Nuns' Stories: Marivaux and Diderot

Author(s): Janet Whatley

Source: Diderot Studies , 1981, Vol. 20 (1981), pp. 299-319
Published by: Librairie Droz

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40372540

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Librairie Droz is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Diderot
Studies

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUNS' STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

By Janet Whatley

If the convent as a novelistic theme seems limited and

dated, the province of only a very few good modern writers,
the Enlightenment is in large measure responsible. The forced
vocation, a serious and prevalent social problem of the ancien
regime, has, happily, been liquidated - but not before giving
rise to innumerable narratives, romantic or libertine, in which
a convent setting was exploited for intrigue or for emotional
and erotic effects.1 Of these fictions, Marivaux's La Vie de
Marianne and Diderot's La Religieuse are among the few that
claim our interest today in that both writers grasped the
metaphoric power of their subject, and could organize around
it a set of perceptions about the individual's efforts to define
and control his destiny. The convent, as Marivaux and
Diderot used it, could provide an insight into the discrepancy
between the ostensible function of an institution and its real
purpose (or purposes - they are almost never single).
Officially, the convent is a sanctified place, where those
possessed of a true vocation have, by a voluntary act of
sacrifice, committed themselves to work for the salvation of

1 On the convent as a theme in French literature, and on the con-

ventions that have governed its use, see Georges May, La Religieuse
(Paris : P.U.F., 1954) ; Pierre Fauchery, La Destinie fiminine dans le
roman europien du dix-huitieme sihcle, 1713-1807: Essai de gynico-
mathie romanesque (Paris : Colin, 1972) ; and Jeanne Ponton, La Reli-
gieuse dans la littirature frangaise (Quebec : Les Presses de TUniver-
site* de Laval, 1969).

299

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

the world by prayer and meditation. Marivaux and Did

both treat that official version as a mask. Although th
not entirely in accord as to how this institution really
function, they agree that the convent is deeply implica
the worldliest of the world's concerns, in the greed and
of families and officials. As both writers see it, the act of
sacrifice is rarely voluntary in any real sense : the novice, too
young to understand what she is doing, is caught in a net-
work of seduction and coercion that will obscure her choices
for her. The moment of sacrifice itself is a spectacle in which
the collectivity gets a vicarious semi-erotic thrill at a cost
in human freedom that the charmed spectator does not have
to pay. The work of prayer and meditation which is to save
the world is, for most, a routine of desperate boredom.
How society and the family implicate themselves in the
ensnarement, the degree of physical and moral freedom one
possesses to deploy in lesistance : these concerns, elaborated
with such profusion in La Religieuse, are tucked into a low-
key, muted passage of some thirty pages in Marivaux's
subplot to La Vie de Marianne.
When Diderot created his heroine Suzanne as part of a
hoax, he conceived her in terms of the most intense appeal
to the male sensibility of his time. She is highly visible,
always identified to herself and to others as the most beautiful
and gifted person in her group, stunning even as an object of
horror and pity in the worst of her persecutions. The heroine
of Marivaux's main plot, Marianne, has the same high
visibility in a more urbane context. The orphan of unknown
parents inspires in everyone she meets the conviction that she
is of noble birth ; she charms, imposes, and brings the glamour
of the romanesque to all her important encounters.
But that other story in Marianne - the story of the nun
Tervire - is muted and autumnal.* Marivaux asks us to

2 Gustave Larroumet compared La Religieuse and the Tervire

episode in his Marivaux (Paris : Hachette, 1882) : "La Religieuse de

300

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

become interested in a heroine who is characteriz

invisibility. Her parentage is known - solid country n
- but from early childhood she has been the object of ind
ence and neglect. The issue of a secret marriage, she is
away until her grandfather finds and acknowledg
upon her father's death and mother's remarriage
forgotten, as is the love that brought hei into being. Rele
to the care of negligent servants, she is temporarily r
by her grandmother, who embodies the values of
working provincial gentry. Upon the death of that g
mother, the quality of Tervire's grief is consonant w
interiority and muteness of her destiny : "Ce sont
tristesses retirees dans le fond de Tame, qui la fletri
et qui la laissent comme morte." 3 Unlike Marianne, w
self-love is healthy, amusing and amused, Tervire th
coquette has barely enough to function with ; her very
is established by Marivaux so indirectly that it hardly
pass through her consciousness.
Tervire's story, like that of Marianne, is incomple
know that she ultimately enters the convent because

