Seductress (52 page)

80
Symmetry, as George . . . :
George Santayana,
The Sense of Beauty
(New York: Dover, 1955 [1896]), 59 and 61.

80
Belles laides
knew . . . :
See Mario Praz,
The Romantic Agony,
trans. Angus Davidson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 27, 25-94, and 199-300, and Wolfgang Kayser,
The Grotesque in Art and Literature,
trans. Ulrich Weisstein (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 184 and passim. For a mathematical explanation of this mode of beauty, see Frank Close,
The Meaning of Asymmetry
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001). The Zen proverb “True beauty is a deliberate, partial breaking of symmetry” approaches this aesthetic view.

80
A
belle laide
“wins . . .”:
George Sand,
Consuelo: A Romance of Venice
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1979), 7. Sand actually modeled her “ugly” seductress in this book on Pauline Viardot.

81
“Prettiness suggests nothing” . . . :
George Moore,
Confessions of a Young Man
(New York: Capricorn Books, 1959), 83, and George Bernard Shaw,
Man and Superman
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1903), 207.

81
A whole subgenre . . . :
This is a major, though neglected theme, in both film and literature. Movies include
The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Funny Girl,
and
The Mirror Has Two Faces.
Novels abound with
belles laides.
Some of the better-known homely sirens are Baroness Munster of Henry James’s
The Europeans,
the bespectacled Hebe of Mary Wesley’s
Harnessing Peacocks,
fat Drenka of Philip Roth’s
Sabbath’s Theater,
steatopygic Nora of Glenn Savan’s
White Palace,
“ugly” Marian Halcombe of Wilkie Collins’s
The Woman in White,
and the plain, fascinating Penelope of William Dean Howells’s
The Rise of Silas Lapham.

81
In Marcel Proust’s . . . :
Quoted in Carolyn Heilbrun,
Toward a Recognition of Androgyny
(New York: Norton, 1964), 79.

81
Living dolls are . . . :
See Pietropinto and Simenauer,
Beyond the Male Myth.
They call the fixation on beauty a “throwback to adolescent masturbatory fantasy.” The pretty “Dream Girl they believe is a teenage fantasy,” 344 and 355. John Munder Ross in
What Men Want
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994) analyzes the adolescents’ tendency to objectify women and overvalue their beauty at some length. He connects this to their immature ego development and “the fear of seduction and engulfment of ultimately painful overstimulation by a woman,” 190.

“Beauty safely conceals woman’s frightening dimensions,” writes Rita Freedman in
Beauty Bound,
a theme taken further by Camille Paglia, who sees it as a male defense against woman’s terrifying connection to the blood, flux, and destructiveness of nature, 61, and
Sexual Personae.
Freud always held that beauty was “aim-inhibited sexuality,” and linked scopophilic perversions to fear of female sexuality.
Civilization and Its Discontents,
25, and
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,
trans. James Stachey (New York: Basic Books, 1962).

For the standard studies of male sexual fears and the accompanying defense mechanisms, see Lederer
The Fear of Women;
Hays,
The Dangerous Sex: The Myth of Feminine Evil;
Horney, “The Dread of Women,” 133-46; and Stern,
Flight from Women.
Laura Mulvey elaborates on Freud’s ideas of beauty as aim-inhibited sexuality and a scopophilic perversion in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”
Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism,
ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 432-42.

81
While plastic surgery . . . :
Jane Brody reported in 1988 that “65 percent of women do not like their bodies”; in 2000 a
People
poll found 80 percent women “felt insecure about their looks.”
New York Times,
October 20, 1988, B14, and “How Do I Look,”
People
(September 4, 2000), 114.

82
“Divinity within,” he . . . :
Quoted in “Beauty,”
Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior,
ed. Albert Ellis and Albert Ararbanel (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1961), vol. 1, 216.

82
Naomi Wolfe wrote . . . :
Wolfe,
The Beauty Myth
(New York: William Morrow, 1991), 61.

82
But Zsa-Zsa Gabor . . . :
Quoted in Freedman,
Beauty Bound,
64.

84
“I own,” wrote . . . :
Quoted in Sydney George Fisher,
The True Benjamin Franklin
(Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott, 1899), 329.

