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  • The Fiction of Enlightenment: Women of Reason in the French Eighteenth Century
  • Edward Ousselin
The Fiction of Enlightenment: Women of Reason in the French Eighteenth Century. By Heidi Bostic. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2010. 270 pp. Hb $59.50.

At first glance, the opening — and central — argument of The Fiction of Enlightenment should, in this day and age, be uncontroversial: ‘This book argues that women writers of the French eighteenth century claimed reason and contributed to the Enlightenment’ (p. 17). For one thing, several novels written by the authors whom Heidi Bostic considers — Françoise de Graffigny, Marie Jeanne Riccoboni, and Isabelle de Charrière — have been re-edited as part of the MLA Texts and Translations series, and are widely used in undergraduate French literature courses. For another, as Bostic points out: ‘Over the past two decades, interest in early modern [End Page 532] women writers has increased dramatically’ (p. 20). With new editions and renewed critical insights, could the works of Graffigny, Riccoboni, and Charrière still be characterized as languishing in the margins of Enlightenment studies? And yet, Bostic puts forth a compelling argument, bolstered by several relevant examples, that ‘too much recent scholarship on eighteenth-century women characterizes them as little more than muse, helpmeet, or hostess supporting men’s undertaking of the serious work of Enlightenment’ (p. 21). However, this fascinating study does much more than ask readers to re-evaluate the contributions of relatively neglected female authors, thereby broadening the eighteenth-century canon. Bostic suggests that a reappraisal of that multifaceted Enlightenment keyword ‘reason’ from a feminist perspective (or, conversely, a renewed recognition that modern feminism originated within the broader Enlightenment project) could help not only to redefine our understanding of the Enlightenment as an ongoing, unfinished enterprise that ‘continues to offer resources to feminism’ (p. 27), but also to transcend the conceptual dead end to which the post-modernist caricature of a hegemonic, ‘phallogocentric’, or narrowly rationalistic, Enlightenment has led. Each of the three main chapters of The Fiction of Enlightenment is organized around a literary motif that characterizes the individual contribution of each author: the mask, for Graffigny’s representation of gender roles as masquerade; the cup, for Riccoboni’s advocacy of ‘reason as remedy’ for social and interpersonal ills; and the book, for Charrière’s experience-based approach to philosophical reason. As Bostic emphasizes, the three authors ‘were not truly in dialogue with one another, either personally or through their works’ (p. 201). This did not prevent them from arriving at similar intellectual methods and conclusions, such as the critique of ‘a certain kind of dogmatic, rationalist philosopher’ (p. 199). Bostic’s analyses amply demonstrate that women writers of the eighteenth century did not just create texts designed to amuse and entertain readers. Her point that these writers ‘must be taken seriously as intellectual contributors to Enlightenment’ (p. 214) is well taken. Combining recent theoretical approaches with well-grounded historical research, Bostic has produced an excellent contribution to eighteenth-century literary studies and to the perennially renewed (and justly so) debate over ‘what is Enlightenment’. Instead of a narrow critique that offers no new avenues for rational thought, her book exemplifies what literary criticism at its best can achieve, in this case a different and more productive approach to understanding the imperfect but still dynamic legacy of the Enlightenment.

Edward Ousselin
Western Washington University
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