History, literature and the representation of women in eighteenth -century Franc

This dissertation examines the civilizing and moral role that women played in late Enlightenment French literature. By offering social critiques or providing a model of just and virtuous behavior for others to follow, female characters advanced civility and social reform by fostering respect for humanity and contributing to the socio-moral discourse of eighteenth-century France. This pervasive connection between women and culture is particularly striking because it challenges the argument of some historians who claim that as the eighteenth-century progressed, women were increasingly defined exclusively by their physical constitution.;The introductory chapter reviews the different approaches historians and literary critics take in their study of subjects such as women. Chapter One explores a range of historical accounts devoted to women in eighteenth-century France and examines in particular the association of women with nature, domesticity and weakness that some historians see as essential to this period.;The following four chapters explore the connection that Diderot, Grafigny, Beaumarchais and Rousseau make between women and notions such as culture, nature, strength, weakness, morality and civility. By depicting women in social or familial contexts and portraying the expression of their ideas and thoughts, these authors establish women as the moral focus of their work. In the case of the drame bourgeois and La Nouvelle Heloise , women function as a model of virtuous behavior for the other characters and the audience or readers. In the works of Beaumarchais, Grafigny, Marivaux and Diderot, female characters, observations and reflections on contemporary culture provide a forum for pointing to necessary social reforms and to the disjuncture between women's abilities and characteristics and the way in which society (men in particular) see them. Women thus provided excellent examples of civil behavior not necessarily because they were inherently moral but because they were vulnerable to society's injustices; these injustices made women stronger and capable of commenting on contemporary society.