[7] Heinrich Morf, in his "Geschichte der französischen Literatur im Zeitalter der Renaissance" relates that a number of ladies took to frequenting the Académie de poésie et de musique founded by Baïf under the auspices of Charles IX; especially after his successor Henry III had transferred its seat to an apartment in the Louvre, whence it came to be called "Académie du Palais".
[8] P. Rousselot. Histoire de l'Education des Femmes en France.
Poullain de la Barre owes his revival to an article by M. Henri Piéron in the "Revue de Synthèse historique" of 1902. The latter's judgment is based upon two works: "De l'Egalité des Sexes" and "De l'Education des Dames", which he found in the Bibliothèque Nationale. In 1913 the "Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France" contained an article by M. Henri Grappin, pointing out that some of Poullain's works had been overlooked, supplying a full list of his literary productions and fully discussing one, entitled: "De l'Excellence des Hommes, contre l'Egalité des Sexes." The above-named three are the only treatises by Poullain which bear upon the position of women.
[9] Cf. Livet, Précieux et Précieuses, p. XXV.
CHAPTER III. The Position of French Women in Eighteenth Century Society.
In the earlier half of the eighteenth century, at a time when the inferiority of English women was so generally recognised as to leave no room at all for controversy, the Woman Question was attracting a good deal of notice in France, and scarcely a year passed without some kind of contribution to its literature.[10] It was by this time an acknowledged problem, and theoretically speaking it may be said that by the middle of the century feminism in France had carried the day, thanks mainly to the influence of modern philosophy, which the salons helped in propagating. The instruction-problem was also settled in theory in a manner satisfactory to feminists, and only that of female occupations remained as yet unbroached. The position of women in society not only became a favourite topic of conversation and controversy, but came to command a number of able pens in periodical literature and in the drama. In the latter branch of literature a number of pieces were written on the subject, some of which were hostile and sought the aid of ridicule, but of which the majority were of a more sympathetic tendency, showing that Molière's attack had failed. All the important theatres paid their tribute of attention to the cause of feminism. One of the earliest was Montchenay's "Cause des Femmes", a comedy performed at the Théâtre italien as early as 1687, while a more elaborate dramatic statement of the cause, entitled "l'Ile des Amazones" was composed in 1718 by Lesage and d'Orneval, and suggested the machinery of the "Amazones Modernes" of Legrand (1727), performed at the Théâtre français. This brings us to the field of Utopian literature à la Mrs. Manley, whose "New Atlantis" had appeared a few years previously. The Amazons, who had founded their own community in a remote island, having forsworn the society of men, made their return conditional on the acceptance of the following terms:
1stly, there was to be no subordination of the wife to the husband;
2ndly, the women were to be allowed to study, and to have their own universities;