The dates pertaining to the writing (mid 12thc.) and to the dissemination (end 13th c.) of the letters between Heloise and Abelard cover a period of intense activity in hagiographic compositions in the vernacular: our hagiographic romances.
The very fact that Abelard resorts to the conventional motifs exploited in vernacular hagiography is in itself proof that even this most challenging and controversial intellectual figure of the 12th century was prone to adopt a conservative stance in his approach and depiction of the feminine.
Heloise (1101-1164) meets Peter Abelard (1079-1142; renowned philosopher and initiator of intentional ethics) in Paris, when her uncle, the Canon Fulbert, hires Abelard to be her teacher; she is 16-year old. Soon after, she finds that she is pregnant; Abelard disguises her as a nun and takes her to his home place in Brittany, where a son (Astralabe) is born.
They (reluctantly) marry to avoid scandal and Fulbert's wrath. But Fulbert is nonetheless so angry that Abelard decides to remove Heloise from her uncle's house and place her at the convent of Argenteuil, near Paris. Thinking that Abelard wants to get rid of Heloise, Fulbert takes his revenge by sending men to castrate him. Thus Heloise is forced to become a nun, while Abelard enters the religious life at the Abbey of St. Denis. (See also Lady as Saint, pp. 76-80).
Wrote a record of his life from his entry into religious life (in 1119) until 1132. Entitled: "Abelard to a (male) friend: A Story of Misfortunes" (Historia calamitatum, ca. 1132).
His misfortunes refer to his tribulations: quarrels with the monks of Abbey of St. Denis; persecutions with his rivals and enemies, leading to his condemnation; further trouble at St. Denis, and his flight away from Paris, at a hermitage in Champagne known as The Paraclete; until he accepted in 1126 to become abbot of the monastery of St. Gildas de Rhuys, in Brittany. (He hated it). His autobiography is supposed to bring relief to the male friend to whom it is addressed. But, no mention of his love affair with Heloise; emphasis is only on HIS problems and suffering.
So, when Heloise happens to read a copy of Abelard's autobiography, she reacts by sending him a series of letters wherein she complains about his neglect of her, his silence, his indifference to the fact that she is stuck in a religious habit against her will and because Abelard placed him there. Her first letter spells out the extent of her misery: the fact that she is still in love with him, that she does not have a religious vocation, and that she suffers from unsatisfied sexual desire.
In other words, Heloise responds to Abelard's self-centered autobiography by attempting to relate to him the story of HER misfortunes.