Diderot, oeuvre supeYieure, irrite souvent comme une injustice

de Marivaux, beaucoup moins forte, inte*resse en elle-mem
une e*tude de mceurs, juste et vraie dans sa mesure" (361). E
Greene in Marivaux (Toronto : University of Toronto Press,
remarks : "To Diderot and his coterie, the story of Tervire mu
seemed pale indeed beside his own Religieuse, powerful, coa
sational - and unpublished." (242). Among the few critics w
much attention to the Tervire story, I note particularly Henri
Marivaux romancier (Paris : Colin, 1975), 234-241 ; Ronald R
tom, Marivaux' s Novels (Rutherford, N. J. : Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 1974), 37-39 ; Jean Fabre, "Intention et structure
dans les romans de Marivaux," Zagdnienia rodzajdw literackich 3
(1960), z. 2 (5), 5-25 ; Leo Spitzer, "A Propos de la Vie de Marianne,"
Romanic Review 44 (April 1953), 102-26, and Marcel Arland, Mari-
vaux (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), 87-91. In his introduction to his
edition of La Vie de Marianne (Paris : Garnier, 1963), Fre*de*ric Deloffre
notes that no review of the Tervire story, which takes up parts nine
through eleven, appeared when these parts were published in 1741
(lxxvii-lxviii).
9 La Vie de Marianne, ed. Frederic Deloffre (Paris: Garnier,
1963), 446-447. All page references to the novel are from this edition.

301

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

where she tells her story to Marianne ; but what she re

is a nairow escape from entering the convent, followe
other adventures culminating in the recognition of her m
where the story breaks off never to be resumed.
Tervire's absent and indifferent mother has left a vacuum
in her life and affections into which a debased kind of mother-
figure can move. Mme de Sainte-Hermieres, a wealthy widow
who has chosen to base her self-importance on her identity
as a devote, is prepared to use Tervire as a means of enhancing
her own prestige ; Tervire, a beautiful girl with what should
have been a future, is the ideal sacrificial lamb. The widow
intends to reap the benefits (worldly ones masked as spiritual)
of Tervire' s "vocation/' Marivaux is offering, in the mat hin-
ations of this power-hungry provincial, a semi-comic and
satiric version of the scapegoat theme which is so tragic in
La Religieuse.
Mme de Sainte-Hermieres' program of persuasion involves
pleasant little dinners, weekends at the chateau, joint "pieux
exercices", and introduction into a circle of devot admirers.
Tervire, whose existence has always been so tenuous, who
struggles against non-being, is now the center of attention.
Motherless, she is now all but stifled by caresses ; lacking in
confidence, she now - temporarily - knows who she is:
"la pr6destinee," as the devot circle calls her. "Ma pr6-
destin6e,. . . que la piet6 d'une fille comme vous est un touchant
spectacle ! Je ne saurais vous regarder sans louer Dieu, sans
me sentir excit6e k 1' aimer. Eh 1 mais sans doute, r6pondaient
nos amis..." (454). (One notes that the divot circle is
characterized by a sort of mindless accord and by a vocabu-
lary of cant : "ma pr6destinee," "le triomphe de la grace,"
"la maison de Dieu," etc.) Tervire, so modest and so honest,
cannot resist this appeal to a narcissism that has had so
little nourishment thus far: "Je m'affectionnais moi-mfime
aux 61oges que je m'entendais donner ; . . . ma d6votion en
augmentait tous les jours, et ma mine en devenait plus

302

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

austere" (453). The aura of authentic and dignified aust

attached to Tervire is replaced by the phony austeri
the "pr6destin6e," just as the real and discreet pathos o
situation is transformed into that of the equally p
"touchant spectacle/'
Mme de Sainte-Hermieres and her divot circle are at the
margin between the convent and the world. When Tervire
begins to make contact with the convent itself, the seduction
is all the more powerful.
On ne saurait croire combien l'amitie d'une religieuse est
attrayante, combien elle engage une fille qui n'a rien vu, et qui
n'a nulle experience. On aime alors cette religieuse autrement
qu'on n'aimerait une amie du monde ; c'est une esp&ce de passion
que l'attachement innocent qu'on prend pour elle ; et il est stir
que l'habit que nous portons, et qu'on ne voit qu'& nous, que la
physionomie reposee qu'il nous donne, contribuent k cela, aussi
bien que cet air de paix qui semble repandu dans nos maisons, et
qui les fait imaginer comme un asile doux et tranquille. . . (455).
This paragraph, rich in its understatement, is full of
suggestions that Diderot will spell out in elaborate detail
and to which he will give a particular interpretation. One
notices that the charm of the convent is threefold : an appeal
to vanity, the appeal of friendship, and the appeal of retreat.
The convent and the world between them encourage the
innocent "crush", and allow an adolescent infatuation to
motivate the most drastic disposition of one's future. Mari-
vaux singles out the details that nourish the infatuation:
the costume, the physionomie reposee, the air de paix. The
habit is related to the touchant spectacle that the nun is
supposed to provide, and it appeals to another childish
aspect of the predestinee : the desire to dress up. As for the
physionomie reposee and the air de paix, the reader of Marivaux
recognizes them as the attributes of the devot life style.
In Marivaux's contexts these terms are stripped of all pos-
itive connotations. The physionomie reposee is the face that
does not bear the appropriate marks of experience, and

