Not ready to make nice

Renegades aren’t shamed into obedience, neither should we. Meet Hortense Mancini, unrepentant for standing up for herself in the 17th century.

Men can outpace consequences, if they’re rich or powerful enough. The US Supreme Court tells us so. In granting complete immunity to one man, the court bowed to his status. This man can murder political rivals with impunity, in or out of office. Some say that’s just a theoretical argument, insupportible in reality—a fantasy like getting away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. Remember that his conviction for 34 charges resulted in a penalty-free sentence, and all other cases against him were dropped.

The axiom applies equally to men who aren’t the US president. In 2017, the director and producer Brett Ratner was accused of sexual misconduct by six actors. He’s back now, rinsed clean by the passage of a few years, selected to direct the $40 million Melania Trump vanity project offered up by a groveling Jeff Bezos.

Andrew Cuomo’s back too, indicating that he intends to run for NYC mayor (and leading in the polls), having served the rigors of a mini-retirement after resigning as NY Governor for his alleged sexual harassment (charges he denies). There really are too many examples that prove the rule. A man whose crimes result in consequences apparently just doesn’t have the juice to elude responsibility for them.

But for women…well, truly, the world loves to witness the take-down of rich, beautiful, or influential women. Nothing much has changed since mobs delighted in the public executions of Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, and Marie-Antoinette.

Ingrid Bergman conceived a child out of wedlock with Roberto Rossellini while she was working on his film, Stromboli. This was scandalous behavior (for Bergman, not Rossellini) in 1950’s America. Senator Edwin C. Johnson denounced her on the floor of the US Senate, calling her a ‘powerful influence for evil.’ She was targeted with bags of hate mail. Ed Sullivan refused to book her on his show, defying public opinion that supported her. The US press panned Stromboli, despite its success in Europe. With one pregnancy, Bergman went from being revered for her beauty, grace, and art to being publicly shamed and vilified for her perceived lack of morals.

In the late 17^th century, literary and well-to-do Europeans were delighting in the scandalous tales they savored in Hortense Mancini’s Memoirs. Mary Astell wrote a treatise on marriage and couldn’t help herself from holding forth on Hortense Mancini’s marriage. The husband was vile, yes—but aren’t they all? Astell decided that Hortense was also to blame for her disastrous marriage. Hortense’s crime, according to church lady Mary Astell, was that she didn’t suffer in silence. She should have been the better person and denied her own needs in order to maintain the marriage. Instead, she acted selfishly in abandoning her children and running off (dressed as a man, adding to her scandal) to Italy to live a life of self-indulgence.

Mary Astell never married yet had many opinions on what makes a good marriage and what it takes to be a good wife; most of her opinions came from her religion. What she saw as indulgence was a woman standing up for herself and flouting her critics.

Before diving into Hortense Mancini’s Memoirs, let’s familiarize ourselves with her life story.

This essay is part of a series called “Shut Out, Not Shut Up” on women through the ages who’ve written despite being dismissed because of their sex. They persisted. This essay on a fascinating woman deserves (I think) its length. You be the judge.

Hortense Mancini

Hortense Mancini’s life: 1646-1699

Born in Rome to an Italian aristocrat, Hortense was the fourth of five daughters. She was considered the most beautiful amongst them and therefore was anticipated to have the greatest prospects. After her father’s death when she was four years old, her uncle Cardinal Mazarin (chief minister of France) took the family under his wing, moving them to France.

As paterfamilias, Cardinal Mazarin negotiated the marriages of the Mancini daughters. Hortense received an offer of marriage from Charles II of England when she was 13 years old. Charles, also first cousin of King Louis XIV of France, was in exile in Paris at the time. The Cardinal rejected the marriage proposal, thinking Charles’ prospects were thin. It proved to be a poor decision when Charles was returned to the English throne two months later. The Cardinal made a desperate bid to resurrect the proposal, which Charles rejected.

The Cardinal failed to secure a deal with several other suitors. Frustrated and fearing (rightly) that he would soon die, the Cardinal made an agreement for Hortense to marry Armand Charles de La Porte de La Meilleraye, one of the richest men in Europe and a man whom the Cardinal originally dismissed out of hand.

The Cardinal willed his considerable fortune to Hortense; in addition, he transferred his name (Mazarin) to the groom so that his name could live on amongst the aristocracy: Armand Charles de La Porte de La Meilleraye became Duc de Mazarin. Upon marrying Hortense, the groom gained a title, immense wealth, and a 15 year old bride admired internationally for her beauty and personality. And Hortense entered into a marriage of bondage, humiliation, and isolation.

