Madame Du Bocage, un premier voyage d’Angleterre au féminin

Madame du Boccage is the first well-known Frenchwoman to travel to England. For contemporary travelers, “England” was sometimes as much a pretext to discuss French preoccupations, as a real destination – in her case, the topic is femininity. The differences in the situation of Englishwomen and Frenchwomen prompt her to discuss the lack of formal recognition of female intellectual performance in France, or the fact that Frenchwomen are systematically restricted to the realm of corporeality and sensuality. Through a partial rewriting of Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques, Madame Du Boccage creates a female vision of England, and an authentic gendered travel experience.