Hesse, Carla. The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern

Hesse, Carla. ''The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern. ''Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Carla Hesse’s thoroughly researched examination of French women and their struggle for equality posits that women’s literature produced in the aftermath of the French Revolution suggests the creation of a “modern” French women within the constraints of the time. While the French Revolution initially promised liberty, equality, and fraternity for all, the rise of Napoleon and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy chipped away at many of the rights women had been granted. Hesse’s research and exploration of literary theory is admirable, but ultimately filled with too many contradictions to create a truly convincing argument.

The core of Hesse’s argument is that the process of “othering” women does not necessarily strip them of agency or power. Hesse argues that she has changed the dynamic of the “other” via her research, proving that women, as the “other,” can still “acquire the capacity for self-constitution and for participation in public reasoning” (pg. xii). In the case of French women, this was accomplished by participating in the literary world: “women’s relationship to literacy, publishing, and authorship are crucial to their becoming modern selves” (pg. xii). Although women’s literary achievements is the backbone of Hesse’s work, it is odd that she begins by discussing the ways in which the shift from oral to written record stripped women of their power. Women’s language was either unrefined or excessively refined, and both held power over their male counterparts. Hesse points in particular to the women of the marketplace, such as the fishwives, whose coarse language and booming voices held court over the other vendors. This transition from oral culture to a culture of literacy therefore leaves women at a disadvantage, as the power of their voice is essentially taken away from them.

Hesse looks at the ways women adapted to this new emphasis on the written word and their attempts to break into the French literary world. Commercial print opened up new opportunities for writers to reach a larger audience, but strict literary laws enforced by the Napoleonic Code curtailed many a woman’s efforts. A female writer’s work, by law, belonged to her husband. Women writers had no way around this law, and some women even had their own original works reprinted under their husband’s name. Hesse examines the works of women such as Louise de Kérlio-Robert and Isabelle de Charrière, gifted novelists that challenged the French Republican ideals of what it meant to be a wife, mother, and female citizen of France. de Kérlio-Robert in particular is a fascinating example of how French women methodically turned against the figure of the female monarch, a role that had traditionally been their only means of power. Previous female monarchs, such as Catherine de Medici, had been revered for the terrifying power they had wielded, but by contrast Marie Antoinette came to symbolize the grotesque mother figure that must be rebelled against. Yet even though female authors contributed to the Enlightenment discourse on the ideals of the Republic, they had no ownership over these ideas. The French laws regarding women-penned literary works were extremely prohibitive, and it is difficult to argue that these women held much power in intellectual circles when their very words could be changed and warped without their permission.

Hesse writes that her theory on the exclusion of women from active citizenship is not due to citizenship being inherently masculine, but that women were not thought of has capable of reason or self-governance. Hesse’s perceived triumph of women in this period is due to their efforts to be seen as competent members of the Republic. Hesse believes that these women were successful, but it is hard to agree with that assessment when the French civil code was not changed until 1965. These women may have succeeded in publishing their works but I believe it is too far to suggest that their male counterparts felt these women to be true equals. If they had, it would not have taken until 1965 to change their absurd laws. At almost every stage of the Enlightenment women were excluded. The divide between the female sphere and the male sphere was stark and immobile, and although Hesse struggles to give her subjects agency, they were still the “other,” with little or no control over their own rights.