The Woman Priest: A Translation of Sylvain Marechal’s Novella, La femme abbe

My God! Pardon me if I have dared to make sacred things serve a profane love; but it is you who have put passion into our hearts; they are not crimes-I feel this in the purity of my intentions. -Agatha, writing to Zoe In pre-revolutionary Paris, a young woman falls for a handsome young priest. To be near him, she dresses as a man, enters his seminary, and is invited to become a fully ordained Catholic priest-a career forbidden to women then as now. Sylvain Marechal’s epistolary novella offers a biting rebuke to religious institutions and a hypocritical society; its views on love, marriage, class, and virtue remain relevant today. The book ends in La Nouvelle France, which became part of British-run Canada during Marechal’s lifetime. With thorough notes and introduction by Sheila Delany, this first translation of Marechal’s novella, La femme abbe, brings a little-known but revelatory text to the attention of readers interested in French history and literature, history of the novel, women’s studies, and religious studies.