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Madame de Stäel
In her lifetime it was widely said that there were three political powers in Europe—Britain, Russia, and Madame de Stäel. Byron described her as "the first female writer of this, perhaps of any age," Germaine de Stäel was certainly the most remarkable woman of her time and she remains unique—both for the scope of her artistic and intellectual achievements, and the force of her political influence which helped to bring down Napoleon. Born in Paris in 1766, the daughter of Jacques Necker, Louis XVI's influential and reforming finance minister, Germaine de Stäel was brought up in her mother's salon, amidst the philosophers of the French Enlightenment. A prodigious and disciplined intellect, a need for love and a love of liberty, together with remarkable courage in both public and private life, de Stäel was driven to disregard dangers and conventions alike, often at great cost.
524 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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December 8, 2015
An absolute life changing book. I have, not joking, ordered an etching of Madame de Stael which is on its way, and then I plan to frame it and hang it up somewhere so I can daily give props to such a fantastic person.
I've also ordered some massive 900 page collection of her works, because while this book was excellent, I could have used more quotes. On that topic will get to the few complaints I have with this book and potentially Madame de Stael in particular:
1) Humongous things mentioned once, and then not come back to later whatsoever.
Example A: Incest?
I wish this author interjected herself into the biography more. It's brilliantly told, amazing job as a biographer, but at a crucial part in 1784, she just presents a diary entry that is blatantly incestuous towards her father. Drily noted as "startling" and moves on. Extreme and highly demonstrable actions between father and daughter until the end of her life since she dragged around a huge portrait of him, the books, and all the tomb stuff. But there was no real analysis about the author or her contemporaries about it? Those people were constantly writing back and forth to each other--SOMEONE had to comment on it. Was this normal or weird? It seems weird. But then this is someone who hung out with Byron.
This made it somewhat hard for me to stomach a lot of the intense father/daughter moments that make up the rest of the book--did anything happen? was the diary entry all wishful thinking? It's odd that her daughter burnt a vast amount of Madame de Stael's letters and papers but somehow this survived the purge. Maybe note on that? I don't know. I was very startled.
Example B: Syphilis?
Skip ahead to 1787. "Intellectual compatibility and opium ensured that her house in Colombier, near Neuchatel, where Benjamin was recovering from a bout of syphilis, he felt truly happy for the first time in his life." -- now this is NOT about de Stael but Madame de Charriere & Benjamin Constant, who was the Richard Burton to de Stael's Liz Taylor.
You'd think a lanky poor guy with syphilis would be a turn off, but not for Madame de Stael who embarked on a legendary on & off romance with him--and had one child with him. So did she get syphilis too? Is that how she died? The black spots, sudden decline? Was there something congenital going on with her last child beyond just "large head" and "slow"? What was up with her mother's illness? How did Benjamin Constant die? (I looked it up--odd symptoms, suspicious as hell). I mean if they didn't have death certificates or science back then, ask some forensic coroners their opinion. The author never says what she died from.
The incest and syphilis mentions contain probably three paragraphs together in a 522 page book and I don't know, deserve possibly closer attention.
However, I think partially it's because it's almost TOO much source material, which leads to my second minor issue:
2) Easily could have been two volumes or more. The end feels rushed anyways.
Pre-Revolution: Madame de Stael trying to prevent the Revolution. In and out of favor with Marie Antoinette and the royalists, finally falling out.
The Terror: Madame de Stael trying to save as many from The Terror as she can. Operates a Scarlet Pimpernel spy ring. Could have saved Marie Antoinette & family but the queen still holding a grudge. Flees from Robespierre.
Goes to England where I'm sorry, Fanny Burney was a total bitch. I really expected better of her. Disappointed. And she had many chances to redeem herself, but FAILED so hard each time. Thank goodness the cache of letters of de Stael's in her possession (because de Stael bankrolled and rescued Burney's husband and Narbonne--the recipient of those letters) did not get burnt by Burney like intended because mislaid.
Wanders around Europe, writes book defending Marie Antoinette, more works, cements her renown. Returns after Robespierre falls, becomes an enemy of Napoleon's.
The War with Napoleon--and this could be volumes in itself I think. Gripping historical drama. And the amazing thing as with all the people she made enemies with--justifiable each time, since she was one of the few that could openly defy very dangerous people. Indeed, she's perpetually out of favor, in exile, fleeing to 40 yards, suspected by secret agents, trailed by spies, and she gets away with it each time. When her book was banned by Napoleon, her son manages to get away with the copy over the back wall while mom stalled. And she seemed to be a master of making enormous scenes (writhing and screaming on floors) to slow down authorities while her friends escaped--I counted three separate times in this book of that.
Since de Stael did help everyone, saying "There is, in the short span of existence, no greater chance of happiness than to save the life of an innocent man." She saved that ungrateful Talleyrand after all and it was the fact she had so many diverse friends--Jacobins to Girondists to Royalists to Ultramontanes to British Prime Minister to the Tsar to Anti-Slavery Movement..and Napoleon's family. Her next door neighbor was his brother Joseph and she was buddies with Lucien too. So when Joseph was forced to tell her that Napoleon said "I will break her. I wish crush her but it's foolish of me to get heated. Tell her to be quiet." Her response back? "There is a kind of pleasure in resisting an iniquitous power. Genius too is a power."
Such a bad ass answer.
Her time in Germany. Winning over Goethe, helping spark Romanticism--and her time in Germany was hilarious. Really any time she inflicts her personality on an unwitting populace, no one really knows what to do. Her personality must have been out of the world. Everyone seemed to write to her, so many quotes are like "and as she recounted to Thomas Jefferson in a letter dated.." but we're not told how she knows Jefferson or other Americans she wrote to really. The author does note that de Stael wrote how Americans would be the future world power and planned a US tour to write a book on her impressions, but died before she could pull that scheme off.
Then her part in the coalition that brought down Napoleon. Now best friends with Wellington, she talks the English into withdrawing their troops.
Her friendship with Byron.
Feminism. I enjoyed the fact that her father (creepy love aside) was basically the Warren Buffet of his time. And the fact she was crafty enough with her money to actually have died leaving an even greater fortune than she inherited. The men in her life, each and every one, seemed to be crazed gambling syphilitic egoists who she was constantly giving enormous amounts of money to.
So it shocks me that there are so few books out on her. Only like two biographies in the past century? That's insane! There should be hundreds of books about her. She's like a Bernhardt, in that she was feted and loved by the entire world, and had a knack of being in the right place at the right time. Although de Stael wielded actual political influence and did change the course of history. She even was so magnanimous that she foiled an assassination attempt on Napoleon's life while he was in exile. I found it was interesting that in exile, one of Napoleon's obsessions was de Stael.
I really hope someone writes the book on the feud.
Her relationship with her children. That can be a deal breaker sometimes in dealing with people from the past. They were just so shitty to their kids. Look at Rousseau. Madame de Stael got lucky in that her father was a financial genius and her mom did physics for fun, hung out with Gibbon, had a ton of money and included her in their life. And she paid it forward. She was an excellent daughter (with hopefully nothing more than that) and seemed like a great mom that even with the lovers, the racing all over Europe, the intrigues, her kids and entourage were all devoted to each other. It’s not that often in reading history do you come across someone who seems to be so much a part of their era, while at the same time transcending it. For example, I do not think she would have that much culture shock if you magically transported her to modern day US. She’d be disappointed most likely we have not gotten further in two hundred years.
TL;dr: Fantastic biography on a legendary figure who shaped political thought, literature, and history.
I've also ordered some massive 900 page collection of her works, because while this book was excellent, I could have used more quotes. On that topic will get to the few complaints I have with this book and potentially Madame de Stael in particular:
1) Humongous things mentioned once, and then not come back to later whatsoever.
Example A: Incest?
I wish this author interjected herself into the biography more. It's brilliantly told, amazing job as a biographer, but at a crucial part in 1784, she just presents a diary entry that is blatantly incestuous towards her father. Drily noted as "startling" and moves on. Extreme and highly demonstrable actions between father and daughter until the end of her life since she dragged around a huge portrait of him, the books, and all the tomb stuff. But there was no real analysis about the author or her contemporaries about it? Those people were constantly writing back and forth to each other--SOMEONE had to comment on it. Was this normal or weird? It seems weird. But then this is someone who hung out with Byron.
This made it somewhat hard for me to stomach a lot of the intense father/daughter moments that make up the rest of the book--did anything happen? was the diary entry all wishful thinking? It's odd that her daughter burnt a vast amount of Madame de Stael's letters and papers but somehow this survived the purge. Maybe note on that? I don't know. I was very startled.
Example B: Syphilis?
Skip ahead to 1787. "Intellectual compatibility and opium ensured that her house in Colombier, near Neuchatel, where Benjamin was recovering from a bout of syphilis, he felt truly happy for the first time in his life." -- now this is NOT about de Stael but Madame de Charriere & Benjamin Constant, who was the Richard Burton to de Stael's Liz Taylor.
You'd think a lanky poor guy with syphilis would be a turn off, but not for Madame de Stael who embarked on a legendary on & off romance with him--and had one child with him. So did she get syphilis too? Is that how she died? The black spots, sudden decline? Was there something congenital going on with her last child beyond just "large head" and "slow"? What was up with her mother's illness? How did Benjamin Constant die? (I looked it up--odd symptoms, suspicious as hell). I mean if they didn't have death certificates or science back then, ask some forensic coroners their opinion. The author never says what she died from.
The incest and syphilis mentions contain probably three paragraphs together in a 522 page book and I don't know, deserve possibly closer attention.
However, I think partially it's because it's almost TOO much source material, which leads to my second minor issue:
2) Easily could have been two volumes or more. The end feels rushed anyways.
Pre-Revolution: Madame de Stael trying to prevent the Revolution. In and out of favor with Marie Antoinette and the royalists, finally falling out.
The Terror: Madame de Stael trying to save as many from The Terror as she can. Operates a Scarlet Pimpernel spy ring. Could have saved Marie Antoinette & family but the queen still holding a grudge. Flees from Robespierre.
Goes to England where I'm sorry, Fanny Burney was a total bitch. I really expected better of her. Disappointed. And she had many chances to redeem herself, but FAILED so hard each time. Thank goodness the cache of letters of de Stael's in her possession (because de Stael bankrolled and rescued Burney's husband and Narbonne--the recipient of those letters) did not get burnt by Burney like intended because mislaid.
Wanders around Europe, writes book defending Marie Antoinette, more works, cements her renown. Returns after Robespierre falls, becomes an enemy of Napoleon's.
The War with Napoleon--and this could be volumes in itself I think. Gripping historical drama. And the amazing thing as with all the people she made enemies with--justifiable each time, since she was one of the few that could openly defy very dangerous people. Indeed, she's perpetually out of favor, in exile, fleeing to 40 yards, suspected by secret agents, trailed by spies, and she gets away with it each time. When her book was banned by Napoleon, her son manages to get away with the copy over the back wall while mom stalled. And she seemed to be a master of making enormous scenes (writhing and screaming on floors) to slow down authorities while her friends escaped--I counted three separate times in this book of that.
Since de Stael did help everyone, saying "There is, in the short span of existence, no greater chance of happiness than to save the life of an innocent man." She saved that ungrateful Talleyrand after all and it was the fact she had so many diverse friends--Jacobins to Girondists to Royalists to Ultramontanes to British Prime Minister to the Tsar to Anti-Slavery Movement..and Napoleon's family. Her next door neighbor was his brother Joseph and she was buddies with Lucien too. So when Joseph was forced to tell her that Napoleon said "I will break her. I wish crush her but it's foolish of me to get heated. Tell her to be quiet." Her response back? "There is a kind of pleasure in resisting an iniquitous power. Genius too is a power."
Such a bad ass answer.
Her time in Germany. Winning over Goethe, helping spark Romanticism--and her time in Germany was hilarious. Really any time she inflicts her personality on an unwitting populace, no one really knows what to do. Her personality must have been out of the world. Everyone seemed to write to her, so many quotes are like "and as she recounted to Thomas Jefferson in a letter dated.." but we're not told how she knows Jefferson or other Americans she wrote to really. The author does note that de Stael wrote how Americans would be the future world power and planned a US tour to write a book on her impressions, but died before she could pull that scheme off.
Then her part in the coalition that brought down Napoleon. Now best friends with Wellington, she talks the English into withdrawing their troops.
Her friendship with Byron.
Feminism. I enjoyed the fact that her father (creepy love aside) was basically the Warren Buffet of his time. And the fact she was crafty enough with her money to actually have died leaving an even greater fortune than she inherited. The men in her life, each and every one, seemed to be crazed gambling syphilitic egoists who she was constantly giving enormous amounts of money to.
So it shocks me that there are so few books out on her. Only like two biographies in the past century? That's insane! There should be hundreds of books about her. She's like a Bernhardt, in that she was feted and loved by the entire world, and had a knack of being in the right place at the right time. Although de Stael wielded actual political influence and did change the course of history. She even was so magnanimous that she foiled an assassination attempt on Napoleon's life while he was in exile. I found it was interesting that in exile, one of Napoleon's obsessions was de Stael.
I really hope someone writes the book on the feud.
Her relationship with her children. That can be a deal breaker sometimes in dealing with people from the past. They were just so shitty to their kids. Look at Rousseau. Madame de Stael got lucky in that her father was a financial genius and her mom did physics for fun, hung out with Gibbon, had a ton of money and included her in their life. And she paid it forward. She was an excellent daughter (with hopefully nothing more than that) and seemed like a great mom that even with the lovers, the racing all over Europe, the intrigues, her kids and entourage were all devoted to each other. It’s not that often in reading history do you come across someone who seems to be so much a part of their era, while at the same time transcending it. For example, I do not think she would have that much culture shock if you magically transported her to modern day US. She’d be disappointed most likely we have not gotten further in two hundred years.
TL;dr: Fantastic biography on a legendary figure who shaped political thought, literature, and history.
August 8, 2020
In the 18th century, there were three great powers in Europe: Britain, Russia and Madame de Staël.
This sentence was enough for me to want to read about this woman. She was one of the main Napoleon opponents, a great writer and a unique thinker. The inventor of comparative literature and the term 'romanticism'. She was an early celebrity: someone about whom everyone had a view.
Her marriage and love life was just as intriguing and unorthodox as her political and creative life to me.
The first quarter of a book was a struggle; I only persisted because of the reasons above. The book was talking about her immediate family and early life; I didn't find it very exciting, it was a bit repetitive and long in my opinion. I almost gave up. But then things came into full swing. Interesting historical events overlapped with Germain's personal development and growth and created a fascinating picture, and suddenly I couldn't put the book down.
This woman was an intellectual giant. Brave and devoted friend. She was vocal and opinionated, and she was not attractive (how dare she!)
"Byron found it hard to forgive the middle-aged authoress for not being good-looking. To Lady Melbourne he declared: ‘I never go near her – her books are very delightful, but in society I see nothing but a very plain woman forcing one to listen and look at her with her pen behind her ear and her mouth full of ink."
In Russia: "Ladies and gentlemen gathered to gape at her. For the most part they were not pleased. They saw a fat woman of fifty, dressed inappropriately for her years. Nor did her manners please. People found her speeches too long and her sleeves too short."
She was a woman of many talents - a dramatist, a talented actress, director and designer – all these made her a uniquely exciting theatre critic as well, irresistibly drawing in her audience.
She was exiled for a decade because she wouldn't conform, emotional and unreserved, but yet her thinking always clear and never muddled by her emotions, even on her deathbed. Always an activist, a committed political thinker and an analyst of human behaviour she believed passionately that literature could not be separate from political and social conditions of a country.
