Dena Goodman

Letter writing for women in pre-Revolutionary France was an important mode of education, self-actualization and self-expression. Unfortunately, although upper-class women were allowed privacy to correspond and express themselves, the patriarchal society still left them very few vocational choices other than marriage and child-rearing. Although women and men were inspired by Rousseau to think of themselves as free beings (for example, able to chose their own mates), women during the period show more were not in fact very free in most respects. show less