One of the most famous portraits of Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, the Marquise du Deffand depicts her alone, in a chair, with a white cat on her lap and her gaze fixed somewhere outside of the frame of the picture. This last feature, unusual for portraits of the time and especially those of the portrait’s painter, Carmontelle, is meant to emphasize the Marquise’s blindness, making it one of her most central attributes. While such portraits of blind men also exist (the famous English mathematician Nicolas Saunderson was almost always depicted with the eyes closed), their portraits tend also to highlight the accomplishments of the men as they were surrounded by the instruments of their trade. To focus on Deffand’s blindness, however, is to grossly misunderstand this dynamic woman. Her voluminous collection of letters, which includes two auto-portraits in which she describes her most important features, highlight her dedication to honest discussion and a love for good company and great literature. In it, the reader finds intricate considerations of what is happening within Deffand’s body as well as the treatments she undertakes for her ailments, but they also find the traces of a vast network of mutual care, as she describes her own ailments alongside those of her friends and caretakers. While there exist numerous studies on blindness and enlightenment, almost all focus on blind men (and particularly blind male philosophers). In this talk, Rutler will examine how gender alters one’s lived experience of blindness and how it also influences the perceptions of blindness by sighted individuals.