Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky listener Discretion advised, get thee
Speaker 1: to a nunnery, go farewell. These are Hamlet's famous words
Speaker 1: to Ophelia, as the play's titular character begins to succumb
Speaker 1: to madness and paranoia. There are probably plenty of Shakespeare
Speaker 1: podcasts you could listen to for a more in depth analysis,
Speaker 1: and we could spend hours debating whether Hamlet is actually
Speaker 1: mad or just pretending. But on a surface level, the
Speaker 1: meaning of Hamlet's orders to Ophelia is clear. A convent
Speaker 1: is a place where a woman can go to absolve
Speaker 1: her sins to conveniently disappear. Joining a convent by force
Speaker 1: or coercion or choice, is a hand that fate dealt
Speaker 1: many women, both real and fictional, throughout the ages. In
Speaker 1: seven seventeenth century France, most upper class women generally had
Speaker 1: two choices upon coming of age, become a wife or
Speaker 1: become a nun Both would require following rigorous sets of
Speaker 1: social rules and accepting a fundamental lack of freedom. But
Speaker 1: what about the women who defied that choice. Ninon de
Speaker 1: Lanclo was one such woman, and an incredibly unique one
Speaker 1: at that. Ninon, a student of philosophy from a young age,
Speaker 1: saw both marriage and the convent as a loss of
Speaker 1: freedom and resolved to forge a different path for herself.
Speaker 1: She became Paris's most celebrated courtesan, all while sharing her
Speaker 1: radical ideas in the city's intellectual circles. But as we know,
Speaker 1: the consequences of going against the grain are often great
Speaker 1: for women, both then and now. Nenon's lifestyle landed her
Speaker 1: imprisoned in a convent, and the order to quote get
Speaker 1: thee to a nunnery had come from the very top.
Speaker 1: For many women, that would be the end of their story,
Speaker 1: but Neinon was determined to continue on, and unlike the
Speaker 1: story of Ophelia, you'll find that Ninon's life was no tragedy.
Speaker 1: I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. Anne Delenchloe
Speaker 1: was born in Paris on November tenth, sixteen twenty. Some
Speaker 1: sources proposed that her family were minor nobles, while some
Speaker 1: other historians insist that they had no noble ties. But
Speaker 1: no matter their origin, they were probably not particularly wealthy,
Speaker 1: but they were certainly involved in Parisian high society. The
Speaker 1: nickname Renan, a traditional French diminutive of Anne, was given
Speaker 1: to her by her father, Henri de Lancloux, was an
Speaker 1: accomplished lutist and composer, and he taught his daughter to
Speaker 1: play the lute from a young age. In addition to
Speaker 1: her father's music lessons, Ninon also inherited his philosophical ideas.
Speaker 1: He was a neo Epicurean, taking a brief detour to
Speaker 1: philosophy one oh one before we continue. Epicureanism, derived from
Speaker 1: the teachings of the Greek sage Epicurus, focuses on a
Speaker 1: secular pursuit to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. The term
Speaker 1: neo Epicurean that you'll hear today came about during the
Speaker 1: philosophy's seventeenth century revival. That was Ninon's father's outlook. But
Speaker 1: given how unconventional Ninon's life ended up, what was her
Speaker 1: mother's perspective? While her father had turned to the Greeks
Speaker 1: den d mother was actually a devout Catholic and wished
Speaker 1: to impart the strict moral standards of counter reformational Catholicism
Speaker 1: on her daughter. Some historians believe her mother's greatest goal
Speaker 1: was for her daughter to become a nun, and there
Speaker 1: was even a brief period during which a young Ninon
Speaker 1: was educated in a convent. Her parents' marriage was one
Speaker 1: of convenience, as you might have been able to guess,
Speaker 1: given that husband and wife could not have been more
Speaker 1: opposed ideologically, you can probably guess whom Ninon ultimately took after.
