Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters

by Dena Goodman

Over the course of the eighteenth century, increasing numbers of French women, from the wives and daughters of artisans and merchants to countesses and queens, became writers-not authors, and not mere signers of names, but writers of letters. Taking as her inspiration a portrait of an unknown woman writing a letter to her children by French painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Dena Goodman challenges the deep-seated association of women with love letters and proposes a counternarrative of young women struggling with the challenges of the modern world through the mediation of writing. In Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters, Goodman enters the lives and world of these women, drawing on their letters, the cultural history of language and education, and the material culture of letter writing inkstands, desks, and writing paper. Goodman follows the lives of elite women from childhood through their education in traditional convents and modern private schools and into the shops and interior spaces in which epistolary furnishings and furniture were made for, sold to, and used by women who took pen in hand. Stationers set up fashionable shops, merchants developed lines of small writing desks, and the furnishings and floor plans of homes changed to accommodate women's needs. It was as writers and consumers that women entered not only shops but also the modern world that was taking shape in Paris and other cities. Although many women, from major novelists, painters, and educators to schoolgirls and their mothers as well as Parisian tourists and other shoppers, come to life in this book, Goodman focuses on four bodies of epistolary work by little-known the letters of Genevieve de Malboissiére, Manon Phlipon, Catherine de Saint-Pierre, and Sophie Silvestre. These letters allow Goodman to explore how particular girls of different social positions came to womanhood through letter writing. She shows how letter writing expanded women's horizons even as it deepened their ability to reflect on themselves. The analysis of more than one hundred illustrations―from paintings by major Dutch and French artists to inkstands and writing desks, stationers' trade cards, and manuscript letters on decorated paper―is integral to Goodman's argument.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

408 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2009

Reviews

[Bridget Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much that's interesting - really, really interesting - about the lives of middle- and upper-class 18th century women in France, from portraiture to inkwells. The real lives of real women, revealed in letters, are both heroic and heartbreaking. The revelation that all writing is, well, WRITING is heartening and even heart-warming.

[Linda Robinson]

This is a scholarly book. While I usually enjoy scholarly books, too, I'm just not that interested in 18th century French women and high fashion. But the paper this book is printed on...ooh la la! You could make a christening gown from it.

[Feli Fek · Rating 5 out of 5]

best boook

[Alanna Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars

"For much as pedagogues and men of letters tried to contain women's writing materially and morally by limiting it to the small format of letter paper and the limited readership of the letter's addressee, in teaching and encouraging women to write letters, they authorized them to write. And the power of writing can never be contained."

[dejah_thoris · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I found this amazing book. If you love letter writing, the 18th Century, or women's studies, this an excellent analysis of the practice of letter writing and how it impacted our eventual growth into Enlightened individuals. Goodman analyzes everything from the depiction of women writing letters in paintings to the production and circulation of their secretaires through the new and used furniture market with a focus on four specific women's epistolary practices. There you will learn how women were taught to write, what they were taught to write, and how they learned to extract and teach others as well as themselves through their letters. Although this is an academic text, Goodman writes in an accessible style without a strong feminist bias despite using a gender studies lens to emphasize women's limited but growing autonomy within their sphere. Highly recommended to anyone who adores letter writing.