303

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

belongs to someone who has made no use of his (or a

her) life, except a cautions and utterly self-centered
vation of it.
The asile doux et tranquille, the dwelling place of that
physionomie reposee, is just as spurious. Tervire is drawn
to what seems to be a lovely, calm and companiable refuge.
The nuns, protected from the harassments and solicitations
of husbands and children, and from all the burdens of freedom,
are utterly available for the delights of a friendship which
is evoked in its infantile simplicity by "la douceur des petits
noms qu'elles me donnaient, et par leurs graces simples et
d6votes" (455).
No sooner does Marivaux establish the charm of this
haven of tranquil souls than he demolishes it. Tervire meets
a nun who tells her the warning story of her entry into the
convent, just as Tervire is warning Marianne. This new
narrator, the lone adult voice amid the twittering, "la seule
qui ne m'eut point donn6 de petits noms, et qui se contentait
de m'appeler mademoiselle" (456), tells a tale that Tervire
finds disturbingly familiar: the same infatuation with a
convent atmosphere full of caresses, tendresses, etc. She
brings into the discourse that forgotten element, God himself :
"Dieu me paraissait si aimable. . . j'allais le servir dans une
paix si delicieuse. H61as ! mademoiselle, quelle enfance!
Je ne me donnais pas k Dieu, ce n'6tait point lui que je
cherchais dans cette maison ; je ne voulais que m'assurer la
douceur d'etre toujours ch6rie de ces bonnes filles, et de les
ch6rir moi-mSme" (458-459). Some intimation of this having
come to her before the moment of her vows, she hesitates,
then yields : "Je ne fus moi-mSme qu'une spectatrice stupide
de Fengagement eternel que je pris." Three narrative levels
into this rich novel of will and destiny, we experience through
this nameless religieuse, whose story detains us only a moment,
the starkest expression of self-abdication. Having abandoned
control of her destiny through a lack of lucidity for which

304

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

she is partly responsible, Tervire's informant has fo

convent to be, instead of an asile doux et tranquil
privileged purlieu of obsession. She has fallen vict
dreadful Racinian passion for an abb6 whom she
loathes and desires all at once, and her claustration
seems to guarantee the mortal virulence of her malady :
"Je suis capable de tout; je ne prevois que des horreurs,
je n'imagine que des abimes

Tervire finds herself instantaneously

tion." But she is not home free ; she b
she risks becoming the possession, th
Sainte-Hermieres : "II ne me manquait
etre son chef-d'oeuvre" (466). When she
edifying masterpiece, she finds hersel
oblivion that had threatened her since her birth and that
seems so much a part of her destiny. Since her beauty is
no longer to serve the demands of a collective voyeurism,
no longer to be immolated in a "touchant spectacle," it is
no longer of the slightest interest. "A peine paraissait-on
savoir que j'etais 1&" (467). Tervire has resumed her true
vocation of invisibility.
Mme de Sainte-Hermieres has one more card to play:
she decides to marry Tervire off to a divot of her circle,
"maigre, pale, serieux et austere." (In this context "austere"
has the same connotation of inauthenticity that it had when
Tervire was wearing the "austere" face of a devote.) Through
this projected marriage, the widow can have another try at
vicarious sanctity through the immolation of Tervire's
beauty and promise. Marivaux has already shown us the
falseness of the "romance" of the convent and Tervire has
been cured of her taste for the narcissistic rewards of the
"pr6destin6e." He is now showing us, through Tervire's
premature resignation to this dreary match, another kind of
trap : acquiescence in too low an estimate of one's value.
Only a disaster saves her from her ill-conceived prudence.

305

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

The same abb6 who had driven the other nun to despair
devises a situation that so thoroughly compromises Ter
that the engagement is broken : the trap of the villain s
the heroine from the trap of the grey destiny she was tr
to arrange for herself. She is free to pursue her authen
vocation of secular charity, to which we shall return.

