Women’s Literary History in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France: Louise de Kéralio and Henriette Guizot de Witt

Suzuki, Mihoko

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-77568-5_11

Women’s Literary History in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France: Louise de Kéralio and Henriette Guizot de Witt

Mihoko Suzuki³

Chapter
First Online: 12 July 2018

196 Accesses
1 Citations

Abstract

This chapter will examine women’s literary histories produced by Louise de Kéralio (1756–1822), the first female editor of a French newspaper, Journal de l’homme et du citoyen, established in 1789, and Henriette Guizot de Witt (1829–1908)––the daughter of the prominent politician and historian François Guizot––who published over one hundred volumes on history and other subjects. On the eve of the French Revolution, Kéralio published some of the planned volumes of Collection des meilleurs ouvrages françois: composés par des femmes, dédiée aux femmes françoises [Collection of the Best French Works Composed by Women, Dedicated to Frenchwomen] (1786–88), a multi-volume history of women’s literature in France. A century later, Guizot de Witt wrote Les Femmes dans l’histoire [The Women in History] (1888), which included women writers—both French and English––active during the French Wars of Religion and the English Civil Wars. While Kéralio’s history was inflected by the historical context of the French Revolution, Guizot de Witt’’s was inflected by her experience of the Revolution of 1848 during which she, along with her father, was exiled in England. Both writers’ careers were enabled by the precedent of their fathers and mothers who were also writers, though the fathers had a much greater impact––both positive and negative.