"‘She is good, easy to be with, grateful for a nothing . . . I don’t know whether her head or her heart is the most warm. Those two enemies have great difficulty in getting on together. The richness of her mind enchants and irritates, she is paradoxical in discussion and if the word sensibility is mentioned, off she goes! But what grace and kindly desire to show everyone at their best! What eloquence, what improvisation, what spirit!’"
It was exciting to read about her literary success, to witness how her ideas swept two continents.
"Madame de Staël encouraged the development of a national spirit which might help each country to discover its own character and express it in its own way, thereby enriching European civilization as a whole."
Her books usually sold out just months after publishing. Again and again, she proved to sceptics (mildly put) like Lord Byron and eventually even Napoleon that they better listen and take her ideas into account, and better not make her an enemy.
"The book sold out in three days in its French edition and sold 2,250 copies in English by the end of the year. Madame de Staël was now the literary as well as the political and social star of the season, putting Byron’s nose out of joint."
Byron: "‘I do not love Madame de Staël but depend upon it – she beats all your natives hollow as an Authoress – in my opinion – and I would not say this if I could help it.’ In his diary he admitted: ‘she is a woman by herself and has done more than the rest of them together, intellectually – she ought to have been a man’"
The quality of her observations and analysis of nations, social orders and governments put her on the same level as men in an era when women were thought to be significantly inferior to men in intellect."
Some of my favourite quotes of Stael:
"‘My passion is my genius’."
"Self-improvement, not happiness, should be the chief aim of human life – overcoming suffering is a condition of moral progress."
"diversity is in itself praiseworthy, for in literature as in so many other fields, unanimity is almost always a sign of servitude."
"Man must be believed capable of making a choice and be free to make it. It follows that no form of domination by any one human being over another is permissible; human dignity and liberty are pre-eminent."
Madame de Staël maintained that original thinking was more important than good taste.
There is so much more! My next step after reading this is to read some of her work. Yesterday I received her "Politics, Literature and National Character" and I cannot wait to start reading.
Here are the books that I added to my reading list following this book:
- On the Influence of Passions on the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations
- Napoleon's Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand
- The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe
- On Germany
- Ten Years of Exile
- Lettres about Jean-Jacques Rousseau
This sentence was enough for me to want to read about this woman. She was one of the main Napoleon opponents, a great writer and a unique thinker. The inventor of comparative literature and the term 'romanticism'. She was an early celebrity: someone about whom everyone had a view.
Her marriage and love life was just as intriguing and unorthodox as her political and creative life to me.
The first quarter of a book was a struggle; I only persisted because of the reasons above. The book was talking about her immediate family and early life; I didn't find it very exciting, it was a bit repetitive and long in my opinion. I almost gave up. But then things came into full swing. Interesting historical events overlapped with Germain's personal development and growth and created a fascinating picture, and suddenly I couldn't put the book down.
This woman was an intellectual giant. Brave and devoted friend. She was vocal and opinionated, and she was not attractive (how dare she!)
"Byron found it hard to forgive the middle-aged authoress for not being good-looking. To Lady Melbourne he declared: ‘I never go near her – her books are very delightful, but in society I see nothing but a very plain woman forcing one to listen and look at her with her pen behind her ear and her mouth full of ink."
In Russia: "Ladies and gentlemen gathered to gape at her. For the most part they were not pleased. They saw a fat woman of fifty, dressed inappropriately for her years. Nor did her manners please. People found her speeches too long and her sleeves too short."
She was a woman of many talents - a dramatist, a talented actress, director and designer – all these made her a uniquely exciting theatre critic as well, irresistibly drawing in her audience.
She was exiled for a decade because she wouldn't conform, emotional and unreserved, but yet her thinking always clear and never muddled by her emotions, even on her deathbed. Always an activist, a committed political thinker and an analyst of human behaviour she believed passionately that literature could not be separate from political and social conditions of a country.
"‘She is good, easy to be with, grateful for a nothing . . . I don’t know whether her head or her heart is the most warm. Those two enemies have great difficulty in getting on together. The richness of her mind enchants and irritates, she is paradoxical in discussion and if the word sensibility is mentioned, off she goes! But what grace and kindly desire to show everyone at their best! What eloquence, what improvisation, what spirit!’"
It was exciting to read about her literary success, to witness how her ideas swept two continents.
"Madame de Staël encouraged the development of a national spirit which might help each country to discover its own character and express it in its own way, thereby enriching European civilization as a whole."
Her books usually sold out just months after publishing. Again and again, she proved to sceptics (mildly put) like Lord Byron and eventually even Napoleon that they better listen and take her ideas into account, and better not make her an enemy.
"The book sold out in three days in its French edition and sold 2,250 copies in English by the end of the year. Madame de Staël was now the literary as well as the political and social star of the season, putting Byron’s nose out of joint."
Byron: "‘I do not love Madame de Staël but depend upon it – she beats all your natives hollow as an Authoress – in my opinion – and I would not say this if I could help it.’ In his diary he admitted: ‘she is a woman by herself and has done more than the rest of them together, intellectually – she ought to have been a man’"
The quality of her observations and analysis of nations, social orders and governments put her on the same level as men in an era when women were thought to be significantly inferior to men in intellect."
Some of my favourite quotes of Stael:
"‘My passion is my genius’."
"Self-improvement, not happiness, should be the chief aim of human life – overcoming suffering is a condition of moral progress."
"diversity is in itself praiseworthy, for in literature as in so many other fields, unanimity is almost always a sign of servitude."
"Man must be believed capable of making a choice and be free to make it. It follows that no form of domination by any one human being over another is permissible; human dignity and liberty are pre-eminent."
Madame de Staël maintained that original thinking was more important than good taste.
There is so much more! My next step after reading this is to read some of her work. Yesterday I received her "Politics, Literature and National Character" and I cannot wait to start reading.
Here are the books that I added to my reading list following this book:
- On the Influence of Passions on the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations
- Napoleon's Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand
- The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe
- On Germany
- Ten Years of Exile
- Lettres about Jean-Jacques Rousseau
October 28, 2022
A brilliantly written story on one of the most intriguing and powerful women of all times. Maria Fairweather did incredible research and digs deep to bring this "in"famous historical character back to life. Even though I thought I already knew a lot about mde. de Stäel's life, this was even better than I expected and learned so much more about this fascinating woman "behind" the curtain.
Want to read
November 14, 2011Napoleon hated her like an arch-enemy. Apparently the feeling was mutual. This shit is ON, ASAP.
April 24, 2022
Paints a slightly ironic portrait of Madame de Staël at times which does much to add humorous touches. One of my many sources while penning Julien’s Terror.
March 29, 2013
Although Madame de Stael was an interesting and important woman, this book was disappointing. Fairweather never manages to provide you with a real person, presenting facts instead. The facts are great, but I felt something was missing.
Fairweather tells you that Stael was brilliant, but never demonstrates it. You have to accept it as a fact because people at the time said so and the author says so. I am willing to believe it, but it would have been better if I could have seen it for myself by being given better examples of her writing and her wit, or more complete details on her brilliant thoughts.
What did come across clearly was that poor Madame de Stael had never grown up and never achieved mastery of her emotions. Her pathetic clutching at various lovers made me cringe. It reminded me of myself. But then, I’m not a brilliant political thinker who holds the most important salons in Europe and have never had, nor will I ever have, any influence on the high and mighty.
It is interesting to learn that in those salons of Paris, the hostess was not simply the one who provided the food and drink. She conducted the conversation which, to be successful, needed to be witty and brilliant. Oh, would I love to sit one evening at a table where the conversation is witty and brilliant. Or even just witty and intelligent.
Fairweather tells you that Stael was brilliant, but never demonstrates it. You have to accept it as a fact because people at the time said so and the author says so. I am willing to believe it, but it would have been better if I could have seen it for myself by being given better examples of her writing and her wit, or more complete details on her brilliant thoughts.
What did come across clearly was that poor Madame de Stael had never grown up and never achieved mastery of her emotions. Her pathetic clutching at various lovers made me cringe. It reminded me of myself. But then, I’m not a brilliant political thinker who holds the most important salons in Europe and have never had, nor will I ever have, any influence on the high and mighty.