Speaker 1: In addition to embracing her father's libertinism and rejection of religion,
Speaker 1: Ninon became something of a musical prodigy in her youth
Speaker 1: and performed the lute and clavichord for charmed audiences that
Speaker 1: gathered in Parisian salons. At the same time, she also
Speaker 1: mastered Spanish and Italian and became an avid reader. There's
Speaker 1: an anecdotal account about Nenan in her teenage years that
Speaker 1: embodies the way she would challenge convention and authority. As
Speaker 1: the story goes, Nenon informed her friends that since women
Speaker 1: are tasked with frivolities and men are allotted freedoms they
Speaker 1: take for granted. Quote from this moment, I will be
Speaker 1: a man for Nonon. It wasn't a declaration about gender identity.
Speaker 1: It was a statement about the role she wished to
Speaker 1: play in society about her interests and the freedoms she
Speaker 1: intended to preserve for herself. Society was only allowing women
Speaker 1: at the time to occupy an incredibly narrow space, and
Speaker 1: so Nenon would chart a course for herself, attempting to
Speaker 1: live with the freedoms that a man would have. It
Speaker 1: was Nenon's determination to quote live as a man would
Speaker 1: that drove her to find another avenue besides the convent
Speaker 1: or marriage, and it was at this time that she
Speaker 1: began her famed career, taking a third option, a courtizan.
Speaker 1: I find the word courtizan interesting because as a culture
Speaker 1: we have found no shortage of both euphemisms and derogatory
Speaker 1: terms for sex workers. But to me, courtesan conveys something specific.
Speaker 1: There's some sophistication there, in my opinion. A little Glamour
Speaker 1: Miriam Webster describes courtesan as quote a female sex worker
Speaker 1: with a courtly, wealthy or upper class clientele. The word
Speaker 1: first appears in the mid fifteen hundreds, driving from the
Speaker 1: Middle French courtisan, literally meaning woman of the court. Many
Speaker 1: courtesans came from poorer backgrounds and began their careers as
Speaker 1: more lower class prostitutes. While others came from more well
Speaker 1: off backgrounds and became courtesan's too improve their social and
Speaker 1: political currency. Courtesans were expected to be artistically and or
Speaker 1: intellectually engaging. Their primary job was, of course, companionship and
Speaker 1: usually sexual pleasure for their benefactors, but it was nearly
Speaker 1: equally important that they entertained through other avenues. Nenon was
Speaker 1: neither wealthy nor poor, and she likely saw a courtizan
Speaker 1: as a path to both financial and social independence. Her
Speaker 1: personal philosophy also must have contributed to her decision. Unlike
Speaker 1: the vast majority of her contemporaries, Nonon did not see
Speaker 1: sex as an immoral act, as she would later write, quote,
Speaker 1: oh you mortals who rely so much on the power
Speaker 1: of your virtue. No matter how great your strength may be,
Speaker 1: there are moments when the most virtuous person becomes the weakest.
Speaker 1: The reason for this strange fact is that nature is
Speaker 1: always pursuing us. It is always aiming to achieve its ends.
Speaker 1: The desire for love in a woman is a substantial
Speaker 1: part of her natural constitution. Her virtue has only been
Speaker 1: patched on. This outlook goes hand in hand with her
Speaker 1: rejection of the Christian Church's teachings. If desire is not
Speaker 1: inherently sinful, then repentance is not the point of existence.
Speaker 1: Nenon's first step to begin her new life was to
Speaker 1: acquire her own residence in Paris, which she likely did
Speaker 1: using inheritance from the recent death of her father. She
Speaker 1: settled on a straight in the fashionable quarter of the Marae.
Speaker 1: The neighborhood was the heart of many of Paris's most
Speaker 1: esteemed intellectual circles, where men and women would gather to
Speaker 1: engage with new, often bohemian ideas. Just as Nenon had
Speaker 1: charmed parias society with her lute years earlier, she soon
Speaker 1: captivated its attention. Yet again. She gained a reputation for
Speaker 1: being different from other courtesans at the time because of
Speaker 1: her openly independent nature. As Ninon's French biographer, Roger Duchamp
Speaker 1: put it roughly translated into English, Nana earned her living
Speaker 1: by having sex. Having sex was not her life. She
Speaker 1: was known for her strict boundaries. She would be the
Speaker 1: one to determine when a relationship started and ended. It
Speaker 1: wasn't unusual for a courtesan to gain enough social currency
Speaker 1: that she could afford to exert that control choosing which
Speaker 1: lover she took instead of the other way around. But
Speaker 1: Nenon seems to have reached that point quicker than most,
Speaker 1: As the famed memoirrist San Simon wrote of her quote,
Speaker 1: Neno always had crowds of adorers, but never more than
Speaker 1: one lover at a time, And when she tired of
Speaker 1: the present occu, she said so frankly, and took another.
