Madame de Staël

French writer

• Born: April 22, 1766
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: July 14, 1817
• Place of death: Paris, France

Madame de Staël publicly articulated the liberal, rational opposition to the injustices and corruption of the French government during the revolution and under Napoleon I. Her social and literary criticism, as well as her colorful personal life, placed her in the vanguard of the Romantic movement, and her two major novels constitute early treatments of the concerns of women.

Early Life

Madame de Staël (mah-dahm duh stahl) was born Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker in Paris on April 22, 1766, the only child of Suzanne Curchod Necker, the beautiful and highly educated daughter of a Swiss clergyman, and the Genevese financier Jacques Necker, who was to achieve fame as minister to Louis XVI. Despite her learning, Madame Necker was considered a rather narrow woman by the urbane Parisians, and her relations with her daughter were always rigid and distant. Though not without critics of his own, the stodgy Jacques Necker was widely esteemed as a man of public and private virtue. Germaine’s natural love for her father was intensified by her childhood awareness of the public acclaim he enjoyed. As an adult, Germaine’s consciousness of her place in the prominent Necker family helped to form her notions of social criticism and political activism and her sense of personal destiny.

A precocious child, Germaine was educated at home in imagined accordance with Émile: Ou, De l’éducation (1762; Emilius and Sophia: Or, A New System of Education, 1762-1763), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s radical exposition on childhood education. Madame Necker stalwartly maintained one of the literary salons for which Paris was celebrated during the eighteenth century, and Germaine grew up on familiar terms with such people as Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d’Alembert, the comte de Buffon, and Guillaume-Thomas Raynal. In this rarefied environment, she absorbed the liberal politics and morals of the Enlightenment.

On January 14, 1786, after years of negotiation, Germaine Necker married a Swedish aristocrat, Eric Magnus, Baron de Staël-Holstein, a favorite of Gustav III and—in accordance with the marriage negotiations—Swedish ambassador to the French court. De Staël may have felt some affection for Germaine (and some, certainly, for her dowry of œ650,000), but she apparently felt none for him, and their first child, Edwige-Gustavine, was probably the only one of their four children actually fathered by de Staël. More important, however, Germaine gained a measure of social and economic independence from the marriage. In the embassy residence in Paris, she established a salon of her own, which soon became the gathering place for such liberal members of the aristocracy as Mathieu de Montmorency, Talleyrand, and Louis, vicomte de Narbonne Lara. In the early days of her marriage, she used her husband’s court connections to try to advance the position of her father, and she took advantage of de Staël’s frequent absences to lead the relatively independent life that was possible for women of her station in eighteenth century Paris.

Life’s Work

Madame de Staël’s residence at the Swedish embassy in Paris was one of the more attractive features of her marriage agreement, for Jacques Necker had been dismissed by Louis XVI in 1781 and had moved his family to Saint-Ouen, where Germaine had sorely missed the intellectual life of Paris. Necker was recalled by Louis XVI in 1788, and was then dismissed and recalled once again at the fall of the Bastille. He continued at his post through the march on Versailles in September, 1789, and the massive nationalization effected by the assembly under the comte de Mirabeau. Necker finally resigned in September, 1790, and repaired to the family estate of Coppet, near Geneva.

During her father’s interrupted tenure at court, Germaine attempted to elicit support among her influential friends of the liberal aristocracy for a constitution and a bicameral government, as a compromise between the continued abuses of the Bourbon Dynasty and the inevitable triumph of the Third Estate. On August 31, 1790, she gave birth to a son, Auguste, fathered by Narbonne, with whom she had been involved for about a year and a half. Determined that Narbonne should be the leader of the new government, Madame de Staël became further embroiled in intrigues at court until Narbonne was appointed war minister at the request of Marie-Antoinette; he was dismissed, however, in March, 1792. At about the same time, de Staël was recalled to Sweden when Louis and Marie-Antoinette were arrested attempting to escape Paris in a maneuver arranged by Gustav III. Gustav was assassinated in March, 1792, however, and de Staël returned to Paris, where Madame de Staël continued to encourage the constitutionalists and agitated for the restoration of Narbonne. She finally fled Paris for Coppet the day before the September massacres began in 1793.

