considers fin-de-siecle French women writers in the context of prevailing cultural anxieties about female intellect. During the years that overlap between the fin-de-siecle and the Belle Epoque, women began to write in record numbers, due to a number of factors including educational reforms and demographic shifts. This trend terrified many male literary critics, who described it as the "crisis of women's writing" in a series of efforts to circumscribe the perceived problem. Such critics frequently linked women's writing to sexual depravity. According to popular medical theories, the fragile confluence of the female mind and body might steer the woman writer towards illicit sexual behavior when she exercised her intellect.