After delivering four children in as many years, Hortense escaped from her husband, fleeing to Rome and the protection of her sister Marie. She spent much of the next three decades warring with her estranged husband over her assets, seeking the protection of powerful men (Charles II and his successors, as well as the Duke of Savoy), and influencing the intellectual European community with her salons. When she died (perhaps of suicide), her husband took possession of her corpse and carted it around France for months, before allowing it to be laid to rest next to Cardinal Mazarin.

“To M.***” (The Memoirs of Hortense Mancini)

Hortense inscribes her memoir as a dedication to her then-current protector, the Duke of Savoy. Every memoir writer must answer: why write a memoir, and why now? Every person has a life story; why should a reader want to read mine? Hortense’s framing device is that she’s writing to a powerful man on whose generosity she depends. In return, she seeks to explain why she’s in need of support and why it’s beneficial for him to provide it.

Hortense describes her life as a particularly privileged child protected by the influential and extremely wealthy Cardinal Mazarin. In his care, she and her sisters interacted daily with French royalty. She describes King Louis XIV’s early infatuation with her older sister, Marie Mancini, and the political decisions that prevented a marriage between them.

The memoir details the several marriage proposals Hortense received, along with Cardinal Mazarin’s failure to negotiate them successfully—effectively portraying herself as deserving of much better prospects than she was able to realize. She explains the resulting match with M. Mazarin as the fruit of the Cardinal’s poor decision-making and his awareness that his time was running out. In her book, Hortense only refers to her husband as M. Mazarin, diminishing his aristocratic title while painting him as a faint shadow of the powerful Cardinal whose name he inherited by marriage.

Hortense writes at length of the first years of her marriage, which were also her late teenage years, being towed around France by her husband, usually while pregnant. M. Mazarin used this maneuver—carting her around the countryside, never staying long and often staying in unsavory locales and rooms—to isolate his wife, preventing her from establishing friendships and personal support.

“My relatives and my friends, who were worried on my account about the dangers to which he was exposing my health, would point them out to me when I came to Paris, in the strongest terms they could muster; but for a long time it was to no avail. What would they have said if they had known that I could not speak to a servant without his being sent away the next day , that I could not receive two visits in a row from the same man or the doors of the house would be closed to him, that if I showed any preference for one of my maids over the others, she was immediately taken away from me? If I called for my coach and he did not see fit to let me go out, he forbade with a smile that the horses be hitched up, and joked with me about that prohibition, until the time to go where I wanted to go had passed. He would have liked me to see nobody in the world but him.”

The memoirs remind us that she was at the time still a teenager who delighted in play, which her husband denied her on religious grounds. Playing blind man’s bluff with her servants was a sin; going to bed late was a sin. When she showed signs of happiness, he forced her to leave for another town. He paid spies to watch her. She couldn’t defend herself in an argument with him because he couldn’t bear to be wrong. He ignored her and her needs.

“Just imagine continual opposition to even my most innocent desires; an implacable hatred for everyone who loved me and whom I loved; an avid effort to set before me all the people I could not abide, and to bribe those who I trusted the most in order to discover my secrets, if I had had any; a tireless diligence in disparaging me to everyone and putting a shameful cast on all my actions; in short, everything that the malice of a sanctimonious cabal can dream up and implement in a household where it holds tyrannical sway, against a naïve, and unsuspecting young woman, whose unguarded behavior every day offered her enemies new occasions for triumph.”

Hortense claims that she could have withstood his despicable behavior if she were the only person affected (“since heaven had given him to me as my master, would merely have moaned and complained of him to my friends”). Her breaking point, she claims, was realizing that M. Mazarin’s extravagance was likely to leave her son, “who should have become the richest gentleman in France,” penniless. In fact, she says, Mazarin took control of the most expensive pieces of jewelry she owned, leaving her only with minor pieces to adorn herself.

The theft of her jewelry in particular provoked her. It would be easy to criticize her complaints as undeserving of sympathy: these are problems of privilege. She retained some jewels, just not the major pieces, which still belonged to her but were secured by her husband. However, her jewels were the only tangible assets she possessed. She had no income that did not come from her husband, and no real property she could liquidate. Her only means to access cash would be to sell her belongings; of those, her jewels were the most likely to raise the sums she’d need to sustain herself. The jewels, therefore, represented her longed-for independence.

