"C'est l'insuffisance de notre être qui fait naître l'amitié": Women's Friendships in the Enlightenment

The study of friendships represented in eighteenth-century French literature offers examples of relationships that display various uses of intersubjectivity. Besides the rich and oft-examined case of Rousseau's Julie and Claire, the friends portrayed by Marivaux, Diderot, Graffigny, Charrière, Laclos, and Roland enact various kinds ofalliances serving plot and affecting reception. Such bonds function both as developmental opportunity and as a life-giving, lifesaving force.