CERFVOL, Le Chevalier de.

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Cri d'une honnête femme qui reclame le divorce. First edition of this prodivorce Enlightenment tract by Cerfvol, almost certainly a pseudonym, "whose rate of divorce-tract production equalled that of John Milton" (Phillips, p. 168). Originating in an analysis of France's depopulation, Cerfvol argues that divorce encourages procreation and has the potential to promote equality between the sexes, seeing "the indissolubility of marriage as a form of enslavement, and divorce as a way of maintaining individual liberty" (Roulston, p. 46). It is bound with five other works, including a lunar utopia.Cerfvol published nine works favouring divorce within a seven year period, written from the perspectives of both husband and wife, but acknowledging that women were under greater restrictions than men. Their focus on population situates them as a precursor of Malthus (Spengler, pp. 94-6). "In the Cerfvol oeuvre of prodivorce works, every device known to 18th-century fiction was employed to persuade readers; it is a veritable encylopedia of rhetorical strategies. Arguments against indissolubility were presented as epistolary exchange, dialogue, and confession; miniature exemplary narratives of marital misery were analyzed and commented upon by sympathetic personages" (Blum, p. 71). Cri d'une honnête femme qui reclame le divorce is written from the point of view of a woman trapped in a miserable marriage, yearning to be free to resume life and become a mother.The other five works in this vo

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