The Memoirs recount the dreary to-and-fro of an embattled marriage. The husband seeks to ruin the wife’s reputation. Their high profile ensures that every public altercation becomes the talk of the town. Lawsuits are filed and fought; agreements are made and ripped up. When they reside together, they spend all of their time apart.

Eventually, she escapes with a trusted woman servant, both of them attired in men’s clothes. They make it to Italy and live with her sister Marie and enjoy the protection of Marie’s highly placed husband. The Memoirs detail her many miseries after her flight to freedom, the quarrels with her siblings as their allegiance tracked with the aristocracy’s ever-shifting opinions of her. She documents many grievances, defending herself by writing when the courts of law and opinion let her down. She portrays herself as a playful personality who just wants to enjoy an unencumbered life. She ends her story with her arrival in Savoy, thinking that she’s fulfilled her hopes.

What happened next

Her subsequent life illuminates the public’s scandalized response to the memoirs.

Hortense published her memoirs in 1675 and lived 24 more years. The financial support she received from her agreement with her husband as well as her pensions from both King Louis XIV and the Duke of Savoy ended when the Duke died. She cast her eyes to England. Leveraging relationships in Charles’ court, she replaced the king’s mistress and received the financial and social standing that came with being in a close relationship to the king.

However, her perceived promiscuity set tongues wagging, and she eventually fell from favour. She had an affair with Anne, Countess of Sussex, an illegitimate daughter of the king. One anecdote has the two lovers dressed only in their nightgowns in St. James’ Park, engaged in a very public friendly fencing match. Anne’s husband sent her to the countryside after this scandal, where Anne supposedly spent her days lying in bed, kissing Hortense’s miniature portrait.

Hortense began an affair with the Prince of Monaco, which temporarily enraged the king. He cut off her pension, before reinstating it a few days later. He ended her official role as his mistress.

Aphra Behn’s The History of the Nun suggests she may also have had an affair with Hortense. This is from the Introduction to her book:

To the Most Illustrious Princess, The Dutchess of Mazarine...how infinitely one of Your own Sex ador'd You, and that, among all the numerous Conquest, Your Grace has made over the Hearts of Men, Your Grace had not subdu'd a more intire Slave; I assure you, Madam, there is neither Compliment, nor Poetry, in this humble Declaration, but a Truth, which has cost me a great deal of Inquietude, for that Fortune has not set me in such a Station, as might justifie my Pretence to the honour and satisfaction of being ever near Your Grace, to view eternally that lovely Person, and here that surprising Wit; what can be more grateful to a Heart, than so great, and so agreeable, an Entertainment? And how few Objects are there, that can render it so entire a Pleasure, as at once to hear you speak, and to look upon your Beauty?

Hortense also had a penchant for cross-dressing. In her book, she laughs off her (and her maid’s) wearing men’s clothing when they escaped from M. Mazarin, saying it wasn’t effective so they soon gave up the pretense. However, she traveled from France to England dressed as a man in 1675, en route to the king’s court. This was a choice she made, not a necessity for disguise.

She established a salon that became central to European intellectual life. She was made, after all, to be the life of a party, and this was indeed her calling. The center of attention and adoration. This was her great success.

Hortense portrayed the egregiousness of M. Mazarin’s actions only as they related to her; the historical record notes his thuggery with others. He was insanely jealous and used religion as his cover for brutality. He knocked out the front teeth of all of the women servants in his households to make them unattractive to men. He prevented milk maids from doing their jobs because of his sexual obsession with cows’ udders. He mutilated works in his art collection, chipping off pieces or painting over images that he considered naughty. These acts of his made it into the historical record; we can only imagine the expanse of his brutality. We don’t need his wife’s testimony to know that M. Mazarin was indeed a nasty piece of work.

Life as Theatre

The spectacle that was the marital acrimony between Hortense and M. Mazarin no doubt captivated their contemporary socialites much like the couple Sunny and Claus von Bülow did in the late 20^th century.¹

The movie Reversal of Fortune brought this particular unhappy family to the larger public, who otherwise wouldn’t have known or cared to know about the miseries of the von Bülow marriage. In this clip, Jeremy Irons’ Claus echoes M. Mazarin. Bear in mind that Claus von Bülow had hired Alan Dershowitz to defend him.

