Room to Grow: The Convent in Graffigny, Riccoboni, and Gouges

This article examines fictional portrayals of the eighteenth-century convent in Françoise de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne, Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni’s Histoire de deux jeunes amies, and Olympe de Gouges’s Le couvent ou les voeux forcés. Rather than living in a hidden world of victims and victimizers behind convent walls, female characters in these works speak out against abuses of power and limitations in convents, form alliances with other women, find safe havens, and exercise some measure of autonomy. These works of fiction provide perspective on how women imagined the shortcomings and possibilities of the convent during the eighteenth century.