SOURCE: Polachek, Dora E., and Marcel Tetel. “A Place of One's Own.” Montaigne Studies 8, no. 1 (October 1996): 3-8.

In the following essay, Polachek and Tetel discuss the treatment of women in the Essays, contending that Montaigne's complicated views on the subject do not fit the usual feminist/misogynist dichotomy.

Mon frere, mon frere, me refusez vous doncques une place?

La Boétie¹

As we reach the end of the millennium, technology enables us to consider with more precision what constitutes the critical focus of the majority of contemporary readings of Montaigne. To confirm some intuitions, we scanned the on-line MLA bibliography covering the last fifteen years, and, as could be expected, Montaigne studies are at an all-time high: nearly 1000 entries. However, when it comes to the question of women, a closer scrutiny of this data base yielded some surprising results: of the total entries, approximately 4٪ focused their critical space...