Her presence at critical events such as theEstates General of 1789 and the 1789Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen underscored her engagement in the political discourse of her time.[5] However, Madame de Staël faced exile for extended periods: initially during theReign of Terror and subsequently due to personal persecution byNapoleon. She claimed to have discerned the tyrannical nature and ambitions of his rule ahead of many others.[6][7][8]
During her exile, she fostered theCoppet group, a network that spanned across Europe, positioning herself at its heart. Her literary works, emphasizing individuality and passion, left an enduring imprint on European intellectual thought. De Staël's repeated championing ofRomanticism contributed significantly to its widespread recognition.[7]
Within her work, de Staël not only advocates for the necessity of public expression but also sounds cautionary notes about its potential hazards.[9]
Her father "is remembered today for taking the unprecedented step in 1781 of making public thecountry's budget, a novelty in anabsolute monarchy where the state of the national finances had always been kept secret, leading to his dismissal by the King in May of that year."[14] The family eventually took up residence in 1784 atChâteau Coppet, an estate onLake Geneva. The family returned to the Paris region in 1785.[10]
Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, 1796 by Ulrika PaschTheSwedish Embassy, Hôtel de Ségur, later Hôtel de Salm-Dyck
Aged 11, Germaine desired to marryEdward Gibbon, a visitor to her mother's salon whom she found most attractive, and suggested this to her mother. Then, she reasoned, he would always be around for her.[citation needed] In 1783, at seventeen, she was courted byWilliam Pitt the Younger and byComte de Guibert, whose conversation, she thought, was the most far-ranging, spirited and fertile she had ever known.[15] When she did not accept their offers Germaine's parents became impatient. With the help ofMarie-Charlotte Hippolyte de Boufflers, a marriage was arranged withBaronErik Magnus Staël von Holstein, aProtestant andattaché of theSwedish legation to France. The wedding took place on 14 January 1786 in the Swedish embassy at 97,Rue du Bac; Germaine was 19, and her husband 37.[16] On the whole, the marriage seems to have been workable for both parties, although neither seems to have had much affection for the other. Madame de Staël continued to write miscellaneous works, including the three-act romantic dramaSophie (1786) and the five-act tragedyJeanne Grey (1787). The baron, also a gambler, obtained great benefits from the match as he received 80,000pounds and was confirmed as lifetime ambassador to Paris.[8]
On 4 and 5 May 1789 Germaine de Staël watched the assembly of theEstates-General in Versailles, where she met the youngMathieu de Montmorency."Dix Août 1792. Siege et prise du Chateau des Tuileries": French soldiers (volunteers) and citizens storming theTuileries Palace to capture the royal family and end the monarchy.
In 1788, de Staël publishedLetters on the works and character of J.J. Rousseau.[17] De Staël was at this time enthusiastic about the mixture of Rousseau's ideas about love andMontesquieu's on politics.[18]
In December 1788 her father persuadedLouis XVI to double the number of deputies at theThird Estate in order to gain enough support to raise taxes to pay for the excessive costs of supporting the revolutionaries in America. This approach had serious repercussions on Necker's reputation; he appeared to consider the Estates-General as a facility designed to help the administration rather than to reform the government.[19] In an argument with the king, whose speech on 23 June he did not attend, Necker was dismissed and exiled on 11 July. Her parents left France on the same day in unpopularity and disgrace. On Sunday, 12 July the news became public, and an angryCamille Desmoulins suggestedstorming the Bastille.[20] On 16 July he was reappointed; Necker entered Versailles in triumph. His efforts to clean up public finances were unsuccessful and his idea of a National Bank failed. Necker was attacked byJean-Paul Marat andCount Mirabeau in theConstituante, when he did not agree with usingassignats aslegal tender.[21] He resigned on 4 September 1790. Accompanied by their son-in-law, Necker and his wife left for Switzerland, without the two millionlivres, half of his fortune, that he had loaned as an investment in the public treasury in 1778.[22][23][24]
During this time of her political thoughts, de Staël was focused on the problem of leadership, or the perceived lack of it. In her later works she often returned to the idea that "the French Revolution has been characterized by a surprising absence of eminent personalities".[25] She experienced the death of Mirabeau, accused of royalism, as a sign of great political disorientation and uncertainty.[citation needed]
After her flight from Paris, de Staël moved toRolle in Switzerland, where Albert was born. She was supported by de Montmorency and theMarquis de Jaucourt, whom she had previously supplied with Swedish passports.[38] In January 1793, she made a four-month visit to England to be with her then-lover, theComte de Narbonne, atJuniper Hall. (Since 1 February, France and Great Britain had been at war.) Within a few weeks, she was pregnant; it was apparently one of the reasons for the scandal she caused in England. According toFanny Burney, the result was that herfather urged Fanny to avoid the company of de Staël and her circle of FrenchÉmigrés inSurrey.Suzanne Curchod, De Staël's mother, strongly disapproved of the affair.[39] De Staël metHorace Walpole,James Mackintosh,Lord Sheffield, a friend of Edward Gibbon, andLord Loughborough, the newLord Chancellor. She was not impressed with the condition of women in English society, finding that they were not afforded the voice and respect they deserved.[40][5] Staël viewed freedom as twofold: political freedom from institutions and individual freedom from social norms.[41][42]
Benjamin Constant by Lina VallierIn 1797 de Staël and Benjamin Constant lived in the remains of the Abbey of Herivaux.
