During the eighteenth-century, at a time when secular and religious authors in France were questioning women’s efforts to read, a new literary genre emerged: conduct books written specifically for ...girls and unmarried young women. In this carefully researched and thoughtfully argued book, Professor Nadine Bérenguier shares an in-depth analysis of this development, relating the objectives and ideals of these books to the contemporaneous Enlightenment concerns about improving education in order to reform society. Works by Anne-Thérèse de Lambert, Madeleine de Puisieux, Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Louise d'Epinay, Barthélémy Graillard de Graville, Chevalier de Cerfvol, abbé Joseph Reyre, Pierre-Louis Roederer, and Marie-Antoinette Lenoir take up a wide variety of topics and vary dramatically in tone. But they all share similar objectives: acquainting their young female readers with the moral and social rules of the world and ensuring their success at the next stage of their lives. While the authors regarded their texts as furthering the common good, they were also aware that they were likely to be controversial among those responsible for girls' education. Bérenguier's sensitive readings highlight these tensions, as she offers readers a rare view of how conduct books were conceived, consumed, re-edited, memorialized, and sometimes forgotten. In the broadest sense, her study contributes to our understanding of how print culture in eighteenth-century France gave shape to a specific social subset of new readers: modern girls.
This article focuses on a little-known text by Constance de Salm (1767-1845), an author of increasing interest to specialists in early nineteenth-century literature. It examines in particular the ...reasons why an ambitious woman of letters with a long-standing experience in Germany never finished (and published) a comparative study she intended to write: Des Allemands comparés aux Français dans leurs mœurs, leurs usages et leur vie intérieure et sociale. Her desire to introduce German society to the French competed with Salm's unwillingness to take risks. As she knew from the reception of Staël's 'De l'Allemagne', making generalizations about a society could easily be the source of controversial scrutiny. She refused to expose herself to the damaging effect this publication could have for her in her adoptive country. The availability of Salm's correspondence in an on line database has made possible a detailed analysis of her motivations and anxieties. A completed Des Allemands would have undoubtedly differed from Germaine de Staël's De l'Allemagne in scope and method, and the article concludes that its existence might have enabled Salm to join Staël among the female pioneers who brought German culture to the attention of the French in the early nineteenth century.
Au xviii e siècle émergea graduellement ce qu’on appelle aujourd’hui la littérature de jeunesse, c’est-à-dire une littérature expressément conçue pour un public d’enfants et d’adolescents des deux ...sexes. Il s’agissait, dans ces ouvrages, de donner à ces lecteurs et lectrices encore marginaux des lectures qui répondent à leurs besoins d’instruction et d’éducation. Au sein de ce public en voie de formation, les jeunes filles ne furent pas oubliées, conséquence logique d’une critique générale de...
Au dix-huitième siècle se développa l’opinion — défendue dès la fin du siècle précédent par Fénelon et madame de Maintenon — que les filles méritaient une éducation plus étendue que celle qu’elles ...avaient reçue jusqu’alors. Selon les historiennes de l’adolescence féminine Paule Constant et Yvonne Kniehbieler, cette conscience accrue des besoins éducatifs des filles (de l’élite en particulier) s’explique par l’allongement de la période entre la puberté et l’état adulte. Une meilleure « gestion...