Where Marivaux works with invisibility and absen

Diderot uses spectacle - insistent presence, often pushed
the point of hallucination.
The two treatments of the substitute sacrifice and its
relation to a maternal figure is a case in point. Tervire's
own mother is absent and indifferent; Mme de Sainte-
Hermieres makes a trivial and casual use of Tervire as a
vicarious renunciation. But the mother of Suzanne Simonin
is on an entirely different level of intensity : a haunted and
terrified figure, she hopes through Suzanne's vocation not
to appease her vanity, but to escape damnation.4 Mme
Simonin' s desperate hopes are pinned to a degraded version
of the belief that one person can and must expiate, through
suffering, the sins of another. Mme Simonin mistakes her
daughter for Christ: and tacitly, through the cruel terror
that impels her, Diderot attacks the very idea of vicarious
propitiation even in its orthodox form. The baroque physi-
cality of religion as presented in this novel is prepared by
the confrontation between Suzanne and her mother: the
gestures of approach and rejection are so anxious and clumsy

4 Rene* Pomeau has an excellent discussion of Mme Simonin in

"Sur la Religion de la Religieuse," Travaux de linguistique et de litti-
ratwe, XIII, 2 (1975), 557-567. See also Samir Riszk,in "La Contesta-
tion des Valeurs sociales dans la Religieuse de Diderot," Sub- Stance 2
(Winter 1972), 51-56.

306

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

that Suzanne's nose is bloodied, staining her mother's

This small domestic violence gives concrete illustra
their biological servitude and to the mess that is bein
of both lives : "Mes larmes et le sang qui coulait de m
se mfilaient ensemble, descendaient le long de mon b
j'en 6tais toute couverte sans que je m'en apersuss
The blood and the tears are those of Suzanne's pro
Gethsemane.
Marivaux had largely confined himself to the seductive
element of the false vocation. Diderot deals with a wider
range of persuasion : the blackmail of the scene just men-
tioned, as well as the legal coercion once Suzanne is behind
the walls.. Where Marivaux tends to explore degrees of
blindness and lucidity, Diderot deals with open warfare
between an individual and a set of laws and institutions.
Nevertheless, Diderot presents the coercive system as having
a large seductive element, and he presents it in much the
same way as Marivaux does: the convent milieu initially
appeals to the vanity, to delight in a costume, and provides
an atmospheric bath of gushing affection. "Mais voyez done,
ma soeur, comme elle est belle ! comme ce voile noir releve
la blancheur de son teint !" (239)
Diderot's use of this motif of narcissism is both more
complicated and less controlled than Marivaux's. Marivaux
is always aware of the degree of self-consciousness and self-
admiration that he has allotted to a character and it is
fully integrated into the moral texture of the whole work.
For instance, the young Marianne has a highly developed
narcissism, amusedly commented upon by the aging
Marianne; Tervire's narcissism is underdeveloped and her
one experience of its nourishment in the divot circle is dis-
astrous. Diderot is clearly satirizing the irrelevant appeal

6 La Religieuse, in CEuures romanesques, ed. Henri Be*nac (Paris :

Garnier, 1962), 247. All page references to the novel are from this
edition.

307

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

to narcissism in the convent seduction, but he does not have

all the satiric detachment about such an appeal that Marivaux
displays with regard to Tervire as a "touchant spectacle/'
When Suzanne describes herself as "une jeune victime
mourante qu'on portait k l'autel," and says "il s'echappait
de toutes parts des soupirs et des sanglots" (246), there are
several kinds of seduction going on. The witnessing world
is being seduced by the spectacle it has arranged for itself,
weeping at a human sacrifice that it has collectively willed ;
the Marquis de Croismare is being moved by this touching
account ; and Diderot himself has a certain complaisance in
the erotic appeal of this scene, to which his generation is
more vulnerable than that of Marivaux.
In Marivaux's system the idea of repos or retraite served
to narcotize the will. Diderot works with the same idea,
but with an inversion of terms ; instead of talking about the
charms of retreat, the superiors recount the terrors of the
world. "II ne se passe pas une histoire facheuse dans le
monde qu'on ne vous en parle;. . . et puis ce sont. . . des
actions de graces k Dieu qui nous met k couvert de ces
humiliantes aventures" (240). Now in fact in neither La
Religieuse nor Tervire's story is le monde a particularly
inviting place. Yet both writers reject the convent's rejection
of the world ; at least it provides variety in its catastrophes.
To live by one's wits, to deal with adversaries of both sexes
and all types, prevents obsession from taking root. The
world, unlike the convent, carries the antidotes for its own
poisons.
The warning that retreat might be other than reposeful
is conveyed to Suzanne not by any quiet, lucid informant
such as Tervire's friend, but by the spectacle of the mad-
woman who makes her embarrassing irruption, chained and
howling, into the pleasant scenario that has been so carefully
planned for Suzanne. Around this hideous figure, who
adumbrates the multiple manifestations of madness that

