¹ For a recent discussion of historiographical debates on the Revolution, see the bicentennial contributions to a forum in French Historical Studies 16 (Fall 1990): 741–802. On women and gender, see Abray, Jane “Feminism in the French Revolution,” American Historical Review 80 (Feb. 1975): 43–62; Applewhite, Harriet Levy, Darline and Johnson, Mary “Women and Political Revolution in Paris,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Bridenthal, Renate Koonz, Claudia and Stuard, Susan 2d ed. (Boston, 1987), 279–306; Godineau, Dominique Citoyennes Tricoteuses: Les femmes du peuple à Paris pendant la Révolution française (Aix en Provence, 1988); Landes, Joan Women in the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987); Harten, Elke and Harten, Hans-Christian Femmes, Culture, et Révolution (Paris, 1989). See also Offen, Karen on the historiography of women and the Revolution, “The New Sexual Politics of French Revolutionary Historiography,” French Historical Studies 16 (Fall 1990): 909–22. For a nuanced reading of the impact of the Civil Code, see Darrow, Margaret H. Revolution in the House: Family, Class, and Inheritance in Southern France, 1775–1825 (Princeton, N.J., 1989).Google Scholar

² Not surprisingly given the new position of the bourgeoisie, most writers focus, implicitly or explicitly, on bourgeois women. Geneviève Fraisse analyzes in detail the philosophical debate about women's intellect, education, and the relation between the sexes in post-revolutionary France: Muse de la raison: La démocratic exclusive et la différence des sexes (Aix en Provence, 1989). Bloch, Jean “Women and the Reform of the Nation,” in Women and Society in Eighteenth-Century France, ed. Jacobs, Eva et al. (London, 1979), 3–18. See also Dena Goodman's article in which she argues that salons in the eighteenth century did not promote leisure but rather the regeneration of society: “Enlightenment Salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 22 (Spring 1989): 329–50. The Hartens (Femmes, Culture, et Révolution) argue that one of the essential cultural thrusts of the Revolution was the symbolic elevation of women to the status of Republican mothers. Women were then perceived as assuring the regeneration of the social and moral order.Google Scholar

³ Chartier, Roger Julia, Dominique and Compère, Marie-Madeleine L'éducation en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1976). For the revolutionary period, see Julia, Dominique Les Trois Couleurs du Tableau Noir: La révolution (Paris, 1981); Françoise Mayeur, L'éducation des filles en France au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1979), 26–33; Harten, and Harten, Femmes, Culture, et Révolution, 95–113.Google Scholar

⁴ Gréard, Octave Education et instruction, vol. 1 L'enseignement secondaire (Paris, 1912), 160–233; Rousselot, Paul Histoire de l'éducation des femmes en France (Paris, 1883), 2: 138–63; de Saint-Pierre, Castel “Projet pour perfectionner l'éducation des filles,” in Oeuvres diverses de M. l'abbé de Saint-Pierre (Paris, 1730), 2: 128–29; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Emile, ou de l'éducation (The Hague, 1762); Spencer, Samia I. “Women and Education,” in French Women and the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Spencer, (Bloomington, Ind., 1984), 83–96; Pope, Barbara “The Influence of Rousseau's Ideology of Domesticity,” in Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present, ed. Boxer, Marilyn J. and Quataert, Jean H. (New York, 1987), 136–45.Google Scholar

⁵ Fraisse, Muse de la raison, 13–36. Not surprisingly, royalist conservative thinkers echoed many of Maréchal's arguments, see Vicomte de Bonald, “De l'éducation des femmes” (1802), in Oeuvres complètes de M. de Bonald: Reunies en collection selon le triple ordre logique, analogique, et chronologique, ed. Migne, Jacques Paul (Paris, 1859), 1: 1398–1401.Google Scholar

⁶ Napoleon had a deep-seated hatred of intellectual women, particularly Madame de Staël, who held a famous salon. Napoleon exiled her from Paris in 1803.Google Scholar

