Marie de France, Mme. De Sevigne, and Mme. De Lafayette achieved international reputations during periods when women in other European countries were able to write only letters, translations, religious tracts, and miscellaneous fragments. There were obstacles, but French women writers were more or less sustained and empowered by the French culture. Often unconventional in their personal lives and occupied with careers besides writing as educators, painters, actresses, preachers, salon hostesses, labor organizers these women did not wait for Simone de Beauvoir to tell them to make existential...