Madame de Staël’s relationship with Narbonne—which followed a similar liaison with Talleyrand and coincided with a profound friendship with Montmorency—was characteristic of her lifelong attraction to the heroes of her political and intellectual causes. Much of her own appeal resided in her power as a fascinating conversationalist, and even those who were prepared to be intimidated by her were often won over by her exuberance and lack of pretension. Possessing none of her mother’s conventional beauty, she was nevertheless a woman of imposing physical appearance. Her wide, luminous eyes were considered her most attractive feature. A woman of Junoesque proportions, Madame de Staël continued to dress in the revealing diaphanous fabrics and décolleté lines of empire fashion even after she had grown heavy in middle age. Her frank display of her ample bosom and legs, and her continuance of the eighteenth century custom of the levée, amazed younger, more conservative Parisians and provoked the derision of her enemies. She customarily wore a turban, which undoubtedly lent a Byronic dash to her overall appearance.

During the Reign of Terror, Madame de Staël lived much of the time at Coppet, spending considerable money and energy smuggling refugees from the liberal aristocracy out of Paris. She gave birth to her son Albert, also the child of Narbonne, on November 20, 1792, and left shortly thereafter for England, where Narbonne had sought refuge from the Terror. Rumors of her complicity in the revolution and in the Terror were circulated by aristocratic French émigrés living in England until she was no longer received by members of the upper class. Disappointed by the conservatism of the British, her relationship with Narbonne strained, she returned in June, 1793, to her husband near Coppet, where Narbonne finally joined her in August, 1794.

In 1794, the year of her mother’s death, Madame de Staël met Benjamin Constant, with whom she would be involved in a passionate and embattled relationship for the next fourteen years. With the fall of Robespierre in 1794, she returned to Paris and reopened her salon. At this time, she worked to encourage support for the positive changes wrought by the revolution; the degree of influence she wielded is measured by the fact that she was expelled from the city alternately by both royalists and republicans. Her only daughter, Albertine, probably the child of Constant, was born in Paris on June 8, 1796. In 1797, Madame de Staël formally separated from her husband; debilitated by a stroke suffered in 1801, he died the following year en route to Coppet.

In 1795, Madame de Staël published Essai sur les fictions (Essay on Fiction, 1795); in 1796, De l’influence des passions sur le bonheur des individus et des nations (A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and Nations, 1798); and, in 1800, De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (A Treatise on Ancient and Modern Literature, 1803). In these and later writings, her examination of the concept of perfectibility—the idea that scientific progress would lead humankind toward moral perfection—and her contention that critical judgment must be relative and historically oriented earned for her a place near Chateaubriand as a precursor of Romanticism. In 1802, she published the novel Delphine (English translation, 1803), which explores the role of the intellectual woman.

One of the most significant factors in Madame de Staël’s life was her relationship with Napoleon, whom she first met in 1797. She early admired him as a republican hero: His successful coup of 18 Brumaire seemed to actualize the liberal abstractions of revolutionary politics. Napoleon, thoroughly conventional in his attitude toward women, however, could not approve of the highly vocal, public role that Madame de Staël had assumed; moreover, he resented the free discussion of his government that was encouraged at her salon, to which even his own brothers were frequent visitors. As he became more tyrannical, she became increasingly critical, eventually labeling him an “ideophobe.” He expelled her from France in 1803 and crowned himself emperor the following year.

Her eleven years in exile from France during the reign of Napoleon seemed a spiritual and intellectual death sentence to Madame de Staël. Immediately upon her expulsion, she visited Germany, where she was welcomed as the author of Delphine. She met with the great thinkers and writers of Weimar and Berlin, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and August Wilhelm von Schlegel, with whom she formed a long-lasting attachment. In April, 1804, Constant brought her news of her father’s death. Prostrate with grief, she returned to Coppet.

