USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications
Nature, nurture, and the social order: Imagining lessons and lives for women in Ancien Régime France.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
ISSN
1537-6370
Abstract
Focusing on the work of Choderlos de Laclos, Riballier, Mme d'Épinay, and Mme de Genlis, this article examines the ways in which, during the 1770s and 1780s, women's education and women's social identity were imagined as two related questions. Both questions were shaped by the perceived dictates of nature, tradition, and necessity, yet each was open to debate and re-imagination. In the works of these four writers, we will see not only considerable ambivalence regarding women's social and familial identities, but also a rift between understandings of those identities based on nature and understandings based on social utility or tradition. Moreover, we will see that along with that ambivalence and that discursive rift came a tension between women's importance as wives and mothers, on the one hand, and their autonomy as selves, on the other.
Language
en
Publisher
Berghahn Books Inc.
Recommended Citation
O'Connor, A. (2012). Nature, nurture, and the social order: Imagining lessons and lives for women in Ancien Régime France. French Politics, Culture & Society, 30 (1), 1-22.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
Abstract only. Full-text article is available only through licensed access provided by the publisher. Published in French Politics, Culture & Society, 30 (1), 1-22. DOI: 10.3167/fpcs.2012.300101 Members of the USF System may access the full-text of the article through the authenticated link provided.