In the summer of 1793, de Staël returned to Switzerland, because she recognized De Narbonne was indifferent towards her and desired to end their relationship. De Staël reacted to this with misery and frustration.[39] She published a defence of the character ofMarie Antoinette, entitled,Réflexions sur le procès de la Reine, 1793 ("Reflections on the Queen's trial"). In de Staël's view, France should have adapted from anabsolute to aconstitutional monarchy as was the case in England. Living inJouxtens-Mézery, farther away from the French border than Coppet, Germaine was visited byAdolph Ribbing.[13][38] Count Ribbing was living in exile, after his conviction for taking part in a conspiracy to assassinate the Swedish king,Gustav III. In September 1794, the recently divorcedBenjamin Constant visited her, wanting to meet her before he committed suicide.
In May 1795, de Staël moved to Paris, now with Constant in tow, as her protégé and lover.[43] De Staël rejected the idea of theright of resistance – which had been introduced into the never implementedFrench Constitution of 1793, and was removed from theConstitution of 1795.[44] In 1796, she publishedSur l'influence des passions, in which she praised suicide and discussed how passions affect the happiness of individuals and societies, a book which attracted the attention of the German writersSchiller andGoethe.[45][46]
"Passionate love is natural to human beings and to yield oneself to love will not result in abandoning virtue".[47]
Still absorbed by French politics, de Staël reopened her salon.[48] It was during these years that Mme de Staël arguably exerted most political influence. For a time she was still visible in the diverse and eccentric society of the mid-1790s. However, on the13 Vendémiaire theComité de salut public ordered her to leave Paris after accusations of politicking, and put Constant in detention for one night.[49] De Staël spent that autumn in the spa ofForges-les-Eaux. She was considered a threat to political stability and mistrusted by both sides in the political conflict.[50] She corresponded withFrancisco de Miranda whom she wished to see again.[51] The couple moved toOrmesson-sur-Marne where they stayed with Mathieu Montmorency. In Summer 1796 Constant founded the "Cercle constitutionnel" inLuzarches with de Staël's support.[52] In May 1797, she was back in Paris and eight months pregnant. She organized the Club du Salm inHôtel de Salm.[53] De Stael succeeded in getting Talleyrand from the list ofÉmigrés and on his return from the United States to have him appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in July.[54] From thecoup of 18 Fructidor it was announced that anyone campaigning to restore the monarchy or theFrench Constitution of 1793 would be shot without trial.[55] Germaine moved toSaint-Ouen, on her father's estate and became a close friend of the beautiful and wealthyJuliette Récamier to whom she sold her parents' house in theRue de la Chaussée-d'Antin.
