation in relation to the governess, not the daughter: 'c'est une mere qui est gouvernante de sa fille, sans le savoir'. (2) One could also say that the two are joint protagonists, in female solidarity or--a key word in Graffigny's sentimental vocabulary--'confiance'. I shall assign the function to both, though there is also an external reason for giving Orphise priority, as we shall see later.
Zilia clearly fits the paradigm that I have indicated. She is an Inca princess, sundered from her high estate and from her prince Aza on the morning of their wedding by the Spanish conquerors of Peru. Ignorant of the fate of her beloved and taken to France, where she is the dependant of a noble family, she maintains her fidelity. What of Orphise? In the play's first act we learn only that she is a governess devoted to her charge and 'd'un merite superieur'. We might find her name odd for a Frenchwoman; but 'Zilia' is also odd for a Peruvian. Both names smack of romance (as does 'Cenie' to a lesser extent). (3) In Act II Orphise and Cenie appear for the first time, and together. On the issue of marriage, Orphise advises Cenie, and then interrogates her suitor. Somewhat severe, she also hints at her own past sorrows in this domain (II. I and 2). The essential revelation, however, comes at the end of this act. The master of the house (who hailed her qualities in Act I) is misled into excluding her from Cenie's counsels. Left alone, Orphise soliloquizes:
C'est donc pour mettre le comble a mon abaissement que Dorimond devient injuste? Helas! j'etais reservee ti des traitements injurieux! Digne fruit de l'etat off le malheur m'a reduite ... Pardonne, Dorsainville: pour conserver la vie d'une epouse qui t'est chere, il ne me restait que le choix des plus viles conditions. Tu n'en rougiras pas, j'ai sauve de l'opprobre ton nora et le mien ... Epoux infortune, devais-tu m'abandonner? ... Quel que soit le desert quite sert d'asile, c'est celui de l'honneur. La honte, ce tyran des times nobles, n'habite qu'avec les hommes: fuyons-les ... Mais plus on m'eloigne de Cenie, plus mes conseils lui sont necessaires. Sans offenser Dorimond, rendons a sa fille ce qu'exigent de moi sa confiance et mon amitifi. On n'est pas tout a fait malheureux, quand il reste du bien a faire. (II. 5)
The elevated register and display of moral sentiment are in themselves proof of Orphise's superiority. But this is also a matter of elevated birth. 'Mon abaissement' is implicitly social as well. That she is fallen from a higher station becomes explicit in the reference to her present situation as 'l'etat ou le malheur m'a reduite'. As Cenie's admirer will later perceive, 'Orphise n'est point nee pour l'etat ou elle est' (v. 2). What caused her fall? She herself supplies the answer in the form of her ambiguous rhetorical question: 'Epoux infortune, devais-tu m'abandonner?' It is clear that she is the passive victim. The fault seems to lie with the 'infortune' of her 'epoux'. The 'devais' implies necessity, that of fate or destiny; but 'devais-tu' addresses the question to the husband, suggesting that he too might have some responsibility. Yet Orphise submits her conduct, and subjects herself, to him: 'Pardonne, Dorsainville.' She defines herself in relation to him, and she does not doubt his love, for she is 'une epouse qui t'est chore'. The whole speech is an affirmation, yet a kind of protest. It sets out my narrative paradigm. The key sentence--'Epoux infortune, devaistu m'abandonner?'--could equally have been addressed, in any or all of her letters, by Zilia to Aza. In both cases, moreover, there is no one to answer. The literary forms are also parallel: Orphise's speech is a soliloquy, as is in effect Zilia's writing.
Aza had been separated from Zilia in the first place when each was taken captive during the Spanish conquest of Peru. The circumstances in which Dorsainville was separated from Orphise are more complicated. We learn of them in Act I, in part from Dorsainville himself who has (unknown to Orphise) reappeared. His friend and benefactor Clerval assures him that justice is owed to 'un homme de votre naissance', whom 'une affaire d'honneur a reduit [...] au metier de simple soldat',...
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