Against Marriage: The Correspondence of la Grande Mademoiselle- This link opens in a new window
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In seventeenth-century France, aristocratic women were valued by their families as commodities to be married off in exchange for money, social advantage, or military alliance. The duchesse de Montpensier-a first cousin of Louis XIV-was one of very few exceptions, thanks to the vast wealth she inherited from her mother, who died shortly after Montpensier was born. She was also one of the few politically powerful women in France at the time to have been an accomplished writer.