It is interesting to learn that in those salons of Paris, the hostess was not simply the one who provided the food and drink. She conducted the conversation which, to be successful, needed to be witty and brilliant. Oh, would I love to sit one evening at a table where the conversation is witty and brilliant. Or even just witty and intelligent.
September 30, 2013
FROM THE SALONS TO THE BARRICADES: THE RISE OF WOMEN OF LETTERS IN WORLD LITERATURE IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES--MADAME DE SCUDERY, DE LA FAYETTE, DE SEVIGNE, DE STAEL, ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA, APHRA BEHN & MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT----FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Individual freedom, male or female, has in reality always been the exception rather than the rule, and in the early days of the modern world it was rather a privilige of a select few of the nobility or the richest bourgeious classes rather than a right or a reality, only later, after the French and American Revolutions broadening to include the middle and lower classes. Women, nonetheless, from the 1600's were beginning to enjoy some increasing measure of that freedom including the gradual emergence of their voice in the world of letters, starting with the priviliged women of the aristocratic classes who frequented the court "salons" and gradually broadening that voice to include larger and larger elements of the middle-classes.
As in Heian Japan with the writings of Lady Murasaki Shikibu in her "Tale of Genji," women's writing flourished in European court circles, especially in France. While the dominant aristocratic codes severely restricted women in their conduct, education and freedom to think, learn and write, yet aristocratic privilege could allow a few individual and talented women the scope for the exercise of their powers of intellect and expression. Thus the Marquise de Rambouillet opened her famous "Blue Room" salon around 1608, which was to develop over forty years into a nexus of intellectual challenge and interchange, allowing women and bourgeious intellectuals to rise to the capacity of intellectual influence and interchange once the exclusive province of aristocratic men, competing even with the royal court. There the emergent values of wit, intelligence and sensitivity came to challenge the traditional official court values of military prowess and power. Such salons continued to exercise social influence over the next two hundred years up to the French Revolution, including such later voices as Madame De Staël of the Napoleonic era. Women writers such as Madeleine de Scudéry, Madame de La Fayette, Madame de Sévigné, often referred to as the "Précieuses” or "Bluestocking" ladies of culture and refinement, became leaders and mediators of the Enlightenment and of progressive social ideas, or influential literary artists.
This movement soon spread to other nations such as England where women such as Katherine Philips, "the Matchless Orinda" and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea established coteries frequented by such writers as Swift and Pope and began to make their own voices heard. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu joined their ranks with accounts of her travels and experiences as a woman in the Ottoman court of the Grande Porte. Soon such aristocratic female voices were joined by such middle-class women as Aphra Behn, author of the novel "Oroonoko," perhaps the first professional woman writer in the English language. Thereafter, the bourgeious revolutions brought a flood of male and female writers to prominence, increasingly insisting on individual rights and individual voices, such as Tom Paine, whose "Rights of Man" attacked aristocracy and monarchy, and such female comrades at the barricades as Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley the author of "Frankenstein," wife of social reformer Richard Godwin, and author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Women," one of the seminal feminist writings of World Literature.
The influence of the increasing democratizing influence of the middle and lower classes was not, however, always a liberal one in the direction of greater freedom for either men or women. In England the middle-class revolution was often associated with the Puritan movement, which severely condemned and restricted the cultural liberties and libertinage of the aristocratic classes, denouncing their emphasis on beauty, wit, frivolity, art, sexual license and foppery in favor of a new form of repressive religious conformity, and the French Revolution, followed by the Russian and Chinese communist revolutions often imposed a revolutionary austerity and puritanism which limited the sexual freedom and individuality of both sexes.
The salon literature also included a strong element of the pastoral, the idealization of the simple life of shepherds in the countryside, often an escape from or counterbalance to the pressures and hypocrisies of urban life and the enforced conformity of court culture. This pastoral dimension, along with its "sentimental" sensibility, was also emphasized in the informal salons of Englishwomen such as Katherine Phillips, who convened their circles not in the urban capital of London but rather in the aristocratic country estates or rural England. This influence evolved further into the idealization of nature and the uncorrupted natural focus of Romanticism.
MADELINE DE SCUDERY, WRITER AND CONVERSATIONALIST OF THE GRAND SALONS
Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) was part of a movement in the late Renaissance in England and France where women adapted classical rhetorical theory to their own unique conditions. She thus revised discourse to be modeled on salon conversation rather than public speaking, a forum reserved to men. Typically, he speaker in the salon built on the ideas of the speaker before them, opting for consensus rather than oppositional debate and argument. Scudéry's "Les Femmes Illustres" (1642) addressed itself to women and defends education, rather than the beauty or the cosmetic arts, as a means of social mobility for women. It justified women's participation in rhetoric and literary culture in the forms most accessible to them: salon conversation and letter writing within intellectual circles. It foregrounds women speakers as models for the speeches, including Cleopatra of Egypt. In it as well as "Conversations Sur Divers Sujets" she adapted classical rhetorical theory from Cicero, Quintilian, Aristotle, and the sophists to a theory of salon conversation and letter writing. Other works of hers such as "Conversation," "The Art of Speaking," "Raillery," "Invention," and "The Manner of Writing Letters" offered guides and models for women's intellectual and social formation while forcefully recording instances of salon conversation and social scenarios where women take intellectual control of the conversation.
In another famous work which became the basis of a popular kind of multi-party social role-playing game, "Clélie," Scudéry invented the famous "Carte de Tendre," a map of an Arcadia where the geography is all based around the theme of love: the "River of Inclination" flows past the villages of "Billet Doux" (Love Letter), "Petits Soins" (Little Trinkets) and so forth, forming a sort of board-game of love's escapades. Scudéry was a skilled conversationalist and several volumes purporting to report her conversations upon various topics were published during her lifetime.
De Scudery is also credited with establishing the genre of the "roman à clef" or "novel with a key" in which the fictional story is based on and reveals the lives of true persons in a coded fictional disguise, which the reader enjoys discovering. Most of her novels exhibited this characteristic and provided readers with great enjoyment in searching for and discovering "the key" to the hidden lives of their contemporaries. The roman à clef has since been used by writers as diverse as Victor Hugo, Phillip K. Dick, and Bret Easton Ellis.
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE, PIONEER OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette (1634-1693), better known as Madame de La Fayette, was a French writer, the author of "La Princesse de Clèves," France's first historical novel and one of the earliest novels in World Literature. At 16, she became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from the scholar Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage also introduced her to the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. There she formed a close intellectual friendship with François de La Rochefoucauld, the renown author of the sardonic "Maxims." La Fayette's most famous novel "La Princesse de Clèves," first published anonymously in March 1678 was an immense success, and is often taken to be the first true French novel and a prototype not only of the French historical novel but also of the genre of the psychological novel.The novel's action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France. The novel recreates that era with remarkable precision. Nearly every character – except the heroine – is a true historical figure. Events and intrigues unfold with great faithfulness to documentary records. The Princess marries but falls in love with a dashing noble the Duke de Nemours, and a chain of intrigues follow giving a moving panorama of life and love at the royal court. Her life, however leads not to her lover's bed but rather to a convent.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE, ICON OF BELLE LETTRES AND EPISTOLARY PROSE
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696) was a French aristocrat, remembered especially for her exquisite prose style in letter-writing. Most of her letters, celebrated for their wit and vividness, were addressed to her daughter and gained wide circulation in literary circles. She is revered in France as one of the great icons of French literature.
Mme de Sévigné corresponded with her daughter for nearly thirty years. A clandestine edition, containing twenty-eight letters or portions of letters, was published in 1725, followed by two others the next year. Pauline de Simiane, Mme de Sévigné's granddaughter, decided to officially publish her grandmother's correspondence and working with the editor Denis-Marius Perrin of Aix-en-Provence, she published 614 letters from 1734-1737, then 772 letters in 1754. The letters were selected according to Mme de Simiane's instructions: she rejected those that dealt too closely with family matters, or those that seemed poorly written. Mme de Sévigné's letters play an important role in the novel "À la recherche du temps perdu" In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust where they figure as the favorite reading of the narrator's grandmother, and, following her death, his mother.
ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA---"THE MATCHLESS ORINDA"
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), was an English poetess who became known by her nom de plume, as "The Matchless Orinda." She was well-educated as her family believed in good education for girls as well as for boys. She became one of six maids of honour to Mary of Modena, who was the wife of James, Duke of York, who would later become King James II. In addition to her writing, Finch was renown for introducing and adapting the French institution of the literary salon to the English environment, often focused on an aristocratic lady's country home rather than city residence.
Finch’s range as a writer was vast and she experimented with the poetic traditions of her day, often straying from the fold through her use of rhyme, meter and content, which ranged from the simplistic to the metaphysical. Additionally, Finch wrote several satiric vignettes modelled after the short tales of French fable writer Jean de La Fontaine. Her poetry is often considered to fall in the category of Augustan, reflecting upon nature and finding both an emotional and religious relationship to it in her verse.
APHRA BEHN, THE FIRST WOMAN PROFESSIONAL WRITER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration, the first English professional female literary writer, and author of the novel "Oroonoko" depicting the tragedy of an African prince shipped to South America as a black slave. It is notable for its exploration of slavery, race, and gender early in history. Her writing also contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature and along with Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood, she was sometimes referred to as part of "The fair triumvirate of wit." She was of modest middle-class origin and traveled in South America and Europe. She is reported to have served as a spy for the Stuart King Charles II. Her political sympathies were conservative, Catholic-sympathetic, Stuart royalist and Tory. Monetary necessity compelled her to write, and her success at it in both plays and prose enabled her to become the first example of a professional woman writer in England and a model and hero for future women such as Virginia Woolf who wrote in "A Room of One's Own:"
"All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds... Behn proved that money could be made by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a sign of folly and a distracted mind but was of practical importance."
MADAME DE STAEL, ICON OF EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM
Madame de Staël, was a French woman of letters of Swiss origin whose lifetime overlapped with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. She was one of Napoleon's principal opponents. Celebrated for her conversational eloquence, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, both critical and fictional, made their mark on the history of European Romanticism. Her father was the prominent Swiss banker and statesman Jacques Necker, who was the Director of Finance under King Louis XVI of France. Her mother was Suzanne Curchod, hostess of one of the most popular salons of Paris, where figures such as Buffon, Marmontel, Grimm, Edward Gibbon, the Abbé Raynal, and Jean-François de la Harpe were frequent guests. Her mother habitually brought her as a young child to sit at her feet in her famous salon, where the sober intellectuals took pleasure in stimulating the brilliant child. This exposure occasioned, as in the case of another child prodigy, John Stuart Mill, a breakdown in adolescence, but the seeds of a literary vocation had been sown irrevocably. She married the Swedish ambassador to the French royal court, a fact which gave her both a high status in French society as well as valuable diplomatic immunity during the excesses of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
At the time of the French Revolution she was enthusiastic for a mixture of Rousseauism and constitutionalism in politics, favoring an American-style constitutional republic or limited constitutional monarchy and democracy like England. Her novels were bestsellers and her literary criticism was highly influential. When she was allowed to live in Paris she greatly encouraged any political dissident from Louis's regime. She exulted in the meeting of the
Estates General at the beginning of the Revolution. In the early days of the revolutionary period she was in Paris taking an interest in, and attending the Assembly, and holding a salon on the Rue du Bac, attended by Talleyrand, Abbé Delille, Clermont-Tonnerre, and Gouverneur Morris. Napoleon said about her, that she "teaches people to think who never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think." Nonetheless she became a bitter opponent of Napoleon, leading him to order her exile from Paris, commanding she not come within 40 leagues of the city, causing her to seek exile in Germany and across Europe.
Auguste Comte included Madame de Staël in his Calendar of Great Men. In a book with the same name, Comte's disciple Frederic Harrison wrote about Staël and her works: "In Delphine a woman, for the first time since the Revolution, reopened the romance of the heart which was in vogue in the century preceding. Comte would daily recite the sentence from Delphine, "There is nothing real in the world but love." "Our thoughts and our acts," she said, "can only give us happiness through results: and results are not often in our own control. Feeling is entirely within our power; and it gives us a direct source of happiness, which nothing outside can take away." The famous quote, "Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent", commonly translated as "To know all is to forgive all", is found in her most famous novel "Corinne." Her works, Harrison wrote, "precede the works of Scott, Byron, Shelley, and partly of Chateaubriand, their historical importance is great in the development of modern Romanticism, of the romance of the heart, the delight in nature, and in the art, antiquities, and history of Europe."
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, ADVOCATE OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND MOTHER OF MARY SHELLEY, AUTHOR OF "FRANKENSTEIN"
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
She, like Tom Paine travelled to France at the beginning of the Revolution and took part in its events. She published numerous books including "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" (1787) and her children's book "Original Stories from Real Life" (1788). Later she married the philosopher and pioneer of modern anarchist thought Richard Godwin, with whom she had a daughter who would become a famous author, Mary Shelley, author of the novel "Frankenstein" and wife of Percy Shelley, the renown Romantic poet and revolutionary thinker. She died from complications of childbirth resulting from the birth of Mary, whom Godwin raised and educated. Her reputation suffered discrediting during the conservative Victorian period, but her life and works were re-evaluated upwards with the growth of the modern feminist movement in the 20th Century.
SPIRITUS MUNDI AND WOMEN OF LETTERS
My own work, "Spiritus Mundi" draws on the models of many women writers, including George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and many others. One of its main characters is Eva Strong, who is a writer, lover of the protagonist Sartorius, and an activist in the global campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a new organ of the United Nations modeled on the European Parliament for global democracy.
World Literature Forum invites you to check out the great Women of Letters in World Literature, and also the contemporary epic novel Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard. For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit...
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr...
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
Individual freedom, male or female, has in reality always been the exception rather than the rule, and in the early days of the modern world it was rather a privilige of a select few of the nobility or the richest bourgeious classes rather than a right or a reality, only later, after the French and American Revolutions broadening to include the middle and lower classes. Women, nonetheless, from the 1600's were beginning to enjoy some increasing measure of that freedom including the gradual emergence of their voice in the world of letters, starting with the priviliged women of the aristocratic classes who frequented the court "salons" and gradually broadening that voice to include larger and larger elements of the middle-classes.
As in Heian Japan with the writings of Lady Murasaki Shikibu in her "Tale of Genji," women's writing flourished in European court circles, especially in France. While the dominant aristocratic codes severely restricted women in their conduct, education and freedom to think, learn and write, yet aristocratic privilege could allow a few individual and talented women the scope for the exercise of their powers of intellect and expression. Thus the Marquise de Rambouillet opened her famous "Blue Room" salon around 1608, which was to develop over forty years into a nexus of intellectual challenge and interchange, allowing women and bourgeious intellectuals to rise to the capacity of intellectual influence and interchange once the exclusive province of aristocratic men, competing even with the royal court. There the emergent values of wit, intelligence and sensitivity came to challenge the traditional official court values of military prowess and power. Such salons continued to exercise social influence over the next two hundred years up to the French Revolution, including such later voices as Madame De Staël of the Napoleonic era. Women writers such as Madeleine de Scudéry, Madame de La Fayette, Madame de Sévigné, often referred to as the "Précieuses” or "Bluestocking" ladies of culture and refinement, became leaders and mediators of the Enlightenment and of progressive social ideas, or influential literary artists.