In 1797, de Staël completed the initial part of her first most substantial contribution to political and constitutional theory, "On the Current Circumstances Which Can End the Revolution".[14]. The work remained in manuscript form and was not discovered until the end of the nineteenth century.[56] In it, Staël deplores the violence, arbitrariness, and materialism that has plagued the revolutionary years, arguing that their roots are to be found in the history of France. To address these issues and end the revolutionary upheaval, she proposes constitutional changes both in terms of the relationships between the key powers of the state and in terms of religion. Specifically, she argues that France undergoes a reformation by adopting Protestantism as a religion of state. The proposal was not simply a result of her own protestant background but it also sought to stall and redirect the Directory government's plans to adopt theophilanthropy as a religion of state.[57]
On 6 December 1797 de Staël had her first meeting with Napoleon Bonaparte in Talleyrand's office, and met him again on 3 January 1798 during a ball. Though she initially believed Napoleon would be devoted to republican ideals and even welcomed him into her social circle, de Staël became an outspoken critic as his regime grew increasingly authoritarian.[58] She made it clear to him that she did not agree with his plannedinvasion of Switzerland. He ignored her opinions and would not read her letters.[59] In January 1800, Napoleon appointed Benjamin Constant a member of theTribunat; not long after, Constant became his enemy. Two years later, Napoleon forced him into exile on account of his speeches which he took to be actually written by Mme de Staël.[47] In August 1802, Napoleon was electedfirst consul for life. This put de Staël into opposition to him both for personal and political reasons. In her view, Napoleon had begun to resembleMachiavelli's princes inThe Prince (in fact tyrants); while for Napoleon,Voltaire,Jean-Jacques Rousseau and their followers were the cause of the French Revolution.[60] This view was cemented when Jacques Necker published his "Last Views on Politics and Finance" and his daughter, her "De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales". It was her first philosophical treatment of the Europe question: it dealt with such factors as nationality, history, and social institutions.[61] Napoleon started a campaign against her latest publication. He did not like hercultural determinism andgeneralizations, in which she stated that "an artist must be of his own time".[47][62] In his opinion a woman should stick to knitting.[63] He said about her, according to the Memoirs ofMadame de Rémusat, that she "teaches people to think who had never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think".[64] It became clear that the first man of France and de Staël were not likely ever to get along together.[65]
"It seems to me that life's circumstances, beingephemeral, teach us less about durable truths than the fictions based on those truths; and that the best lessons of delicacy and self-respect are to be found in novels where the feelings are so naturally portrayed that you fancy you are witnessing real life as you read."[66]
De Staël published a provocative, anti-Catholic novelDelphine, in which thefemme incomprise (misunderstood woman) living in Paris between 1789 and 1792, is confronted with conservative ideas about divorce after theConcordat of 1801. In this tragic novel, influenced by Goethe'sThe Sorrows of Young Werther and Rousseau'sJulie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, she reflects on the legal and practical aspects on divorce, the arrests and theSeptember Massacres, and the fate of theémigrés. (During the winter of 1794 it seems De Staël was pondering a divorce and whether to marry Ribbing.) The main characters have traits of the unstable Benjamin Constant, and Talleyrand is depicted as an old woman, herself as the heroine with the liberal view of the Italian aristocrat and politicianMelzi d'Eril.[67]
When Constant moved toMaffliers in September 1803 de Staël went to see him and let Napoleon know she would be wise and cautious. Thereupon her house immediately became popular again among her friends, but Napoleon, informed byMadame de Genlis, suspected a conspiracy. "Her extensive network of connections – which included foreign diplomats and known political opponents, as well as members of the government and of Bonaparte's own family – was in itself a source of suspicion and alarm for the government."[68] Her protection ofJean Gabriel Peltier – who plotted the death of Napoleon – influenced his decision on 13 October 1803 to exile her without trial.[69]
For ten years, de Staël was not allowed to come within 40leagues (almost 200 km) of Paris. She accused Napoleon of "persecuting a woman and her children".[70] On 23 October, she left for Germany "out of pride", in the hope of gaining support and to be able to return home as soon as possible.[71][72]
With her children and Constant, de Staël stopped off inMetz and metKant's French translatorCharles de Villers. In mid-December, they arrived inWeimar, where she stayed for two and a half months at the court of theGrand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and his motherAnna Amalia. Goethe who had become ill hesitated about seeing her. After meeting her, Goethe went on to refer to her as an "extraordinary woman" in his private correspondence.[73] Schiller complimented her intelligence and eloquence, but her frequent visits distracted him from completingWilliam Tell.[74][75] De Staël was constantly on the move, talking and asking questions.[76][47] Constant decided to abandon her inLeipzig and return to Switzerland. De Staël travelled on to Berlin, where she made the acquaintance ofAugust Schlegel who was lecturing there on literature. She appointed him on an enormous salary to tutor her children. On 18 April they all left Berlin when the news of her father's death reached her.
On 19 May, de Staël arrived in Coppet now its wealthy and independent mistress. She spent the summer at the chateau sorting through his writings and published an essay on his private life. In April 1804,Friedrich Schlegel marriedDorothea Veit in the Swedish embassy. In July Constant wrote about de Staël, "She exerts over everything around her a kind of inexplicable but real power. If only she could govern herself, she might have governed the world."[77] In December 1804 she travelled to Italy, accompanied by her children,August Wilhelm Schlegel, and the historianSismondi. There she met the poetMonti and the painter,Angelica Kauffman. "Her visit to Italy helped her to develop her theory of the difference between northern and southern societies..."[5]
De Staël returned to Coppet in June 1805, moved toMeulan (Château d'Acosta), and spent nearly a year writing her next book on Italy's culture and history. InCorinne ou l'Italie (1807), her own impressions of a sentimental and intellectual journey, the heroine appears to have been inspired by the Italian poetDiodata Saluzzo Roero.[78][79] The book tells the story of two lovers: Corinne, the Italian poet, and Lord Nelvil, the English noble, traveling through Italy on a journey in part mirroring Staël’s own travels. (Staël appears to have identified with her character, and there are several portraits of Staël represented as Corinne.)[80] She combined romance with travelogue, showed all of Italy's works of art still in place, rather than plundered by Napoleon and taken to France.[81] The book's publication acted as a reminder of her existence, and Napoleon sent her back to Coppet. Her house became, according toStendhal, "the general headquarters of European thought" and was a debating club hostile to Napoleon, "turning conquered Europe into a parody of a feudal empire, with his own relatives in the roles ofvassal states".[82] Madame Récamier, also banned by Napoleon,Prince Augustus of Prussia,Charles Victor de Bonstetten, andChateaubriand all belonged to the "Coppet group".[83][84] Each day the table was laid for about thirty guests. Talking seemed to be everybody's chief activity.
For a time de Staël lived with Constant inAuxerre (1806),Rouen (1807),Aubergenville (1807). Then she metFriedrich Schlegel, whose wifeDorothea had translatedCorinne into German.[85] The use of the wordRomanticism was invented by Schlegel but spread more widely across France through its persistent use by de Staël.[86] Late in 1807 she set out forVienna and visitedMaurice O'Donnell.[87] She was accompanied by her children and August Schlegel who gave his famous lectures there. In 1808 Benjamin Constant was afraid to admit to her that he had married Charlotte von Hardenberg in the meantime. "If men had the qualities of women", de Staël wrote, "love would simply cease to be a problem."[88] De Staël set to work on her book about Germany – in which she presented the idea of a state called "Germany" as a model of ethics and aesthetics and praised German literature and philosophy.[89] The exchange of ideas and literary and philosophical conversations with Goethe, Schiller, andWieland had inspired de Staël to write one of the most influential books of the nineteenth century on Germany.[90]
Pretending she wanted to emigrate to the United States, de Staël was given permission to re-enter France. She moved first into theChâteau de Chaumont (1810), then relocated toFossé andVendôme. She was determined to publishDe l'Allemagne in France, a multi-volume book aboutGerman culture and in particular the growing movement ofGerman Romanticism. The book was considered "dangerous" by Napoleon as it favorably presented "new and foreign ideas" that challenged existing French political structures.[91] Constrained by censorship, she wrote to the emperor a letter of complaint.[92] The minister of policeSavary had emphatically forbidden her to publish her "un-French" book.[90] In 1810, after de Staël had successfully published her book in France, Napoleon ordered the destruction of all 10,000 copies.[93] In October of the same year, she was exiled again and had to leave France within three days.August Schlegel was also ordered to leave theSwiss Confederation as an enemy of French literature. De Staël found consolation in a wounded veteran officer namedAlbert de Rocca, twenty-three years her junior, to whom she got privately engaged in 1811 but did not marry publicly until 1816.[47]
The operations of the French imperial police in the case of de Staël are rather obscure. She was at first left undisturbed, but by degrees, the chateau itself became a source of suspicion, and her visitors found themselves heavily persecuted.François-Emmanuel Guignard, De Montmorency and Mme Récamier were exiled for the crime of visiting her. She remained at home during the winter of 1811, planning to escape to England or Sweden with the manuscript. On 23 May 1812, she left Coppet under the pretext of a short outing, but journeyed throughBern,Innsbruck andSalzburg to Vienna, where she metMetternich. There, after some trepidation and trouble, she received the necessary passports to go on to Russia.[94]
DuringNapoleon's invasion of Russia, de Staël, her two children, and Schlegel travelled throughGalicia in theHabsburg empire fromBrno toŁańcut where de Rocca, having deserted the French army and having been searched by the Frenchgendarmerie, was waiting for her. The journey continued toLemberg. On 14 July 1812 they arrived inVolhynia. In the meantime, Napoleon, who took a more northern route, had crossed theNiemen River with his army. In Kyiv, she metMiloradovich, governor of the city. De Staël hesitated to travel on toOdessa,Constantinople, and decided instead to go north. Perhaps she was informed of the outbreak ofplague in the Ottoman Empire. In Moscow, she was invited by the governorFyodor Rostopchin. According to de Staël, it was Rostopchin who ordered his mansion in Italian style near Winkovo to be set on fire.[95] She left only a few weeks before Napoleon arrived there. Until 7 September, her party stayed inSaint Petersburg. According toJohn Quincy Adams, the American ambassador in Russia, her sentiments appeared to be as much the result of personal resentment against Bonaparte as of her general views of public affairs. She complained that he would not let her live in peace anywhere, merely because she had not praised him in her works. She met twice with the tsarAlexander I of Russia who "related to me also the lessons a laMachiavelli which Napoleon had thought proper to give him."[96]
"You see," said he, "I am careful to keep my ministers and generals at variance among themselves, in order that each may reveal to me the faults of the other; I keep up a continual jealousy by the manner I treat those who care about me: one day one thinks himself the favourite, the next day another, so that no one is ever certain of my favour."[97]
For de Staël, that was a vulgar and vicious theory. GeneralKutuzov sent her letters from theBattle of Tarutino; before the end of that year he succeeded, aided by the extreme weather, in chasing theGrande Armée out of Russia.[98]
After four months of travel, de Staël arrived in Sweden. In 1811, she began writing her "Ten Years' Exile", detailing her travels and encounters. She traveled to Stockholm the following year, and continued work there.[99] She did not finish the manuscript and after eight months, she set out for England, without August Schlegel, who meanwhile had been appointed secretary to the Crown Prince Carl Johan, formerly French MarshalJean Baptiste Bernadotte (She supported Bernadotte as the new ruler of France, as she hoped he would introduce aconstitutional monarchy).[100] In London she received a great welcome. She metLord Byron,William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, andSir Humphry Davy, the chemist and inventor. According to Byron, "She preached English politics to the first of our EnglishWhig politicians ... preached politics no less to ourTory politicians the day after."[101] In March 1814 she invited Wilberforce for dinner and devoted the remaining years of her life to the fight for the abolition of the slave trade.[102] Her stay was severely marred by the death of her son Albert, who as a member of the Swedish army had fallen in a duel with a Cossack officer inDoberan as a result of a gambling dispute. In OctoberJohn Murray publishedDe l'Allemagne both in French and English translation, in which she reflected on nationalism and suggested a re-consideration of cultural rather than natural boundaries.[103] In May 1814, afterLouis XVIII had been crowned (Bourbon Restoration) she returned to Paris. She wrote herConsidérations sur la révolution française, based on Part One of "Ten Years' Exile". Again her salon became a major attraction both for Parisians and foreigners.
When news came of Napoleon's landing on the Côte d'Azur, betweenCannes andAntibes, early in March 1815, de Staël fled again to Coppet, and never forgave Constant for approving of Napoleon's return.[104] Although she had no affection for theBourbons she succeeded in obtaining restitution for the huge loan Necker had made to the French state in 1778 before the Revolution (see above).[105] In October, after theBattle of Waterloo, she set out for Italy, not only for the sake of her own health but for that of her second husband, de Rocca, who was suffering fromtuberculosis. In May her 19-year-old daughter Albertine marriedVictor, 3rd duc de Broglie inLivorno.
The whole family returned to Coppet in June.Lord Byron, at that time in debt, left London in great trouble and frequently visited de Staël during July and August. For Byron, she was Europe's greatest living writer, but "with her pen behind her ears and her mouth full of ink". "Byron was particularly critical of de Staël's self-dramatizing tendencies".[106][107] Byron was a supporter of Napoleon, but for de Staël Bonaparte "was not only a talented man but also one who represented a whole pernicious system of power", a system that "ought to be examined as a great political problem relevant to many generations."[108] "Napoleon imposed standards of homogeneity on Europe that is, French taste in literature, art and the legal systems, all of which de Staël saw as inimical to her cosmopolitan point of view."[107] Byron wrote she was "sometimes right and often wrong about Italy and England – but almost always true in delineating the heart, which is of but one nation of no country, or rather, of all."[109]
Despite her increasingly ill health, de Staël returned to Paris for the winter of 1816–17, living at 40, rue des Mathurins. Constant argued with de Staël, who had asked him to pay off his debts to her. A warm friendship sprang up between de Staël and theDuke of Wellington, whom she had first met in 1814, and she used her influence with him to have the size of theArmy of Occupation greatly reduced.[110]
De Staël became confined to her house, paralyzed since 21 February 1817 following astroke. She died on 14 July 1817. Her deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism, after readingThomas à Kempis, was reported[citation needed] but is subject to some debate. Wellington remarked that, while he knew that she was greatly afraid of death, he had thought her incapable of believing in theafterlife.[110] Wellington makes no mention of de Staël reading Thomas à Kempis in the quote found inElizabeth Longford's biography of the Iron Duke. Furthermore, he reports hearsay, which may explain why two modern biographies of de Staël – Herold and Fairweather – discount the conversion entirely. Herold states that "her last deed in life was to reaffirm in her 'Considerations, her faith in Enlightenment, freedom, and progress'."[111] Rocca survived her by little more than six months. The first edition of her complete works was published by his son with the publishing houseTreuttel & Würtz in 1820-1821.[112]
In total, Madame de Staël had six children, who were all acknowledged by her husband (except her last son, who was born after his death). In all likelihood, only the first two children were actually fathered byErik de Staël-Holstein:
Gustavine Sophie Madeleine de Staël-Holstein (July 1787), died in infancy.
