Gender and Voice in the French Novel, 1730-1782 by Aurora Wolfgang (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews123 tiple functions: to protect women, to experiment on them or simply to eliminate them from society's view. The final section, "Economies," investigates the circulation, exchange, and division ofwomen in the novel in the restricted spaces like the harem and the more "open" space of society or le monde. These patterns of circulation lead to the new domestic economy as seen in Rousseau, in which women are excluded from public life, existing only within in the family realm. Espaces duféminin, with its exceeding detail and thorough documentation , is a systematic investigation of feminized space that goes beyond a surface examination ofthe boudoir, the kitchen, or the convent. Martin convincingly extrapolates the shifting perspectives on women's place in society and female sexuality that evolved during the eighteenth century. This study, while perhaps less accessible for undergraduates, is an excellent resource for graduate -level research. Susie HennessyMissouri Western State University Wolfgang, Aurora. Gender and Voice in the French Novel, 1730-1782. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing. Pp 209. ISBN 0-7546-37026 . $89.95. As early as 1715, the social space of the French salon began to evolve from its seventeenth-century function as an extension of court society, dominated by aristocratic men and women who followed explicit rules of behavior , language and "honnêteté." Eighteenth-century "salonnières" were wealthy, influential and well-educated women who attracted intellectuals and "philosophes," as well as a cross-section of aristocratic and bourgeois society , to their weekly gatherings. In her recent study, Aurora Wolfgang clearly links the influence of this female-dominated social and intellectual space to the rising popularity of the sentimental novel, characterized by the first-person , female voice in the epistolary or memoir form. The author demonstrates how the heroine inevitably gives voice to her sexuality and expresses the inherent duality of femininity: a simultaneous representation of nature and culture, spontaneity and artifice, virtue and vice. Wolfgang's study shows how Marivaux and Laclos's manipulation of the female voice is inseparable from the expression of her sexuality, whereas women writers like Graffigny and Riccoboni break with biology to create strong, independent, and assertive female characters. Wolfgang notes that the coquette's language, a mélange ofnatural spontaneity and carefully staged-seduction, characterizes the heroine's first-person narrative in Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne. Marianne's rhetoric emphasizes simplicity, conversational style and naivety, while she manipulates her image as the object of male desire. Wolfgang points out that while Marivaux overtly condemns the coquette's artifice and vanity, he nonetheless defines femininity through the highly sexualized female body and the seduction rite. 1 24Women in French Studies Adopting a female narrative voice allows Marivaux to temporarily stage himself as the coquette: exploring male desire from an instinctive (female) point of view while falling back on reason, a traditionally male attribute, to carefully order his seemingly disorganized—and thus feminine—text. In Les Lettrespéruviennes, by contrast, the author shows how Graffigny uses the traditionally female epistolary form and the voice of the "other" (woman and foreigner), to implicitly criticize the woman's participation in empty social rituals that perpetuate her debasement. Zilia, Graffigny's heroine , turns to self-education as solace for a broken heart, and prefers a solitary life surrounded by books rather than participation in society or marriage. The author aptly illustrates how Graffigny's use of historical and scholarly footnotes adds a more philosophical (or traditionally male) subtext to Zilia's narrative , transforming the heroine from coquette to "femme savante." Wolfgang's third chapter demonstrates how critical perceptions of Riccoboni's Fanni Butlerdhave falsely characterized the novel as both genuinely autobiographical and truly representative of an authentic female voice. Instead, the author argues, Riccoboni destines Fanni's sentimental confessions , normally reserved for the private sphere, for wide publication to a larger readership. Labeling the work as "autobiographical" wrongly suggests that women writers are incapable ofcreating a convincing fictional female voice. Wolfgang describes Fanni Butlerd as posing an open challenge to the eighteenth -century male domination ofnarratives of female desire. Lastly, the author turns to Chloderos de Laclos's Liaisons dangereuses, a complex epistolary novel dominated by the female voice, where highly eroticized...