All the Abbé's Women: Power and Misogyny in Seventeenth-Century France, through the Writings of Abbé d'Aubignac

Abstract

The image of François Hédelin as a tightrope walker is an amusing one, given the abbé's reputation as a stern and inflexible dramatic theoretician in seventeenth-century France. Nevertheless, it is this comparison that accurately represents abbé d'Aubignac's philosophical attitude towards the female sex. What is striking about all of Hédelin's fictional output is that the principal focus of his work is women - women of high political and social standing. One may speculate that the composition of these works is, in part, a manifestation of the abbé's fantasies about women, however subtle and innocent these notions appear to be.