Dershowitz: You know it’s very hard to trust someone you don’t understand. {Pause}

Dershowitz: You’re a very strange man.

Claus von Bülow: You have no idea. {Closes the car door}

Hortense Mancini’s depiction of her life, while burnishing her reputation, serves as a theatrical spectacle with Hortense in the starring role. The isolation her husband imposed on her was indeed abusive. It’s also fair to say that she lived for the spotlight, and that she felt her isolation even more because she thought she deserved to be the focus of social attention.

Although she pays lip service to the idea that she would have suffered her indignities privately, complaining only to close friends, in writing this book she made great effort to dramatize every perceived injustice, every entreaty made, every tabloid-worthy story of the ongoing litigation between her and her husband.

Hortense Mancini chose to attract attention to her affair with a woman in staging a playful duel in St. James’ Park. She wasn’t ashamed of her sexuality; she flaunted it. She made minimal effort to paint herself as an ideal mother.² She makes no mention of her daughters and only mentions her son to use his future inheritance as a rationale for fighting with her husband. Not every memoirist is a narcissist, but the genre has a unique appeal to someone who is.

The unhappy marriages of outrageously rich socialites may not interest you, but their stories have proven appeal. Hortense’s Memoirs certainly made a splash when they were published. Her work was successful in achieving her goal: even people who didn’t know her couldn’t resist reading about her.

Beneath the spectacle, a serious grievance

It’s easy to be censorious about Hortense’s risqué or self-serving behavior, but she makes a point early in her book that deserves attention. She was used as property by the men in her life.

Other accounts confirm what she states to be true about herself: that she was known for her great beauty, wit, and intelligence. In this passage, Hortense describes her interests as a young child:

“You will doubtless find it hard to believe that at that age, when philosophical reasoning is usually the last thing on a person’s mind, I had such serious thoughts as I had about every aspect of my life. And yet it is true that my greatest pleasure at that time was to shut myself up alone and write down everything that came into my head. Not long ago I came across some of these writings again, and I confess to you that I was tremendously surprised to find in them ideas far beyond the capacities of a little girl. They were filled with doubts and questions which I posed to myself about all these things I found hard to understand. I never resolved them to my satisfaction, but I kept doggedly seeking the answers that I could not find; and if my conduct since then has not shown great judgement, at least I have the consolation of knowing that I once wanted very much to acquire it.”

She mentions the several proposals of marriage from the king of England and the Duke of Savoy that her uncle the Cardinal had refused. The Cardinal refused Savoy’s proposal since it would require him “to give up Geneva in consideration of the marriage.” She was, therefore, being bartered amongst men as a possession.

Hortense was the Cardinal’s favorite of his young relatives, “either because as the youngest I seemed to him to be the least culpable, or because there was something in my temperament which he liked better, for a long time he showed as much tenderness to me as aversion for them.”

“This is what impelled him to choose me, to leave his estate and his name to the husband he would give me, and it is also what made him more concerned about my conduct than about that of the others, and ultimately also more displeased when he believed he had reason to complain of it. He was very afraid that I might commit myself to someone out of love.”

Indeed, his concern was so great that he had women spying on Hortense at this age, probing her about her affections, so that they could supply the Cardinal with actionable intelligence.

The Cardinal’s health deteriorated, and his “desire to perpetuate his name won out over the indignation he had conceived against me.” Although the Cardinal originally dismissed M. Mazarin as Hortense’s suitor (“he would rather give me to a valet”), the urgency of approaching death enhanced Mazarin’s appeal. The Cardinal died soon after, leaving his estate entirely to Hortense and his name to M. Mazarin. The Cardinal and M. Mazarin both got what they wanted. Hortense realized, too late, that she was now chattel that her husband could cart around as he pleased.

In Mary Astell’s critique of the marriage between Hortense Mancini and M. Mazarin, Astell took the popular position of criticizing both parties. Mazarin was vindictive and abusive, but Hortense’s behavior was outrageously impious. In Astell’s opinion, Hortense should have kept their marital problems out of the headlines.

One has two options when facing a bully—appease or fight—and only one tactic works. Despite the hardship it imposed on her, Hortense chose the more effective tactic. She fought back as publicly as possible to ensure her version was widely known, especially by those who were positioned to help her cause.

