The Enlightenment of Age. Women, Letters and Growing Old in Eighteenth-Century France (review)

The result of long-lasting research efforts and meticulous close readings, Joan Hinde Stewart's monograph is devoted to the exploration of the fate of aging and elderly women in eighteenth-century France, focusing on the section of society that should, according to the perception at the time, leave said society's limelight once their prime begins its decline. Within the framework of this study, the author aims to "explore the disjuncture between the personal and the public, between realities and perceptions, between description and prescription" (1).

Although this study provides interesting takes on the comportment of aging women, mostly both eminent and prominent members of literary France, the vigor of its insights seems occasionally obscured by rather associative reasoning. Thus, inverting the epochal designation "The Age of Enlightenment," the title "The Enlightenment of Age" seems cryptic; it calls for the explanatory precision "Women, Letters and Growing Old in Eighteenth-Century France" in the subtitle, and ultimately leaves its readers to start their perusal of the subsequent ten chapters with quite a mouthful. The first chapter takes the reader through the writings of Anne Thérèse de Lambert and her Traité de la vieillesse, highlighting the coexistence of de Lambert's "sinewy personality" and "her rigidly moralistic work" which sanctioned the societal expectations of elderly women (18). This aspect is subsequently complemented by an investigation of eighteenth-century literature on longevity, composed mostly by male writers who conclude that, in old age, man attains a status of venerability while "there is something horrible about [woman's] very existence once her sexual usefulness is ended" (65).

The women at the center of Stewart's attention throughout the study are for the most part the most eminent French women writers of the time, but now and again the histories of these non-fictional aging women and the stories of fictional aging women blend almost imperceptibly: retracing the genesis of La Belle et la Bête from Walt Disney via Perrault to Le Prince de Beaumont and de Villeneuve's version, the chapter "Old Fairies" for example juxtaposes the fate of the two women writers, de Beaumont and de Villeneuve, and the fate of their (elderly) female characters to an extent which seems to suggest a potential correspondence between the fictional females and their non-fictional creator. Proportionally, Stewart's corpus however consists first and foremost of the epistolary relations between corresponding couples of an aging woman and a man far her junior; she considers Graffigny and Devaux, Du Deffand and Walpole, Riccoboni and Liston, de Charrière and Constant, and also the occasional threat posed by the intrusion of another (younger) women (as did the arrival of Madame de Staël in the case of de Charrière). Supplemented to the readings of these correspondences are the epistolary exchanges on fictional women, particularly the disagreement between Du Deffand and Walpole on account of Claude Crébillon's novels and Riccoboni's and Laclos's correspondence on Les Liaisons dangereuses. In this latter case, the author argues with Pomeau in favor of Laclos' imitation of Riccoboni's Ernestine; eventually, she even goes one step further in this association, claiming that Riccoboni was likely to have been incensed at Laclos' female characters because she might ultimately have sensed a potential resemblance to Mme de Rosemonde. Occurring on several occasions, this juxtaposition of biographical and literary plots as well as a range of associative comments (one wonders about the significance of Riccoboni and Valmont sharing a date of death) seem to be taken slightly too far, tainting the fascinating perspectives the study opens up. Yet, the wealth of material and of close readings in this study helps to draw attention to and shed new light on an age-old motif.