At court, various dialects and diverse pronunciations were in use by the representatives of the different provinces; the written language, though understood generally, was not used.  Warriors were largely in evidence among the members of the nobility and court; entirely indifferent to decency of expression, purity of morals, and refinement of manners, and even boasting of their scorn of all restrictions, they took their boisterous rudeness into the drawing room where their influence was unlimited.  The king, being of the same class, knew no better, or, if he did, had not the moral courage to compel a change; thus, the institution of a reformatory movement fell to the lot of woman.

Then, however, woman was but little better than man; to gain his esteem, she would first have to make radical changes in her own behavior and become self-respecting.  The customs of the time placed many disadvantages in the way of her social and moral reform.  As a rule, the young girl was confined to a convent until she reached marriageable age; when that came and with it an undesired husband, she was ready for almost any prank that would relieve the monotony of her uncongenial marital relations.  The convents themselves were so corrupt or so easily corruptible, that, very frequently, young girls did not leave them with unstained purity.  To certain of these institutions, women and men of standing often bought the privilege of access at any time, to drink, dine, sleep, or attend sacred exercises with other persons; thus, libertinage was not uncommon within the walls of those so-called religious establishments.

Mme. de Rambouillet felt most keenly the degradation of woman and resolved to act against it by combating everything that could offend taste or delicacy.  As in the beginning of every great age, all things tended to greatness.  A period of discipline and cooerdination set in, and elegance, grace, and refinement became the most pronounced characteristics of the time; rough, crude, robust, vigorous, and energetic characteristics, combined with coarseness and brutality, were eliminated during the seventeenth century.  The women who caused this general purification of morals and language were given the name of precieuses and the movement that of preciosite.

The extent to which the precieuses went in inventing locutions by which they were to be recognized as elegant, is generally exaggerated; Livet says that out of six hundred women hardly thirty could be accused of such fatuity.  The wiser and more conservative women did adopt a large number of expressions which were necessary for refinement of language and these classicisms were exaggerated by some of the provincial classes who received their expressions from books and the theatre; such authors as Corneille, etc., were studied and their poetic licenses introduced into spoken language.  These follies, pictured by Moliere, naturally afforded much amusement in cultured circles where every event of the day was discussed, from the vital affairs of the government to the aesthetic interests of art and literature.