84
Ancient Greek chroniclers . . . :
Brantôme,
Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies,
227.

84
The aged Jane Digby . . . :
Quoted in Tharp,
Mrs. Jack,
322.

84
As the French . . . :
Brantôme,
Fair and Gallant Ladies,
232.

85
As a recent survey . . . :
And that’s a generous figure. Other studies show a much lower rate of sexual satisfaction in the general female population, ranging from 30 to 15 percent. Susan Crain Bakos, “From Lib to Libido,”
Modern Maturity
(September-October 1999), 57.

85
Prepatriarchal societies invested . . . :
Barbara G. Walker,
The Crone: Women of Age, Wisdom, and Power
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 24. See Shahrukh Husain, on the subject of the elder deity’s sexual voracity: “The crone retains a powerful appetite for sex and like Hecate, Circe, and the Cailleach Beur, copulates with young men by deception, coercion, or
sheer charisma
” (italics mine).
Goddess,
111.

86
Around her the . . . :
Bernard Fays, Franklin,
Apostle of Modern Times
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1929), 461.

86
At sixty-one, covered . . . :
Ibid., 459.

86
Statesmen, philosophers, historians . . . :
Willis Steell,
Benjamin Franklin of Paris 1776-1785
(New York: Minton, Balch, 1928), 69.

86
“Gaiety” resounded until . . . :
Jules Bertaut, “Madame Helvétius,”
Égéries du xviiie siècle
(Paris: Librairie Plon, 1928), 166.

86
A rabid advocate . . . :
Quoted in Judith Curtis, “Françoise d’Issembourg d’Happoncourt de Graffigny (1695-1758),
French Women Writers: A Bio-Biblio Source-book,
ed. Eva Martin Sartori and Dorothy W. Zimmerman (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 210.

87
As “cunning and . . .”:
Bertaut, “Madame Helvétius,” 137.

87
Christened the “light . . .”:
Amelia Gere Mason,
The Women of the French Salons
(New York: Century, 1891), 188.

87
Every morning his valet . . . :
Mademoiselle Gaussin once turned down six hundred livres for her favors with a flick of the hand at Helvétius. “Sir,” she said to the disappointed suitor, “look like this man and I will give
you
twelve hundred Louis!” Quoted in Bertaut, “Madame Helvétius,” 148.

87
Proclaiming her his . . . :
Quoted ibid., 149.

88
Her most serious . . . :
Quoted ibid., 158.

88
Reconstituting her salon . . . :
Ibid., 166.

88
The best minds, . . . :
Quoted in Fisher,
True Benjamin Franklin,
329.

88
In a backyard . . . :
Steell,
Franklin of Paris,
76.

88
Almost a male . . . :
His letter on the subject recommends “old women to young ones” because of their brains, conversation, and “disposition to please,” quoted in Fisher,
True Franklin,
127.

88
Yet after seven weeks . . . :
Quoted in Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin
(New York, Viking, 1938), 651.

89
Nearly every day . . . :
Steell,
Franklin of Paris,
77.

89
Minette shrieked with . . . :
Ibid., 70.

89
“Let us
avenge . . .
”:
Quoted in Van Doren,
Franklin,
652.

89
When he was at last . . . :
Quoted ibid., 653. A recent play about their relationship,
Balloon,
by Karen Sunde, portrays Minette as Benjamin Franklin’s prompt and silent serviceable muse. But she was his equal in character, conversation, and charisma, even though she “spelled like a scrubwoman.” Fays,
Franklin,
459.

89
After Franklin left . . . :
Chamfort, born illegitimate and educated in charity institutions, rose to become a member of the French Academy and intimate of Louis XVI and the nobility. Later he became secretary of the Jacobin Club during the Revolution but killed himself when he ran afoul of Marat and Robes-pierre and was threatened with imprisonment. Collections of his work include
Pensées, Maxims et anecdotes,
and
Oeuvres complètes.

