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  • Vers un nouveau mode de relations entre les sexes: six correspondances de femmes des Lumières by Jürgen Siess
  • John T. Booker
Siess, Jürgen. Vers un nouveau mode de relations entre les sexes: six correspondances de femmes des Lumières. Garnier, 2017. ISBN 978-2-406-05766-6. Pp. 176.

In eighteenth-century Europe, when equality between the sexes, even among the cultural elite, was no more than a distant dream, what might a woman have hoped to gain by entering into correspondence with a man? In doing so, what sort of balance might she have tried to strike between "échange intellectuel" and "liens affectifs" (8)? And to what extent and on what terms might the man in question have been willing to reciprocate? Those are the broad questions that Siess explores by looking at six individual cases. The first is that of Émilie du Châtelet, a rare woman at the time to enjoy recognition in scientific circles, who exchanged letters with Maupertuis before initiating a more sustained correspondence with Saint-Lambert; in the latter, Siess notes, she sought to maintain "une certaine indépendance, une liberté de mouvement—à l'égard de l'amant pour ses activités intellectuelles, à l'égard du mari pour sa relation amoureuse" (41). The letters of Julie de Lespinasse,"la grande salonnière des Lumières" (43), to le comte de Guibert and then to Condorcet reveal a woman intent on forging "de nouveaux rapports [...] qui permettent à la femme de jouer un rôle actif sur le plan affectif et le plan intellectuel à la fois" (65). In the correspondence of Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni with David Garrick, English comédien and author, and with Robert Liston, Scottish diplomat, Siess sees the sort of mise en question of accepted relationships between men and women depicted in her novel Lettres de mistress Fanni Butlerd. In contrast to those three women, Marianne de La Tour had no public reputation when she wrote to Rousseau after reading La nouvelle Héloïse. Through their subsequent "échange ludique" (103), initially hesitant and wary on Rousseau's part, Siess traces "le souhait d'une femme cultivée et douée pour la littérature d'être reconnue par l'auteur en vue, faisant ainsi entendre que la femme peut être l'égale de l'homme" (108). The case of Isabelle de Zuylen (later Isabelle de Charrière, after marrying) is striking in that she initiated correspondences first with the much older baron Constant d'Hermenches and later with the much younger Benjamin Constant (before the latter became involved with Mme de Staël). If the first relationship naturally provided an "éducation sentimentale et sociale" (117), in the second she herself came to play the role of spiritual mentor. The final correspondence examined by Siess, between Éléonore de Sabran and Stanislas de Boufflers, was remarkably devoid of drama or tension and stands as a model of what an epistolary relationship between a woman and man at the time might have been, but rarely was in reality: one marked from the start by mutual affection and respect. Siess's approach can seem a bit thesis-like at times, with its perfunctory review of existing criticism, explicit statements of intentions, and eventual summaries. But the material he presents is quite interesting and his overall treatment intelligent and readable. [End Page 219]

John T. Booker
University of Kansas
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