Zilia e Cénie: la donna come figura dello 'straniero' nell'opera di Françoise de Graffigny

The private correspondence between Françoise de Graffigny and Antoine-François Devaux allows us to trace the genesis of the epistolary novel Lettres d'une Péruvienne and the five-act play Cénie, two works considered best-sellers of the 18th century. These letters help us understand her working methods (self-censorship, her conception of the female author, her relationship with her main characters, her surrounding environment, etc.) as well as the motivations behind her writing (primarily the need for money), to the extent that they can be considered drafts of both works. The interplay between Françoise de Graffigny's biography and her fictional female characters is evident from the start, and the reconstruction of the genesis of these works demonstrates how literary creation becomes a means of self-reflection and the creation of a feminine self. This contribution will seek to demonstrate how, in her two most well-known works, Graffigny uses the figure of the stranger, in all its senses, to highlight the difficulties women faced in 18th-century society, showing through the cases of Zilia and Cénie that women were considered 'like' foreigners in their own country, in their own homes.