Hey, Pompy ... What a Gal !!!

Sex tips from the Marquise de Pompadour

Pompadour did not, it is fair to say, have a romantic conception of love. Indeed, the Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni probably summed up her approach to romance quite nicely when he wrote that "the experience of falling in love originates in extreme depression, an inability to find value in everyday life." From the very beginning, Pompadour acted as though the key to Louis's heart was through exploiting his insecurities as well as his fear of the future. Pompadour's insight into human nature, as I hope shall become clear shortly, is a particularly shrewd one when seduction, and seduction alone, is the overriding goal.
Before she could prey on Louis's insecurities, Pompadour had to reckon with the irksome fact that Louis XV, having long since abandoned any hope of being a great king, was becoming more and more carefree. How do you make someone feel insecure about that which they no longer care about, or to which they remain oblivious?
Pompadour's strategy, which was sheer genius in conception and execution, was to open the wounds of failure, rub salt in them, and then offer Louis the hope of closing them. Basically, since the king had few insecurities, Pompadour had to create them. Pompadour strongly hinted to Louis that the reason for his unpopularity was that the French felt he would not live up to the legacy of his auspicious predecessor, Louis XIV.
This much, I rather suspect, Louis XV already knew deep down; but since most of his advisers, through politeness or sycophancy, avoided making this point directly to the king, Louis XV thought Pompadour's observation particularly novel, and profound, and was impressed that someone could see so deeply inside him. As if meeting a stranger who knew all his stories, Louis began falling for Pompadour's spell.
Preying on his easily ascertainable yet unremarked shortcomings, and passing these off as unique insights into the real Louis XV, Pompadour began her masterful seduction. Having drawn Louis's attention to his own failures, and then nurtured his insecurities so that they could grow malignant and spread, Pompadour became the only person with whom the king felt comfortable discussing his foibles, of which he was, understandably, quite ashamed.
Pompadour shared a special bond with Louis XV: sometimes, Pompadour correctly recognized, there are things one is more comfortable confiding in a stranger than a friend; and so Pompadour used what Louis XV told to her to enhance her status from stranger to close confidant to, eventually, official mistress. But how precisely did she accomplish this successful entrapment?
Pompadour sought to bridge the gap between who Louis was, and what he felt he ought to be. Of course, and she knew this, what Louis ought to be was vastly different than what he was, or even what he could be (Pompadour did not actually believe Louis XV could amount to anything); but the key to her seduction was to convince Louis that this chasm was not as wide as everyone thought, and to make him believe that only she could bridge it. Thus Pompadour became a teacher, a confidant, and someone who made Louis feel good about himself. To Louis, the power she possessed over him was all for the good, and she gradually became indispensable to his sense of self-worth, rather like an addictive drug.
Unlike other members of Louis XV’s inner-circle, who either flattered Louis with pretty words that lacked substance or otherwise approved of his baser instincts and disreputable habits, Pompadour, after destroying Louis by pointing out his weaknesses, then inspired him, offering him a path to follow if he wanted to achieve, how shall I put it, salvation.

Perhaps Pompadour's insight into seduction—discover someone's weaknesses, then exploit them—sounds trite, but its effectiveness when executed correctly, by which I mean subtly, is so rarely remarked on nowadays: Everyone must endure the weight of insecurity, of not believing in themselves, and a person who aspires to something greater than mere ordinariness is especially burdened by this, as well as by, and this is true of the young in particular, uncertainty about what the future will bring, and a sense of powerlessness in shaping it.
Pompadour recognized this, and used it to make Louis XV emotionally dependent on her, and used that dependence, in turn, to enhance her status in the kingdom. By the time of Pompadour's death in 1764, Louis XV is said to have remarked, in tacit acknowledgment of what she had done to him, "La marquise n'aura pas beau temps pour son voyage."
Pompadour taught that effective seduction, because it requires creating something similar to an emotional dependence, cannot be a one-off affair. The seduction must be continuous. In fact, the sheer strength of Pompadour's hold on Louis became known when she, having lost the ability to excite the king in the bedroom, and in any event finding intimacy unbearable because of a painful and chronic leucorrhea, still retained her position as Louis XV's official mistress.
Gradually, Pompadour's responsibilities shifted to the exercise of a political function, where, being aware that Louis was unhappy with his accomplishments as king, she persuaded him to try to leave his mark on French foreign policy by abandoning France's traditional friendship with Prussia in favor of one with Austria. It is I think worth pausing here to note the ease with which Pompadour transitioned from the world of romance to that of politics, for ultimately, Pompadour knew, they both rewarded the same manipulative and mendacious behavior.

Two points should I think be made about Pompadour's seduction of Louis XV. First, and most importantly, Pompadour was able to maintain her dignity throughout. Historians tend to ignore Pompadour and instead celebrate Don Juan, Casanova, and Cleopatra as the apotheosis of the sexual personae. What they fail to consider, however, is that these latter three, when seducing others, demeaned themselves and their gender considerably.
Don Juan and Casanova, in addition to being scofflaws, debased themselves into androgynous figures. The two basically ceased being obtrusively masculine and instead trumpeted their femininity, prefiguring, in many ways, none to their credit, Oscar Wilde's famous prepubescent object of lust, Dorian Gray. This sort of willful and unmanly metrosexualism is unbecoming; doubtless, Don Juan and Casanova were quite happy being the little spoon, too.
Cleopatra, likewise, is hardly a figure we want women to emulate. What in particular is praiseworthy about Cleopatra hiding in a carpet and having her man-servants unfurl it in front of Julius Caesar, making a complete spectacle of herself? The Romans of the period called Cleopatra an “Egyptian whore”, which, on an honest inspection of the list of men who had their way with her, is not an entirely inaccurate charge. Additionally, Cleopatra brought ruin to Caesar and, later, Mark Anthony, probably making wittols of them both.

By contrast, Pompadour's quiet, graceful, and dignified seduction of Louis XV leaves her with nothing to be ashamed of. Surely it is Pompadour's story we should celebrate, and emulate. Yet it is ignored, partly because Pompadour's seduction of Louis XV was deeply, and palpably, unromantic; instead, it was workmanlike, shrewd, manipulative, and entrapping. And effective.

Precisely because the seduction worked, however, it repays close study. By deromanticizing seduction, Pompadour provides us with a handy map to help us obtain what we desire. Pompadour is, in many respects, the matriarch of the relationship guru, except, unlike today's men and women's magazines, Pompadour's stock-in-trade is not dull platitudes.

Pompadour instead offers a subtle lesson into human weakness. For Pompadour, a successful seduction can overshadow the means used to obtain it. Now, this is obviously untrue when one is hoping that a seduction will lead to a stable marriage, because manipulation of the kind Pompadour counseled will poison any long-term relationship; Pompadour's advice, however, is quite useful for short-term relationships. and insecurity, and how knowledge of these can be used to seduce others.

It is dangerous knowledge, but it is knowledge nevertheless...
After all, as Pompadour reminds us, it is the cruelty of eros that elevates it above mere pleasure, and makes it sublime.

------------------------
by Alykhan Velshi, Jan. 2007 (full article, here )