Opinion d[Text in Unknown]une Femme sur les Femmes.

First Edition. 12mo (168 x 100mm). 72pp., with the half-title. Some light foxing throughout and with a couple of spots in places, a few uncut edges, half-title a little dusty. Modern antique style calf-backed marbled boards, spine lettered in gilt, marbled pastedowns, new endleaves (spine a little worn but otherwise fine).   Paris: Giguet Very Rare. Harvard only in the USA. OCLC records two physical copies in France only.   A remarkable and important diatribe - dedicated "aux Femmes" - on the treatment of women in French society in the chaotic years after the Revolution and under the looming shadow of the restrictive Napoleonic Code.   Marie-Françoise Raoul (often known as Fanny Raoul) was born c.1771, her mother died during her birth and she was raised by her father, a notary, who educated her and encouraged her early writing. It was also through the support of the poet, Princess Constance de Salm (1767-1845) that Raoul published Opinion d?une Femme sur les Femmes.   The work begins with a dedication, "aux Femmes", in which Raoul pleads to her female readers:   "Puissé-je améliorer votre sort! Plusieurs d'entre vous, ne le croyant pas si malheureux, s'étonneront du tableau que j'en fais. Les couleurs en sont fotes peut-être, elles empruntent a teinte de mon ame; mais il n'y entre point d'exagération. Hélas! la vérité, la triste et cruelle vérité est là; c'est elle seule qui conduit ma plume; son ascendant irrèsistable m'entraîne, et je prends votre défense. Peut-être l'injustice et la déraison prévaudront-elles encore long-tems; peut-être l'habitude de penser n'est-elle pas assez commune, pour que toutes les idées philosophiques puissent fructifier dans des tête qu'elle n'a pas encore cultivées: mais une idée utile est rarement perdue; elle tombe toujours dans quelques esprits séconds où elle fermente en silence, et se développe tôt ou tard." (p. 5-7)   [May I improve your lot! Many of you, not believing it to be so wretched, will be astonished by the picture I paint. The colours may be exaggerated, perhaps, borrowing the hue of my soul; but there is no exaggeration. Alas! The truth, the sad and cruel truth, is there; it alone guides my pen; it's irresistible power compels me, and I take up your defence. Perhaps injustice and unreason will prevail for a long time yet; perhaps the habit of thinking is not yet common enough for all philosophical ideas to bear fruit in minds it has not yet cultivated: but a useful idea is rarely lost; it always falls into some secondary mind where it ferments silently, and develops sooner or later.]   In her "Avertissement" before the main text, Raoul further emphasises that the motivation of her work is to fully highlight the terrible status and respect for women in society both in the domestic sphere and in their opportunities in public life, she writes:   "Ces idées sont le fruit de longues observations. Souvent frappée de nos maux domestiques, dont la multiplicité fait le mal public, j?en ai recherché la cause, et je l?ai trouvée dans le peu de considération, je dis plus, dans le mépris qu?on a pour les femmes ; mépris qui prend sa source dans l?état d?avilissement et d?oppression où les a réduites une législation barbare, copiée sur de barbares usages." (p.10)   [These ideas are the fruit of long observations. Often struck by our domestic ills, whose multiplicity constitutes a public ill, I have sought their cause, and I have found it in the little consideration, I say more, in the contempt that is shown to women; contempt which originates in the state of degradation and oppression to which they have been reduced by a barbaric legislation, copied from barbaric customs.]   She continues,   "L?homme, cet être égoïste et vaniteux, qui rapporte tout à lui seul, au lieu de voir dans la femme sa compagne, son égale, s?obstine à n?y trouver qu?un être uniquement créé pour lui, qu?un hochet agréable qu?il brise, comme un enfant capricieux et mutin, lorsqu?il en est las, ou qu?il rejette, quand il y.…