Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters

"From paintings and novels through paper, ink, and exquisite desks to the words of women who poured their hearts out to each other, Dena Goodman takes us on a dazzling tour of the world of eighteenth-century female letter-writers. Goodman makes a convincing case that these French women did not just record their thoughts on paper; they invented their very selves through the rituals and pleasures of correspondence." -- Sarah Maza, Jane Long Professor of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University "Reading Dena Goodman's creative exploration of French culture and gender history is always a treat. In Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters, Goodman turns her attention to the iconic Enlightenment practice of letter writing and plunges deep into the intimate material details of how four particular women in eighteenth-century France experienced the culture of reading and writing letters. Interpreting a broad variety of cultural artifacts from portraits of female letter writers to letter-writing manuals, inkwells, stationery, and writing desks, Goodman reveals a detailed picture of how female letter writers participated in both the burgeoning material and consumer culture of eighteenth-century France and the domestic sphere of family and friendship. Engaging an important set of questions in both cultural studies and feminist historiography about subjectivity, empowerment, and writing, Goodman argues that women experienced writing as an activity that both provided an autonomous space for self-reflection and control and a connected space in which they enacted identities as mothers, daughters, and female friends." -- Jennifer Jones, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey "This wonderful book is essential reading for anyone interested in women and the Enlightenment. Dena Goodman brings together diverse areas of inquiry to focus on the issue of letter writing and its role in the formation of a woman's sense of self in eighteenth-century France. Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters, which is based on truly impressive original research, is written in an elegant, accessible style." -- Mary Sheriff, W. R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Art History, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "We might expect a book on girls and young women writing letters to tell us about their education and the instruction given by their mothers, but Dena Goodman takes us to many more surprising places too: to the shops where inkstands, fine Dutch paper, and fashionable writing desks were sold, to female painters choosing how to depict women writing letters, and ultimately to the hard-won sense of self gained in the act of pressing quill to paper. Goodman recaptures a world we have forgotten and recovers aspects of it we never knew." -- Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, UCLA, author of Inventing Human Rights

Dena Goodman is Lila Miller Collegiate Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment and Criticism in Action: Enlightenment Experiments in Political Writing, both from Cornell, and the editor or coeditor of several other books including, most recently, Furnishing the Eighteenth Century.