308

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

appear throughout the book, there crystallizes the t

that a human being can be utterly controlled by a se
external circumstances. At this point we need to con
the role of the "condition" in the two novels, for upon
concept depend some particularly important and sub
distinctions between these fictional realms.
"II est sAr, monsieur, que, sur cent religieuses qui meurent
avant cinquante ans, il y en a cent tout juste de damnees,
sans compter celles qui deviennent folles, stupides ou furieuses
en attendant" (240-241). (Apparently, if one can survive
until the menopause, sanity may return.) Diderot believed
that the condition (profession, family role, etc.) had a large
share in determining what we are and what we can do.
But of the various conditions that interested Diderot, the
only one that he treats as carrying sure damnation with it
is that of the nun. When Suzanne the pious Catholic speaks
of damnation in its orthodox sense, behind her the phil-
osopher Diderot is speaking of the belief that one is damned :
that is, to Jive and die in a state of superstitious terror, to
have lost the sense - or the necessary illusion - of any free-
dom of will, to be hounded by a need to propitiate baleful
if illusory powers. The exemplary madwoman whom Suzanne
sees during her noviciate, "qui ne voyait plus que des demons,
l'enfer et des gouffres de feu" (241), the lesbian superior of
Saint-Eutrope cowering before Satan, are engaged in a futile
battle with a Hell that is no less powerful for being non-
existent.
This "damnation" is in part the necessary consequence
of violating what Diderot sees as the essential human need
for sociability; it is also, more specifically, the price of
confined femininity. Sur les Femmes (1772), renders explicit
a number of assumptions in the novel. "C'est surtout dans
la passion de l'amour, les acces de la jalousie, les transports
de la tendresse maternelle, les instants de la superstition, la
maniere dont elles partagent les Emotions 6pid6miques et

309

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

populaires, que les femmes 6tonnent, belles comme les s6

phins de Klopstok, terribles comme les diables de Milton
La Religieuse bears witness throughout to a certain m
dread : women in groups means women in mobs, whet
nuns or maenads. Ambiguously sub-human or super-hum
woman is governed by "un organe susceptible de spas
terribles, disposant d'elle et suscitant dans son imaginati
des fantdmes de toute espece." 7 The sadistic Soeur Christ
the lesbian superior of Saint-Eutrope, at the mercy of t
uterus, are hysterics in the etymological sense of the w
The mystical mere de Moni merely represents the positi
aspects of this physiological bondage : her hysteria takes
form of immense psychic energies peculiar to priestesses
prophetesses throughout history. Diderot, who seems
have been capable of a considerable range of friendly
loving relationships with women, also enjoys speculating
their otherness : La Religieuse and Sur les Femmes repres
I think, not so much the real working model of feminin
that he used in his life, but the exploration of a collecti
of myths that constitute his poetic version of the female.
Marivaux also ascribes to women a special conditio
carrying special powers and vulnerabilities, but of a diffe
order from Diderot's. Neither the preoccupations nor
decorum of his generation would induce him to write ab
women in Diderot's overtly physiological terms. Women
"other" in that they are geniuses of the esprit de fin
rather than the masculine esprit de giometrie. The depe
ency of women in society furnishes them with a perspica
as to its workings ; they understand better than the mas
the way of the world. Women are, for Marivaux, ad
and realists; sooner and more thoroughly than men
they are initiated in the set of laws they must live w

• Ed. AssSzat-Toumeux (Paris : Gamier, 1975), II, 252.

