Abstract

Abstract: Marie Jeanne Riccoboni (1713-1792), one of the foremost proto-feminist women writers of Enlightenment France, has offered conflicting and enigmatic information about her childhood. While her desire for privacy regarding her own biography can be understood and respected, when (new) personal details elucidate her published oeuvre, both her fiction and her correspondence, they hold a particular fascination for readers and scholars alike. This essay will shed light on a notoriously blank page of Riccoboni's life, her childhood, through two newly uncovered lettres de cachet pertaining to her mother Marie Marguerite Dujac and her grandfather Jean Baptiste Dujac. An analysis of these documentsas lettres de cachet through the lens of royal and paternal authority as well as female agency, will provide new context for Riccoboni's biography regarding her relationship with her mother and her childhood, as well as offer important clues for some essential elements of her fiction, including her proto-feminism.

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