Volume 42, Number 13 · August 10, 1995
Cherchez la Femme
By Robert Darnton
Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade
by Gary Kates
Basic Books, 368 pp., $25.00
It had to happen. Now that gender studies reigns on many campuses as the queen of the social sciences and humanities, someone was sure to rehabilitate the chevalier/chevalière d'Eon, the man/woman who beginning in the 1770s led the diplomats of pre-revolutionary Europe on a merry chase through a series of intrigues that could have come out of The Marriage of Figaro. That Beaumarchais himself got caught in the subplots makes the story all the more interesting: a case of nature imitating art. Now it is available to the general reading public, packaged in a way that suits the times, as a heroic episode in the history of feminism.
Review, 3828 words
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