Gabrielle Suchon (December 24, 1632, in Semur-en-Auxois – March 5, 1703, in Dijon) was a French moral philosopher who participated in debates about the social, political and religious condition of women in the early modern era.

[2] Suchon's writing is unique because she specifically addresses women, as opposed to most moral philosophy of the time, whose primary audience was men.

[4] She asserts that a woman can live a fulfilling life while unmarried[1] and promotes the power of voluntary celibacy on secular terms.

[4] She also responds to assertions from the notable feminist treatise Of the Equality of the Two Sexes (1673) by François Poulain de la Barre.

[2] Nuns were forbidden from reading directly from the scripture without the interpretation of a male bishop, which implies that Suchon continued her biblical education outside of the convent.

[2] Church documents have revealed that on October 15, 1666, Suchon was legally transferred from the convent in Semur to the Jacobin monastery at Langres.

[2] Suchon wrote while an intellectual debate called the querelle des femmes was taking place in Europe (14th-17th century).

[6] Due to the content of her work and the time in which she wrote, most historians consider Suchon to have contributed to this popular intellectual movement.

[2] Her writing suggests that she believed her methods to be superior to the standard argumentative styles of the querelle des femmes.

[2] This is significant because women were restricted from reading and partaking in intellectual work and essentially all established academics were men during her lifetime.

[3] Post-enlightenment thinkers would classify Suchon's work as lacking in philosophical merit because it fails to exclude religious texts.

[2] In her section on liberty, Suchon depicts the complicated and extensive nature of women's deprivation of freedom throughout history.

[2] She argues that "women's deprivation of knowledge originates not in divine or natural law" and attributes female oppression to man-made social constructions.

Suchon argues that by barring women from intellectual debate, society as a whole is being deprived of great thinkers.

[2] She asserts that a life unfettered by societal constraints in which one is free to pursue intellectualism, is preferable to both marriage and religious vows.

[2] Suchon views celibacy not as a religious virtue, but as a practical path to gaining individual autonomy and freedom for women.

However, Suchon strongly condemns parents that force the religious life upon their young, naive daughters for self-serving reasons.

[2] Suchon rejects the widely accepted idea that women needed to be cloistered (segregated from men) to draw away the temptations of the flesh.

[2] She argues that while it was widely accepted that nuns held religious authority, Catholic clergymen reserved true divine knowledge for members of their own sex.

Du Célibat volontaire was also featured in another notable French journal, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres after its release.

[7][3] Historians argue that Suchon's work did not gain significant popularity because male intellectuals discredited 'feminized' writing throughout the early modern era.

Marriage was greatly stifling to a woman's freedom and sometimes the nunnery was the only venue that women could gain independence from the confines of gender discrimination.

[6] Suchon's writing sheds light upon the difficulty women faced in getting an education, the realities of marriage and life in convents in the early modern era.

Suchon is considered to be the most prominent pro-woman writer during the reign of Louis XIV, a time where both intellectual endeavors and economic freedom for women were greatly stifled in France.

[2] A copy of Du célibat volontaire was found at the cloister of Billettes until the French Revolution, suggesting that Suchon's work was read in at least one convent.

[3] Du Célibat volontaire has been discovered in Besançon, Paris, as well as in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library), Göttingen, Florence and Rome.

[3] The wider dispersal of Suchon's second work could be a result of French readers travelling abroad or printers bringing the text to trade shows.