SOURCE: Day, Shirley Jones. “Tracing Out New Paths: Madame d'Aulnoy.” In The Search for Lyonnesse: Women's Fiction in France, 1670-1703, pp. 169-239. Bern, Germany: Peter Lang, 1999.

In this excerpt, Day studies d'Aulnoy's first novel, Histoire d'Hypolite, Comte du Duglas, in the context of women's fiction after Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, author of the influential novel La princess de Clèves (1678).

The case of Mme d'Aulnoy is perhaps the most perplexing of the three women novelists, followers of Mme de Lafayette, who are studied here. Her life, with its supposed scandals, was the object of a serious biographical study published over seventy years ago.¹ Born in about 1650, she is credited with having led an adventurous existence during the early part of her life. It is claimed that she had false charges of treason laid against her husband, a brutal bully thirty years older than herself. She apparently spent some time...