⁷ Napoleon, “Notes sur l'établissement d'Ecouen,“ addressed to the comte de Lacépède, 15 May 1807, translated in Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, ed. Bell, Susan Groag and Offen, Karen M. (Stanford, Calif., 1983), 1: 94–96. Reproduced in full in French in Rebecca Rogers, Les demoiselles de la Légion d'honneur: Les maisons d'éducation de la Légion d'honneur au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1992), 332–35. Napoleon explicitly stated that he did not want the schools of the Legion of Honor to imitate Saint-Cyr “where huge sums of money were spent and demoiselles were poorly raised.” For a succinct discussion of Fénelon and Madame de Maintenon, see Lougee, Carolyn “Noblesse, Domesticity, and Social Reform: The Education of Girls by Fénelon and Saint-Cyr,” History of Education Quarterly 14 (Spring 1974): 87–113. For the influence of domestic ideology on the upper classes, see Darrow, Margaret H. “French Noblewomen and the New Domesticity, 1750–1850,” Feminist Studies 5 (Spring 1979): 41–65.Google Scholar

⁸ Letter of 7 Dec. 1805, no. 9552, in Napoleon I, Correspondance de Napoléon Ier (Plon, 1863), vol. 11. Louis Grimaud indicates the existence of an abortive project of 18 November 1803 to found feminine lycées, Histoire de la liberté d'enseignement en France (Paris, 1944–[54]), 3: 248. Historians as well as contemporaries have noted that the emperor used the promise of education or the hope of receiving the Legion of Honor or imperial noble titles to ensure the fidelity of his citizens. See, for example, Françoise Guizot, Essai sur l'histoire et l'état actuel de l'instruction publique en France (Paris, 1816), 58–66; Tulard, Jean Napoléon et la noblesse d'Empire avec la liste complete des membres de la noblesse impériale, 1808–1815 (Paris, 1979).Google Scholar

⁹ AFIV ^*331, Archives Nationales (hereafter AN), Paris; Hortense de Beauharnais, Mémoires de la Reine Hortense (Paris, 1927), 2: 121–22.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Napoleon, “Notes sur l'établissement d'Ecouen.“Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid. In this respect, Napoleon's directives strongly echoed Fénelon's prescriptions for the noble girls at Saint-Cyr. The most important distinction between the two being the emperor's interest in educating non-noble girls. See Lougee, Carolyn C. Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton, N.J., 1976).Google Scholar

¹² Grimaud cites Napoleon in 1806 arguing before the Conseil d'état that “public” education was inappropriate for women since they were not destined to live in public: “morals are their responsibility; marriage is their destination.” Grimaud, Histoire 4: 196–97. Throughout this article “public” education refers to education within institutions. For evidence of Napoleon's anti-feminism, see Balde, Jean “Napoléon et l'éducation des filles,“ Revue Hébdomodaire (20 Aug. 1921), 333–51. In 1810 he requested that Madame de Genlis, educator of the royal princes, prepare a general plan for the elementary education of girls. Grimaud, Histoire, 4: 197; Coz, E. “Napoléon et la Comtesse de Genlis,” Revue de la France moderne (Sep. 1898). Napoleon's surrender of both male and female popular education to religious authorities was a realistic strategy given the war's effect on France's public finances, see Moody, Joseph N. French Education since Napoleon (Syracuse, N.Y., 1978), 14–15. For an analysis of Napoleon's pragmatic and political use of female religious orders, see Langlois, Claude he catholicisme au féminin: Les congrégations françaises à supérieure générale au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1984), 111–51.Google Scholar

¹³ He had already created such a network for hospital workers with his authorization of the Sisters of Charity in 1809. Dossier 6, AFIV 909, AN. Napoleon unquestioningly left elementary education for girls in the hands of either religious or lay women.Google Scholar

¹⁴ The minister noted that the Sisters of Charity already existed for hospitals and that the approval of the statutes of the congregation of “les soeurs de Refuge” would suffice for the fourth institution.Google Scholar

¹⁵ 10 July 1810, AFIV 1047, AN.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Letter of 13 July 1810, in Lettres inédites de Napoléon Ier (an VIII-1815), ed. Lecestre, Léon (Paris, 1897).Google Scholar

