The first serious attempt made by the ladies of the French court to better their position ended disastrously. Their influence was more than discounted by the demoralising effects of the wars and by the gross libertinism of the male leaders of society. The more determined among the women, finding the task of reforming the morals of a dissolute court beyond their strength, resolved to cultivate in their own private circles that refinement of manners and higher civilisation which the court refused to adopt. Thus arose the famous salons of the seventeenth century, in which the struggle for the emancipation of the female mind was combined with that for the improvement of contemporary morals, the refinement of contemporary taste, and the purification of the French language and literature.
"Depuis le salon de Madame de Rambouillet jusqu'au salon de Madame Récamier", says M. Ferdinand Brunetière, "l'histoire de la littérature française pourrait se faire par l'histoire des salons." This statement by an eminent critic implies a magnificent eulogy of women and testifies to the magnitude of their literary influence during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for the history of the salons is the history of indirect feminism. Nor was their influence restricted to literature; in nearly every department of social life French women rose to ascendancy; and this, too, at a time when the subjugation of their sex in the other countries of Europe, and notably in England, was most complete. After the great triumphs of the first half-century of their existence, the salons shared in the general decline, to be revived with a fair amount of success,—although of a somewhat different kind—in the eighteenth century.
Woman thus became a social influence to be reckoned with. The question may be put whether upon the whole this remarkable event was favourable to the cause of feminism? For, however much the movement of "preciosity" did to make women realise their independence, and assert their individuality, its original tendencies were not towards any appreciable increase of female instruction. The leaders of the movement: Mme de Rambouillet and her daughters, and afterwards Mme de Sévigné and Mme de la Fayette, detested the "femme savante" quite as much as they hated ignorance. The only aim of the education they recommended was to make women fit for the society in which they were expected to move; manners, taste and wit were cultivated at the expense of those qualities which are indispensable to rouse a spirit of pure feminism. The "précieuses" were bent upon cultivating sentiment rather than intellect, and—apart from the fact that sentiment is rather apt to run riot and that many women have a natural surplus which does not require cultivation—it is by a well-regulated intellect that the cause of feminism will be best served. As it was, the essentially feminine qualities were cultivated by the salons, and the sexual difference emphasized. It must therefore be admitted that the salons only very indirectly furthered the feminist movement and that the interest evinced by the "précieuses" in the equality problem and its levelling tendencies was naturally slight. But it stands to their credit that they compelled men to recognise the importance of sex in other matters than those which are purely sexual. If the cause of feminism in the days of the salons had been in a more advanced state, the ladies who frequented them might have turned anti-feminist in their horror of social changes which threatened to rob them of the empire which their essentially feminine qualities had so easily secured over men.
The better "précieuse" was not an intellectual; she was expected to conceal such knowledge as she might possess and to cherish that "pudeur sur la science" which makes Mme de Lambert refer to her secret "débauches d'esprit", and which became the prevailing sentiment also among her Bluestocking sisters of the eighteenth century.
The history of the French salons and of the "précieuses" who peopled them begins in the year 1613, when Catherine, marquise de Rambouillet invited to her town residence all those who, like herself, felt disgusted at the camp-manners prevailing at the court and at the licentiousness of the language and literature practised there. The Rambouillet-assemblies, in their original intention a reaction against the "esprit gaulois", accomplished far more than they aimed at in securing for women a prominent place in French society. They became a powerful factor in that thorough reform of manners and of language which became the glory of the century and which, whatever excesses may have followed in its train, did away for good and all with coarseness and brutality. Of the very questionable society at court it might be said that "force prevailed, while grace was wanting"; the latter essentially feminine quality was abundantly supplied at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where the feminine element found its way into literature; and conversation, which hitherto had been masculine, became the means of introducing a new language for new manners.
In opposition to the scant respect with which women were treated in court-circles, an ideal of love was set up which was more in accordance with the platonic sentiment. Once again the virginal state became an object of glorification. The state of matrimony, on account of its coarser foundation, was relegated to an inferior position. To the crude, almost offensive lovemaking of the courtier was opposed the modest, unselfish worship of platonic love of a pastoral kind; and the representative poetry of the period, some of which was the work of women, exalted the platonic passion which was to revolutionize the relations of the sexes. The warrior-lover of the feudal past, who was only a tyrant under the mask of chivalrous adulation, gave way to the "honnête homme", or knight without an armour, of whom it could be said that he possessed "la justesse de l'esprit et l'équité du coeur", safe-guarding him against error of judgment and excess of passion, and making him the devoted and constant lover of his mistress. The following enumeration is given of his duties: "aimer le monde, aimer les lettres sans affectations; mais surtout être amoureux et rechercher la conversation des femmes". Anybody wishing to be admitted to polite society had to conform to these rules. The tone of conversation was characterised by a spirit of "galanterie", a kind of chivalry of words and actions, which was to inspire men to noble feelings and to corresponding deeds.
Mme de Rambouillet attracted to her salon not only men and women of the aristocracy, but also a great many men-of-letters, who were valued according to their literary merit, regardless of fortune and importance. This close alliance between the female sex and the men of culture was in some respects the best education the former could have chosen. They were bent on proving once for all, as Fléchier puts it, that "l'esprit est de tout sexe" and that nothing was wanting to make women the intellectual equals of men, but the habit of being instructed and the liberty of acquiring useful knowledge. Women became the unchallenged arbitresses of morals, taste, language, literature and wit, in all of which they themselves set the example. In a contemporary work we find the earliest salon described as "l'école de Madame de Rambouillet, qui a renouvelé en partie les moeurs, où l'on mettait sa gloire dans une conduite irréprochable." Not only was the language purified by removing its overgrowth of obscenity and indelicacy, but it was divested of a number of superfluous and affected foreign words. The female influence upon the literary taste was equally all-embracing. A number of new words owed their existence to feminine initiative, and although the writers of the very first class were on the whole unfavourably disposed towards what came to be called "préciosité", and were consequently inclined to satirise its excesses, a great deal of respectable second class talent was lavished upon the frequenters of the salons.
The literature produced by the "habitués" of Mme de Rambouillet's salon was mostly of an occasional nature, and composed in homage to the female sex, comprising sonnets, madrigals, epistolary prose, and plays. The literature of the Scudéry circle, besides the products of a growing pedantry, also included many occasional pieces of a lighter kind, among which were so-called sonnets-énigmes, vers-échos and the like, which, if contributing to the enjoyment of an idle moment, had no permanence whatever as literature. To this kind of poetry the ladies themselves were important contributors. In M. Victor du Bled's "La société française" we read about a "Journée des Madrigaux" at Mlle de Scudéry's, occasioned by a present of a "cachet de cristal" made to the hostess on one of her famous Saturdays, calling forth poetical ebullitions from the most widely different authors. There were the famous "Portrait" series, composed by the ladies of the Duchess of Montpensier's circle; the written "Conversations",—those by Mlle de Scudéry herself were judged by Mme de Maintenon to contain "useful hints to young females" and therefore introduced at St. Cyr—and a very extensive literature in the epistolary style, which was to become the current form of the Richardsonian novel.
The topics of the day also formed a subject of animated discussion at the assemblies. Among them the social position of women and their treatment by the male sex occasionally found a place. Dissertations on literary subjects alternated with discussions of intellectual problems, one of the themes at Mlle de Scudéry's being: "De quelle liberté les femmes doivent-elles jouir dans la société?" Although the salons of the seventeenth century were not so revolutionary in their tendencies as some of the next, inasmuch as they were strictly private and did not either directly or indirectly aim at subverting the existing government or promoting seditious theories, yet political subjects were not shunned, and even philosophy and science—the craze of the salons of the early eighteenth century—found a number of devotees and sympathisers. About the middle of the seventeenth century, Cartesianism became the fashionable philosophy in spite of the opposition of the universities. Mme de Sévigné's letters prove that many women were interested in its propagation. The "précieuses" felt attracted by the speculations of Descartes, to follow which the cultivation of a sound sense of logic is more indispensable than any great erudition. The consequence of the philosophical movement was a widening interest in knowledge, an awakening curiosity about science, and a corresponding contempt of tradition, resulting from that self-reliance which is the natural outcome of the theory of human perfectibility.