Napoleon feared her, the crown heads of Europe courted her, as did the intellectual elite, she was much quoted in her own time and ours, yet Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein - generally known as Madame de Staël, was a figure who had almost disappeared into the mists of history.
How astonishing it is, that the woman of whom the French memoir writer Madame de Chastenay wrote, there were three great powers struggling against Napoleon for the soul of Europe: "England, Russia, and Madame de Staël," could have suffered such a fate. And Vienna, a city heavily marked by its opposition to Napoleon, would, despite the fact that she stayed there for only five months, for years after refer to 1808 as the year of Madame de Stael's visit.
I've been obliquely bumping into her during my excursions through women's history for years, but it was only when reading about her friendship with Juliette Récamier , and learning that she's been the subject of no less than five recent books, led me to finally determine to read more.
I'd love to read all five books, but since that isn't going to happen, I chose Angelica Goodden The Dangerous Exile, in part because it seemed to focus rather less on the romantic side of de Staël's life, and if there's one aspect of her I find rather repulsive, it's her rather histrionically conducted love life.
That, of course, got her into trouble in her own time - having children to men not your spouse being rather frowned upon. Fanny Burney wrote in 1813, about her dropping of de Stael in 1793: "I had found her so charming that I fought the hardest battle I dared fight against almost ALL my best connections... She is now received by all mankind - but that indeed, she always was — all womankind, I should say with distinction and pleasure."
That was when de Staël was in exile in England, yet for Goodden, she is always more or less in exile - fighting to be allowed to be the person she wants to be, when she's a woman. Behind her exile the author identifies the question: "how is it possible to be politically aware, politically active and yet a woman?"
Article comments