History is Queer: Julie d’Aubigny
History is Queer is a series of entries highlighting LGBTQ individuals in the contemporary world and throughout history.
Who: Julie d’Aubigny
When: 1670-1707
Where: France, duh.
The opinions expressed here are those of the blogger, and do not represent the views of The Cube or Southern Tier AIDS Program.
Why you should care:
Julie d’Aubigny learned fencing, literacy, dancing, and drawing from her father, who was the personal secretary of the Count d’Armagnac. As a young woman, she became involved with the count, and married a fellow named Maupin soon before her affair with the count ended.
Her husband left for a job in Southern France, but Julie decided to stay in the city. She decided to not let gender roles get in the way of being totally awesome, and gained a reputation for hitting shopkeepers and randomly starting duels. Fittingly, her next lover was a young dueling teacher named Serannes, who wooed her, leaving out the fact that he was on the run from the police for killing a man in an illegal duel.
The lovers fled to Marseille, where they made a living telling stories, singing songs, and displaying their swordsmanship. To further add to her queer cred, Julie dressed in male clothing while duelling. In Marseille, she could have also had some vocal training.
Eventually, Julie peaced out from Serannes and began seeing a woman whose parents, being old and French and totally uncool, disapproved of the pair. They put Julie’s girlfriend in a convent in Avignon. Deciding to challenge the religious order after challenging gender roles, Julie snuck into the convent as a nun-in-training, stole some old nun’s dead body, put it in her girlfriend’s room, and set it on fire. The pair ran away.
Three months later, the young woman returned to her parents, and Julie found herself on trial in France. Tried as a man, she was found guilty of kidnapping, arson, dressing as a man, and failing to appear before a tribunal. She was sentenced to death.
Still on the run, Julie fought a duel against a male swordsman and managed to stab him through the shoulder. Unluckily, this dude turned out to be the son of the Duke of Luynes. Luckily, he and Julie became lovers. The affair lasted until he went into the military.
Julie reached out to her husband and got him to lift the charges against her, but then did a career about-face and hooked up with a singer, getting into an opera company. Thanks to her flamboyant nature and contralto voice, Julie became a star, though her personal life was less successful: she tried to kill herself after Franchon Moreau, the Great Dauphin’s mistress, rejected her advances.
Julie continued appearing in opera roles and even reunited with her husband. She retired from the opera in 1705 and died in 1707. Her life was the basis for the famous novel Mademoiselle de Maupin.
References:
Julie d’Aubigny
The opinions expressed here are those of the blogger, and do not represent the views of The Cube or Southern Tier AIDS Program.