Speaker 1: Yet such was the authority of this wanton that no
Speaker 1: man dared fall out with his successful rival. He was
Speaker 1: only too happy to be allowed to visit as a
Speaker 1: familiar friend. We don't have a clear timeline of when
Speaker 1: her relationships with her various benefactors started or ended, but
Speaker 1: we do know their names. Her most famous lovers included
Speaker 1: the king's cousin, the General Louis the second de Bourbon,
Speaker 1: otherwise known as Legrand Conde, as well as Francois duc
Speaker 1: de la Roche Fouquet, member of one of the most
Speaker 1: illustrious French noble families and a published writer and frequent
Speaker 1: salon fixture himself. Among her spurned petitioners was Cardinal Richelieu,
Speaker 1: the chief minister to Louis the thirteenth, known for accumulating
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of power and influence in both the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church and French monarchy. His rejection speaks to the
Speaker 1: weight of Nenon's social currency as well as her goals.
Speaker 1: If she simply sought to acquire wealth and power, why
Speaker 1: would she have refused one of France's most powerful figures.
Speaker 1: We don't know her specific reasons for refusing where she
Speaker 1: lose advances, but we can probably imagine that Nenon might
Speaker 1: have taken issue with his censorship of the press and
Speaker 1: his consolidation of power away from the nobility her clientele,
Speaker 1: family and friends. Years into her career, Nenon found herself
Speaker 1: facing a new and different sort of relationship. In sixteen
Speaker 1: fifty two, when she would have been in her early thirties,
Speaker 1: she was pursued by a well known nobleman, Louis de Mornay.
Speaker 1: De Mournay gets a mention in sin Simon's memoirs as well,
Speaker 1: where he's simply described as making quote a lot of
Speaker 1: noise with women. Quote. I'm not sure if that's literal
Speaker 1: or metaphorical, but it's no surprise then that he was
Speaker 1: married when he and Nenon began a relationship. The couple
Speaker 1: actually had a son together Louise, and for three years
Speaker 1: the three of them lived together in the country, where
Speaker 1: Nenon studied and the nobleman hunted while they both cared
Speaker 1: for their son. However, Nenon wasn't suited for the quiet
Speaker 1: country life, and she ultimately wasn't suited for de Mornay,
Speaker 1: a man with ultimately boring, fairly conventional, and low brow interests.
Speaker 1: Nenon returned to Paris in sixteen fifty five, and her
Speaker 1: son seems to have stayed at court. We don't know
Speaker 1: for sure what kind of relationship Neinon had with him
Speaker 1: throughout the rest of her life. Returning to her previous career,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, wouldn't be as smooth as she
Speaker 1: might have hoped. Was used to ending relationships on her terms,
Speaker 1: but de Mournay appears not to have gotten that message
Speaker 1: when she refused to return to him despite his pleas
Speaker 1: he fell into a fever. To console his distress, she
Speaker 1: cut off her hair and sent the curled locks to
Speaker 1: his bedside. It didn't do much to appease her scorned
Speaker 1: ex lover, but it did evidently start a trend. Women
Speaker 1: across Paris began to sport bobbed hair. A la Neinont. Eventually,
Speaker 1: like all of her other former lovers, de Mournay forgave
Speaker 1: Nenon and they settled into a friendship. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: hairstyles that were changing in Paris the Frond. The two
Speaker 1: short wars between the French nobility and Louis the Fourteenth's
Speaker 1: regency government further asserted the power of the monarchy, and
Speaker 1: Cardinal Mazarin Young Louise Minister and Richilieu's successor. With this
Speaker 1: assertion came a wave of conservatism, and conservatives famously don't
Speaker 1: favor openly atheist courtesans. It was only a year after
Speaker 1: Ninon's return to the city in sixteen fifty six that
Speaker 1: the Queen Mother of France, Anne of Austria, was petitioned
Speaker 1: by a group of Ninon's detractors aka those who might
Speaker 1: have been jealous of her status, wary of her philosophy,
Speaker 1: or both to silence her. The petition ultimately led to
Speaker 1: Nenon's imprisonment in a convent home to many quote wayward
Speaker 1: women of the seventeenth century. While there were those who
Speaker 1: joined the convent voluntarily, the French convent primarily functioned as
Speaker 1: an alternative to prison for rebellious women. Minon had designed
Speaker 1: a life for herself, specifically to circumvent the choice between
Speaker 1: marriage or convent, but in the end she was still
Speaker 1: sentenced to the latter. The writing of Ninons that has
Speaker 1: survived is philosophical, not diaristic, so we're left to imagine
Speaker 1: how she must have felt confined to those walls. As
Speaker 1: we know, Ninana was not faded to stay at the
Speaker 1: convent for long. The story goes that her savior was
Speaker 1: actually not, as you might have been expecting, one of
Speaker 1: her many powerful lovers, but a kindred spirit, Christina, the
Speaker 1: exiled Queen of Sweden, who we actually discussed in the
Speaker 1: early podcast episode Queen Christina removed her own crown. You
Speaker 1: can see why the monarch who described herself as having
Speaker 1: quote an insurmountable distaste for marriage as well as quote
Speaker 1: for all the things that females talked about and did,
Speaker 1: would be impressed by ninon convictions. Christina often woren't masculine clothing,
Speaker 1: she barely combed her hair, and cared far more about
Speaker 1: her studies than she did running a country. She was
Speaker 1: just a reminder at been a while since the episode.
Speaker 1: Ultimately forced to abdicate her throne for her refusal to
Speaker 1: marry and intend to convert to Catholicism. Christina was only
Speaker 1: in her twenties when she abdicated, and so much of
Speaker 1: her life after the throne was spent traveling Europe. During
Speaker 1: her time in Parisian society, she likely heard much about
Speaker 1: Nina's rise and fall and decided to visit her in
Speaker 1: the convent. Their conversation must have made an impact and
Speaker 1: sounds like an off Broadway play waiting to happen. Christina
Speaker 1: swiftly intervened and Ninon was set free. In sixteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: a pamphlet began to circulate around Paris, wonderfully entitled The
Speaker 1: Coquette Avenged. It was a short work, but it boldly
Speaker 1: described the possibility of living a good, fulfilling life outside
Speaker 1: the constraints of religion. While it's not a certainty, the
Speaker 1: work has long been attributed to Nenan, and it's believed
Speaker 1: to have been written during her time in the convent,
Speaker 1: proving that her imprisonment only further cemented her beliefs and convictions.
Speaker 1: After her brief stay with the nuns, Nenon returned to
Speaker 1: being a courtesan, but in the sixteen sixties, she would
Speaker 1: ultimately say goodbye to that part of her life and
Speaker 1: dedicate herself to her literary circle. While Nonon had attended
Speaker 1: and hosted numerous salons in her time, in sixteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven she established her regular salon at the Hotel de
Speaker 1: Sagon in Paris, which would continue to meet for the
Speaker 1: rest of her life. Her guests were some of the
Speaker 1: city's most prominent intellectuals, artists, and political thinkers. The most
Speaker 1: famous names among her friends include Saint Simon, the memoirist
Speaker 1: we've quoted several times now, Mollieri, the iconic playwright, and
Speaker 1: the woman known as Madame Scarone, who actually secretly married
Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth following the death of Queen Maria. Theresa.
Speaker 1: Nenan's surviving philosophical work comes from her letters to another
Speaker 1: attendee of her salons, a man named Charles de Sevigner,
Speaker 1: an aristocrat and the son of Madame de Sevigner, who's
Speaker 1: remembered to this day as a seventeenth century literary icon.
Speaker 1: For her own letter writing, Nenon appears to have taken Charles,
Speaker 1: twenty eight years her junior, under her wing, or, in
Speaker 1: her own words, quote you ought to be aware of
Speaker 1: the fact that when a woman has lost the freshness
Speaker 1: of her first youth and takes a special interest in
Speaker 1: a young man, everybody says she desires to make a
Speaker 1: worldling of him. You know the malignity of this expression.
Speaker 1: I do not care to expose myself to its application.
