The Amorous Heart

by Marilyn Yalom

  The characters of Manon Lescaut, Madame de Merteuil, and Fanny Hill depart significantly from the portraiture of sexless women with hearts governed by conformist morality. And if we were to look further into frankly obscene literature, from Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) to the Marquis de Sade’s Justine (1791), we would find women who were unwilling or unable to maintain even a semblance of sexual purity.

  On the whole, eighteenth-century erotic literature showcased two kinds of women: those with pure and tender hearts (even if they lost their virginity) and those who lusted just like men. The French doctor and philosopher Julien La Mettrie tried to avoid this “virgin/whore” dichotomy by arguing that women have the same needs as men and that they should indulge in voluptuous pleasure (volupté) just like their male counterparts. His philosophical essay L’Art de jouir (The Art of Pleasure) (1751) devotes long passages to the benefits of both male and female orgasm.

  For all his well-known materialism, La Mettrie fell back on heart metaphors when he wanted to express the delights derived from sensual love. His statement “all nature is in the heart of the one who feels” restores to the heart its primacy not only in relations between people but also in our relations with the natural world. The amorous heart absorbs emanations from other human beings and from our natural surroundings. In the novels of Richardson, Rousseau, PrévÔt, and others, we can perceive the heart’s transports during the Age of Reason as well as glimmers of the coming Romantic era.

  THERE ARE TWO NOTABLE ABSENCES IN THIS HISTORY OF women’s hearts during the eighteenth century. The first is the absence of women’s voices. Though some English, French, and other European women did write sentimental novels, they did not wield the authority or gain the popularity of male writers. This is not to say that women were absent from the discourse on the heart—far from it. They were the novelists’ primary readers and ran the salons showcasing male authors, participating through their speech and letters in the never-ending conversation on love. Women writers who ventured into the realm of novels and essays would not come to the forefront of literature until the following century when authors including Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and George Sand challenged the male literary hegemony and injected a feminine viewpoint into affairs of the heart.

  The second absence concerns graphic images of the heart. Venus, cupids, mythological and biblical figures, kings, queens, princes and princesses, nymphs and shepherdesses, youthful lovers, noble and bourgeois families and an occasional peasant, not to mention floral arrangements and natures mortes—these filled the many paintings, drawings, and engravings that issued from European studios during the eighteenth century. Given my familiarity with the bucolic and boudoir trysts painted by Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard, I was surprised to realize that none within my memory included a heart image. Love letters, yes. Stolen kisses, yes. Bedroom scenes showing lovers narrowly escaping a husband’s entry. Desire pulsating within finely shaped female bodies, but not a single graphic heart. Could this be possible? Determined research turned up Boucher’s Amours des Dieux series showing a heart icon at the center of a target punctured by Cupid’s arrows. There are probably more eighteenth-century high-culture paintings with hearts, but they are so rare as to make one ask: Where did the amorous heart icon go?

  Chapter 16

  The Heart in Popular Culture

  DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, EVEN WHILE ELITE artists were ignoring the heart icon and scientists were promoting the brain, ordinary folk were not abandoning the heart. Frenchmen carved hearts into their outdoor window shutters and on the backrests of chairs and settles. Germans painted hearts on wooden or papier-mâché boxes, some to be used as containers for love letters. Swiss maidens embroidered hearts on textiles to be folded carefully into their hope chests, and the Romansch-speaking Swiss decorated their New Year’s greetings with slightly asymmetrical hearts, their points curving to the left-hand side.

  German speakers carried the heart icon across the Atlantic to colonial America, where it assumed a new life among the Pennsylvania Dutch (Dutch being a deformation of the word deutsch). Between 1750 and 1850 the heart symbol appeared on numerous birth and baptismal certificates, marriage and house blessings, bookplates and writing samples known as Vorschriften. These were written in Fraktur, a distinctive artistic style of German writing, and embellished with ink and watercolor drawings.

