Women's words : essay on French singularity /

Ozouf studies the memoirs and personal correspondence of ten French women from the 18th century through the 20th. The book is ambitious, and were it not so frustrating in method, tone, and thesis, it would be genuinely provocative. Despite the valiant efforts of the translator (a comparison between the original and the English version attests to how good the translation is), the reader cannot be sure who is speaking, the author or the literary women. Ozouf goes to great pains to show how women have been inscribed in the "invisible model" men construct for them and how men "sigh with relief" when the feminine author complies with their generic model. But the "essentializing" (her word) penchant she so condemns is precisely what Ozouf herself does. She emplots the women's words in her own ideology, forcing them to validate her theses that the "moderation" of French feminism (contrasted with aggressive Anglo-American feminists) is due to seeing themselves as individuals and not as women and that American feminists stress sexual difference. An endnote in which she changes the original "white males" to "white men" because she "cannot bring [herself] to use the ugly expression 'white males'" is emblematic of the manner in which Ozouf ignores cultural differences: the failure to recognize the cultural and semiotic distances that separate French male (male) and femelle (female) from their English counterparts pervades this book. Not recommended. Y. Jehenson; University of Hartford

In this complicated, difficult, and controversial book, major French historian Ozouf uses the technique of collective biography and the writings of ten female subjects‘Mme du Deffand, Mme de Charrière, Mme Roland, Mme de Staël, Mme de Rémusat, George Sand, Hubertine Auclert, Colette, Simone Weil, and Simone de Beauvoir‘to demonstrate that there is a uniquely French brand of feminism that has been more tolerant of the differences between the sexes than its American counterpart. Going back to the pivotal impact of the French Revolution, Ozouf shows how in the French national tradition, women have "linked up with men's movements and placed their hopes in a global political solution"‘in stark contrast to what she labels "particularist feminism." Specialists in women's history will undoubtedly challenge many of Ozouf's arguments, e.g., her interpretation of the impact of the French Revolution on women's lives. Recommended for specialists in the field.‘Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.