“ Comedy was no longer to provoke laughter, but tears. The innovation consisted in destroying the sharp distinction then existing between tragedy and comedy in French literature. Indications of this change had been already offered in the work of Marivaux, and La Chaussée’s plays led naturally to the domestic drama of Diderot and of Sedaine. ”

“ Voltaire maintained that the comédie larmoyante was a proof of the inability of the author to produce either of the recognized kinds of drama, though he himself produced a play of similar character in L’Enfant prodigue. The hostility of the critics did not prevent the public from shedding tears nightly over the sorrows of La Chaussée’s heroine. L’École des mères (1744) and La Gouvernante (1747) form, with those already mentioned, the best of his work. ”