89
As the nation hurtled . . . :
Quoted in Bertaut, “Madame Helvétius,” 176.

89
As “light and lively” . . . :
Ibid., 167 and 181.

90
Franklin’s drinking song, . . . :
Quoted in Carl Van Doren,
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings
(New York: Viking, 1945), 477.

90
Also, of course . . . :
Terrified of their “grand” motherly influence on children, eighteenth-century clerics tried to banish the aged from the nursery.

90
Through the adroit . . . :
Brantôme,
Fair and Gallant Ladies,
214.

90
They gamboled in . . . :
Jehanne d’Orliac,
The Moon Mistress,
trans. F. M. Atkinson (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1930), 272.

91
But Catherine preferred . . . :
Her motto was “Odiate et aspetate.” Quoted ibid., 267.

91
Her father’s favorite . . . :
Ibid., 29.

91
Her teacher was . . . :
Ibid., 41.

91
They learned classical . . . :
Ibid., 40. For the sort of narrow education girls of this period received, see Hufton,
The Prospect Before Her,
28-61 and passim.

91
Women had to . . . :
Castiglione,
Book of the Courtier,
211.

92
His jealous mistress . . . :
Quoted in d’Orliac,
Moon Mistress,
68.

92
Although sycophants called . . . :
Quoted in Armel de Wismes,
The Great Royal Favorites
(Nantes: Artaud Freres, n.d.), 15.

93
Even Henri admitted . . . :
Quoted in Mark Strage,
Women of Power: The Life and Times of Catherine de’Medici
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 68.

93
He taxed the churches . . . :
Quoted ibid., 61.

93
He wore Diane’s . . . :
Quoted in Grace Hart Seely,
Diane the Huntress: The Life and Times of Diane de Poitiers
(New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1936), 162.

93
She “ruleth the . . .”:
Quoted in Strage,
Women of Power,
67.

93
The “Dissimulation Queen” . . . :
Quoted in d’Orliac,
Moon Mistress,
267.

94
When Diane recovered . . . :
Quoted ibid., 215.

94
Faithful to her credo . . . :
d’Orliac, 211 and Helen Weston Henderson,
The Enchantress
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), 155.

94
According to rumor . . . :
Supposedly Henri handed him a box of candy. “Hallo,” Henri sniped, “every body must live.” Quoted in William W. Sanger,
The History of Prostitution
(New York: Eugenics Publishing, 1939), 112.

94
Brantôme, who saw . . . :
Brantôme,
Fair and Gallant Ladies,
230, and quoted in Seely,
Diane the Huntress,
234.

94
Her elder enticements . . . :
d’Orliac,
Moon Mistress,
22.

95
With the ascendance . . . :
See Marina Warner,
Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary
(New York: Vintage, 1983), 190 and 177-91.

96
“Nothing,” said this . . . :
Quoted in Edgar H. Cohen,
Mademoiselle Libertine: A Portrait of Ninon de Lanclos
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 188.

96
Lovelocks spilled to . . . :
Quoted in Maud Cruttwell,
Madame de Maintenon
(London: J. M. Dent, 1930), 39.

96
“It was a fight,” she . . . :
Quoted ibid., 285.

96
“You are as . . .”:
Quoted in Charlotte Haldane,
Madame de Maintenon
(London: Constable, 1970), 27.

96
Louis at first . . . :
Quoted ibid., 77.

97
Childhood wounds still . . . :
Louis XIV’s traumatic childhood fits a classic psychiatric profile. Unsatisfied by any of his wet nurses as a ravenous baby, he behaved in perfect accordance with Melanie Klein’s theory. He split the breast—i.e., all women—into polarized opposites, the good and the bad. His puritanical mother and their overintimacy only exacerbated the split and his attachment to feminine purity. He also suffered from a secret sense of inferiority because of his spotty, neglected education and the accumulated scars from his tenth year during the Fronde, when he lived on the lam, in fear of his life.