ABSTRACT
The querelles des femmes refer to a centuries-old intellectual and rhetorical game in which elite men and women argued over whether or not females could learn, reason, and contribute to the intellectual culture of the era. As a feminist and scholar, Hilda Smith has been involved in both the historical and contemporary versions of the querelles des femmes. The baron de Breteuil, Du Châtelet's father, seems to have been pleased to have an unusually bright daughter and permitted her more education than was normally given to a courtier's little girl. Though, Du Châtelet made no specific mention in her writings of the arguments over French society's cultural premises about the proper behavior and role of its women. In 1730, when Du Châtelet first read John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, it was a small but cosmopolitan world of elite, learned men. Du Châtelet's letters to Maupertuis from February 1738 to March 1739 show the gradual evolution of her thought.
