Women of Sensibility or Reason (review)

70 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION P.L-M. Fein. Women of Sensibility or Reason. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 1987. ? + 165pp. $US18.00. The title of this study, Women of Sensibility or Reason, promising a rich contribution to feminist literature, is well qualified by its subtitle, "The function of the feminine characters in the novels of Marivaux, Diderot, Crébillon fils, Duelos and Laclos," which accurately reflects the diachronic approach the author has chosen for his overview of this broad subject. Indeed, Patrick Fein's dense book does not limit itself to women's role in narrative structures but expands to survey vast horizons. It includes a mine of information relating to women's social, political, and judicial status throughout the ages. His commentary , reaching back to the social position of women in the "Courts of Love," also draws on snippets of feminist critics' views such as those of Kate Milien and Nancy K. Miller whose preoccupation with eighteenth-century novels affirms the importance of such works in the historical development of feminism. Nevertheless, the intention of Fein's book is not to add another chapter to the history of feminism, but rather to analyse a number of major French eighteenth-century novelists from his own perspective of the women characters. The following quotation from the introduction summarizes Fein's basic hypothesis : "If women have the importance in French society of the eighteenth century that is usually attributed to them, then a study of their importance in the structure of novels of the period should bring out that primacy." As he points out, the study by critics such as Raymond Picard of women's role in the literary salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has demonstrated their impact on the intellectual development of French élite society. It is a major further step, however, to presume that fiction can form a reliable basis for a sociological evaluation. Fein provides no justification for this supposition nor does he follow explicit and established socio-political methodology. The first section of the study deals with the French social and literary background of the eighteenth century. It consists of a rich and perceptive variety of detail which provides the reader with a comprehensive view of the paradoxical situation of women in French society, where their apparent supremacy in polite society was undermined by political and economic inequality. There are useful sources for additional reading on the subject. The choice of fiction in the second and third parts, which make up the central portion of the book, is based on a traditional division of the eighteenth-century French novel into two well-established major ideological directions, one founded on sentiment and the other on reason. Unfortunately, as has been realized for several decades now, this division is artificial, since novels contain both elements and the resulting categorization is arbitrary. In the second part of the book Fein analyses the function of women characters in the novel of sensibility as exemplified by Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne and Diderot's La Religieuse. The chapter on Marivaux focuses on "self-discovery and social discovery " of Marianne within a framework of pathetic elements—illegitimacy, REVIEWS 71 lechery, family greed, and infidelity—associated with the plots of many romans de sensibilité of the period. Here Fein couples the depiction of "thoughts and feelings and experience of a woman of the eighteenth century" with Marianne's function as "spokeswoman for the author" in the moralistic digressions. A sociopsychological interpretation of La Religieuse with an emphasis on Diderot's criticism of the unjust position of women in society fills the main section of the chapter on Diderot. The remaining pages of part two discuss the moral question of fidelity raised by Diderot's Contes, and the significance of Diderot's choice of a woman narrator in Jacques lefataliste to illustrate the feminine perspective . After Fein's cursory analysis of these complex questions, it is not clear what conclusion the reader should draw. Soon after informing us that Diderot's choice of narrator is an aspect of his feminism, Fein quotes him in such a way as to suggest a complete lack of feminism in his views. The paradox remains unresolved to...