The Presentation of Scotland in the Writing of the French Female Sentimental Novelists

This paper aims to address the links between three issues pertinent to several French novels from the turn of the 19th century: spatial setting, gender, and the social position occupied by the sexes. Germaine de Staël’s Corinne ou l’Italie and Sophie Cottin’s Malvina will be taken as examples to illustrate how and why detailed description of Scotland as a spatial setting is employed at this time, allowing us to gain new insight into the period’s ideas and tastes, and into the types of fiction that a newly literate public was devouring.