This lucid study of the works of Madame de Lafayette explores the ambiguities and tensions discernible in her writing. Anne Green shows Madame de Lafayette working out conflicting attitudes to her status as woman and author, and, by tracing the patterns of reticence and self-revelation, and the problems of communication between the sexes which run through all Madame de Lafayette’s writing, she arrives at a persuasive new evaluation of her work. This book will be of particular interest to students of gender studies, as well as to seventeenth-century specialists.