Marilyn Yalom, who discusses this passage in her book on women's memories of the Revolution, thinks this memoir - along with many others from the period - draws on various kinds of literary tropes.
What book? Is it any good - that sounds fascinating. I wish I could recall the story with the test of a virtuous lover in it. The ring too - in high Athurian romance wearing a ladies ring was a sign of a love pact (or a seduction, no wonder Babet was mortified). There's that part in the next chapter too where a wicked lover is nearly substituted before true love prevailing. I suppose we can never do more than speculate and of course we'll never know.
I think Élisabeth was possibly not being given the whole truth about some things, probably to protect her as someone completely naive to the political climate. Do we know anything else about deputy Guffroy? To some extent she might be filling in the gaps, although her mother and Le Bas might also have been weaving tropes into the explanations they gave her because it's hard to just completely make something up, people usually fall back on some kind of store of familiar tales. Perhaps. Her mother certainly comes across as very protective.
Alternatively, Mme Duplay could be less concerned about marrying off her elder daughters than she is in testing Le Bas;
I could see that, in Élisabeth's version of her she is extremely protective. You also do get the feeling that Élisabeth feels herself valued by her family, it's not quite the dismal picture of girls being a curse to marry off to the first person to ask in the Duplay household, which is rather to their credit.
Again, my take, assuming there is something between Robespierre and Éléonore and that Mme Duplay knows about it, would be she is trying to protect Babet. One daughter is already married off (do we know when?) so that Éléonore's unmarried status clearly wasn't a bar to Sophie. I've heard the theory go that Robespierre wouldn't marry Éléonore because he didn't want to put her at risk from his political opponents and therefore he wouldn't "go public" until the situation had stabilised. If that were so, in saying she had no intention of marrying the youngest before the eldest, perhaps Mme Duplay was saying she wasn't getting her scatty, innocent youngest tied up with a political husband until Robespierre thought it was safe to marry Éléonore.
Which is very convoluted, but if I had to fanfic it, that's how I'd write it. These Robespierrists do like their romance.
no subject
What book? Is it any good - that sounds fascinating. I wish I could recall the story with the test of a virtuous lover in it. The ring too - in high Athurian romance wearing a ladies ring was a sign of a love pact (or a seduction, no wonder Babet was mortified). There's that part in the next chapter too where a wicked lover is nearly substituted before true love prevailing. I suppose we can never do more than speculate and of course we'll never know.
I think Élisabeth was possibly not being given the whole truth about some things, probably to protect her as someone completely naive to the political climate. Do we know anything else about deputy Guffroy? To some extent she might be filling in the gaps, although her mother and Le Bas might also have been weaving tropes into the explanations they gave her because it's hard to just completely make something up, people usually fall back on some kind of store of familiar tales. Perhaps. Her mother certainly comes across as very protective.
Alternatively, Mme Duplay could be less concerned about marrying off her elder daughters than she is in testing Le Bas;
I could see that, in Élisabeth's version of her she is extremely protective. You also do get the feeling that Élisabeth feels herself valued by her family, it's not quite the dismal picture of girls being a curse to marry off to the first person to ask in the Duplay household, which is rather to their credit.
Again, my take, assuming there is something between Robespierre and Éléonore and that Mme Duplay knows about it, would be she is trying to protect Babet. One daughter is already married off (do we know when?) so that Éléonore's unmarried status clearly wasn't a bar to Sophie. I've heard the theory go that Robespierre wouldn't marry Éléonore because he didn't want to put her at risk from his political opponents and therefore he wouldn't "go public" until the situation had stabilised. If that were so, in saying she had no intention of marrying the youngest before the eldest, perhaps Mme Duplay was saying she wasn't getting her scatty, innocent youngest tied up with a political husband until Robespierre thought it was safe to marry Éléonore.
Which is very convoluted, but if I had to fanfic it, that's how I'd write it. These Robespierrists do like their romance.