Speaker 1: All the service I am willing to render you is
Speaker 1: to become your confidante. You will tell me your troubles,
Speaker 1: and I will tell you what is in my mind.
Speaker 1: Likewise aid you to know your own heart and that
Speaker 1: of a woman. End quote. Charles, in his youthful ignorance,
Speaker 1: had found himself struggling to find a woman that returned
Speaker 1: his affections. Ninon became something of his dating guru. As
Speaker 1: you can probably guess, her advice to him wasn't the
Speaker 1: kind of sound bites you can hear on TikTok from
Speaker 1: dating experts, but rather a reflection of her philosophical beliefs
Speaker 1: regarding sex, gender, and the nature of humans themselves. In
Speaker 1: one letter, she writes, quote, it is not because you,
Speaker 1: referring to both Charles and men at large quote, possess
Speaker 1: superior qualities that you are an agreeable companion to be
Speaker 1: in I raced with outstretched arms. You must be sympathetic,
Speaker 1: amusing important to the pleasure of others. I warn you
Speaker 1: that you cannot succeed in any other manner, especially with women.
Speaker 1: Now tell me what would you like me to do
Speaker 1: with your learning, with the geometry of your mind, and
Speaker 1: with the exactitude of your memory, Dear marquise, if you
Speaker 1: have such advantages, if you have no personal charm to
Speaker 1: balance your austerity, you will not please women. I can
Speaker 1: vouch for that, far from pleasing them, you will seem
Speaker 1: to them like an intimidating critic. You will so constrain
Speaker 1: them that any pleasure they might have enjoyed in your
Speaker 1: presence will be banished. In other words, don't be all
Speaker 1: head and no heart. While this is surely a bit
Speaker 1: of tough love, it's also a blatant disavowal of conventional
Speaker 1: gender roles. Relationships, then, On argue, cannot work when a
Speaker 1: man is expected to only be the head and the
Speaker 1: woman only the heart. What is love without reciprocity. While
Speaker 1: Nanon encouraged men to work on their charm, she began
Speaker 1: to further encourage fellow women to work on their minds.
Speaker 1: Her Salon began hosting lectures, and at each one men
Speaker 1: paid a fee, while women were admitted for free the
Speaker 1: original Ladies Night. By this point in her life, Nenon
Speaker 1: was approaching her eighties. I am of your opinion, she
Speaker 1: wrote in a letter that wrinkles are a mark of wisdom.
Speaker 1: That series of letters, the last written works we have
Speaker 1: of Ninon's, add a new face to her philosophy, which
Speaker 1: is her thoughts on aging and mortality. While she complained
Speaker 1: of physical discomforts and transformations, she was not dismayed by
Speaker 1: changes in her appearance. The soul and the mind, she believed,
Speaker 1: shown far brighter than beauty. Ninon de L'encloude died of
Speaker 1: natural causes in Paris in seventeen o five, at eighty
Speaker 1: four years old. In a letter to a friend written
Speaker 1: not long before her death, she wrote, quote, your life
Speaker 1: has been too illustrious not to be lived in the
Speaker 1: same manner until the end. Do not permit hell to
Speaker 1: frighten you. Pronounce the word love boldly, and that of
Speaker 1: old age will never pass your lips. That's the story
Speaker 1: of the life of Ninon de l'ancloux. But keep listening.
Speaker 1: After a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit
Speaker 1: more about her lasting literary legacy. Nenon's legacy in the
Speaker 1: literary world might have been far greater than she would
Speaker 1: ever be able to know. After her death, she still
Speaker 1: sought to encourage education, and she gave some money in
Speaker 1: her will to the promising nine year old godson of
Speaker 1: a friend. The boy seemed like he had potential. Maybe
Speaker 1: he had something dazzling about him, or maybe Nanon was
Speaker 1: just trying to be nice. The boy, whose name was
Speaker 1: Francois Marie ar Away, would use the money to buy books.
Speaker 1: If that name doesn't sound familiar, it's probably because he's
Speaker 1: far better known today by his pen name Voltaire. Nobel
Speaker 1: Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz,
Speaker 1: with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender,
Speaker 1: Amy Hit and Julia Milani. The show is edited and
Speaker 1: produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il Kaali
Speaker 1: and Exis executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
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