ABSTRACT
In this chapter the conclusion to the monograph Marie Jeanne Riccoboni’s Epistolary Feminism: Fact, Fiction, and Voice Marijn S. Kaplan identifies the central importance of what she terms “epistolary feminism” in Riccoboni’s work, epistolarity used to promote proto-feminism. Having taken the preview to Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd published in the Mercure de France (1757) as its source and juxtaposed the author’s subsequent epistolary fiction and correspondence, Kaplan summarizes how the author progressively develops her theory for the empowerment of women and the female voice in eighteenth-century patriarchal France.
Based on this, Kaplan concludes that Riccoboni should be considered one of the major female and feminist contributors to the French Enlightenment.
