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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.oxg4p9

>

Where these data come from
“Mais surtout, lisez !” : Women’s reading in Nineteenth-Century France

Abstract

This work aims to explain, from a gender perspective, reading practices of women in the early 19th century France. Until now, the way French women read in those days and their own uses of reading, behind stereotypes and sexist representations, are not really known in cultural history. According to these stereotypes, women read badly, or not seriously, and only “feminine literature”. Based on sixty six women’s personal writings (diaries, autobiographies, letters), this work aims to inverse this focus in order to analyze the women’s point of view on their own practices. Such analysis reveals how gender’s types shape first education and, more generally, social identities. Women have to read, of course, but only that kind of literature that would be acceptable for a « good wife », educated but not scholar, virtuous and pious. However, focusing on personal writings, we show that women were not passive within this social and cultural domination: as a reflexive experience, reading leads them to a wide reformulation of their social identity, which includes a possibility to emancipate by reading and learning.

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