  FIGURE 27. Artist unknown, Birth and Baptismal Certificate (Geburts und Taufschein) for Maria Catharina Raup, 1810. Laid paper, watercolor, and ink, the Free Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  The birth and baptismal certificate above (Figure 27) is typical of the genre. Hand drawn and hand lettered with a large heart dominating the center, the document begins with these words: “To these two married people, namely Daniel Raup and his lawful wife Catharina, born Schumacherin, a daughter was born into the world, named Maria Catharina, in the year of our Lord Jesus 1810, the 29 day November, at 11 o’clock at night, in the sign of Capricorn.” The names of the mother and daughter, Catharina and Maria Catharina, appear in tiny letters beneath the name of their husband and father, Daniel Raup, which dominates the document both in placement and size. The two small hearts below the central heart contain religious messages. The one on the left reads, “I am baptized, I stand united with my God through my baptism. I therefore always speak joyfully in hardship, sadness, fear and need. I am baptized, that’s a joy for me. The joy lasts eternally.” The one on the right continues, “I am baptized, and when I die, how can the cool grave hurt me?”

  In colonial America, birth records were kept by churches, where baptisms took place. Because there was no bureau of vital statistics, church records written in English as well as Pennsylvania Dutch birth and baptismal certificates written in German acted as de facto legal documents. Following the American Revolution the demand for Fraktur documents soared, and professional printers took over their production. Given its long history as a symbol of love, the heart was a natural embellishment for birth, baptismal, and marital records, whether they were produced privately or professionally. In the private registers kept by families in New England a pair of hearts often symbolized a married couple, with smaller hearts representing their progeny.

  WHEN FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS BECAME POPULAR IN eighteenth-century Europe and America the heart found its way into their iconography. Freemasons used the heart as one of their primary occult symbols along with the Masonic Eye, symbol of God’s all-seeing presence. Not surprisingly, the heart stood for love, broadly speaking, and brotherly love in particular. Masons were encouraged to establish close bonds with fellow Masons and to promote charity for the needy, which they continue to do in numerous ways to this day.

  FIGURE 28. Artist unknown, heart-in-hand carving from an Odd Fellows lodge, nineteenth century. Carved wood and paint, private collection. Image credit: Aarne Anton.

  A specifically American group, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), adopted the heart-in-hand as its official emblem. Like the Freemasons, IOOF was a male-only organization founded on the principles of brotherly love, mutual support, and Christian values. Carved into a wooden staff or embroidered into a textile, the heart-in-hand motif represented the IOOF dictum that “Whatever the hand goes forth to do, the heart should go forth in unison.” Put another way, the hand should be guided by the heart.

  Similarly, the Shakers, a religious sect that emigrated from England to northeastern America in the eighteenth century, were also devotees of the heart-in-hand symbol, following the words of their founder, Mother Ann Lee: “Put your hands to work, and your hearts to God.” Known for their work ethic, cleanliness, and simple lifestyle, Shakers in the nineteenth century began to manufacture furniture and other products whose clean-cut design has had lasting influence on American style. In private they made drawings of their ecstatic visions, consisting of minuscule writing and multiple symbols, including numerous hearts. It takes patience and a keen eye to read these intricate documents made by Shaker girls
and women, who were inspired by the words of scripture, as interpreted by Mother Ann Lee. For example, the outline of a heart on a “spirit drawing” from 1849 surrounds the following words: “My treasure is not on the Earth, But in the heavens far away, where the cares of time cannot find them. When my work on earth is done, how gladly will I fly to the arms of the saints, who have watched over me in the days of my youth, for they love me & I love them & nought can separate us from each other.”

  These unique Shaker drawings, crammed with hearts, flowers, leaves, vines, trees, feathers, birds, apples, moons, suns, scrolls, lyres, houses, cups, eyes, and faces, were understood to come from supernatural sources and expected to be kept for oneself or given as gifts to other members of the community. Though the practice came to an end in the 1850s, a few hundred have survived and can sometimes be seen in museums and exhibitions devoted to Shaker culture.