This essay benefited from the suggestions made by Anne Cruz, Mary Lindemann, Michael Miller, and Frank Palmeri; and the bibliographical information on Louise de Kéralio’s work on Christine de Pizan provided by Susan Dudash. On behalf of Association François Guizot, Catherine Coste generously granted me permission to reproduce the portraits of François Guizot and Henriette Guizot de Witt.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 69.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 89.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 119.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
For recent assessments of Kéralio see Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 81–103; Annie Geffroy, “Louise de Kéralio, Traductrice, Éditrice, Historienne et Journaliste, Avant 1789,” in Lectrices d’ancien régime (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003), 103–12; Annie Geffroy, “Louise de Kéralio-Robert, pionnière du républicanisme sexiste,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 344 (April–June 2006): 107–124.
2.
The only scholarship on Guizot de Witt to date is the Introduction by Catherine Coste to François Guizot, Lettres à sa fille Henriette 1836–1874, ed. Laurent Theis (Paris: Perrin, 2002), 7–72. Gisela Bock, Women in European History (London: Blackwell, 2002), 257 includes one brief sentence on Guizot de Witt; she does not mention Kéralio.
3.
See Rotraud von Kulessa, “La femme auteur dans la critique littéraire du 18^e siècle,” in Critique, critiques au 18^e siècle, ed. Malcolm Cook and Marie-Emanuelle Piagnol-Diéval (New York: Lang, 2006), 295–308.
4.
Cited in L. Antheunis, Le Conventionnel Belge François Robert (1736–1826) et sa femme Louise de Keralio (1758–1882) [sic] (n.p.: Editions Bracke Witteren, 1955), 81. This, the only monograph on Kéralio and her husband, devotes more attention to him. Antheunis’ favorite adjective for Kéralio, Robert’s “petite femme,” is “remuante” (bustling); he states, however, that Kéralio “was by her superior intelligence his evil genius” (87). This and all translations from French are mine.
5.
Louise de Kéralio, Histoire d’Elisabeth , reine d’Angleterre, tirée des écrits originaux anglois et autres pieces manuscriptes qui n’ont pas encore paru, 5 vols. (Paris: Legrange, 1786–88), title page, 1:i.
6.
Ibid., 1:1.
7.
Ibid., 1:iii. On this point, Kéralio anticipates Patrick Collinson’s influential “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 69 (1987): 394–424.
8.
Kéralio, Histoire d’Elisabeth, 4:664.
9.
Ibid., 4:666–667.
10.
Ibid., 1:iv–v. To this end, Kéralio promoted the translation of Marchamont Needham’s The Excellencie of the Free State, Or, The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth (1656); reported on the centennial celebration of the Glorious Revolution and reproduced the Bill of Rights; and proposed to create the position of prime minister after the model of England, suggesting Danton for the position. See Mercure national et Révolutions de l’Europe, 4 (January 14, 1791), 223 (mispaginated for 123); Mercure national, ou Journal d’Etat et du citoyen, 2.4 (May 9, 1790), 236–242; ibid., 3.6 (August 16, 1790), 361–366; Antheunis, Le Conventionnel Belge, 39.
11.
Louise de Kéralio, Collection des meilleurs ouvrages: composés par des femmes, dediée aux femmes françaises (Paris: Lagrange, 1786–89), 14 vols.
12.
On the vicissitudes of censorship during the years before the French Revolution, see Nina Gelbart, Feminine and Opposition Journalism in Old Regime France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 11–12, and passim.
13.
Kéralio, Collection, 1:ix.
14.
Ibid., 1:viii.
15.
See Earl Jeffrey Richards, “The Medieval “femme auteur” as Provocation to Literary History: Eighteenth-Century Readers of Christine de Pizan,” in The Reception of Christine de Pizan from the Fifteenth through the Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Glenda K. McLeod (Lewiston: Mellen, 1991), 101–126. Richards points out that Christine’s tradition of readers was more continuous than other medieval writers (e.g. Chrétien de Troyes, Charles d’Orléans) because some of her works were available in print; yet, since most of her works were not published, her readership was limited to those who were able to read medieval manuscripts (102–103). He characterizes Kéralio’s assessment of Christine as “balanced and impartial” (115).
16.
Kéralio, Collection, 1:1. Despite this claim, Nadia Margolis states that Kéralio “relie[d] on early printed texts—even the 1549 prose edition of the Chemin de long estude [The Book of Long Study] rather than on good original manuscripts”; and that her concern was “to make those texts uncovered by her philological brethren (like [Claude] Sallier and [Jean] Boivin [de Villeneuve]) accessible to women.” “Modern Editions: Makers of the Christinian Corpus,” in Christine de Pizan: A Casebook, ed. Barbara K. Altmann and Deborah L. McGrady (New York: Routledge, 2003), 251–270, 255. On Boivin and Sallier, see 253–254. Kéralio, however, explicitly acknowledges that she is using the printed edition in this instance; elsewhere she states that she will focus in particular on those works transmitted solely in manuscript, such as the L’avision-Christine [Christine’s Vision] (Collection, 2:167).
17.
