Les écrits autobiographiques des femmes russes du 18e siècle rédigés en Français

Résumé En

Whatever the perception of French philosophy by the authors of the autobio¬ graphies with which we propose to deal in this article, the Enlightenment provoked and formed their strategy which consisted in making the shadow supposed to surround the feminine universe disappear. This feminine universe is shown more clearly than in the writings of French authoresses. In the texts of Catherine the great, countess Dashkowa, Mme de Kriidener and the writer of the Note secrète feminine ambition expresses itself more radically than in Western Europe during the same period. Whilst in France a woman could aspire to no more than the rank of queen of a Salon and was excluded from the public stage during the French Revolution, in Russia, the same period saw women making revolutions, taking power, dictating their will and drawing up self-portraits in full conscious¬ ness of their historical role : the first was empress, the second member of both Russian academies and numerous European ones, the third counsellor to Alexan¬ der the 1st. Unlike French female aristocratic memoirs, where a need to provoke passion and awaken masculine desire is often manifest, the quest for masculine love and real or imaginary desires are generally absent from our Russian texts. Women — mothers, daughters or friends — , and not men, become objects of sensibility and affection. Men are left on the margins of life. The idea that passion is women's main occupation, established and maintained in France by authors and authoresses in the 18th century, is hardly relevant here. The Russian authoresses insist on their status as women and their femininity is their defining aspect.