Abstract
The Enlightenment period has been defined by its eighteenth-century contemporaries and their successors as the light of reason dispelling the obscurity of ignorance. However, modern scholars such as Heidi Bostic argue that Enlightenment women are often left in the dark, as either subjects or authors. This chapter will show how, in her fairy tale Beauty and the Beast (1740), Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve uses her marginalized position to lay claim to the space of night as the locus of female-driven Enlightenment. In rewriting nighttime and creating an alternative female-centric dream reality, Villeneuve deeply disturbs the dynamics of power or desire and gives her heroine Beauty the opportunity to redefine and experience the meaning of a woman-driven Enlightenment.
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