Kéralio, Collection, 1:295–296. See Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “Louise de Kéralio Reads the Biography of Charles V Written by Christine de Pizan: A Comparison of Two Female Intellectuals Who Lived Four Centuries Apart,” Imago Temporis, Medium Aevum, 5 (2011): 101–115. On Christine de Pizan as a historian, see Natalie Zemon Davis, “Gender and Genre: Women as Historical Writers, 1400–1820,” in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Labalme (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 153–182, 157–60.
18.
Kéralio, Collection, 3:107–108, 110, 109.
19.
Ibid., 3:108.
20.
Ibid., 3:109, emphasis added.
21.
Claire le Brun-Gouanvic, who gives a detailed account of Kéralio’s anthologizing of and commentary on Christine, characterizes the “distance between Christine and Kéralio” as “esthetic, rather than intellectual or psychological.” “Mademoiselle de Kéralio, commentatrice de Christine de Pizan au XVIII^e siécle, ou la rencontre de deux femmes savantes,” in Christine de Pizan: Une femme de science, une femme de lettres, ed. Juliette Dor and Marie-Elisabeth Henneau (Paris: Champion, 2008), 325–341, 341.
22.
On sovereign prerogative, see Kéralio, Observations sur quelques articles du projet de constitution de M. Mounier (1789), 13–14. Kéralio published an anonymous translation of John Howard’s The State of Prisons in England and Wales (1777) as L’État des Prisons (1788); the work also included discussion of the deplorable state of French prisons and hospitals.
23.
Kéralio, Collection, 5:501.
24.
Ibid., 6:5.
25.
Ibid., 6:409.
26.
Ibid., 6:408.
27.
Sarah Hanley, “Identity Politics and Rulership in France: Female Political Place and the Fraudulent Salic Law in Christine de Pizan and Jean de Montreuil,” in Changing Identities in Early Modern France, ed. Michael Wolfe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 78–94; Elianne Viennot, La France, les femmes, le pouvoir, vol. 1: L’Invention de la loi salique (V^e–XVI^e siècle) (Paris: Perrin, 2006).
28.
On the political context for the publication of this text, see Lynn Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political Pornography and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution,” in Eroticism and the Body Politic, ed. Hunt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 108–130, 120–121, 125.
29.
[Louise de Kéralio], Les Crimes des reines de France, depuis le commencement de la monarchie jusqu’à Marie Antoinette (Paris: au bureau des révolutions, 1791), 116, 312.
30.
Ibid., 147.
31.
Ibid., 445, 439–440, 443.
32.
Hunt, “The Many Bodies,” 123.
33.
Condorcet, “Sur l’admission des femmes au droit de la cité,” Journal de la Société de 1789, 5 (July 3, 1790): 1–13; 4, 12. As examples of queens, he cites Elizabeth I, Maria Theresa, and the two Catherines of Russia. On Condorcet’s writings on the rights of women, see Candace E. Proctor, Women, Equality, and the French Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990), 111–116.
34.
Dedicating her Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne [Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen] (1791) to Marie Antoinette, Olympe de Gouges, who was executed in 1793 for being a royalist, explicitly states that she will defend the queen even though “the whole Empire accuses you [vous] and considers you responsible for its calamities” (1). Germaine de Staël published, anonymously, Reflections sur le procès de la reine par une femme [Reflections on the Trial of the Queen by a Woman] (1793), against the execution of Marie Antoinette, emphasizing her role as a “suffering mother.”
35.
For a detailed account of how the Society of Revolutionary Women was banned on the grounds of its anti-Jacobin politics, though allegedly because of its female membership, leading to the proscription of all women’s clubs, see Proctor, Women, Equality, chap. 9.
36.
Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 213–217. See also Lynn Hunt, ed., The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 28–29, 135–139. For a detailed account of the rise and fall of women’s revolutionary clubs, see Dominique Godineau, The Women of Paris and their French Revolution, trans. Katherine Streip (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 97–174: “Louise Kéralio was the most conspicuous woman in the club [Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes, Defenders of the Constitution]” (105).
37.
Hesse, The Other Enlightenment, 92; Leigh Whaley, “Partners in Revolution: Louise de Kéralio and François Robert, Editors of the Mercure National, 1789–1791,” in Enlightenment and Revolution, ed. Malcolm Crook, William Doyle, and Alan Forrest (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 114–131, 131.
38.
Proctor, Women, Equality, chap. 10, argues that the post-revolutionary legal exclusion of women from politics and government was more decisive than that of the ancien régime by custom. She also suggests that the Revolution’s destruction of convents adversely affected women’s education.
39.
Both her maiden and married names proved to be assets for Guizot de Witt. In a letter dated December 28, 1871, Thomas Guthrie (1803–73) wrote: “Your signature is made up of two famous names; I will regard it as a great advantage to the Sunday Magazine to have such colours nailed to its mast.” Cited in Coste, “Introduction,” 67.
40.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, “Mme Guizot (née Pauline de Meulan),” in Portraits of Celebrated Women, trans. H. W. Preston (Boston: Roberts, 1868), 344–384, 384.
41.
Henriette Guizot de Witt, Monsieur Guizot in Private Life, 1787–1874, trans. M. C. M. Simpson (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1881), 202.
