Mail Call: Epistolary Exchanges Explored

Thomas O. Beebee. Epistolary Fiction in Europe, 1500-1850(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Pp. X + 277. $64.95 cloth.

Isabelle de Charrière and Constant d'Hermenches. There Are No Letters Like Yours. The Correspondence of Isabelle de Charrière and Constant d'Hermenches . Translated and with an introduction and annotations by Janet Whatley and Malcolm Whatley (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000). Pp. xxxv + 549. $29.95 cloth.

Kurt Kloocke, ed. Madame de Staël - Charles de Villers - Benjamin Constant: Correspondance . Etablissement du texte, introduction et notes par Kurt Kloocke avec le concours d'un groupe d'étudiants (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993). Pp. 338. $55.80 paper.

Marie-France Silver and Marie-Laure Girou Swiderski, eds., Femmes en toutes lettres: Les épistolières du XVIIIe siècle . SVEC 2000: 4 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000). Pp. xiii + 277. $65.00 paper.

The cleverly sly title, Femmes en toutes lettres, artfully describes Marie-France Silver and Marie-Laure Girou Swiderski's collection of essays analyzing different aspects of authentic correspondences written by women as they negotiate what Béatrice Didier, a contributor to the collection, calls the "the myths of femininity" regulating women's writing (244). The polysemous title hangs between truth and fiction for the expression "femme en toutes lettres," read conventionally, refers to how womanly a woman really is. Another reading, just as literal but taking "letter" as a formal literary structure, can be read as a reference to construction of an identity, fictional or real, through letters. The essays making up Femmes en toutes lettres not only cover women of a diverse cultural and social background on two continents dating from the Régence to the Révolution but also give a variety of "theoretical critical grids" offering a cross-section of "thematical, sociological, psychoanalytical, structural, semiotic, and stylistic readings" (Didier 243). Studies range from those on the correspondence of well-known writers, such as madame de Graffigny, madame d'Epinay, madame de Genlis, madame Roland and madame du Châtelet to lesser or unknown but fascinating letter writers, such as Elisabeth Bégon and Marie Madeleine Hachard de Saint-Stanislas. A useful short biography of the épistolières is included. Following Bernard Bray's opening comments on the types of epistolary exchange, Silver and Swiderski's introduction point out the vast, unexploited, but disappearing resources to be mined in archives in the domain of women's correspondence (1). They also remind the reader of the difficulty of studying women's correspondence due to the politics of publishing, which require well-known correspondents to be viable and, even then, more often than not the letters of the lesser-known correspondents are omitted, erasing exchange in favor of a false solipsism (3). The epistolary collections studied in these articles demonstrate that their authors understood the letter as action (4). Indeed, they exploited the letter form to venture into problematic areas for women, such as science, politics, or religion and it is through exchanges such as these, some of which remain unpublished, that one may glimpse "the full breadth of feminine experience" (4).

Of particular interest is the "letter as laboratory" brought out in multiple studies. Vera Grayson's "Ecrire son identité: la genèse des Lettres d'une Péruvienne" traces the evolution of Graffigny's novel in progress through letters to good friends and her reaction to their advice. Grayson points out that although Graffigny depended on her friends when she was working out her plot, what is most original and controversial in her novel—Aza's infidelity and Zilia's resistance to marriage—was not open for discussion and was gradually left out of her letters (39). Like Graffigny, Charrière works out aspects of her plots through her correspondence. Isabelle Vissière in "La poétique d'Isabelle de Charrière ou la correspondance comme laboratoire d'une oeuvre" examines what literary creation meant for Charrière, who took a hands-on...