Becoming a Woman in the Age of LettersOver the course of the eighteenth century, increasing numbers of French women, from the wives and daughters of artisans and merchants to countesses and queens, became writers not authors, and not mere signers of names, but writers of letters. Taking as her inspiration a portrait of an unknown woman writing a letter to her children by French painter Adlade Labille Guiard, Dena Goodman challenges the deep seated association of women with love letters