the error of neglecting this new country being built across the ocean—Thomas Jefferson was, after all, one of her friends. At a time when women were legally placed under guardianship at the death of their father or their husband, her new resolution proved quite remarkable, and the legacy Madame de Staël left to her children showed that she knew to be wary of a shark.
It is often said that money is "the sinews of war;” to master it is the best way to win battles…
But this area being private—although everyone knew that Mme de Staël belonged to the greatest private wealth of France, if not Europe—it was quite naturally through literature and her writing that she distinguished herself from her contemporaries.
Unusual for women at that time, Mme de Staël emerged as a true writer, recognized and respected throughout Europe. In a way, her writing was an extension of her conversation. No longer a simple conversation “de salon” among society, it had become an argumentative demons-tration of the power of her
ideas, and the virtuous foundation of their principles. Her work was both critical and fictional—though she publi-shed only two novels, Delphine (1802) and Corinne (1807), which were huge bestsellers—to reach a wider audience that would otherwise be resistant to her grand theories, but would be more easily seduced by fiction conveying new ideas. So, at the very early age of 22, she started writing about literature with Lettres sur Rousseau (Letters on the works and character of J.J. Rousseau, 1788), gaining her entry into the domain of criticism and literary analysis, which was quite new at the time, especially for a woman. This approach continued with her Essai sur les fictions (1795), De la littérature (1799), and of course, De l’Allemagne (1810-13).
In parallel, she demonstrated her full involvement in political writings with Réflexions sur le procès de la reine (Thoughts on the trial of the Queen,1793), Réflexions sur la paix adressées à M. Pitt et aux Français (Reflections on peace addressed to Mr. Pitt and the French, 1795), and Considérations sur la Révolution françaises (Considerations on the French Revolution, 1815). She also
The Writer
Madame de Staël. Engraving by Langlois, after a drawing by Laederick. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images).
Madame de Staël had charisma, energy, ambition and political strength along with humanistic ideas, but it was her enthusiasm that governed her emotions altogether. She wrote “Enthusiasm is the emotion that offers us the greatest happiness, the only one that offers it to us, the only one able to sustain human destiny in whatever situation destiny places us.”
53 | Ceres Magazine | Spring 2016