  Another American religious sect, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, also welcomed the heart into their iconography. Their attention to the heart derived from a scriptural passage in which the prophet Elijah predicted that the Lord “would turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of their children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). Mormon drawings coupled the heart, the symbol of love, with keys, the symbol of patriarchal authority. This vision of family members linked together by the hearts of fathers and children simply passed over the role of the mother.

  NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN FOLK ARTISTS EMBRACED the heart motif as never before. They made everything in the shape of a heart, from muffin molds and cookie cutters to butter presses, hat boxes, snuff boxes, keepsake boxes, pin cushions, mirror frames, metal trivets, and locks. Hearts were painted on dower chests and cupboards, carved into cradles and chair backs, stamped into stoneware jugs, pressed into glass, sewn into quilts, and hooked into rugs. They also were and remain popular on horse bridles.

  Brides living in Virginia and North Carolina sometimes received baskets decorated with hearts for the storage of household keys. It was a meaningful gift, meant to mark the passage of the bride into her new position as matron and keeper of the keys. These little baskets were usually made of cow or pig hide, sturdy enough to last a lifetime. Occasionally one turns up today at auction and fetches the handsome sum of ten or twenty thousand dollars.

  Many hearts were expressions of friendship, especially female friendship, which was valued in nineteenth-century American culture almost as much as romantic love. Hearts that spoke for one’s loving feelings appeared on the pages of diaries, memory albums, invitations, holiday messages, and, of course, valentines.

  American cemeteries also began to feature hearts in the nineteenth century, depending on the deceased person’s religion, ethnicity, and place of burial. Among other western states California welcomed the heart motif on tombstones, usually for a married couple. In the Santa Rosa rural cemetery complex, twin hearts adorn the grave of Flora and George Buckmaster and a single heart commemorates the lives of M. J. and Catherine Bower. A few years back, when my photographer son Reid and I were traveling across the United States in preparation for a book on American cemeteries, we discovered a Greek American tombstone in Colma, California, that told a wrenching story common to many families at the time: mother, father, and their soldier son, who had been killed in action during World War II at the age of twenty-six, all wrapped in hearts.

  FIGURE 29. Reid Yalom, Tombstone with Three Hearts, Greek Cemetery, Colma, California, 2008. Digital print.

  Americans have had a love affair with the heart for a very long time. From colonial times to the present, the heart has adorned a plethora of everyday items suitable for a democratic society. No longer reserved for the elite, the heart belongs to everyone. We call upon it to express our deepest emotions, from love to loss. When misfortune strikes, it symbolizes our own broken hearts and our sympathy for others. Yet most of all, as in the Middle Ages when the heart icon was born, it continues to represent the ineffable allure of romance and our shared belief, since around 1800, that love should be the primary ingredient in the choice of a spouse.

  Chapter 17

  Hearts and Hands

  “NEVER COULD I GIVE MY HAND UNACCOMPANIED BY MY heart.”

  These words were written by a young American woman named Eliza Chaplin to one of her friends in 1820. Eliza had no need to explain the meaning of “heart and hand,” for everyone in her time and place would have understood that “heart” meant love and “hand” meant marriage. Regardless of the many transformations undergone by the heart motif since the beginning of recorded time, the nineteenth century began in the West with a common understanding that “heart” could not be ignored in the making of a happy marriage.

  Reflect for a moment on Eliza Chaplin’s words. They seem ordinary enough to us today, and given the history traced in this book, they come as no surprise. But why does the “hand” represent marriage in the Western world? That question takes us as far back as ancient Rome when, during the wedding ceremony, the matron of honor (pronuba) joined the spouses’ right hands, and the bride received the wedding ring she would wear throughout her marriage. Sometimes the ring itself bore the image of two clasped hands that represented the marriage contract.

  The hand as a marital symbol was even written into law. The Romans had two kinds of marriage: marriage cum manu and marriage sine manu—literally “with hand” and “without hand.” The first meant that a woman became a member of her husband’s family and was subject to his authority. The second meant that a woman, even after her marriage, remained under the tutelage of her father and kept her premarriage inheritance rights. Though these two specific forms of marriage have disappeared, Western inheritors of Roman law have held on to the symbol of the marital hand for over two thousand years. The picture of two hands clasped together became the sign of a harmonious union, whether molded into a fourteenth-century German Jewish wedding band, painted at the center of a sixteenth-century Italian maiolica plate, or carved into a nineteenth-century American tombstone.

  Clasped hands took further physical form in the tradition of “handfasting,” a betrothal ritual practiced in England until the mid-eighteenth century and in Scotland until the twentieth. During the ceremony, which often took place outdoors, the couple took hold of each other’s hands and declared that they accepted the other as a spouse. With or without witnesses, it was a binding contract and, for many, the equivalent of marriage. A proper church wedding usually took place within six months, by which time many of the brides—between 20 and 30 percent—were already pregnant.

  In church, couples enacted a similar ritual. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer from 1552 stated explicitly that the bride and groom should join hands during the marriage ceremony and loosen them only when “the Man shall give unto the Woman a Ring,… to put it upon the fourth finger of the Woman’s left hand. And the Man holding the Ring there… shall say, ‘With this Ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.’” Beautiful words that still move us when they are pronounced in weddings today!

  WHY, WE MAY ASK, DID ELIZA CHAPLIN FIND IT NECESSARY to say that she would never give her hand without her heart? The answer is that love had not been a prerequisite for marriage during most of written history. Family connections, property, social position, and religion counted considerably more than love in most eras and most places. A Roman girl’s marriage would have been arranged by her father, and she would not have been given the opportunity to “fall in love” before the wedding. She was, however, required to add her consent to that of her father and mother for the match to be legal. The main purpose of matrimony was to produce children. If the couple developed tender feelings for each other, all the better. If not, and if the husband found reason to be dissatisfied with the arrangement, divorce—at least for the man—was relatively easy. Women, however, were not allowed to initiate it.

  During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church gradually took over the jurisdiction of marriage. In 1181, when matr
imony was made a sacrament, it subsequently required not only monogamy, indissolubility, and exogamy but also mutual consent. Of course, mutual consent was by no means tantamount to love. In fact, as we have seen from the court of Marie de Champagne, the possibility of marital love between members of the nobility was considered highly unlikely. As for the broader population, it is impossible to make blanket statements about the whole of medieval Europe. Still, I would venture to say, from a lifetime of medieval studies, that most marriages were marriages of convenience and that mutual inclination was not the first—or even the last—determinant in forging a conjugal union.

  Just when did love become the primary basis for marriage? From around 1600 onward a small but growing number of unions were initiated by love. In England this new spirit was linked to the Reformation. From their pulpits Anglican clergymen began to emphasize the joys of nuptial love in addition to companionship, mutual support, and, of course, progeny. And in less hallowed spaces Shakespearean theater gave voice to the passionate desires of men and women who prized amorous love above all other considerations and sometimes risked their parents’ wrath in choosing a mate. Like Eliza Chaplin two centuries later, Shakespeare recognized the need for both heart and hand in the creation of a satisfying union. Speaking with certainty and satisfaction, Juliet remarked to the priest after he had wed her to Romeo: “God join’d my heart and Romeo’s, thou our hands.”

  Even the Catholic Church, during the Counter-Reformation, took into consideration the new emphasis on love in marriage. As a response to pressure from individuals in unhappy marriages, it loosened some aspects of its marital laws. Legal records from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries show that some men and women found a way to have their unhappy marriages annulled on the grounds that one or both of the spouses had been coerced into matrimony by their families and had not truly given their consent. Petitions for annulment began with the formula “I said yes with my mouth but not with my heart,” the implication being that only the consent of the heart gave validity to a marriage.