ABSTRACT
The narrative of Jodin’s adventures in Warsaw, Dresden and Bordeaux was initially revealed in the twenty-one surviving letters written to her by Diderot between 1765 and 1769. Additional evidence about her life emerges, as we have seen, in the two ‘public letters’ about the French troupe, as well as letters submitted by Jodin and others to Count Moszynski. Her further career in Dresden can be traced in diplomatic letters dealing with both public and private matters. It is striking, in relation to the archival material relating to Jodin’s life and the theatrical world she inhabited, to note the extent to which historical evidence takes the form of letters, symptomatic in many respects of the public/private distinctions of eighteenth-century culture.1 Secret letters ( de ), the means by which Jodin was imprisoned in la Salpetriere, were simultaneously secret from the subject (Jodin) but public to the authorities, and revealed her private life to the police, a public authority. In addition, Jodin’s private letters to Picard and Rochemore were made public, probably without her knowledge and certainly without her concurrence. In any case women had no ‘rights’ to privacy where transgressive behaviour was suspected.2
