Singing through the Pain: Murat Riffing on Montaigne

Abstract

In this essay, I explore how Henriette-Julie de Murat (1668–1716), during a long period of exile, creates an authorial identity intended to interact with her cousin Menou as well as her captors. By focusing on Murat’s literary relationship with Menou, I investigate how Murat’s correspondence undermines her captors’ attempts to control her expressions of desire and affection toward women. The letters—seemingly intended as a distraction from Murat’s confinement and sickness—also serve as a political statement. Through references to Montaigne’s notion of male friendship, Murat reimagines female friendship as equal to Montaigne’s theorization of homosocial bonds. Murat then weaves into her discussion of female friendship love songs replete with pastoral references in which female companionate love replaces heteronormative tropes. Murat’s correspondence reclaims agency over her expression of desire in a literary style that distracts her from the monotony of captivity and the suffering of her illness.