Workshops: Stories

Workshop 9: Transforming the Myth of
Marriage in Early Modern France

Conveners:

• Nancy Frelick, University of British Columbia
• Claire L. Carlin, French, University of Victoria
• Marianne Legault, French, University of British Columbia
• Colette H. Winn, French, Washington University

We explored with the workshop participants several versions of the story of marriage for early modern women in France. The first of two discussion periods focused on how male professionals (doctors, lawyers, journalists), wrote about women's roles as wives. When physicians talk about the necessity of women's sexual pleasure in order for conception to occur, or as compensation for the rigors of pregnancy and childbirth, to what extent is their discourse liberating for women? When a lawyer succeeds in defending a woman against a charge of adultery, to what extent is the accused woman the victor? What happens to her story when it is retold by journalists and transformed into mass market entertainment? Can traditional notions of the subservient wife be transformed when women are not the authors of their own stories?