¹⁷ The State did maintain, however, the power to approve or reject an order's statutes. Langlois, Le catholicisme, 125–35.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Bonneville de Marsangy, Louis Mme Campan à Ecouen: Etude historique et biographique d'après des lettres inédites et les documents conservés aux Archives nationales et à la Grande-Chancellerie de la Légion d'honneur (Paris, 1879).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Among her most famous students were Bonaparte's sisters, Caroline and Pauline, Hortense and her cousin Stéphanie de Beauharnais, and the daughters of General Etienne MacDonald and of the future president of the United States James Monroe. See de Marsangy, Bonneville Mme Campan, 5–19, for details of her marriage and early boarding school. Campan's letters are found in Campan, Jeanne Correspondance inédite avec la Reine Hortense (Paris, 1835), 1: 260–394. Hortense in turn relayed Campan's proposals to the emperor; see de Beauharnais, Mémoires, 2: 122. Evidence of Campan's personal goals can be found in her Mémoires (Paris, 1823); and Maigne, M. Journal anecdotique de Mme Campan ou souvenirs recueillis dans ses entretiens… suivi d'une correspondance inédite de Mme Campan à son fils (Paris, 1824).Google Scholar

²⁰ “Mémoire pour la Reine de Hollande,” 20 Oct. 1809, in Campan, Correspondance inédite, 2: 26–27.Google Scholar

²¹ “Sur une nouvelle organisation à donner à l'èducation des jeunes françaises,” in ibid., 54–55.Google Scholar

²² Campan was convinced that her first boarding school encountered financial problems due to competition from other schools. This notion of oversupply is a continuous refrain in her correspondence. See “Lettre à son excellence le comte de L.,” 1812, in Campan, De l'éducation: Suivi des conseils aux jeunes filles, d'un thé#x0103;tre pour les jeunes personnes et de quelques essais de morale (Paris, 1824), 2: 15–17. For information on existing boarding schools, see Constant, Paule Un monde à l'usage des demoiselles (Paris, 1987), 316–22.Google Scholar

²³ “Mémoire pour la Reine de Hollande,” 25–30; and undated letter, in Campan, Correspondance inédite, 2: 39–40. Campan was not alone in her concern to establish teacher-training programs for women. In the eighteenth century Madame de Genlis and Madame de Miremont both called for them. See Madame de Genlis's Discours sur la suppression des couvens religieux et sur l'éducation publique des femmes par Madame Brulart (Paris, 1790); and de Miremont's, Madame Traité de l'éducation des femmes (Paris, 1779–89).Google Scholar

²⁴ Letter of 15 Feb. 1806, in Campan, Correspondance inédite, 1: 304–7.Google Scholar

²⁵ Règlement de 1811, Archives of the Grand Chancellory of the Legion of Honor, Paris, as well as evidence from student notebooks (see footnote 27). For Old Regime schools, see Sonnet, Martine L'éducation des filles au temps des Lumières (Paris, 1987), 257–61. Over two-thirds of the student body at Campan's school were daughters of superior officers, generals, or the civilian equivalent. Rogers, Les demoiselles de la Légion d'honneur, appendix 3.Google Scholar

²⁶ For nineteenth-century salon life, see Martin-Fugier, Anne La vie élégante, ou, la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815–1848 (Paris, 1990). de Bassanville, Comtesse Les salons d'autrefois, souvenirs intimes (Paris, 1866), 2: 317, 292–94; Campan, De l'éducation, 1: 238–39.Google Scholar

²⁷ Notebooks of Eugénie Pascal-Diacre, student at Ecouen from 1811 to 1814, 21 J11, Departmental Archives of the Ardennes, Charleville-Mézières; Campan, De l'éducation, 1: 96, and 2: 333–42. Articles about Campan and her school at Ecouen were common in the women's journals that burgeoned in the 1830s and 1840s. See, for example, “Les orphelines de la Légion d'honneur” and “Souvenirs de Madame Campan,” La revue des demoiselles (Mar. and June 1846); “Galerie des institutrices célèbres: Madame Campan” and “Histoire des institutions célèbres de jeunes filles: Maison Impériale Ecouen,” Revue de l'enseignement des femmes (Apr. 1845 and Feb. 1846). For the impact of the school on other institutions, see Rogers, Les demoiselles de la Légion d'honneur, 68–70. Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis, Mémoires inédits de Madame la Comtesse de Genlis, sur le dix-huitième siècle et la révolution française, depuis 1756 jusqu'à nos jours (Paris, 1825), 6: 22.Google Scholar