7 Ibid., 255.

310

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

But these conditions are not as rigorously defined in

of physiology and institutional tyranny as in Didero
distinction shows up in the treatment of feminine fri
Much of Marianne's own story is that of a cou
emulation in love and generosity between her and her
mother. Tervire is cared for or takes care of two noble,
straight-backed and straight-talking elderly women who
provide a kind of moral backbone for the narrative. When
she befriends her unknown and destitute mother late in the
story, it is with an energy and an imaginative respect for the
privacy of the unknown woman that is more courtly than
sentimental. A point that is obvious, but perhaps worth
making explicit : as far as Marivaux's writing is concerned,
lesbianism does not exist. No equivocation shadows the joy
that Marivaux's women take in each other's love. It is
"free," that is, subject to moral but not psychosexual analy-
sis. Diderot's full-scale treatment of the lesbian convent of
Saint-Eutrope, on the other hand, complicates the inter-
pretation of all the feminine friendships in La Religieuse.
(One must note here that the view of lesbianism as sane,
dignified and responsible is, as far as I know, simply not
available in eighteenth-century France.)
Nevertheless, there are elements in the Tervire story that
invite comparison with Diderot's lesbian convent episode.
Mme de Sainte-Hermieres, and the majority of the nuns in
the convent that Tervire is about to enter, represent versions
of feminine friendship that are distorted, though not in an
explicit sexual sense. Mme de Sainte-Hermieres is destruc-
tively possessive ; the babbling little nuns lack the distance,
the measure, the weight that signify for Marivaux the legit-
imate bond between women. Bearing neither the responsi-
bilities of women in secular life nor the real duties of their
calling, they are lacking in ballast. The one nun who is a
real friend to Tervire is the one person who calls her "made-
moiselle." The Marivaux's convent is a place where virtues

311

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

and energies tend to be trivialized, and only an extraordin

person can avoid falling into either vacuousness or obsess
Much of the atmosphere of Marivaux's convent is to b
found in Diderot's lesbian convent. "On est toujours tr
pres ou trop loin des sup6rieures de ce caractere ; il n'y
vraie distance, ni mesure" (330). The gossip, the idle c
osity, the pervasive restlessness, the pursuit of small luxu
all these characteristics of Diderot's Saint-Eutrope seem
be a skillful elaboration of Marivaux's convent world. For
Marivaux, that busy, nattering foolishness is complete in
itself as a milieu in which the conscious soul must struggle :
he can claim as a full and sufficient fictional and poetic
realm a desperate ordinariness. Diderot, however, prefers
to push a set of conditions toward the extraordinary and the
spectacular. The friendship display of Marivaux's convent
is silly ; at Diderot's Saint-Eutrope it is poisoned : "Petites
minauderies f ausses, dictees par la rSponse de la superieure ;
il n'y en avait presque pas une qui ne m'eut 6t6 ma voix
et rompu mes doigts, si elle l'avait pu" (334-335). The
mother superior's specifically sexual excitement at the
history of Suzanne's persecution, at the detail of the physical
outrages, is a further perversion of the already quasi-per-
verse public reaction to the "jeune victime mourante."
The explicitly lesbian orientation of Diderot's superior can
be seen as one way of realizing the fictional potential in the
relationship between Marivaux's Mme de Sainte-Hermieres
and her predestinee. However, nothing in Marivaux cor-
responds to Diderot's recognition scene, in which Suzanne's
mental innocence is destroyed forever as she overhears the
mother-superior's confession : "Le voile qui jusqu'alors
m'avait d6rob6 le p6ril que j'avais couru se dSchirait

Quelle femme, monsieur le marqui

femme !" (384)
The madness, the fear of damnat
endemic to Diderot's imagined conven

312

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

dawning naturalism. Much of Diderot's career was

to the study of what freedom could mean to the
creature, of whom so much is determined by a specifi
and by his physiological endowment, and who is y
vinced of the possibility of his own freedom. When
says to her persuaders, "Je connais du moins le pr
liberty" (250), the word liberte is all the more power
its abstraction : it is not yet the freedom to do any pa
thing : it is the freedom to live in a society open en
let the healthy range of desires develop. Diderot's att
toward determinism, toward restrictions on psychic o
liberty, is a particularly complex component of his th
La Religieuse represents the darkest, most restrictiv
of moral liberty in his whole body of work. One h
percent of nuns who die under fifty die "damne
mere de Moni says that, of all the nuns, "il n'y en a
pas une dont je ne puisse faire une bete feroce" (291)
and minds are pressed so close by the confinements
condition and by the rebellion of outraged physical n
that they either break or are permanently deformed.
herself cannot resist the erosion made by her condit
her very being.
Now while Marivaux also deals with the problem o
freedom of the human being moving among forc
would modify it, his terms are not those of Diderot. C
the possibilities for his characters are shaped by a co
a configuration of structures and forces. Most of his
heroes and heroines are compelled to redefine, in the
of a play, what it means to be "true to oneself un
pressure of shifting circumstances and the odd revel
which ensue. And yet Marivaux retains the trace
essentialist concept of human nature, which is related
Christianity and to his long apprenticeship in the ro
which has such close links with the Christian world view.
If Marivaux's negative portrayal of the convent is not as