42.
Ibid., 221.
43.
On the importance of Guizot as “the first great modern historian of France” and on his historiography, see Douglas Johnson, Guizot: Aspects of French History, 1787–1874 (1963; Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1975), chap. 7, 320. Johnson notes the value Guizot placed on archival research and documentary evidence, as well as his “detached and objective style” that “conceal[s] both his dislikes and attachments” (353, 328–329); these qualities distinguished his historiography from that of Michelet and Macaulay (353, 327–328). On Guizot’s promotion of the Comité de travaux historiques that undertook the project of tracking down and publishing manuscripts bearing on the history of France and opening the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the public, see Pim den Boer, History as a Profession: The Study of History in France, 1818–1914, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 66–68.
44.
This work was based on Guizot’s recounting of French history to his grandchildren: L’histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789 (Paris: Hachette, 1872–76), 5 vols.; L’histoire de France depuis 1789 jusqu’en 1848 racontée à mes petits enfants (Paris: Hachette, 1878–79), 2 vols.
45.
Henriette de Guizot de Witt, Charlotte de La Trémoille, comtesse de Derby, d’après les lettres inédites conservées dans les archives des ducs de La Trémoille, 1601–1664 (Paris: Didier, 1870).
46.
Nadine Kuperty-Tsur, the recent editor of Duplessis-Mornay’s memoirs, states that she found evidence of Guizot de Witt’s work in the manuscript held in the Musée de Chantilly, in the form of small pieces of paper with historical notes that were included in her edition. Les Mémoires de Mme de Mornay (Paris: Champion, 2010), 15–16. Davis, “Gender and Genre,” briefly discusses Mornay’s memoirs as historical writing, mentioning in passing “Guizot’s daughter” as its nineteenth-century editor (162–163).
47.
François Guizot, “Notice sur Mme de Mornay et sur ses mémoires,” in Memoires de Charlotte Arbaleste de La Borde Mornay, édition accompagnée de lettres inédites de M. et de Mme Duplessis Mornay et de leurs enfants, ed. Henriette Guizot de Witt (Paris: Société d’Histoire de France, 1868–69), 2:xlii–xlix.
48.
Guizot, Lettres, 884 (January 27, 1868).
49.
Ibid., 885 (January 29, 1868).
50.
Ibid., 888 (February 5, 1868).
51.
Ibid., 899 (March 9, 1868).
52.
Ibid., 913 (April 7, 1868); see also 888 (February 5, 1868). Audé (1820–70) was the mayor of Roche-sur-Yon, and the secretary general of the Vendée prefecture; he produced a Catalogue de la bibliothèque de la ville de Napoléon-Vendée (1857).
53.
Guizot, Lettres, 897 (March 7, 1868). See also 899 (March 11) for further bibliographical advice. On March 13, Guizot informs his daughter that he has sent her three volumes that include information on Derby; he explains their relevance for her work, and that he will write to the current Lord Derby for the Historical Account of the House of Derby if the Institute’s librarian cannot order the volume from London (901).
54.
Guizot, Lettres, 898 (March 9, 1868). See also 871 (August 22, 1867); 899 (March 11, 1868); 901 (March 13, 1868). According to Gabriel de Broglie, the duke of Trémoille was married to the daughter of Guizot’s close political associate, Charles Duchâtel. “L’itinéraire Guizot,” Marina Valensise, ed., François Guizot et la culture politique de son temps (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 293–308, 300.
55.
Guizot, Lettres, 902 (March 15, 1868). See Mme [Henriette de] Guizot de Witt, The Lady of Latham; Being the Life and Original Letters of Charlotte de la Trémoille, Countess of Derby (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1869), vi.
56.
Guizot, Lettres, 898 (March 7, 1868), 905 (March 24, 1864).
57.
Ibid., 902 (March 15, 1868).
58.
Ibid., 898 (March 7, 1868).
59.
Ibid., 900 (March 12, 1868).
60.
Ibid., 901 (March 13, 1868).
61.
Ibid., 977 (February 14, 1870). The offending sentence, following an unquestionably positive assessment of the quality of “Mme de Witt’s” narration and reflections that bespeak “a great maturity of mind,” is supplied by the editor in a footnote.
62.
Guizot and his daughter address one another in English especially during periods of heightened emotion. See, for example, Lettres, 213 (February 25, 1848), in which Guizot writes to his daughter concerning his ouster from power and concludes: “Adieu, encore, my dearest.” Her letter of July 17 of the same year states that “it is useless to tell you that I love you,” concluding, “j’espère fort à être (I strongly hope to be) of few words” (214). See also 1021 (June 17, 1873), with news of her sister Pauline’s illness that led to her death: “Adieu, Father beloved. God bless and keep you.”
63.
Yonge had queried Guizot concerning historical details in order to write one of her novels. Guizot delegated the response to his daughter, who entered into an extended correspondence with Yonge. Yonge later helped to disseminate Guizot de Witt’s works to the Anglophone readership. Coste, “Introduction,” 67. Thus Guizot de Witt’s collaboration with Yonge also originated from her father’s reputation as well as his support.
64.
Guizot de Witt, Les Femmes dans l’histoire (Paris: Hachette, 1888), 161.
65.
