SOURCE: Zinsser, Judith P. “Emilie du Châtelet: Genius, Gender, and Intellectual Authority.” In Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, edited by Hilda L. Smith, pp. 168-90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

In this essay, Zinsser examines how du Châtelet negotiated political and societal demands to produce and publish her work.

As Sarah Hanley's essay on Christine de Pizan and the Salic law demonstrates (chapter 13), France has a long tradition of women writing and writing on political subjects. In England the Civil War and Glorious Revolution increased the numbers and status of writers on many kinds of topics; Louis XIV's reordering and consolidation of monarchical authority had the opposite effect in France. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the French government gained more control over publications on all subjects whether by women or men. Every book required the “Approbation,” a testimony to the value of...