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

The subject of this remarkable and original study is 'aging and aged women of the French eighteenth century' and 'the relation of female aging to appearance, respectability, sexuality, health, power and mortality' (pp. 1, 3). The frontispiece represents an engraving of an elderly Françoise de Graffigny, one of the few prominent women of the dying years of the Ancien Régime, and author of the Lettres d'une Péruvienne of 1747. Joan Hinde Stewart devotes much of her discussion to such women, who also included Marie Du Deffand, Marie Riccoboni, who published a gently parodic sequel to Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne, and Isabelle de Charrière, all of whom loved and were loved by much younger men. Her main focus is on how women aged at this time, how aging women were perceived by a male-centred society, and how female writers perceived themselves. Ironically, the image of female old age in the aforementioned frontispiece is a not unattractive one, displaying none of the traits of ugliness, such as sagging, drooping flesh, castigated by Diderot, who is quoted at length on the subject. This contrast raises the question of perception that is central to Stewart's approach and which is usefully explored via women's letters, male studies of female aging, and male-authored fairy tales and literary texts, most notably Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses, in addition to the medical and scientific literature of this Age of Enlightenment. Thus, the complexity of ways in which definitions of age-related concepts such as middle age and the menopause evolved throughout the century is addressed by means of popular as well as high-cultural and scientific models. As Joan Dejean points out in her Foreword, one is most struck by the near invisibility of older women in the official discourse of the period, while accounts in their private correspondence of romantic liaisons often painted quite a different picture of mature female sexuality. Such accounts help to enliven the discussion with anecdotes that are as entertaining as they are revealing. Stewart's polemic in praise of 'mature passion' might have adopted a more earnest approach, and doubtless some of the conclusions she draws are sober ones with regard to negative perceptions of older women. Nevertheless, she pursues her argument with a lightness of touch that makes this book both enjoyable and instructive. Indeed, the title of the book and a number of the chapter titles —'Fifteen Minutes to Fifty', 'What Time Is It?', 'Word Salad'— reflect a witticism of style that is pleasing to find in an academic study of such breadth and depth.