Accursed Politics - a potent phrase used by one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's female characters - probes the intriguingly subtle equivocations revealed by six highly gifted and fascinating French women writers who were deeply involved in the revolutionary political life of their day. Ostensibly denied any public political role, they paid lip service to the conventional pieties of marriage and motherhood, and went their own way. In a time of political, social, and economic upheaval, their activities, as elegantly described by Renee Winegarten, ranged widely through the political spectrum before, during, and after the Revolution of 1789.<BR>In Accursed Politics, Ms. Winegarten brings these absorbing women to life in a piece of history that has considerable resonance for our own time. It is a tale of ambitions overriding social expectations.