Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:38:32.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Between Romance and Social Critique: Staël and Women Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century

from Part III - After the Revolution: The Novel in the Long Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2021

By
Alison Finch
Edited by
Adam Watt
Adam Watt
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Get access

Summary

The two main drivers of women’s novels between 1800 and 1830 were the love-intrigue and a keen interest in politics. The market played a part: readers craved love-stories but, as avid followers of the national upheavals of the period, they were not solely seeking escapism. Thus, for example, egalitarian perspectives often shape the plots of these women’s novels. Among those who performed a (sometimes precarious) balancing-act between ‘romance’ and ‘social critique’ were Stéphanie de Genlis, Adélaïde de Souza, Julie de Krüdener, Sophie Cottin, Sophie Gay and Claire de Duras. The linchpin was the celebrity Germaine de Staël, who set the agenda not only for contemporary novelists but also for many later ones, both male and female. With characters like the creative Corinne, as well as through feminist analyses and comparative literary criticism, she influenced writers throughout Europe and in the United States. For Staël, romance, Romanticism, history and social critique were interwoven. Her contribution to Western culture is increasingly highlighted by literary scholars and intellectual historians, and in 2017 France bestowed on her a significant accolade: publication in the prestigious Pléiade series.

Keywords

Staëlwomen writersromanceRomanticismpoliticsrevolutionNapoleonCorinneKünstlerroman
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the Novel in French , pp. 292 - 308
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Astbury, Katherine, The Moral Tale in France and Germany 1750–1789 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002)Google Scholar
Astbury, Katherine, Narrative Responses to the Trauma of the French Revolution (Oxford: Legenda, 2012)Google Scholar
Astbury, Katherine and Plagnol-Diéval, Marie-Emmanuelle (eds.), Le Mâle en France, 1715–1830: représentations de la masculinité (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004).Google Scholar
Astbury, Katherine and Seth, Catriona (eds.), Le Tournant des Lumières (Paris: Garnier, 2012)Google Scholar
Counter, Andrew J., The Amorous Restoration: Love, Sex, and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar
Fairlie, Alison, Flaubert: Madame Bovary (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)Google Scholar
Ferber, Michael, Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar
Finch, Alison, Women’s Writing in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar
Fontana, Biancamaria, Germaine de Staël: A Political Portrait (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Sandra, and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination [1979] (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar
Hamilton, Paul (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of European Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hufton, Olwen, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, 1500–1800 (London: HarperCollins, 1995)Google Scholar
Isbell, John, The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Staël’s De l’Allemagne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Roger, Unacknowledged Legislators: The Poet as Lawgiver in Post-Revolutionary France: Chateaubriand – Staël – Lamartine – Hugo – Vigny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seth, Catriona, ‘Introduction’, in de Staël, Madame, Œuvres [De la littérature, Delphine, Corinne], ed. by Seth, Catriona (Paris: Gallimard, 2017), pp. ix–xxxixGoogle Scholar
Waller, Margaret, The Male Malady: Fictions of Impotence in the French Romantic Novel (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993)Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×