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Political theorist Lori Marso explores an alternative vision of citizenship in the writings of French Enlightenment figures Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Germaine de Stael. This critique transgresses the boundary between political philosophy and literature in turning explicitly to fictional texts as the site of an alternative conception of self, citizenship and democratic politics. Marso departs from much feminist scholarship on Rousseau by reading "Emile" and "La Nouvelle Heloise" from the perspective of his women characters. Tracing the words, gestures and even the silence of the women characters in Rousseau's text, Marso argues that these women display an uncanny ability to deconstruct the qualities and dictates of scholarship for which Rousseau is infamous. Germaine de Stael builds on the perspective of Rousseau's women to uncover the radical potential of the feminine as a way to reconceptualize citizenship. Based on her experience of the French Revolution, Stael demonstrates the limits of establishing strict identities as prerequisites for citizen participation. In Stael's novels, "Delphine" and "Corrine", Marso locates a citizenship practice premised on the recognition of individuals in terms of their concrete histories and situations.