During the seventeenth century in France, women began to exercise more influence in a wider range of political and literary movements than had been the case in any previous century. Arguably, they were more influential during this period than they were to be during the two following centuries. This was the period of the rise of salon culture, and an explosion in women's writing, particularly poetry, portraits, novels, and moral maxims. It also embraced the political disturbances called the ‘Fronde’, which involved a number of central female actors. Literature and politics were closely entwined, for during this period in particular women used literature ‘to assert their influence on the century's political and social structures’.

Various reasons may be proposed for women's literary and political emergence in France at this time. It may well have had something to do with their political prominence at court. During the first half of the seventeenth century, the advent of two regencies, those of Marie de Medici and Anne of Austria, demonstrates that women's prudence and capacity to rule was widely accepted, though still contested. These regencies were associated with the emergence of new forms of literature discussing the virtues of women under the rubrics honnête femme and femme forte. This literature is different from the earlier querelle des femmes in that it assumes that women are capable of virtue and outlines the character of the honourable, heroic, and strong woman.