Women Performing Music: Staging a Social Protest

Women's musical contributions have, throughout history, consistently been either downplayed or forgotten. The widespread cultural conviction that a woman's musical sensibility is inherently immoral became particularly problematic in late eighteenth-century France. The role ofmusic in Isabelle de Charrière's Caliste and Germaine de Staël's Corinne has been similarly downplayed. I foreground the textual evidence that these authors were aware that music, of all the arts, posed a particular problem for women. By creating the first musical and moral heroines in French literature, Charrière and Staël forge a positive role model for women who seek to enter musical fields. By downplaying the heroines' musical talents, we significantly detract from the efficacy of the authors' social critique.