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.
Category:Enlightenment