Tra uguaglianza e differenza: compassione e condizione femminile nel pensiero di Fanny de Beauharnais

This article analyses the role of compassion in the two major works of Fanny de Beauharnais (1737–1813). A writer who has been almost completely overlooked by critics until recently, she offers a distinctly feminine interpretation of eighteenth-century thought, closely associated with the social and intellectual world of the literary salons. The two texts under study, published in 1776 and 1811 respectively, are the long philosophical tale Volsidor et Zulménie, conte pour rire, moral si l’on veut, et philosophique en cas de besoin and La Marmotte philosophe ou la Philosophie en domino. The article aims to demonstrate how the theme of compassion, which played a central role in eighteenth-century philosophical debates, enabled Fanny de Beauharnais to position herself in relation to her philosophical role model, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and in response to the ‘egalitarian’ and ‘differentialist’ currents that dominated discussions of gender relations in late eighteenth-century France.