Gendering of Listening and Speaking in Post-Revolutionary Salons

In post-revolutionary French literary circles, women’s voices were marginalized. Romantic cénacles welcomed few women as writers or performers. Meanwhile, female-led salons were dismissed as unserious, trivial, worthless—not because of any lack of literary readings or literary conversation but because of their inclusion of women. This article will examine two post-revolutionary salonnières who managed to create a space and a role for themselves within the new maledominated literary circles: Juliette Récamier, whose more conventional approach made only slight modifications to the earlier codes of mondain sociability, and Delphine de Girardin, whose more radical approach integrated the new Romantic codes of sociability and literary recitation. The social success of these two women required a strict attention to the codes of feminine speech and silence that complicated women’s participation as literary performers.