Male Transvestism Inspired by Riccoboni‘s Histoire du marquis de Cressy: Ponteuil‘s Lettre de la Marquise de Cressy à son époux, héroïde (1775)

Abstract

Contemporary readers and reviewers found the ending to Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni‘s second novel, Histoire de Monsieur le marquis de Cressy (1758)—a female suicide—extremely controversial. Ponteuil‘s 1775 Lettre de la Marquise de Cressy à  son époux, héroïde, a neglected male-authored adaptation of Riccoboni‘s novel, rewrites the controversial ending in a more conventional, less protofeminist manner. Just like the continuations to Graffigny‘s Lettres d‘une Péruvienne, Ponteuil‘s text deserves scholarly attention since it was undoubtedly written to align better with eighteenth-century bienséance, vraisemblance and sensibilities, yet adapted and misinterpreted Riccoboni‘s protofeminist messages in the process. This essay supports modern critics‘ feminist interpretations of the suicide and confirms the author‘s important contributions to the Enlightenment debate on suicide.