²⁸ Like Campan Madame Legroing La Maisonneuve envisioned girls’ education to be preoccupied with women's status in the case of widowhood or financial disaster, but she recommended women learn to sew rather than teach for their livelihood. She ran a reputable boarding school during the period of the Consulate (1799–1804) and wrote an influential essay, entitled Essai sur le genre d'instruction qui paraǐt le plus analogue à la destination des femmes in 1799. See Mayeur, L'éducation des filles, 62. The archives of the school at Saint-Denis contain the dossiers of all the first teachers (see Chardoillet and Moullin dossiers). Yvan David and Monique Giot, Madame Campan, 1752–1822: Catalogue de l'Exposition au Chăteau de Malmaison (Paris, 1972), 92–93; Schneider, Joanne “An Historical Examination of Women's Education in Bavaria: Mädchenschulen and Contemporary Attitudes about Them, 1799–1848” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1977), 39–43; Albisetti, James C. Schooling German Girls and ‘Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1988), 28.Google Scholar

²⁹ Inspection report of 2 June 1823, VD6 158, no. 3, Departmental Archives of the Seine (hereafter DA Seine), Paris; Campan, De l'éducation, 2: 24–43; de Marsangy, Bonneville Mme Campan, 179–80, 233–36; Rogers, Les demoiselles de la Légion d'honneur, 65–68. See Campan's letters nos. 173, 175, 176, in Correspondance inédite, which show her efforts to place students in suitable marriages.Google Scholar

³⁰ Campan, Conseils aux jeunes filles, printed in volume 1 of Campan, De l'éducation. I disagree with Karen Garver's conclusion that Campan “accepted and sought to uphold the existing social order” in her writings and that her success never led her “to question traditional views about the place of women.” On the contrary, Campan's correspondence, which Garver does not cite, clearly attests to her desire to extend women's influence beyond the immediate family. “Madame Campan, Madame Guizot, and the Education of Women in Napoleonic France,” in Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 1–3 November 1979, Omaha, Nebraska (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1981), 64.Google Scholar

³¹ Goblet, Dictionnaire administratif et topographique de Paris: Du commerce, des arts, et des produit en tous genres de l'industrie qui s'y trouve (Paris, 1808). Grimaud describes some of these schools in Histoire, 3: 278–79. In 1810 Campan argued there were forty-three to forty-four secondary schools for men in Paris and thirty boarding schools for women, including those run by nuns. Campan, Correspondance inédite, 2: 59. F7 8071, p. 72, AN. A survey in 1808 revealed the presence of 12,300 nuns throughout France; Langlois, Le catholicisme, 312.Google Scholar

³² Gréard, Education et instruction, vol. 1 L'enseignement secondaire, 105–6; Mayeur, L'éducation des filles, 58; Campan, Correspondance inédite, 2: 25–30. A decree of 15 February 1804 had placed all schools above the primary level under the surveillance of the prefect. But this control was virtually nonexistent, allowing any woman to call herself a secondary school teacher.Google Scholar

³³ As early as frimaire year nine (1801), the prefect of Paris was urging mayors to watch over schools more carefully because many were inadequate in respect to both “instruction and morality.” VD6 6367, no. 7, DA Seine. Règlement pour les écoles de filles, VD6 367, no. 7, DA Seine. This new set of guidelines stipulated that women inspectors had to approve all schoolmistresses’ published rules of study. Furthermore, schoolmistresses had to specify the nature of their establishment over the front door. Clearly the concern was to avoid faulty advertising and protect the public against fraudulent claims. According to Octave Gréard, Madame de Genlis was among these first women inspectors, Education et instruction, 1: 94. See de Genlis, Mémoires inédits, 6: 48ff. for more details.Google Scholar

³⁴ For the first arrondissement in Paris, four women served as inspectors from at least 1812 until 1817: Villemanzy, B. the Marquise Montbel (née de Berré), the Countess Miron de Poisioux, and Madame de Pierrelevée. Inspection reports from 1812 to 1817, VD⁶ 158, no. 3, DA Seine. For the period of the Empire the only complete inspection reports are for the wealthy first arrondissement. See the report of 12 May 1813 and 1 May 1816. In some departments, however, efforts to “reform” girls’ education were partially successful. In 1812 in the Haute Garonne, prize-giving ceremonies were eliminated. Claudine Martin, “L'instruction des filles en Haute Garonne dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle,” Annates du Midi 91 (1979): 502.Google Scholar

³⁵ Gossot, Emile Mademoiselle Sauvan, Première inspectrice des écoles de Paris: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1877), especially 34–71. She ran her school until 1828 and eventually became head of the only Parisian cours normal primaire for girls. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre dossier, archives of the school of the Legion of Honor at Saint-Denis. Many of this schools’ teachers explained their decision to teach on material grounds. de Choiseul, Adrienne from the illustrious de Choiseul family, emphasized that she sought a position at the same school “having lost due to circumstances both her rank and her patrimony.”Google Scholar