Gustava Hedwig de Staël-Holstein (August 1789), died in infancy.
With her second husband,Albert de Rocca, de Staël then aged 46, had one disabled son:
6. Théodore Gilles Louis Alphonse de Rocca (7 April 1812 - 12 November 1842), who married Marie-Louise-Antoinette de Rambuteau, daughter ofClaude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau,[47] and granddaughter of De Narbonne.[114]
Even as she gave birth, there were fifteen people in her bedroom.[115]
After the death of de Staël's husband, Mathieu de Montmorency became the legal guardian of her children. Like August Schlegel he was one of her intimates until the end of her life.
Albertine Necker de Saussure, married to de Staël's cousin, wrote her biography in 1821 and published it as part of the collected works.Auguste Comte included Mme de Staël in his 1849Calendar of Great Men. "In one version of the calendar, the 24th day of the month of Dante is dedicated to Madame de Staël, who finds herself among such poets as Milton, Cervantes, and Chaucer. In another version, Staël finds herself honored, instead, on the 19th day of the tenth month, known as “Shakespeare,” among the likes of Goethe, Racine, Voltaire, and Madame de Sevigné."[116] Her political legacy has been generally identified with a stout defence of "liberal" values: equality, individual freedom, and the limitation of state power by constitutional rules.[117] "Yet although she insisted to the Duke of Wellington that she needed politics in order to live, her attitude towards the propriety of female political engagement varied: at times she declared that women should simply be the guardians of domestic space for the opposite sex, while at others, that denying women access to the public sphere of activism and engagement was an abuse of human rights. This paradox partly explains the persona of the "homme-femme" she presented in society, and it remained unresolved throughout her life."[118]
Comte's discipleFrederic Harrison wrote about de Staël that her novels "precede the works ofWalter Scott, Byron,Mary Shelley, and partly those ofChateaubriand, their historical importance is great in the development of modernRomanticism, of the romance of the heart, the delight in nature, and in the arts, antiquities, and history of Europe."
Recent studies by historians, includingfeminists, have been assessing the specifically feminine dimension in de Staël's contributions both as an activist-theorist and as a writer about the tumultuous events of her time.[119][120] Some scholars call her a precursor of feminism.[121][122][123]Staël had a robust theory of female liberation. At the time that Staël was writing, in the peak years of the French Revolution, early French feminism was animated over the issue of legal and political equality for the sexes. At the advent of the French Revolution in 1789, the image of a traditional homemaking woman had given way to a more militant feminist approach found in pamphlets that circulated in France at the time. In this sea of tumultuous events, Staël’s use of the novel and more implicit methods to communicate her beliefs about the Revolution and gender equality, coupled with her social status, aided in ensuring her endurance on the political and literary scene.[124]Staël’s extensive set of writings, from her correspondence with lovers to her philosophy to her fiction, betray not just the tension between intellectual and romantic fulfillment but also between feminist political equality and romantic fulfillment. Her work indicates that she finds her two desires, personal freedom and emotional intimacy, to be diametrically opposed in practice, especially in post-Revolutionary French society. In particular, she deplored that men took the central roles in Enlightenment philosophy and politics, neither of which included avenues for women’s direct participation.[125]
Staël was a strong advocate for the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. In her later years, her salon was frequented by abolitionists, and emancipation was a recurring topic of their discussions. After meeting the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce in 1814, Staël published a preface for his essay on the slave trade in which she called for the end of slavery in Europe. In that text, Staël argued in particular against those who defended slavery on the grounds that the economic impact of abandoning the slave trade would be too grave:
"When it is proposed that some abuse of power be eliminated, those who benefit from that abuse are certain to declare that all the benefits of the social order are attached to it. ‘This is the keystone,’ they say, while it is only the keystone to their own advantages; and when at last the progress of enlightenment brings about the long-desired reform, they are astonished at the improvements which result from it. Good sends out its roots everywhere; equilibrium is effortlessly restored; and truth heals the ills of the human species, as does nature, without anyone’s intervention." (Kadish and Massardier-Kenney 2009, 169)
Staël argues here that the claim that abolition would have “dire consequences” for the French economy is nothing but an illusory threat used by those who benefit from the institution of slavery (Kadish and Massardier-Kenney 2009, 169). Staël believed that the termination of the slave trade would improve France and bring about a positive consequence that ‘sends out its roots everywhere.[91]
In 1807, Jacques Le Ray de Chaumont sent Jefferson a copy ofCorinne, and also conveyed to Staël Jefferson’s first letter addressed to her. This marked the beginning of a series of eight letters between the two, the last of which was sent from Staël to Jefferson shortly before her passing in 1817.
The correspondence between Staël and Jefferson sheds light upon the fascinating relationship between two momentous figures, covering the personal (such as Staël’s son Auguste’s desire to visit the United States to “make a pilgrimage toward reason and freedom”) and the global (the War of 1812 is the pressing topic, and there is even an interlude where Jefferson details the state of South American geopolitics, replete with a map).
Famously, in 1816,in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, Staël writes, “If one succeeds in destroying slavery in the South, at least one government in the world will be as perfect as human reason can possibly conceive.” Although this is generally understood by scholars to be a criticism of slavery in the southern states of the United States, due to ambiguity in translating the word "south" from the original French, other scholars have suggested that de Staël could be referring to colonization in South America.[126]
The Adams family (including former American presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams and former First Lady Abigail Adams) was an important political family in the U.S during the 18th and early 20th century. Staël was a frequent topic of discussion amongst the Adams. John Quincy Adams, the 6th U.S president, in particular, recommended and sent many copies of Staël’s works to his father, John Adams; mother, Abigail Adams; and wife, Louisa Catherine Adams.In letters written between the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, these members of the Adams family discussedDelphine,A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions, Upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations, andThe Reflections Upon Peace.[93]
De Staël is credited inTolstoy's epilogue toWar and Peace as a factor of the 'influential forces' which historians say led to the movement of humanity in that era.[127]
The popular wrestling compilation seriesBotchamania has referenced her on several occasions sayingOne must choose in life, between boredom and suffering which is normally followed by a humorous joke.
On the popular HBO television show,The Sopranos, character Meadow Soprano quotes Madame de Staël in Season 2, Episode 7,D-Girl, when she says, "Madame de Staël said, 'In life one must choose between boredom or suffering.'"
Mme de Staël is used several times to characterize Mme de Grandet inStendhal'sLucien Leuwen.
Mme de Staël is mentioned several times, always approvingly, by Russia's national poet,Alexander Pushkin. He described her in 1825 as a woman whose persecution distinguished her and who commanded respect from all of Europe, and gave her a positive portrayal in his unfinished 1836 novelRoslavlev.[128] Her high stature in Russia is attested by Pushkin's warning to a critic: "Mme de Staël is ours, do not touch her!"[129]
Mme de Staël is frequently quoted byRalph Waldo Emerson and she is credited with introducing him to recent German thought.[131]
Herman Melville considered de Staël among the greatest women of the century andMargaret Fuller consciously adopted de Staël as her role model.[132]
Danish radicalGeorg Brandes gave pride of place to de Staël in his survey ofEmigrantlitteraturen and highly esteemed her novels, particularlyCorinne, which was also admired byHenrik Ibsen and used as a guidebook for his travels through Italy.[133]
Talleyrand observed with his customary cynicism that Germaine enjoyed throwing people overboard simply to have the pleasure of fishing them out of the water again.[134]
Sismondi accused De Staël of a lack of tact, when they were travelling through Italy and wrote Mme De Staël was easily bored if she had to pay attention to things.
For Byron she was "a good woman at heart and the cleverest at bottom, but spoilt by a wish to be – she knew not what. In her own house she was amiable; in any other person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again".[136]
Sophie ou les sentiments secrets, 1786 (published anonymously in 1790)
Jane Gray, 1787 (published in 1790)
Lettres sur le caractère et les écrits de J.-J. Rousseau, 1788[137]
Éloge de M. de Guibert
À quels signes peut-on reconnaître quelle est l'opinion de la majorité de la nation?
Réflexions sur le procès de la Reine, 1793
Zulma : fragment d'un ouvrage, 1794
Réflexions sur la paix adressées à M. Pitt et aux Français, 1795
Réflexions sur la paix intérieure
Recueil de morceaux détachés (comprenant : Épître au malheur ou Adèle et Édouard, Essai sur les fictions et trois nouvelles : Mirza ou lettre d'un voyageur, Adélaïde et Théodore et Histoire de Pauline), 1795
Essai sur les fictions, translated by Goethe into German
De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations, 1796[138]
Des circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la République en France
De la littérature dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1799
Delphine, 1802 deals with the question of woman's status in a society hidebound by convention and faced with a Revolutionary new order
Vie privée de Mr. Necker, 1804
Épîtres sur Naples
Corinne ou l'Italie, 1807 is as much a travelogue as a fictional narrative. It discusses the problems of female artistic creativity in two radically different cultures, England and Italy.
Agar dans le désert
Geneviève de Brabant
La Sunamite
Le capitaine Kernadec ou sept années en un jour (comédie en deux actes et en prose)
An appeal to the nations of Europe against the continental system: published at Stockholm, by authority of Bernadotte, in March, 1813. By Madame de Staël Holstein.
