Sexual Politics on Stage: Sincerity, Gender, and Revolution in the Comedies of Isabelle de Charrière

In her comedies of the late 1780s and early 1790s, Isabelle de Charrière dared to question influential eighteenth-century thinkers and politicians such as Rousseau and Robespierre. She denounced their politically motivated notions of sincerity and corruption, of femininity and class, albeit in subtle, mediated, and often quite subversive ways. Eager to participate in the public debates of her day, she condemned deviousness and dishonesty not solely in aristocratic salon society but in all social classes and political camps. She fought narrow gender stereotypes and prejudice against female learning, she portrayed the dependent and oppressive nature of women's domestic lives, and she set out to teach girls survival skills in a misogynous world. Despite increasing hostility and adversity, Charrière was able to challenge dominant theories on society, education, and gender, if necessary resorting to oblique and indirect methods to advance her progressive ideas.