Conduct Books for Girls in Enlightenment France by Nadine Bérenguier (review)

Talavera déconstruit l’image des fillettes dans la publicité, les illustrations et le voyeurisme de l’iconographie pornographique qu’on retrouve jusque dans les baby dolls, les dessins et les jouets. Ahmed Haderbache et Ana Monleón analysent la représentation féminine au cinéma tandis que Marta Segarra passe en revue certains films réalisés par des femmes. C’est avec une étude de l’œuvre artistique, enfin reconnue, de Niki de Saint-Phalle que Domingo Pujante González clôture cet excellent ouvrage. Portland State University (OR) Claudine Fisher BÉRENGUIER, NADINE. Conduct Books for Girls in Enlightenment France. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. ISBN 978-0-75466-875-6. Pp. x + 283. $104.95. This well-organized and carefully argued book frames its analysis by explaining that education was a chief concern of the Enlightenment, given the era’s emphasis on the use of reason and the acquisition of knowledge. There was a broad consensus that the education available to women was inadequate; conduct books responded to this concern by offering “moral and social education [for] girls” (2). Conduct books “were not written about girls but for them,” making these works unique (3). The turn to conduct books is part of a growing critical trend focusing on texts and other artifacts previously unrecognized as worthy of careful study. Bérenguier draws upon an impressive range of scholarship; the excellent bibliography is divided into sections (distinguishing primary from secondary texts, for example) for maximum usefulness. All French quotations are given in the original plus in English translation, enhancing the book’s accessibility. The book’s thirteen main chapters are divided into three parts: “Textual Strategies,” “Topoi,” and “Reception.” Focal authors include Anne-Thérèse de Lambert, Madeleine de Puisieux, Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont, Louise d’Épinay, Joseph Reyre, and Pierre-Louis Roederer. Parts one and two analyze the conduct books thematically in various combinations, while part three treats them individually. Thus, readers gain a general understanding of tendencies common to conduct books as well as a clear sense of the individual works. Part one examines the narrative forms prevalent in conduct books as well as prefatory material (drawing upon Gérard Genette’s important work on ‘paratexts ’), highlighting a paradoxical situation: girls were encouraged to read and become knowledgeable, but authors and other authorities realized that too much knowledge could destroy girls’ innocence. Conduct books often used a dialogic form, mimicking conversations between a girl and her mentor. The texts, meant to continue providing education to girls in their parents’ absence or even death, had a “testamentary dimension” (32). Part two focuses on the types of behavior that would permit upper-class girls to fulfill their future roles in their families and in the wider society. An overarching topic that frames the conduct books is motherhood, including a mother’s role in her daughter’s education and, conversely , cases of “maternal shortcomings” (67). The books were meant to ease a girl’s transition from the protected space of the home to the wider social sphere. Bérenguier discusses the delicate balance between too little knowledge and too much, which could earn a girl the pejorative title of femme savante (90–96). Perhaps no subject was more important than marriage, and Bérenguier devotes a chapter to this topic. Reviews 1255 Part three, the longest one, focuses on the reception of conduct books. The major sources for this information are reviews from the periodical press. Bérenguier draws here upon the rich body of scholarship represented by figures such as Daniel Mornet and Roger Chartier. After providing a superb survey of eighteenth-century periodicals (111–20), she demonstrates how a network of journalists shaped public reception of conduct books and attitudes toward their authors. Some fascinating trends emerge, including the differing fortunes of male and female authors (for example, Lambert did not want to be published) and the contrasting critical responses to separate editions of the same work (for example, d’Épinay’s Conversations d’Émilie). Bérenguier shows the lack of necessary correlation between the response of professional critics and that of the general readership (143). This part of the book truly astonishes with...