Le Bonheur au feminin: strategies narratives des romancieres des Lumieres

Abstract

Defining happiness preoccupied eighteenth-century French intellectuals, including the women novelists whom Isabelle Tremblay discusses in her monograph, which offers ‘une étude thématique’ (p. 9) of how French women writers attempted to redefine personal happiness within the constraints imposed upon their lives. She includes a wide array of writers in her survey, from the better-known names of Lambert, Tencin, Épinay, Riccoboni, Le Prince de Beaumont, and Charrière, to the little-read works of Beccary, Robert, Villeneuve, and Kéralio. In the first half, Tremblay examines the traditions that defined the lives of the majority of women of the period: marriage, motherhood, and virtue. She argues that, while her chosen authors recounted stories of ‘une aliénation profonde’ (p. 27) within the restricted lives of women, they also championed self-respect and personal accomplishment as key components of women's true happiness. Riccoboni and Épinay used irony as a means of critiquing the ideologies responsible for women's misery within marriage, while others proposed strategies for surviving this oppressive institution, such as seclusion, flight, travel, or withdrawal from society. Motherhood, because it involved the care and education of children, was seen to compensate for a woman's lack of marital satisfaction. Virtue, as these novelists conceived it, led women to reflect independently on social norms and brought them peace of mind. In the second half, Tremblay focuses on how study, female friendship, and love helped women give meaning to their lives. Study was portrayed as offering women a sense of usefulness and increasing their self-esteem. Friendship not only enabled them to know themselves better, but provided comfort and support in their tribulations. And love, rather than passion, was depicted as steadfast, a sentiment on which women could rely during their struggles and which would impart a sense of ultimate value to their existence. In conclusion, Tremblay asserts that eighteenth-century women's fiction ‘participe à redéfinir l'archétype de l'héroïne féminine qu'incarne désormais la figure de la femme heureuse’ (p. 152). While Le Bonheur au féminin lacks a comprehensive presentation of the wider cultural debates surrounding happiness (and the author's concluding assertion is not fully substantiated), this is nonetheless a welcome reading of these under-studied women authors of the period and one that ties their contributions to an important debate within eighteenth-century society. Scholars will find much food for thought in Tremblay's study, which represents a significant step in the direction towards a better understanding of French women's fiction.