Research Catalog

Title

Infertility and the novels of Sophie Cottin / Michael J. Call.

Author

Call, Michael J.

Publication

Newark : University of Delaware Press ; London ; Cranbury, NJ : Associated University Presses, c2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

167 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

• "Sophie Cottin was a barren woman. Her correspondence reveals that she suffered from persistent amenorrhea - the absence of menstruation - throughout almost all of her mature life. Married in 1789 at the age of nineteen, she found herself widowed and childless four years later. As a result of many factors, among them the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, late eighteenth-century France had become a fiercely pronatalistic culture; women were valorized essentially through their fertility, that is, through maternal production. Having openly espoused Rousseau's ideas on the proper social roles for women, Cottin understood well that there was little use for barren women like herself in post-revolutionary French culture.
• Caught between the ideological positions she had embraced and the reality of her sterility, she cast about for alternatives. In the early years of her widowhood, she took up writing in a serious way, admitting that she found writing therapeutic. Her story, little known to modern readers on either side of the Atlantic, may nevertheless be a perfect case study of a woman's "coming to writing" in post-revolutionary France. This book explores the crucial connections between her self-perceived "defectiveness" and her literary production."--Jacket.

Subject

• Cottin, Madame 1770-1807 > Criticism and interpretation
• Infertility, Female, in literature

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-165) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. The Early Life of Sophie Cottin -- 2. Infertility and Plenitude in Claire d'Albe -- 3. Back in Step with Jean-Jacques: Malvina -- 4. The Anger of Amelie Mansfield -- 5. Mathilde and the Miracle of Bagneres -- 6. Filial Devotion in Elisabeth.

ISBN

0874138078 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2002072462

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library