SOURCE: "Women in Marivaux: Journalist to Dramatist," in Women and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, edited by Eva Jacobs and others, The Athlone Press, 1979, pp. 42-54.

In the excerpt below, Mason investigates the depiction of women in Marivaux's plays. The critic concludes that "Marivaux can scarcely be termed a leading feminist of his day. He is alive to feminine inequality, but he deals relatively little with the disabilities facing eighteenth-century women. "

It is possible to trace, in Marivaux's plays … a steadily growing concern about feminine inequality; in the space of this article, however, one can do no more than touch on some of the more significant plays in this regard. L'Ile des esclaves (1725) addresses itself essentially to class differences between masters and servants; but the dramatist does not fail to comment on the caprices of 'femmes de qualité'. On this island, slaves and servants (no clear distinction is...