This movement soon spread to other nations such as England where women such as Katherine Philips, "the Matchless Orinda" and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea established coteries frequented by such writers as Swift and Pope and began to make their own voices heard. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu joined their ranks with accounts of her travels and experiences as a woman in the Ottoman court of the Grande Porte. Soon such aristocratic female voices were joined by such middle-class women as Aphra Behn, author of the novel "Oroonoko," perhaps the first professional woman writer in the English language. Thereafter, the bourgeious revolutions brought a flood of male and female writers to prominence, increasingly insisting on individual rights and individual voices, such as Tom Paine, whose "Rights of Man" attacked aristocracy and monarchy, and such female comrades at the barricades as Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley the author of "Frankenstein," wife of social reformer Richard Godwin, and author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Women," one of the seminal feminist writings of World Literature.
The influence of the increasing democratizing influence of the middle and lower classes was not, however, always a liberal one in the direction of greater freedom for either men or women. In England the middle-class revolution was often associated with the Puritan movement, which severely condemned and restricted the cultural liberties and libertinage of the aristocratic classes, denouncing their emphasis on beauty, wit, frivolity, art, sexual license and foppery in favor of a new form of repressive religious conformity, and the French Revolution, followed by the Russian and Chinese communist revolutions often imposed a revolutionary austerity and puritanism which limited the sexual freedom and individuality of both sexes.
The salon literature also included a strong element of the pastoral, the idealization of the simple life of shepherds in the countryside, often an escape from or counterbalance to the pressures and hypocrisies of urban life and the enforced conformity of court culture. This pastoral dimension, along with its "sentimental" sensibility, was also emphasized in the informal salons of Englishwomen such as Katherine Phillips, who convened their circles not in the urban capital of London but rather in the aristocratic country estates or rural England. This influence evolved further into the idealization of nature and the uncorrupted natural focus of Romanticism.
MADELINE DE SCUDERY, WRITER AND CONVERSATIONALIST OF THE GRAND SALONS
Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701) was part of a movement in the late Renaissance in England and France where women adapted classical rhetorical theory to their own unique conditions. She thus revised discourse to be modeled on salon conversation rather than public speaking, a forum reserved to men. Typically, he speaker in the salon built on the ideas of the speaker before them, opting for consensus rather than oppositional debate and argument. Scudéry's "Les Femmes Illustres" (1642) addressed itself to women and defends education, rather than the beauty or the cosmetic arts, as a means of social mobility for women. It justified women's participation in rhetoric and literary culture in the forms most accessible to them: salon conversation and letter writing within intellectual circles. It foregrounds women speakers as models for the speeches, including Cleopatra of Egypt. In it as well as "Conversations Sur Divers Sujets" she adapted classical rhetorical theory from Cicero, Quintilian, Aristotle, and the sophists to a theory of salon conversation and letter writing. Other works of hers such as "Conversation," "The Art of Speaking," "Raillery," "Invention," and "The Manner of Writing Letters" offered guides and models for women's intellectual and social formation while forcefully recording instances of salon conversation and social scenarios where women take intellectual control of the conversation.
In another famous work which became the basis of a popular kind of multi-party social role-playing game, "Clélie," Scudéry invented the famous "Carte de Tendre," a map of an Arcadia where the geography is all based around the theme of love: the "River of Inclination" flows past the villages of "Billet Doux" (Love Letter), "Petits Soins" (Little Trinkets) and so forth, forming a sort of board-game of love's escapades. Scudéry was a skilled conversationalist and several volumes purporting to report her conversations upon various topics were published during her lifetime.
De Scudery is also credited with establishing the genre of the "roman à clef" or "novel with a key" in which the fictional story is based on and reveals the lives of true persons in a coded fictional disguise, which the reader enjoys discovering. Most of her novels exhibited this characteristic and provided readers with great enjoyment in searching for and discovering "the key" to the hidden lives of their contemporaries. The roman à clef has since been used by writers as diverse as Victor Hugo, Phillip K. Dick, and Bret Easton Ellis.
MADAME DE LA FAYETTE, PIONEER OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, comtesse de La Fayette (1634-1693), better known as Madame de La Fayette, was a French writer, the author of "La Princesse de Clèves," France's first historical novel and one of the earliest novels in World Literature. At 16, she became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from the scholar Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage also introduced her to the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. There she formed a close intellectual friendship with François de La Rochefoucauld, the renown author of the sardonic "Maxims." La Fayette's most famous novel "La Princesse de Clèves," first published anonymously in March 1678 was an immense success, and is often taken to be the first true French novel and a prototype not only of the French historical novel but also of the genre of the psychological novel.The novel's action takes place between October 1558 and November 1559 at the royal court of Henry II of France. The novel recreates that era with remarkable precision. Nearly every character – except the heroine – is a true historical figure. Events and intrigues unfold with great faithfulness to documentary records. The Princess marries but falls in love with a dashing noble the Duke de Nemours, and a chain of intrigues follow giving a moving panorama of life and love at the royal court. Her life, however leads not to her lover's bed but rather to a convent.
MADAME DE SEVIGNE, ICON OF BELLE LETTRES AND EPISTOLARY PROSE
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696) was a French aristocrat, remembered especially for her exquisite prose style in letter-writing. Most of her letters, celebrated for their wit and vividness, were addressed to her daughter and gained wide circulation in literary circles. She is revered in France as one of the great icons of French literature.
Mme de Sévigné corresponded with her daughter for nearly thirty years. A clandestine edition, containing twenty-eight letters or portions of letters, was published in 1725, followed by two others the next year. Pauline de Simiane, Mme de Sévigné's granddaughter, decided to officially publish her grandmother's correspondence and working with the editor Denis-Marius Perrin of Aix-en-Provence, she published 614 letters from 1734-1737, then 772 letters in 1754. The letters were selected according to Mme de Simiane's instructions: she rejected those that dealt too closely with family matters, or those that seemed poorly written. Mme de Sévigné's letters play an important role in the novel "À la recherche du temps perdu" In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust where they figure as the favorite reading of the narrator's grandmother, and, following her death, his mother.
ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHELSEA---"THE MATCHLESS ORINDA"
Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), was an English poetess who became known by her nom de plume, as "The Matchless Orinda." She was well-educated as her family believed in good education for girls as well as for boys. She became one of six maids of honour to Mary of Modena, who was the wife of James, Duke of York, who would later become King James II. In addition to her writing, Finch was renown for introducing and adapting the French institution of the literary salon to the English environment, often focused on an aristocratic lady's country home rather than city residence.
Finch’s range as a writer was vast and she experimented with the poetic traditions of her day, often straying from the fold through her use of rhyme, meter and content, which ranged from the simplistic to the metaphysical. Additionally, Finch wrote several satiric vignettes modelled after the short tales of French fable writer Jean de La Fontaine. Her poetry is often considered to fall in the category of Augustan, reflecting upon nature and finding both an emotional and religious relationship to it in her verse.
APHRA BEHN, THE FIRST WOMAN PROFESSIONAL WRITER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Aphra Behn (1640-1689) was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration, the first English professional female literary writer, and author of the novel "Oroonoko" depicting the tragedy of an African prince shipped to South America as a black slave. It is notable for its exploration of slavery, race, and gender early in history. Her writing also contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature and along with Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood, she was sometimes referred to as part of "The fair triumvirate of wit." She was of modest middle-class origin and traveled in South America and Europe. She is reported to have served as a spy for the Stuart King Charles II. Her political sympathies were conservative, Catholic-sympathetic, Stuart royalist and Tory. Monetary necessity compelled her to write, and her success at it in both plays and prose enabled her to become the first example of a professional woman writer in England and a model and hero for future women such as Virginia Woolf who wrote in "A Room of One's Own:"
"All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds... Behn proved that money could be made by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a sign of folly and a distracted mind but was of practical importance."
MADAME DE STAEL, ICON OF EUROPEAN ROMANTICISM
Madame de Staël, was a French woman of letters of Swiss origin whose lifetime overlapped with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. She was one of Napoleon's principal opponents. Celebrated for her conversational eloquence, she participated actively in the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, both critical and fictional, made their mark on the history of European Romanticism. Her father was the prominent Swiss banker and statesman Jacques Necker, who was the Director of Finance under King Louis XVI of France. Her mother was Suzanne Curchod, hostess of one of the most popular salons of Paris, where figures such as Buffon, Marmontel, Grimm, Edward Gibbon, the Abbé Raynal, and Jean-François de la Harpe were frequent guests. Her mother habitually brought her as a young child to sit at her feet in her famous salon, where the sober intellectuals took pleasure in stimulating the brilliant child. This exposure occasioned, as in the case of another child prodigy, John Stuart Mill, a breakdown in adolescence, but the seeds of a literary vocation had been sown irrevocably. She married the Swedish ambassador to the French royal court, a fact which gave her both a high status in French society as well as valuable diplomatic immunity during the excesses of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
At the time of the French Revolution she was enthusiastic for a mixture of Rousseauism and constitutionalism in politics, favoring an American-style constitutional republic or limited constitutional monarchy and democracy like England. Her novels were bestsellers and her literary criticism was highly influential. When she was allowed to live in Paris she greatly encouraged any political dissident from Louis's regime. She exulted in the meeting of the
Estates General at the beginning of the Revolution. In the early days of the revolutionary period she was in Paris taking an interest in, and attending the Assembly, and holding a salon on the Rue du Bac, attended by Talleyrand, Abbé Delille, Clermont-Tonnerre, and Gouverneur Morris. Napoleon said about her, that she "teaches people to think who never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think." Nonetheless she became a bitter opponent of Napoleon, leading him to order her exile from Paris, commanding she not come within 40 leagues of the city, causing her to seek exile in Germany and across Europe.
Auguste Comte included Madame de Staël in his Calendar of Great Men. In a book with the same name, Comte's disciple Frederic Harrison wrote about Staël and her works: "In Delphine a woman, for the first time since the Revolution, reopened the romance of the heart which was in vogue in the century preceding. Comte would daily recite the sentence from Delphine, "There is nothing real in the world but love." "Our thoughts and our acts," she said, "can only give us happiness through results: and results are not often in our own control. Feeling is entirely within our power; and it gives us a direct source of happiness, which nothing outside can take away." The famous quote, "Tout comprendre rend très-indulgent", commonly translated as "To know all is to forgive all", is found in her most famous novel "Corinne." Her works, Harrison wrote, "precede the works of Scott, Byron, Shelley, and partly of Chateaubriand, their historical importance is great in the development of modern Romanticism, of the romance of the heart, the delight in nature, and in the art, antiquities, and history of Europe."
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, ADVOCATE OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND MOTHER OF MARY SHELLEY, AUTHOR OF "FRANKENSTEIN"
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
She, like Tom Paine travelled to France at the beginning of the Revolution and took part in its events. She published numerous books including "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" (1787) and her children's book "Original Stories from Real Life" (1788). Later she married the philosopher and pioneer of modern anarchist thought Richard Godwin, with whom she had a daughter who would become a famous author, Mary Shelley, author of the novel "Frankenstein" and wife of Percy Shelley, the renown Romantic poet and revolutionary thinker. She died from complications of childbirth resulting from the birth of Mary, whom Godwin raised and educated. Her reputation suffered discrediting during the conservative Victorian period, but her life and works were re-evaluated upwards with the growth of the modern feminist movement in the 20th Century.
SPIRITUS MUNDI AND WOMEN OF LETTERS
My own work, "Spiritus Mundi" draws on the models of many women writers, including George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and many others. One of its main characters is Eva Strong, who is a writer, lover of the protagonist Sartorius, and an activist in the global campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a new organ of the United Nations modeled on the European Parliament for global democracy.
World Literature Forum invites you to check out the great Women of Letters in World Literature, and also the contemporary epic novel Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard. For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:
For Discussions on World Literature and n Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit...
Robert Sheppard
Editor-in-Chief
World Literature Forum
Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel
Author’s Blog: http://robertalexandersheppard.wordpr...
Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...
Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO
Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG
Copyright Robert Sheppard 2013 All Rights Reserved
October 2, 2018
Though off to slow start, this biography is an engrossing read about one of the major European intellectuals of the early 19th century. Madame de Stäel was a fascinating woman, raised to confront, converse with, and dominate salon society. Her daring escape from Paris during the French Revolution, her ability to strike fear and terror into Napoleon's heart, the breadth of her learning and questioning mind, and her string of interesting lovers are some of the highlights I will recall for years to come. After years reading 19th century history and literature, I feel I have finally met the ubiquitous Madame de Stäel face-to-face. So many pieces fall into place. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in history, society, the evolution of male-female relationships, or feminism, though I hope that doesn't scare off male readers. Like George Sand, de Stäel was often referred to as though she were male, which at that time was considered a great compliment.
June 18, 2019
The fascinating life story of a fascinating woman. Madame de Stael was a gifted author and political theorist, a real life Scarlet Pimpernel, and a public figure whose influence terrified the most powerful man on the continent: Napoleon. Her successes and failures, genius and foibles, make for enthralling reading. Great stuff.
NB: it's also interesting to see how little has changed, in certain ways. de Stael's (male) enemies constantly attacked her appearance and her sexuality, and as women like Clementine Ford and Anita Sarkeesian could attest, men haven't learned any new tricks in that regard in the last 200 years.
NB: it's also interesting to see how little has changed, in certain ways. de Stael's (male) enemies constantly attacked her appearance and her sexuality, and as women like Clementine Ford and Anita Sarkeesian could attest, men haven't learned any new tricks in that regard in the last 200 years.
April 1, 2024
Remarkable biography for the level of detail. Madame de Stael was the daughter of the Director General of Finance for Louis XVI, a prolific letter writer, and the author of multiple books and plays who lived 1766-1817. She was among the wealthiest women of France, highly influential and energetic, and best known for opposing Napoleon, who banished her from Paris.
The book takes care to include most if not every thought Mme. de Stael revealed in her writings. Readers who wish to fully appreciate the book will benefit by being fluent in French and familiar with period history including leading characters, philosophies, geography, and politics.
The book takes care to include most if not every thought Mme. de Stael revealed in her writings. Readers who wish to fully appreciate the book will benefit by being fluent in French and familiar with period history including leading characters, philosophies, geography, and politics.
February 18, 2023
There is a lot of information about the French revolution and some European politics around that time. However, I have reached page 200 and still don't know why Madame de Stael is considered to be so significant. I know a lot about the men she was obsessed with and the privileged life she was born into. I hate to give up on any book but just don't think I am going to get any more out if this and there are so many other books I could be reading, so I am saying goodbye, and not au revoir!
July 22, 2018
“I have loved God, my father, & liberty”
A keen observer of history, an influencer of events, a philosopher, a writer...an incredible woman and intellectual. For those that study the French Revolution and Napoléon are familiar with this incredible woman. This biography is incredibly well written and absorbing (just like the subject herself). This is an excellent biography.
A keen observer of history, an influencer of events, a philosopher, a writer...an incredible woman and intellectual. For those that study the French Revolution and Napoléon are familiar with this incredible woman. This biography is incredibly well written and absorbing (just like the subject herself). This is an excellent biography.
March 2, 2021
One of the best an interesting books i read. For Powerful and strong women.
October 29, 2016
Maria Fairweather's biography of Germaine de Staël is unquestionably a great book for anyone lucky enought to the culutural baggage necessary to enjoy it. In today's terms, Madame de Staël was one of the great movers and shakers of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. The exact nature of her greatness is however a matter of dispute. In my view, Ms. Fairweather greatly undervalues Madame de Staël's accomplishments in the cultural sphere and greatly overvalues her achievements in the political arena. What is certain is that Ms. Fairweather's book is a rollicking great read about an extraordinary woman who seemed to know every important political and cultural player in her time.
Amongst many others, Germaine de Staël knew the Duke of Wellington (the victor at Waterloo) and Marshall Kutuzov (who forced Napoleon out of Russia) , Schiller, Goethe and Byron all of whom found her ugly and overbearing yet were proud friends that admired her for her tremendeous intellect.
