Women and Work in the Eighteenth-century Francosphere : History, Art, Culture

This book focuses on the interface between women and work and/or women at work, across the eighteenth-century French-speaking world, primarily in text (private, historical, and literary), but also in art. In this way, contributors confront the difficulty of defining work in gendered terms; a return to the simplistic binary underscores the value of isolating work by women and why this is important in both eighteenth- and twenty-first-century contexts; and it identifies underlying, recurrent themes which underpin the book’s chapters and subsections, many of which have striking echoes in the modern world. While in dialogue with recent work in this field, the specific moments, memoirs, and narratives selected for inclusion in this book are engaging and exciting. Essays comprise original studies with a number or entirely new focuses, which will contribute fresh perspectives to current scholarship on the history, social history, culture, art history, and literature of the 18th-century Francosphere.