The Philosopher as Tramp and Female in the Writings of Graffigny

Throughout her writings, Françoise de Graffigny explores the material and emotional pressures facing women who, like herself, confront the challenges of financial and social instability. In her plays Cénie (1750) and La Fille d'Aristide (1758), Graffigny blends the potent sentimentality of the popular new comédie-larmoyante with a troubling critique of the opportunities for female economic survival in eighteenth-century France. Like Rameau's nephew, tramp philosophers such as Zilia and Cénie bring added complexity to Enlightenment conceptions of who and what makes a philosophe.