Germaine de Staë was an extravagant personality. She was a Daddy's girl and a spoiled brat. She was ugly, had ghastly taste in clothes and was highly promiscuous. Depending on one's point of view she was either extremely pushy or highly energetic. She was loyal to her friends and very courageous.
Ultimately from the the perspective of the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Germaine de Staël was right on all issues. She was a vigorous promoter of liberal democracy. She was opposed to both the Ancien Régime and the Napoleonic dictator ship. She wanted government appointments and promotions to be made on the basis of competency rather than patronage. She advocated the abollition of slavery and serfdom. Although, she certainly felt that she deserved more political influence than she had, she was relatively quiet on the question of the rights of women not because indifferentur but because she was a very political person who put her efforts first and foremost on issues that were clearly on the political agenda.
Ms. Fairweather in her biography masterfully explains the importance of the institution of the Salon and the Salonières in European history. Both Germaine de Staël and her mother Mme Necker were among the leading salonières of their times. In their weekly Salons they brought together leading political and literary figures together for the purpose of socializing and discussing new ideas. Prior to the advent of the mass media, the Salons were the best vehicles for introducing the political elites to new ideas on government, economics, literature, music, and other areas in the arts.
I find myelf disagreeing with Ms. Fairweather on a wide number of issues. Ms. Fairweather is of the opinon that Mme. de Staël's most successful novel Corinne is about being Germaine de Staël and nothing else; whereas I feel that Corinne makes a very compelling case for the reunification of Italy. Ms. Fairweather notes that Mme. de Staël's study of German art, literature, music and philosophy ("De l'Allemagne) was a major force behind the rise of the romantic but discounts the actual theories that she presents on German culture and Romanticism. For my part, I feel that Mme. de Staël's views on the subject are extremely solid and require only someone to restate them in the terms of our current century.
Ms. Fairweather's book is tremendous fun for anyone who has a solid background in the history and the literature of Germaine de Staël's era. If you think that you match the description, then do not hesitate to plunge into it. For readers unfamiliar with the Napoleonic and Revolutionary era, the book may prove to be a dreary slog.
Amongst many others, Germaine de Staël knew the Duke of Wellington (the victor at Waterloo) and Marshall Kutuzov (who forced Napoleon out of Russia) , Schiller, Goethe and Byron all of whom found her ugly and overbearing yet were proud friends that admired her for her tremendeous intellect.
Germaine de Staë was an extravagant personality. She was a Daddy's girl and a spoiled brat. She was ugly, had ghastly taste in clothes and was highly promiscuous. Depending on one's point of view she was either extremely pushy or highly energetic. She was loyal to her friends and very courageous.
Ultimately from the the perspective of the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Germaine de Staël was right on all issues. She was a vigorous promoter of liberal democracy. She was opposed to both the Ancien Régime and the Napoleonic dictator ship. She wanted government appointments and promotions to be made on the basis of competency rather than patronage. She advocated the abollition of slavery and serfdom. Although, she certainly felt that she deserved more political influence than she had, she was relatively quiet on the question of the rights of women not because indifferentur but because she was a very political person who put her efforts first and foremost on issues that were clearly on the political agenda.
Ms. Fairweather in her biography masterfully explains the importance of the institution of the Salon and the Salonières in European history. Both Germaine de Staël and her mother Mme Necker were among the leading salonières of their times. In their weekly Salons they brought together leading political and literary figures together for the purpose of socializing and discussing new ideas. Prior to the advent of the mass media, the Salons were the best vehicles for introducing the political elites to new ideas on government, economics, literature, music, and other areas in the arts.
I find myelf disagreeing with Ms. Fairweather on a wide number of issues. Ms. Fairweather is of the opinon that Mme. de Staël's most successful novel Corinne is about being Germaine de Staël and nothing else; whereas I feel that Corinne makes a very compelling case for the reunification of Italy. Ms. Fairweather notes that Mme. de Staël's study of German art, literature, music and philosophy ("De l'Allemagne) was a major force behind the rise of the romantic but discounts the actual theories that she presents on German culture and Romanticism. For my part, I feel that Mme. de Staël's views on the subject are extremely solid and require only someone to restate them in the terms of our current century.
Ms. Fairweather's book is tremendous fun for anyone who has a solid background in the history and the literature of Germaine de Staël's era. If you think that you match the description, then do not hesitate to plunge into it. For readers unfamiliar with the Napoleonic and Revolutionary era, the book may prove to be a dreary slog.
August 15, 2009
I'm rating this book (that Leah loaned me last year -- thank you!) so highly because of the subject matter: a politically influential genius of France's troubled revolutionary times, thought by all to be one of the time's most brilliant minds, but maligned by history as inconsequential. Every so often I encounter such historical women of genius and it angers me that I've never heard of them. Wikipedia quotes a 1911 encyclopedia that dismisses her ideas as unoriginal, but in reading her biography I understand this perception: when women are barred from politics, they must find other ways to influence history. This one was constantly surrounded by intellectuals and men of power; who is to say their ideas were not shaped by her? This woman was equal to Napoleon and his greatest social enemy. (A scene between them: she had prepared many arguments to counter his famous misogyny at a meeting—he short-circuits her by staring at her decolletage and asking if she'd nursed all her children.)
Girlfriends, I encourage you to find inspiration in Madame de Stael! I feel I have found a friend who shares my values and passions, and am eager to dig up her works and get to know her mind first hand.
Girlfriends, I encourage you to find inspiration in Madame de Stael! I feel I have found a friend who shares my values and passions, and am eager to dig up her works and get to know her mind first hand.
September 6, 2009
This book has been entered into my bookshelf of historical and biographical works as a permanent resident so I can go back to it later.
Unlike most folks I read this as part of my research on the era of Napoleon for a research project (roleplaying game setting design) so what I was looking for was a vast array of information about people, culture, politics and events that wasn't a dry history read, and it did the job admirably.
It definitely opened up information to me that I had not encountered elsewhere about someone who's importance and influence was ignored by many a historical author since she fought in the battlefield of politics, letters and influence rather than musket and cannon.
Unlike most folks I read this as part of my research on the era of Napoleon for a research project (roleplaying game setting design) so what I was looking for was a vast array of information about people, culture, politics and events that wasn't a dry history read, and it did the job admirably.
It definitely opened up information to me that I had not encountered elsewhere about someone who's importance and influence was ignored by many a historical author since she fought in the battlefield of politics, letters and influence rather than musket and cannon.
June 19, 2007
An amazing book about an amazing woman, who evidently lived her life at full throttle, as only the super rich can truly afford to do. She defied the rigid conventions of pre-revolutionary France, survived the genocide of revolutionary France, and used her influence and fierce intellect to challenge Napoleon in post-revolutionary France. She suffered injustice, exile, miscarriages, sexism, and some ridiculous hairstyles, and finally gets the exhaustive, meticulous and enlightening biography that she deserves.
February 14, 2008
I was intrigued by the life of an influential and intellectual female during and following the era of the French Rev. I found her daily life and character were of interest to me as were her relationships with other historical and literary characers.It is a highly readable and fascinating text.
February 7, 2015
I LOVED this book and it definitely helped me have a deeper understanding of this era. How Madame de Stael has been forgotten by so many I do not know but she was an incredible woman and deserves to be remembered.
January 6, 2009
I read this a while ago but loved it enough to lend to Kristen (read her great review). I found Madame de Stael's life fascinating enough to forgive some uneven writing. You will too, I hope!
February 14, 2011
Fascinating woman and fascinating perspective. She is not always likable but always interesting.
August 2, 2011
One of the best biographies I've read in ages -- what a lady!
January 23, 2016
Very well written and researched book. I loved it immensely. If you want a great book on not only Madame de Stael, but the times in which she lived, this is a great one.
October 4, 2016
Not having heard of her before, I was absolutely fascinated by the story of this incredible, passionate, highly influential and important woman. I'm in awe.
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November 12, 2018Biog S778f 2005
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