Gender, Enlightenment, and Revolution in Two Eighteenth-Century Biographies

Abstract

Recent biographies by Gary Kates and Nina Rattner Gelbart of two eighteenth-century figures, a transgendered officer and diplomat--the Chevalier d'Eon--and a state-sponsored midwife named Mme du Coudray, offer unexpected insights into themes of gender, Enlightenment, and revolution when considered in tandem. Jeffrey S. Ravel notes that in context of last decade's emphasis on the role of gendered thought and behavior in onset of revolution, it is striking that these two life stories do not necessarily conform to our historiographical expectations. Although both du Coudray and d'Eon adopted unconventional positions in relation to Old Regime standards, their life stories were thoroughly fashioned by possibilities and limitations of existence in an absolutist polity. Lisa Forman Cody, however, argues that lives of d'Eon and du Coudray also display characteristics that foreshadow a more modern sense of self. Du Coudray's mission, Cody suggests, hints at future republican projects that harness maternity to cause of national regeneration, while d'Eon's legal troubles in England generate modern conceptions of bodies and selves as separate and self-possessed. Kates, in his contribution to forum, discusses how his encounter with d'Eon across two centuries changed his own ideas about gender. His research, and meetings with contemporary transgendered individuals, led him to rethink his gender assumptions and question feminism he had inherited from 1970s. Gelbart, in turn, found herself locked in a struggle with her subject to unveil private feelings and emotions that du Coudray had so carefully hidden in written record. In her essay, she openly reflects on biographical process in tale of king's midwife. Finally, Elizabeth Colwill takes note of the historiographical and methodological issues that biographical genre raises for historians. Both Kates and Gelbart, she suggests, were attracted to the hidden motivations of their 'secretive subjects,' leaving some reviewers uneasy with the accuracy of their work. Colwill, however, argues that fact vs. fiction may be a false construction, because the art of interpretation is not at odds with careful archival reconstruction.