³⁶ Kerber, Linda K. makes a similar argument regarding familial educational strategies after the American Revolution. See Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980), 206. Letter of 13 Mar. 1817, dossier Boucheporn, archives of the school of the Legion of Honor at Saint-Denis.Google Scholar

³⁷ Inspection reports for 1812, 1814–15, VD⁶ 158, no. 3, DA Seine.Google Scholar

³⁸ It is interesting that the inspectors chose “paternal” rather than “maternal” as the adjective to describe the education in Thomas's school. I have no explanation for this. Inspection report for 1812, VD⁶ 158, no. 3, DA Seine.Google Scholar

³⁹ For a discussion of competing models of girls’ education, see Pope, Barbara Corrado “Mothers and Daughters in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris“ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1981), 15–56; and Havelange, Isabelle “La littérature enfantine à l'usage des demoiselles, 1750–1850” (Thèse de 3ème cycle, EHESS, 1983–84). Etienne, Jean Portalis, Marie Discours, rapports, et travaux inédits sur le Concordat de 1801 (Paris, 1845), 503; report entitled: “Rapport sur les associations religieuses de femmes à Sa Majesté Impériale et Royale” (24 Mar. 1807).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See Langlois, Le catholicisme, for greater detail, 112–25; also Deries, Léon Les congrégations religieuses au temps de Napoléon (Paris, 1929).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Mayeur, L'éducation des filles, 37.Google Scholar

⁴² Nobécourt, Marie-Dominique “Un example de l'éducation des filles au XIXe siècle par les congrégation religieuses: Le Sacré-Coeur de Paris, 1816–1874“ (Thèse de l'Ecole de Chartes, 1981), 86; Deries, Les congrégations religieuses, 248; Hufton, Olwen H. Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (Toronto, 1992), 133–54; Mills, Hazel “Negotiating the Divide: Women, Philanthropy, and the ‘Public Sphere’ in Nineteenth-Century France,” in Religion, Society, and Politics in France since 1789, ed. Tallett, Frank and Atkin, Nicholas (London, 1991), 29–54. The issue of women's clericalism versus men's anti-clericalism dominated debates on gender roles and girls’ education from 1850 on in France. See McMillan, James “Clericals, Anticlericals, and the Women's Movement in France under the Third Republic,” Historical Journal 34 (1981): 361–76. Mgr. Baunard, Louis Un siècle de l'Eglise de France, 1800–1900 (Paris, 1901).Google Scholar

⁴³ Stern, Daniel (pseudonym for the Countess d'Agoult), Mes souvenirs, 1806–1833 (Paris, 1877), 151–90; d'Ainval, Christine Le Couvent des Oiseaux: Ces jeunes filles de bonne famille (Paris, 1991), 118–23; Sand, George (pseudonym for Aurore Dupin), Histoire de ma vie (Paris, 1968), 1: 877.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Grew, Raymond and Harrigan, Patrick J. School, State, and Society: The Growth of Elementary Schooling in Nineteenth-Century France: A Quantitative Analysis (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1991); Horvath-Peterson, Sandra Victor Duruy and French Education: Liberal Reform in the Second Empire (Baton Rouge, La., 1984), 150–73.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Bachellery, Josephine Lettres sur l'éducation des Femmes (Paris, 1848); Daubié, Julie Victoire La femme pauvre au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1866); Quartararo, Anne Therese “The ‘Ecoles Normales Primaires d'Institutrices': A Social History of Women Primary School Teachers in France, 1879–1905” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1982); Mayeur, Françoise L'enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles sous la Troisième République (Paris, 1977); Margadant, Jo Burr Madame le Professeur: Women Educators in the Third Republic (Princeton, N.J., 1990).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Smith, Bonnie G. Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1981). For evidence of continued middle-class preference for a relatively superficial education for girls in the early decades of the twentieth century, see de Beauvoir, Simone Memoires d'une jeune fille rangée (Paris, 1958); Offen, Karen “The Second Sex and the Baccalauréat in Republican France, 1880–1924,” French Historical Studies 13 (1983): 252–86.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Thirty years later, however, the class-based character of this education was repudiated in another reform. Henceforth student merit rather than one's father's occupation determined the content and objectives of a student's curriculum.Google Scholar