De l'esprit des traductions
Considérations sur les principaux événements de la révolution française, depuis son origine jusques et compris le 8 juillet 1815, 1818 (posthumously)[140]
Dix Années d'Exil (1818), posthumously published in France by Mdm Necker de Saussure. In 1821 translated and published asTen Years' Exile. Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son.[141]
Lettres de Madame de Staël à Madame de Récamier, première édition intégrale, présentées et annotées parEmmanuel Beau de Loménie, éditions Domat, Paris, 1952.
Lettres sur les écrits et le caractère de J.-J.Rousseau. – De l'influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations. – De l'éducation de l'âme par la vie./Réflexions sur le suicide. – Sous la direction de Florence Lotterie. Textes établis et présentés par Florence Lotterie. Annotation par Anne Amend Söchting, Anne Brousteau, Florence Lotterie, Laurence Vanoflen. 2008.ISBN978-2745316424.
Correspondance générale. Texte établi et présenté par Béatrice W. Jasinski et Othenin d'Haussonville.Slatkine (Réimpression), 2008–2009.
Madame de Staël ou l'intelligence politique. Sa pensée, ses amis, ses amants, ses ennemis…, textes de présentation et de liaison de Michel Aubouin, Omnibus, 2017.ISBN978-2258142671 commentaire biblio, Lettres de Mme de Staël, extraits de ses textes politiques et de ses romans, textes et extraits de lettres de Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Napoléon, Benjamin Constant. This edition contains extracts from her political writings and from letters addressed to her by Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Napoleon and Benjamin Constant.
A short Account of Lady Jane Grey / Historische Nachricht über Lady Jane Grey / Notice sur Lady Jane Grey.Calambac Publishing House, Germany 2020, trilingual edition: English/German/French, ISBN 978-3-943117-10-3.
^Wilkinson, L. R. (2017). Hibbitt, Richard (ed.).Other Capitals of the Nineteenth Century An Alternative Mapping of Literary and Cultural Space. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 51–67.
^Simon, Sherry (2003).Gender in Translation. Routledge. pp. 61–62.ISBN978-1134820863.
^Dixon, Sergine (2007).Germaine de Staël, daughter of the enlightenment: the writer and her turbulent era. Amherts (N.Y.): Prometheus books.ISBN978-1-59102-560-3.
^It was Tallien who announced the September Massacres and sent off the famous circular of 3 September to the French provinces, recommending them to take similar action.
^Halo, A. (2024). A reformation to end the revolution: Germaine de Staël and the struggle for republican mores under directory France. History of European Ideas, 51(2), 257–275.https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2024.2391383
^Panizza, Letizia; Wood, Sharon.A History of Women's Writing in Italy. p. 144.
^The novel prompted, none too inspiringly,The Corinna of England, and a Heroine in the Shade (1809) byE. M. Foster, in which retribution is wreaked on a shallowly portrayed version of the French author's heroine.
^Schlegel and Madame de Staël have endeavoured to reducepoetry to two systems, classical and romantic.
^Ferber, Michael (2010) Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0199568918.
^Madame de Staël et Maurice O’Donnell (1805–1817), d’apres des letters inédites, by Jean Mistler, published by Calmann-Levy, Editeurs, 3 rue Auber, Paris, 1926.
^Goodden, Angelica (2007). "The Man-Woman and the Idiot: Madame de Staël's Public/Private Life".Forum for Modern Language Studies.43 (1):34–45.doi:10.1093/fmls/cql117.
^Marso, Lori J. (2002). "Defending the Queen: Wollstonecraft and Staël on the Politics of Sensibility and Feminine Difference".The Eighteenth Century.43 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press:43–60.JSTOR41468201.
^Moore, L. (2007).Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France.
^Popowicz, Kamil (2013).Madame de Staël (in Polish). Vol. 4. Warsaw: Collegium Civitas.
^Casillo, R. (2006).The Empire of Stereotypes: Germaine de Staël and the Idea of Italy. Springer. p. 1.ISBN978-1403983213.
Garonna, Paolo (2010).L'Europe de Coppet – Essai sur l'Europe de demain (in French). Le Mont-sur-Lausanne: LEP Éditions Loisirs et Pėdagogie.ISBN978-2606013691.
Hilt, Douglas. "Madame De Staël: Emotion and Emancipation".History Today (Dec 1972), Vol. 22 Issue 12, pp. 833–842, online.
Hofmann, Étienne, ed. (1982).Benjamin Constant, Madame de Staël et le Groupe de Coppet: Actes du Deuxième Congrès de Lausanne à l'occasion du 150e anniversaire de la mort de Benjamin Constant Et Du Troisième Colloque de Coppet, 15–19 juilliet 1980 (in French). Oxford, TheVoltaire Foundation and Lausanne, Institut Benjamin Constant.ISBN0729402800.
