This book focuses on the interface between women and work and/or women at work, across the eighteenth-century French-speaking world, primarily in text (private, historical, and literary), but also in art. While contributors confront the difficulty of defining work in gendered terms, a return to the simplistic binary underscores the value of isolating work by women and reveals why this is important in both eighteenth- and twenty-first-century contexts. Did these women retain agency through their work? Essays identify underlying, recurrent themes including networking and community, which underpin the book’s chapters and subsections, many of which have striking echoes in the modern world. While in dialogue with recent work in this field, the specific moments, memoirs, and narratives selected for inclusion in this book are surprising and engaging. Essays comprise original studies, which will contribute fresh perspectives to current scholarship on the history, social history, culture, art history, and literature of the eighteenth-century Francosphere.