The trials of their marriage consisted of wave upon wave of disputes, attacks, and feints. Hortense intimidated Mazarin, even if each successful parry lasted briefly, long enough for him to regain his confidence and have another go at her. She fought much of her campaign in the field of public opinion because she was widely admired and he was not. She succeeded in holding him at bay until her death, when he took final possession of her corpse and trotted his decaying trophy around France. Eventually he had to relinquish his hold on her, her decay also her last revenge. Regardless his futile attempt, Hortense died a free woman.

Standing up

In 2003, The Chicks triggered a tsunami of outrage when their lead vocalist, Natalie Maines, expressed her opinion against then-President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. The Chicks at the time were one of country music’s most popular bands and the best selling female band ever. Country radio stations responded to Maines’ public statement by blacklisting the group at a time that platform was essential to music distribution and sales. The group received death threats and were criticized by other country artists. Their music sales declined and concerts were cancelled. They lost corporate sponsorships.

The band spent a few years out of the spotlight before returning with vengeance. In 2006, a documentary about the backlash against them was released: “Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing.” That year, they released the hit single “Not Ready to Make Nice” from their award-winning album, “Taking the Long Way.” The song’s defiance has become an anthem for anyone in the situation they found themselves: bullied, terrorized, kicked around, dismissed.

The Chicks are hardly the only musical artists who’ve stated opinions that offend some of their fans, but few artists have paid so dearly. Consider the text of Maines’ comments:

Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.

Compared to the flame-throwing commentary that constitutes a normal weekday afternoon on X, her comments now seem tame. Taking a stand against war and violence is hardly incendiary. Being ashamed of an association with the man who started the war they’re against also seems mild: Maines simply said they weren’t proud to share an identity with him. She claimed an alliance with many in the UK, a foreign country to be sure, but a US ally. So why the scorched earth retribution against them?

I think it’s important to note that when they did return with a new album, that album was wildly successful, topping the charts and winning awards. Were their opinions actually unpopular?

In March 2003, before the invasion, 47%-60% of the US public supported invading Iraq if the UN approved. By spring 2007, around 60% of the public disapproved of the war. It didn’t take long for the public to realize that Bush and his spokespeople had manipulated allies and the country into starting a war and toppling the Hussein regime.

The Chicks’ disapproval of the war wasn’t an extreme position, although the backlash was. Supporting their 2006 record, fans voted with their dollars, signaling public approval for the group’s doubling down on their initial opinion. Those who maintained the outrage were tilling a field that the Tea Party subsequently farmed and whose bitter fruit today feeds the ugly firebombing of civil norms in defense of misogyny.

The Chicks band members’ beauty and musical accomplishment posed a problem for misogynists who think they own the right to define women to whom they’re attracted. This misogynistic antipathy plays out reliably against beautiful women who don’t play their assigned roles, whether the example is Ingrid Bergman in 1950, Jane Fonda in the 1970s, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez since her first election to Congress.

“If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet. Ya creepy weirdos.”

- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on X, December 31, 2021

This is a useful context for understanding Hortense Mancini. She was born into a society that held women to a specific ideal. The powerful people in her young life demonstrated to her that she had brilliant prospects. They also determined that life as a woman would be a series of transactions in which she would be negotiated. Once she married, her prospects disappeared into the pockets of her husband. She had no power and no assets. In marriage, she know only abuse and isolation.

As she entered her 20s, she decided she’d take her life into her own hands. She stood up for herself, even if it meant being controversial. She spent the remaining three decades of her life not ready to make nice, not ready to back down. A model for our times.

“We know how it is in Texas. We don’t get a goddamned thing we don’t fight for.”

Cecile Richards, 2018

Ellie’s Corner

The pampered queen.

Thanks for reading,

1. Sunny von Bülow had fallen due to diabetic shock and was unconscious when her husband found her. She remained in a coma for 28 years and never recovered from a vegetative state. Her husband Claus was charged with and convicted of administering a large dose of insulin to induce the reaction. His appeal, documented in the movie, was successful.

2. I should note that modern ideas venerating children are anachronistic in this context. Whereas the modern ideal of the good mother is to sacrifice herself for her children, cultural norms were different in the 17th C. As an aristocrat, Hortense wouldn’t have been expected to make her children central to her life. She was expected to bear children (minimally, a male heir), which she did. She was also expected to ensure her son had the means to be successful and carry on the family name and manage the family assets, which he would inherit. I can’t measure Hortense Mancini’s behavior with today’s standards, although I think it’s fair to note that she focused almost exclusively on her injuries from her husband and others.