Women’s silence in religious practice

Women’s silence in religious practice is presented at Versailles as a Church edict, but its force in the novel reaches beyond worship: Pope Innocent uses it to judge women’s music, modesty, and right to interpret what they have heard. Marie-Josèphe de la Croix answers that demand through argument, composition, and attentive translation, making the rule a conflict over who may speak and whose account of experience will be believed.

The rule and its claimed scope

Pope Innocent cites the Church’s edict that “Women should remain silent” when he condemns Marie-Josèphe’s composition. She knows the rule from experience: it had kept the convent in “miserable silence.” Her reply, “In church, Your Holiness!”, identifies the boundary she understands the edict to set. The Pope rejects that limitation. He insists that women should be silent “At all times,” and declares music injurious to Marie-Josèphe’s modesty. His interpretation therefore turns a religious restriction into a broader principle of female restraint, reaching from the convent into artistic and public life.

That expansion matters because Marie-Josèphe is not merely present as a listener. She composes, explains, and contests the judgments made about her work. The exchange places her capacity to create music beside an authority that treats her creation as evidence against her: instead of hearing the piece on its own terms, Pope Innocent calls it indecent and orders Louis XIV to censor what he calls pagan excess. The rule operates not only by prohibiting speech in a particular setting, but by giving an influential man the power to define women’s expression as improper wherever it occurs.

Music judged as female impropriety

The confrontation begins after Marie-Josèphe’s music has been performed before Louis XIV. Yves de la Croix calls his sister the more talented musician, prompting the King’s astonishment. Pope Innocent answers the praise by condemning the composition as indecent. When Marie-Josèphe asks his pardon, he rebukes her and invokes the edict. Her joy drains away into incomprehension and humiliation; she wonders whether she should have let Monsieur powder her, as if concealing her face might help her endure the public judgment.

The Pope’s criticism also makes interpretation part of the dispute. He characterizes the story associated with the music as heathen indecency and hears intrigue and debauchery in the composition. Yves intervenes to say his sister is innocent. Marie-Josèphe is grateful for his defense, but the Pope looks her over, inspecting her headdress, dress, and décolletage. The scene sets her brother’s testimony against an authority that reads her appearance and her music together as grounds for suspicion. Her work is not allowed to remain simply music: its meaning and its moral character are claimed by others.

Speaking, singing, and translation

The rule’s pressure is especially sharp in scenes where Marie-Josèphe tries to communicate with the captive sea monster. During Yves’s dissection of a male sea monster, Count Lucien de Chrétien tells her that the creature must be silenced for the King’s sake. Marie-Josèphe whispers that she fed it and that its cry is not the sound it made when hungry; she wonders whether it dislikes the music. Count Lucien calls her impudent. The exchange is not a direct invocation of the Church edict, but it echoes the broader struggle over whether a female voice may interpret what is happening. Marie-Josèphe answers a demand for silence with observation: the cry has changed, and that change may mean something.

Her later attempt to understand the sea monster discovers a form of communication that does not depend on spoken words. Marie-Josèphe asks whether she can see the sea monster’s songs and whether the creature understands her; the response is a song whose imagery describes a tiny fish, its surroundings, its movement, and its taste. The sea monsters communicate through images and associations rather than ordinary words. Marie-Josèphe hums the melody and asks the sea monster’s name, then runs for paper and charcoal. She records the songs as rough pictures, not as words or musical notes; sometimes her tears smudge the paper, though the scenes remain clear to her because she hears them. Her work here reverses the logic of enforced silence: she attends to another being’s expression and makes a record of it without reducing it to conventional speech.

Authority, belief, and the limits of silence

The conflict returns when Marie-Josèphe conveys the sea woman’s account before Louis XIV and Pope Innocent. Asked whether the sea woman claims immortality, Marie-Josèphe answers in song that life continues through creation and death, but that the dead do not return. Pope Innocent calls the exchange heretical. Marie-Josèphe insists that she did not invent the story and asks him to believe her; she explains that the sea woman does not understand heresy. She is not only repeating a message but defending its source and claiming the right to interpret it before religious and royal authority.

These scenes do not show the edict disappearing or the Pope accepting Marie-Josèphe’s position. They show instead how the rule attempts to govern the conditions of expression: when women may speak, whether their music is modest, and whether their testimony can count as knowledge. Against that restriction, Marie-Josèphe speaks directly, composes despite condemnation, and listens closely enough to translate songs into images. Her acts make the demand for silence visible as a contest over authorship and credibility, not simply a rule of church conduct.