The influence of the seventeenth century salon was of a threefold nature--literary, moral, and social. According to the salon conception, artistic, literary, or musical pleasure being derived from form and mode of expression, it possessed a special and unique interest in proportion to the efforts made and the difficulties surmounted in attaining that form and expression: thus, woman introduced a new standard of excellence.
_Préciosité_ treated language not as a work of art, but as a medium for the display of individual linguistic dexterity; giving no thing its proper name, it delighted in paraphrase, allusion, word play, unexpected comparisons and abundance of metaphors, and revelled in the elusive, delicate, subtle, and complex. Hence conversation turned constantly to love and gallantry; thus woman developed to a wonderful degree, unattainable to but few, the art of conversation, politeness and courtesy of manners, and social relations, at the same time purifying language and enriching it.
French women of the seventeenth century are condemned for having treated serious things too lightly; and it is said that "in confining the French mind to the observation of society and its attractions, she has restricted and retarded a more realistic and larger activity." In answer to this it may be asserted that the French mind was not prepared for a broader field until it had passed through the process of expurgating, refining, drilling, and disciplining. If _préciosité_ influenced politics, it was by developing diplomacy, for, from the time that this spirit began to spread, French diplomacy became world-renowned.
The social influence of the movement may be better appreciated by considering the condition of woman in earlier periods. Having practically no position except that of housewife or mother, she was merely a source of pleasure for man, for whom she had little or no respect. The _précieuses_, on the contrary, exacted respect, honor, and a place beside man, as rights that belonged to them.
As the outcome of their desire to think, feel, and act with greater delicacy, women introduced propriety in expression, finesse in analysis, keenness of _esprit_, psychological subtleness: qualities that surely tended to higher standards of morality, purer social relations, finer and more subtle diplomacy, more elegance and precision in literature. Therefore, _préciosité_ in France had a wholesome influence, which was possible because woman had won for herself her rightful position, and her aspirations were toward social and moral elevation.