So she had a while and she just wanted to expand her mind. Emilie knew that at some point she had to get married, but usually by that time, you weren't really on the shelf until like 18 or 19. MONTAGNE: The sword fight was, what, one way of showing that she was a serious person and take me the way I am or don't take me at all?īODANIS: Yeah, a little bit. This wasn't the famous Cardinal this was his grandnephew. That sounds almost impossible to be true.īODANIS: I would've - when I first came across it, I thought, could that really be the case? But the person who recorded that was a fellow named Richelieu who really did not have positive views about many women. And after that, she put down her sword, lifted up Descartes' "Analytic Geometry," walked back outside and the guys left her alone. So she didn't win the sword fight she didn't kill the guy, but she didn't lose either.
And it turned out she'd been a little bit of a tomboy as a child, and her father had given her fencing lessons and horse riding, and she'd been allowed to climb trees and stuff.
And when she was sent to Versailles to find a suitable husband, which she eventually did, Bodanis writes that the 16- year-old hit on a way to fend off lascivious courtiers - she challenged one to a duel.ĭAVID BODANIS: They went to one of the big buildings at Versailles, and she started taking her clothes off - not all of them, but just down to the equivalent of the petticoat layer. What could be the plot for a period drama, actually played out in real life.īorn in 1706, Emilie du Chatelet was a bookworm when the king's own daughters were illiterate. He was a revolutionary philosopher and writer, she was a brilliant young aristocrat - and their love affair would capture the spirit of the Enlightenment.
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