As a title, Salonnières, Furies and Fairies does no justice to the critical treatment of the contents of this volume. The subtitle, however -- Politics of Gender and Cultural Change in Absolutist France -- points to a serious study of literature, society, and culture in the 17th-century France of Louis XIV. Anne Duggan rehabilitates two key women writers who remain outside the French canon of traditionally studied literary works: Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy (1650/1-1705). Their writings, social position, and cultural influence contributed to discussions that engaged Nicolas Boileau (for the ancients) and Charles Perrault (for the moderns), leading to the famous debate or "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes" ("The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns"). The dialogue included the role women played in the private and public spheres or affairs of family and state.

In Chapter One (25-49), Duggan provides a historical overview from feudal to modern times of change in politics (i.e., from chivalry to the absolutist movement), and the change brought on by culture: the humanist education, the creation of Jesuit collèges, women's salons, and the Academies that promoted men and excluded women. She notes the increased cloistering of women in an effort to exclude them from the public sphere. Men had opportunities to seek glory, and women, confined to domestic life, hoped for an equal chance at the same privilege through education and writing. Duggan introduces early in her analysis the influence that politics, business, and law, as well as women had on language (préciosité) and literature.

In Chapter Two (50-90), Duggan studies Scudéry's Clélie, Histoire Romaine and the famous "Carte de Tendre." Chapter Three (91-120) introduces us to Scudéry's Chroniques des Samedis. The gatherings in her salon for her habitués or regular visitors took place on Saturdays. They supported the socio-cultural public sphere or mondanité, encouraged networking among the précieux, forming professional alliances, and promoting a political parlementaire agenda already suggested in Clélie. The Saturday gatherings favored developing social skills through letter writing, conversation, and negotiation of relationships between male and female as outlined in the "Carte de Tendre," using the latter as a guide. Of interest were questions of obedience, control over one's feelings, superiority/equality among lovers, and interpersonal relations which, according to Scudéry were to be regulated by civility rather than physical aggression (duels or rape, for instance). Tyrannical passions or lovers translated at the political level to usurpation of power and the dangers of absolute domination. Scudéry/Sapho rather than being frivolous, appears to have been, on the contrary, a serious writer who "masterly manipulated historical discourses" taming the male and female warrior (89). In the process she transformed the pen into an allegorical sword, and a powerful 17th-century patron's "secretary" into a modern-day vassal (119).

Chapter Four (121-164) offers an insight into Boileau's ideas on women's folly and their irrationality. In Les Héros de roman and Satire X Boileau praises the ancient warrior heroes and ridicules the more "feminine" and peace-loving modern heroes in Scudéry's fiction. Nor is Perrault's Apologie des femmes (In Praise of Women) as favorable to women as the title of his work might suggest. Some of his contes propose obedience to parents and husbands as a woman's highest virtue. Obedient women, unassertive and docile, confined their lives to the private sphere. In Perrault's fairy tales, society rewards women's obedience, docility, submission, domestic labor, lack of curiosity, passivity -- traits that remove women from power and make them socially and politically un-enterprising. Women who transgressed in these areas were severely punished, as exemplified by Bluebeard, "an extreme, negative form of husbandly authority" (156). Perrault, according to Duggan, defended men's authority in the public sphere and the absolute rule of father and husband in the private sphere. Although this is not an entirely new idea, it is forcefully demonstrated.

It will take a woman who, like Scudéry, will propose positive social, political, and cultural roles for women and "challenge the tyranny of patriarchs within public and private spheres" (166). To do so, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy takes us to England in Chapter Five (165-200) in L'Histoire d'Hypolite, comte de Duglas (1690). D'Aulnoy's short stories form the subject matter of Chapter Six (201-239). Through a "mirror" effect, comparing English and French political systems, d'Aulnoy defends mondanité, the culture of the salons, and aristocracy. She opposes familial tyranny and surveillance, forced marriages, absolutism, and religious intolerance and persecution. She portrays more favorably, like Don Quixote, the chivalric system that, from a political point of view, is a step back. D'Aulnoy, however, takes a much more progressive attitude towards women. The heroines of her short stories dare to disobey, nor do they lack ambition or curiosity. They dare to take initiatives to free themselves from the tyranny of others and the tyranny of domestic labor (torture), and are rewarded with political, social, and marital success. From a feminist position, d'Aulnoy suggests that "women indeed can be capable and reasonable rulers" in femino-centric worlds.

Duggan takes the feminist approach that a political and social environment that excluded women did not prevent them to make important cultural contributions. She concludes that "Absolutism in all its repression failed to put a stop to women's participation in the cultural production of French society" (48). What makes her study original and passionate is her approach to literature through the language of politics, business, and law. Duggan's rich itinerary leads us through the maze of Scudéry's complex and complicated novels and d'Aulnoy's many characters and themes as the latter proposes roles for women different from those of Perrault. Duggan's work will appeal to 17th-century specialists, feminists, historians, and psychologists, and intellectually sophisticated readers interested in French literature, women, and gender studies.