Looking In and Shouting Out: Gendered Perspectives on the Convent in Gouges, Diderot, and Théron

Abstract

This article argues that the gendered differences present in eighteenth-century French convent literature are put forth by two interconnected factors: (1) the ways in which the author understands and critiques the structure and function of monastic confinement and (2) the mechanism that drives the text forward, namely voice, gaze, or embodiment. Close readings of Olympe de Gouges’s Le Couvent ou les voeux forcés and Denis Diderot’s La Religieuse serve to demonstrate that the authors’ critiques of the convent space are not only present in their plots, but also replicated in the very form of their writing. These Enlightenment texts are juxtaposed with a 2012 theatrical adaptation of Diderot’s La Religieuse staged by French playwright Anne Théron, allowing for an investigation of how the mechanism propelling the work develops or persists when the authorial voice is altered across time and gender.