Guizot corresponded with Staël and refers to and quotes from Staël many times in his work, for example, in his introduction to the Mornay edition, “Notice,” xiv. His views concerning the French Revolution were close to Staël’s , as expressed in her Considerations sur les principaux événements de la révolution française [Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution] (1818). Moreover, Guizot’s close associate, Victor de Broglie, was married to Staël’s daughter, Albertine; Adèle Vernet, baroness de Staël , widow of Ludwig August Staël von Holstein, Staël’s son, was a close friend of the family, who is mentioned numerous times in Guizot’s letters to his daughter.
66.
Guizot, Lettres, 900 (March 12, 1868).
67.
On the political nature of Charlotte Stanley’s correspondence with her sister-in-law Marie de la Tour Auvergne, see my “Political Writing Across Borders,” in A History of Early Modern Women’s Literature, ed. Patricia Phillippy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 364–381.
68.
Guizot de Witt, Lady of Latham, 31.
69.
The Scottish Dove, 112 (December 3–10, 1645), 887; A Perfect Diurnall, 123 (December 1–8, 1645), 990.
70.
Guizot de Witt, Les Femmes, 190.
71.
Ibid., 194.
72.
François Guizot, “Introduction,” Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (London: Dent, 1908), xxi–xxvi.
73.
On Mornay’s authorship of Vindiciae, see Hugues Daussy, Les Huguenots et le roi: Le combat politique de Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1572–1600) (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 241–254.
74.
Guizot de Witt, Les Femmes, 203.
75.
Ibid., 204–205.
76.
Ibid., 210.
77.
Guizot, Lettres, 484 (January 26, 1858) informs his daughter that Hachette has published 20,000 copies in six editions, the fifth having sold out.
78.
Guizot de Witt, Les Femmes, 219.
79.
Guizot de Witt’s description of this marriage cannot but recall her own in which she far outshone her husband in ability and accomplishment; see Coste, “Introduction,” 62. According to Coste, Guizot de Witt’s novels frequently include the demise of men responsible for ruining their families; her husband Conrad repeatedly fell into serious debt in pursuing agricultural projects (53–57).
80.
Ibid., 37, 47.
81.
Guizot de Witt, Vieilles histoires de la patrie (Paris: Hachette, 1887), chap. 7. The title of each chapter (which she calls récits) is followed by a parenthetical indication of her sources; she explains this presentation and methodology by the historiographical principle of valuing the judgments of historians contemporary with the events she is recounting (Preface, n.p.).
82.
For a list of Guizot de Witt’s works, editions, and translations, see Guizot, Lettres, 73–78. Guizot de Witt’s publications met—though only partially—financial exigencies caused by her husband’s improvidence. The most profitable were the History of England and the History of France that Guizot de Witt completed on behalf of her father, each netting 20,000 francs. See Coste, “Introduction,” 71.
83.
M. Guizot dans sa famille: et avec ses amis (Paris: Hachette, 1880); Lettres de M. Guizot à sa famille et à ses amis (2nd. ed., Paris: Hachette, 1884); Pages choisies de Guizot (Paris: Perrin, 1897); Le Temps passé (Paris: Perrin, 1887). Only the first of these four works was translated into English.
84.
This conservative turn can also be seen in François Guizot’s later years, in which theological writing became predominant.
85.
Guizot de Witt, Vieilles histoires, Preface, n.p. The sixth edition was published in 1905.
86.
On Witt-Schlumberger’s work in these organizations, see Linda Clark, Women and Achievement in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 262–263, 278–280. James H. McMillan, in discussing Witt-Schlumberger’s “social feminism”—public philanthropy on the rehabilitation of prostitutes and against the white slave trade and alcohol abuse—concludes that her “feminism was a means rather than an end, the real goal being the reform and regeneration of French society.” France and Women 1789–1914: Gender, Society and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000), 203. On Witt-Schlumberger’s involvement in pronatalism—the movement to reverse depopulation by recognizing maternity as a social function and national service—see Anne Cova, “French Feminism and Maternity: Theories and Policies, 1890–1918,” in Maternity and Gender Politics: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States, 1880s to 1905s, ed. Gisela Bock and Patricia Thane (London: Routledge, 1991), 119–137, 131; and Karen Offen, “Body Politics: Women, Work and the Politics of Motherhood in France, 1920–1950,” 138–159, 145.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA
Mihoko Suzuki

Authors

Mihoko Suzuki
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mihoko Suzuki .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Hilda L. Smith
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Melinda S. Zook

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Suzuki, M. (2018). Women’s Literary History in Late Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France: Louise de Kéralio and Henriette Guizot de Witt. In: Smith, H., Zook, M. (eds) Generations of Women Historians. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77568-5_11

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77568-5_11
Published: 12 July 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77567-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77568-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics