At a time when we wonder what can be done with a classic literature marked by patriarchy, and when fairy tales are suspected of conveying an imaginary of feminine submission, Jennifer Tamas offers a defense and illustration of the great texts that abound in powerful women and can serve as milestones in the history of feminist struggles. To reread rather than cancel, to strip rather than stifle, this is what she invites in “ In the name of women », which has just appeared in Le Seuil.
“L’Obs” wanted to make her talk to Marie Desplechin, today’s author and lifelong reader. Even before we ask them the slightest question, they start the discussion…
Marie Desplechin. It’s very beautiful what you tell in the book: the young Louis XIV who mourns the departure of Marie Mancini, away from the court to avoid a marriage that would jeopardize the alliance with the kingdom of Spain. History has remembered a hardened monarch, who gives up out of duty, while you show that it is she who withdraws, and he who throws himself at her feet and tries to recover her.
Jennifer Tamas. Mlle de Montpensier talks about it, Voltaire takes it up, but, in the Pléiade edition devoted to Racine, Marie Mancini is presented as anecdotal in the life of Louis XIV. Not only does it erase this woman from history, but it prevents us from understanding why Racine writes “Bérénice”: the story of an emperor whom a woman helps to renounce love for
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