ABSTRACT
Exploring friendship tropes in the Port-Royal nun's writings presents a methodological challenge involving monasticism and the interpretation of sources. The friendship tropes were typical for the time and were gendered female in ways that assumed women's inferiority and that recognized chastity as a heroic virtue. The trope juxtaposing tyranny with female associative chastity along with its companion trope of infighting among women emerged in the Port-Royal nun's writings shortly after Abbess Anglique Arnauld's acceptance and unreserved commitment to the Benedictine Rule. Anglique credited abb de Saint-Cyran in her memoir for her new acceptance of Port-Royal and the Benedictine Rule, she never explained how she reconciled the male bias of the rule with the Pauline Interdictions preventing women from preaching or teaching in the Church. Sainte-Beuves portrayal of Port-Royal as a synthesis of past traditions with intellectual and scientific progress reveals its debt to the trope of female associative chastity by associating the Port-Royal nun's with divine truth.