313

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

extreme as Diderot's it is because of his perception of w

a condition can do to a human being is less stringent. T
Tervire's friend the nun is temporarily obsessed, but not
Mme de Sainte-Hermieres and the ordinary nuns cultiva
distorted kinds of friendship with Tervire, but these ar
categorically pathological. The soul is not, in Marivau
utterly determined by the body that human nature is in
tably perverted if it is denied certain gratifications : Mariva
will not specify any particular kind of deprivation t
necessarily destroys the individual. Tervire herself,
counting her story to Marianne, is that Diderotian imp
bility : a sane nun. The elements of the convent milieu
can be identified by "case" terms in Diderot - hyste
sadism, lesbianism, etc. - are, in Marivaux's version of th
more indefinable and permit more moral and psychic e
room. The final disposition of Tervire's friend is instruct
"Cependant, a force de prieres, de combats, et de g6mis
ments, ses peines s'adoucirent, elle acquit de la tranquill
insensiblement elle s'affectionna k ses devoirs, et devint
Texemple de son couvent par sa ptete" (464). That is, moral
autonomy is possible even under the unpromising conditions
of the convent ; prayers are answered, and battles won ; the
devoirs, whether significant in themselves or not, form a
framework around which one can - "insensiblement" - re-
forge one's sanity. As for piete, it seems to be a word with
real and positive content, and Marivaux can assume about
it a community of belief that no longer exists for Diderot
and his circle. One could say that the convent has not yet,
in Marivaux's time, been identified as an institution which
one can separate out from the whole fabric of society, which
is responsible for a whole category of ills, and which one can
conceive of dismantling. While certain milieux may restrict
possibilities, there is no situation or condition which so
utterly closes down moral autonomy as does the convent in
La Religieuse.

314

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

I made a speculative connection between Marivau

partially essentialist view of autonomy and his Christia
In his religion, as in many things, his discretion was ext
The faux divot in Marivaux's work can be spotted by
frequent use of the word "Dieu" ; the Marivaux chara
who are true incarnations of goodness confine themselv
the language of this world. In another context, Mar
associates faith with slow and secret processes rather t
with brusque revelations : "Imaginez-vous un fruit q
mtirit, ou bien une fleur qui s'6panouit k Fardeur du soleil
This intimate and thoroughly uncataclysmic sense of rel
is the underpinning of the ultimate fate of Tervire's f
the religieuse and indeed of Tervire herself. It is not in
propriate that an almost invisible heroine should em
such a quiet and unspectacular religious sense.
Diderot, for all his atheism and for all his rage again
convents, had a tremendous interest in religion, but ch
as a lover of enthusiasm, in all its manifestations. The
nun in La Religieuse who is both authentically pious
successful in her calling is Mme de Moni, whose prestig
not so much attached to her Christianity as to her fun
as a conductor of extraordinary energies. At the same
Diderot is drawn to what Christianity offers as a unique
terrible spectacle. Suzanne the pious Catholic stat
religious terms what the unbeliever Diderot respond
aesthetically and emotionally : "Je voyais Finnocent, le f
perc6, le front couronn6 d'6pines, les mains et les pieds p
de clous, et expirant dans les souffrances et je me d
'Voila mon Dieu, et j'ose me plaindre V" (301) Dider
imagination responds intensely to that very aspect of C
tianity that the Enlightenment sought to annihilate
Passion, the centrality of the suffering expiatory vi

8 In Journaux et OEuvres diverses, ed. Deloffre and Gilot (P

Gamier, 1969), 352-353.

315

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

erected as spectacle. For Diderot, the Passion was on

catalyst for the passions of men, when they were cap
grandeur of feeling. His nostalgia about Christianit
nothing to do with personal salvation, but with the e
and cohesive force of religion to weld together a grea
munity for great art.9
Marivaux's is an absent God, though not in any angu
Pascalian sense. Marivaux is too close to Christianity
regard it aesthetically. In compensation, the parasit
hypocrites attached to the external trappings of religi
a comic gold mine. Marivaux has a wealth of aesth
resources to tell us what religion is not ; in the interst
this network of negatives, we may, if we wish, seek to
what it is.
I have spoken of La Religieuse as presenting the most
pessimistic view of human autonomy. But it is also, patently,
a story - a scary, sexy, sensational story, an abrege des
horreurs of all convent novels. The term "gothic" sums up
the element of play involved in all those spooky corridors.
At the same time, Diderot is letting off a certain amount of
personal steam, which we know about through his habit of
wearing his exuberant heart on his sleeve, and through the
vast number of reflections on himself that he wanted us to
have. Diderot's pleasure in La Religieuse comes in part from
his immense versatility. All the freedom that Suzanne does
not possess is available to the philosophe, who, having exper-
imented with one model of the human bondage/freedom
problem, can go on to another. His inexhaustible energy
guarantees that he can leave the caverns of La Religieuse
for the open road of Jacques le Fataliste, and reopen in an
altogether different mode the question of liberty and fatality.
Marivaux's engagement with his art seems to be very
different. He left us next to nothing in the way of personal

9 See Rene* Pomeau, op. cit.9 on the aesthetic appeal of Christianity

for Diderot as shown in his art and drama criticism,

316

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES: MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

records to bring to bear on the works ; the novels them

mine a few motifs over and over again. Marivaux's J
and Marianne are embarked on quests which are the m
analogues to those in the old romances; they are tryin
find out what hopes they can entertain. What is the "de
of Tervire the invisible ?
She is, in fact, the reality of that living sacrifice that the
nun is supposed to be and usually is not. Her imaginative,
energetic charity enables her to find the words to lift Marianne
from a self-pitying depression. She is free enough, even in
her own frustration, to keep Marianne free, without the aid
of the sybilline energies of a Mme de Moni. Blind to her
self-interest, Tervire is impelled by charity as Marivaux is
impelled by a need for reconciliation and redemption. There
is a great Greuze-style tableau as Tervire reconciles the dying
Mme de Dursan and her dying son, amid the grateful tears
of the family. But it is essential to note that the following
day the family has dried its tears and is calculating how to
deny Tervire her due. The moment of sensible ecstasy
guarantees nothing.
One relationship does get its ideal solution. When her
mother has been reduced to Tervire' s own habitual state of
invisibility, the reconciliation is at hand : "Cette mere qui
faisait si peu de figure, qui etait si enterree que les gens mSmes
de son fils ne savait pas sa demeure

herself, just before recognizing her daug

strange and unexpected sources of comfort
"J'aurais sans doute indignement p6ri a
ressources, sans vous, mademoiselle, k q
sans vous qui ne me devez rien . . . " (56
scene between mother and daughter is a
transparency, such thorough comprehen
redemption that Marivaux can take hi
He has, whether he intended to or no
paradigm of human salvation. Those m

317

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 JANET WHATLEY

and the invisible, of losing and finding, suggest that Mariva

has written in his nun's story something close to a Chris
allegory, where grace is to be found anywhere except w
it is officially expected to be.
Diderot wept, he tells us, while creating the fictio
trials of his heroine. Marivaux's involvement is such that
having accorded his heroine Tervire that moment of perfect
fulfillment, he preferred to leave her poised in a Paris drawing-
room, in full confrontation with her mother's enemy, rather
than making her way back to the convent, the home of
miscarried destinies.
Tervire, I suspect, is created out of a very intimate area
of Marivaux's personality. The hiddenness of her beauty
and virtue may reflect Marivaux's extreme sense of privacy ;
for the modern reader it conjures up the whole problem of
Marivaux and his contemporaries. Tervire's neglected virtue
reminds of Marivaux's underestimated genius. Whether he
wanted us to make that association, the discreet Marivaux
did not tell us.
Diderot did not, apparently, think of Marivaux as an
artist who had much to teach him.10 Nevertheless, Diderot
was to cultivate in his prime some strengths that Marivaux,
with his very different intellectual equipment, had possessed
almost a generation earlier. In Le Neveu de Rameau, which
follows closely upon La Religieuse, Diderot restores to the
relations of good and evil the mystery and complexity that
tend to be erased in the sociability/claustration dichotomy
of La Religieuse. And he subjects the virtuous self to one of
the most rigorous examinations in all of literature. He left
the beautiful Suzanne, whose pathos was sure to please, for
the middle-aged uncomfortable Moi, who wonders why his
virtuous discourse sounds so unconvincing in the presence

10 A convenient source of Diderot's comments on Marivaux is the

index to Roger Lewinter's edition of the CEuures computes in 15 vol-
umes (Paris : Le Club fran^ais du Livre, 1969-73).

318

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NUN'S STORIES : MARIVAUX AND DIDEROT

of Lui. Diderot needed to learn - and he did learn - to look

critically at the expressions of his own self-love.11 And he
learned to let his work reveal not only the modifiability of
human nature within a system, but also the elusiveness,
toughness, and recalcitrance of that same human nature,
for which the artist is eternally grateful.

University of Vermont

11 See Carol Blum, Diderot: The Virtue of a Philosopher (New York :

Viking, 1974), for a masterly recounting of this evolution in Diderot's
work.

319

This content downloaded from

193.50.45.191 on Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:19:30 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms