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

Abstract

236 Reviews pruning so as tomake the contributors' analysis ofDu Ch'atelet's works come into much sharper focus; referenceswere needed inRemy Saisselin's (rather peculiar) es say on her portrait (and why quote Carmontelle inEnglish?); theEnglish expression of a couple of contributors needed careful attention ('an aroma ofAristotelianism' (p. 227)? 'Cartesian tourbillons and Newtonian action-at-a-distance were fodder to the debaters, seasoned with national pride' (p. 227)?); and a decision needed to be made as towhether she would be referred to asMme du Chatelet or Du Chatelet, surely a basic question in feminist historiography. Such editorial issues aside, there are some good contributions here, not the least of which is, rather surprisingly, William Barber's essay on the Institutions de physique, firstpublished in I967 and reprinted in revised formhere. Some aspects of this essay, in particular its hostility to her attempt to fuse Leibnizian metaphysics with New tonianmechanics, have been called into question elsewhere since, but it represents none the less an early sustained attempt to takeDu Chatelet's work seriously and so has itsplace here. Good and new contributions include John R. Iverson's essay on Haid and Brucker's inclusion ofDu Chatelet in theirPortrait Gallery ofLearned Authors (I74I-I755), which interestingly explores theextent towhich she had a hand in theway shewas presented; Bertram Eugene Schwarzbach's piece on Du Chatelet's Examens de la Bible, which reveals thewit and humour of her biblical criticism, ar guing that ifVoltaire had read it,he would have borrowed from it forhis La Bible enfinexpliquee (a tempting argument: how could he have resisted using her claim that Potiphar's wife was justified in sleeping with Joseph since she had such a dull eunuch fora husband?!); and the essays on theDiscours sur lebonheur by Barbara Whitehead and Nanette LeCoat are clear and informative. Marie-Therese Inguenaud's essay on Graffigny and Du Chatelet's 'hatred' for each other,while good in places, does not entirely succeed in avoiding the conclusion that theyhated each other because they were women, while Jean-FranSois Gauvin's essay on the cabinet de physique at Cirey, though not very illuminating ofDu Chatelet, is fascinating. Overall, the volume has the slight feel of amissed opportunity. It does not quite answer the question itasks: how isour understanding of theEnlightenment altered if when we sayphilosophe, we also thinkDu Chatelet? WORCESTER COLLEGE,OXFORD KATE E. TUNSTALL Gender and Voice in theFrench Novel, I730-I782. By AURORAWOLFGANG. Alder shot:Ashgate. 2004. ix+209 pp. /45. ISBN 978-o-7546-3702-8. This isan important study of the engendering of literary style during the eighteenth century.Aurora Wolfgang does not explore whether there is an intrinsically female writing style but instead focuses on how writers exploited the conventional notion of 'women's writing' for their own ends. In the introduction she contests Robert Darnton's view ('Two Paths through the Social History of Ideas', in The Darnton Debate: Books and Revolution in theEighteenth Century, ed. by Haydn T. Mason (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, I998), pp. 25 I-93) thatwomen played littlepart in the literarypublic sphere and Carla Hesse's assertion that only after theRevolution did women really begin toparticipate in it ('French Women inPrint, I750-I 800: An Essay inHistorical Bibliography', inThe Darnton Debate, pp. 65-82). She goes on to trace the rise ofwomen's participation in culture, deftly defending Dena Goodman (The Republic ofLetters: A Cultural History of theFrench Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, I994)) against Darnton's attacks. She also draws extensively on Joan E. Dejean (Ancients againstModerns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin-de-Siecle (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, I997)) and Joan MLR, I02. I, 2007 237 B. Landes (Women and thePublic Sphere in the Age of theFrench Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, I988)) in charting scholarly thinking on the extent of women's influence on the public lifeof letters. In thisway, the reader is prepared forher particular contribution to the debate: theway inwhich the novel as a form at themargins of dominant culture in the firsthalf of the century became, in the second, a space which could be appropriated bywomen. She shows how initially, in the I730s, male writers used a...