Ms. Locke describes her lecture: "Madame de Lafayette’s book, La Princesse de Clèves, is one of the earliest novels of psychological realism, while at the same time it offers us an idealized description of an historical milieu. Our protagonist must wend her way through the Valois court, find Mr. Right, and become (a) woman in order to deal with the twin challenges of love and death. I argue that Simone de Beauvoir’s famous sentence, 'one is not born, but becomes, woman,' is tested in this novel. Will young Mlle de Chartres learn how to be 'woman' through her education? Or will she be able to transcend her education through her experience of the passions of jealousy, fear, and grief to become 'a woman' of inimitable virtue?"