Mots en cheveux. Hériter de l’histoire genrée de la broderie à travers l’écriture

Contemporary pieces of embroidery showing words made of human hair open up reflections upon how women artists challenge the traditional partition between the needle (for women) and the pen (for men). The article offers a synthesis on the historical construction of this gendered assignaion of needlework to women, from Renaissance to the early twentieth century. The idea of physical and moral coercion appears in the feminine history of needlework as well as in the history of the access of young women to reading and writing. Finally, if embroidery was for a long time excluded from metaphorical descriptions of literature, unlike weaving, the article ends up showing how the crossroads between writing and embroidery can be seen as a part of women’s emancipation.