From 1804 to 1810, Madame de Staël officially resided at Coppet, where she gathered around her a group of loyal and intellectually stimulating friends, including Schlegel and Jeanne Récamier. She spent much of her time away from the estate, however, venturing into France and traveling to Italy until she was confined to Coppet as a result of the machinations of the French and Genevese police. The Romantic and feminist concerns of her 1807 novel Corinne: Ou, L’Italie (Corinne: Or, Italy, 1807) brought her renewed fame, and in 1810 she completed De l’Allemagne (Germany, 1813), a thinly disguised critique of contemporary France, which was suppressed by Napoleon; it was published in England in 1813.

In 1811, she took another lover, John Rocca, a young Genevese sportsman who had been wounded in military action and was now tubercular. Rocca fathered her last child, Alphonse, and in 1816 they were married. Shortly after the birth of Alphonse, she fled Coppet and traveled throughout Europe, involving herself in Russian and Swedish political intrigues directed toward overthrowing Napoleon. Napoleon’s abdication in 1814 brought Madame de Staël the freedom to reestablish herself in Paris, where she died on Bastille Day in 1817.

Significance

Madame de Staël was a brilliant and unconventional woman whose circumstances of birth allowed her to witness some of the most significant events of Western history and whose intelligence and moral courage led her to participate. In the face of serious opposition, she lived with great enthusiasm and energy, balancing the exercise of intellect and creativity with the pursuit of a passionate personal life.

Madame de Staël tended the flame of the Enlightenment through the darkest days following the French Revolution. The rational tenor of her criticism of oppression and her defense of freedom provided a constant corrective not only to political tyranny but also to the social and cultural constraints that bound her as a woman. In her nonfictional prose, she sought support for her philosophical stance in the individualistic spirit of English and German Romanticism and in the cultural relativism afforded by her experiences in Germany, Italy, and Russia. Her examination, in Delphine and Corinne, of the difficulties encountered in the personal lives of gifted and creative women has gained new attention from feminist critics. Madame de Staël thus continues to assert her vivacious presence.

Bibliography

Besser, Gretchen Rous. Germaine de Staël, Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1994. A comprehensive study of Staël’s life and work, describing the evolution of her career and her defense of political liberties. Part of Twayne’s World Authors series.

Fairweather, Maria. Madame de Staël. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005. Comprehensive biography, focusing on Staël’s salons as a setting for French literary and political intrigue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fairweather portrays Staël as a complicated, passionate, and outspoken woman who was not afraid to challenge France’s extreme political factions.

Gutwirth, Madelyn. Madame de Staël, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. This book is a feminist analysis of the biographical, cultural, and social sources of the novels Corinne and Delphine, especially in their focus on the complications created by talent and love in women’s lives. Includes notes, a bibliography, and an index.

Herold, J. Christopher. Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958. This standard biography is eminently readable and sympathetic, although slightly ironic in tone. Herold treats Madame de Staël’s life in its entirety, emphasizing the effects of her relationship with her parents and focusing on her prodigious literary accomplishment and her unconventional personal life. Informed by an easy familiarity with French politics and culture, the book includes illustrations, an extensive annotated bibliography, and an index.

Hogsett, Charlotte. The Literary Existence of Germaine de Staël. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Writing from a feminist standpoint, Hogsett provides a critical analysis of Madame de Staël’s writings as they reveal her development as a woman writer struggling to define herself in a male-dominated tradition. Contains notes, a bibliography, and an index.

Levaillant, Maurice. The Passionate Exiles: Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier. Translated by Malcolm Barnes. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1958. Levaillant examines Madame de Staël’s life in exile at Coppet, with particular focus on her friendship with Jeanne Récamier. The book quotes extensively from the two women’s correspondence.

Marso, Lori Jo. (Un)Manly Citizens: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s and Germaine de Staël’s Subversive Women. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Analyzes the portrayal of women characters in Staël’s novels, Corinne and Delphine. Marso argues that these characters offer an alternative concept of the self and democratic citizenship.

Staël, Madame de. Selected Correspondence. Arranged by George Solovieff, translated and edited by Kathleen James-Cemper. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2000. The letters are published in chronological order and provide details about the major events in Staël’s life from 1789 until 1817.

Wilkes, Joanne. Lord Byron and Madame de Staël: Born for Opposition. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999. Madame de Staël and Byron became friends while they were both living in Switzerland. The book explores their friendship and their shared literary concerns.