Stolen glances: Women and spectatorship in eighteenth-century French literature
Description
Extensive questioning and exploring of a number of theories about how we receive knowledge characterize the eighteenth century, a period of epistemological revolution. One of the most prominent theories of the time was John Locke's theory of empiricism, which proposed that our knowledge comes from our sensory perception of things in the world. Among the senses sight was accorded a privileged position. This dissertation, an interdisciplinary project that draws on empiricism theory, deals with female spectatorship as it is represented in French Enlightenment novels, aesthetic tracts, and scientific writings. I examine women's gaze as it navigates societal prejudices and comes to occupy a space of importance in four key domains where the gaze is underscored and where women faced restrictions: science, aesthetics, sexuality and worldliness. Feminist historiography and literary studies have tended to oscillate between an emphasis on the subordination and exclusion of women and a countervailing insistence on the achievements of women as agents of social change, literary and artistic production, and scientific discovery. My work argues for a middle position that acknowledges women's agency in these areas, yet does not lose sight of the context of constraint in which it was achieved. I therefore define eighteenth-century women's gaze as a stolen glance My first chapter, entitled 'Of Microscopes and Telescopes: Women's Quest for Knowledge,' explores the scientific gaze, drawing on the writings of Mme Du Chatelet, a leading French translator and interpreter of Newton, and Mme Thiroux d'Arconville, also a scientist and translator. Chapter two, 'An Artist's Perspective: Women's Gaze in the Aesthetic Realm,' considers the aesthetic gaze, focusing on the memoirs of court painter Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, and novels by Mme Riccoboni and Isabelle de Montolieu. Chapter three, 'Coming to Paris: Women's Gaze at the World,' investigates women's worldly gaze in an age preoccupied with social spectatorship through an analysis of novels by Mme de Graffigny and Marivaux. And my last chapter, 'Forbidden Desire: Women's Erotic Gaze,' turns to the erotic realm and studies representations of female spectating in novels by Voltaire, Retif de la Bretonne and the Marquis de Sade