Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter argues that Keralio uses the quest for the missing mother as a narrative pretext to critique the efficacy of Enlightenment thought. Although set in the eighteenth century, the action reflects the realities of exile and of a post-revolutionary, post-Terror present, with Geneva under the tyranny of public opinion standing in for France. It shows how the novel progresses from fluidity with respect to religion, virtue, equality, happiness, and gender, to a fixity presented as both a source of contentment beneficial to individuals and society and an oppressive constraint. It discusses Keralio’s questioning of the linkage of virtue and happiness to patriarchy and gender norms, through three instances of gender deviance: rebellious Mathilde, unmanly Alphonse, and Charlotte, a farmer’s daughter with intellectual aspirations. It shows how Keralio critiques the woman writer stereotype and illustrates the “reflective relationship to the present” and pressing against boundaries that Foucault equated with enlightenment.</jats:p>