Society and Sociability in Gabrielle Suchon: Towards a Politics of Friendship

This article aims to examine the treatment of friendship in Gabrielle Suchon's Traite de la morale et la politique (1693) and Du celibat volontaire (1700). In the Traite, friendship is cast in political terms and is represented as the key foundational element of a healthy society. Specifically, a feminization of friendship and a politicization of sociability and conversation allow Suchon to carve out a space for women at the centre of a society founded on egalitarian civic friendship. In Du celibat, Suchon expounds her conception of true friendship, particularly for those who choose a celibate life, and casts freedom as a key constituent element. Through her vision of friendship and conversation as hallmarks of a civil society, Suchon casts her neutralistes within a civil space, constructed and envisaged between the public and private, and so procures for voluntarily celibate women the validity of a space of classical origins.