Women and the Politics of Self-Representation in Seventeenth-Century France

Modern Language Review, The, Oct, 2002 by Veronique Desnain

Women and the Politics of Self-Representation in Seventeenth-Century France. By PATRICIA FRANCIS CHOLAKIAN. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2000. 219 pp. 28 [pounds sterling].

The Grand Siecle is currently receiving a lot of attention from feminist scholars. Patricia Cholakian's study joins a number of recent publications examining the role of women in seventeenth-century French literature with the avowed aim of 'bridg[ing] the gap between early modern scholarship and feminist theory' (p. 10). Unlike studies dealing with male writers' perceptions of women, this book looks at autobiographical narratives by women and the way they are used to resist repressive ideologies of gender. It raises issues concerning the genre and women writers' strategies and innovations, as well as offering direct testimonies of the frustrations experienced by women in seventeenth-century society. Those frustrations concern the place of women in the political sphere (Marguerite de Valois and Mademoiselle de Montpensier's thwarted ambitions), but are also the product of the dependence on men imposed by marriage.

Cholakian uses analyses of autobiography as a genre to highlight the specific difficulties encountered by women trying to create an independent self in a patriarchal, and most importantly, patrilineal society. The chapter on Mademoiselle de Montpensier and her attempts to create a 'house' descended from her maternal ancestors might have benefited from a mention of Irigaray's theory on the importance of female genealogies in the formation of the 'gendered self'. The author does insist, however, on the 'desexualization' operated by the female autobiographers as a response to the focus on sexual exploits and physical appearance used by men both to demonize and to idealize them (Marguerite's case is especially enlightening in presenting and showing the negative impact of both tendencies).

The chapter on Jeanne Guyon is particularly interesting in its presentation of religious practice and writing as an act of resistance. Fascinating in its ambiguity (is religion the true motive or a means to denounce women's oppression under cover of one of the few forms of written expression considered suitable for women?), the religious autobiography enables the writer to reveal details of her private life which would normally be regarded as unsuitable for publication. Ironically, the chapter on the transvestite Abbe de Choisy offers some of the most interesting insights into both the construction of womanhood as spectacle and the acceptance of gender roles: Choisy acknowledges the obstacles that his transvestism put in the way of his personal advancement at court but does not seem to challenge the 'rightfulness' of such discrimination. None the less, the author rightly points out that Choisy's experiences cannot be construed as female and that they obliterate, to a large extent, the biological aspects of la condition feminine.

Finally, Cholakian insists on the role of the editors, which seems at times to blur the boundaries between biography and autobiography. By doing so, not only does she deal with issues of authenticity but she also draws attention to the question of the education of women, which was, together with the suitability of women for political power, at the heart of the ongoing debate on la condition feminine for most of the century.

VERONIQUE DESNAIN UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH