Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis explained

Stéphanie Félicité du Crest, Madame de Genlis
Birth Name:Caroline-Stéphanie-Félicité du Crest de Saint-Aubin
Birth Date:25 January 1746
Birth Place:Issy-l'Évêque, Saône-et-Loire
Death Place:Paris
Resting Place:Père Lachaise Cemetery
Occupation:Author, educationalist
Language:French
Citizenship:France
Genre:Novels
Subject:Historical romance, Sentimental novel
Notableworks:Mémoires inédits sur le XVIII' siècle; Adèle et Théodore
Spouse:Charles-Alexis Brûlart, Comte de Genlis (1763; separated 1782)
Children:Caroline (1765-86), Pulchérie (1767-1847) and Casimir (1768-1773)
Relatives:Madame de Montesson

Caroline-Stéphanie-Félicité, Madame de Genlis (25 January 1746 – 31 December 1830) was a French writer of the late 18th and early 19th century, known for her novels and theories of children's education. She is now best remembered for her journals and the historical perspective they provide on her life and times.

Life

Caroline-Stéphanie-Félicité du Crest de Saint-Aubin was born on 25 April 1746 at Champcéry near Autun, in the Saône-et-Loire region. Her parents were Pierre César du Crest (1711-1763), later Marquis de Saint Aubin, and Marie Françoise Félicité Mauget de Mézières (1717-1790).[1]

Her father's debts forced him to sell their home in 1757 and move to Paris. She and her mother spent interludes at the estates of Charles Guillaume Le Normant d'Étiolles and Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière, where she was taught dancing by a ballet master of the Comédie-Française and singing by Ferdinando Pellegrini. She also learned to play the harp, a skill which later in Paris she used to support them. Pierre César was captured by the English while returning from Santo Domingo in 1760 and one of his fellow prisoners was Charles-Alexis Brûlart, Comte de Genlis (1737–1793), whom he introduced to his daughter after their release. After Pierre died in 1763, his sister married de Genlis at midnight on 8 November 1763; as a younger son, his title 'Comte' was complimentary and she was always known as Madame de Genlis.[2]

In 1782 she published her first epistolary novel Adèle et Thèodore written while on holiday in Lusignano in Liguria. Its basic theme is education, where she takes a position unlike Rousseau in Emile. For her the condition of women depends on the education that is imparted to take the role that belongs to her in society, while for Jean-Jacques Rousseau the sphere of female action is restricted to the domestic sphere and therefore their education remains limited; for Genlis, education represents a step forward for her emancipation but on the other hand she submits first to the will of her mother and then of her husband. The success of this novel was due to the fact that she is the first woman to be gouverneur of princes of royal blood.

Since Charles-Alexis' own parents were dead, they went to live with his godfather, the Marquis de Puisieux and had three children; Caroline (1765-1786), Pulchérie (1767-1847) and Casimir (1768-1773).[3] It is possible that she also had one or more secret offspring;[4] as Talleyrand later wrote: "In spite of the strictness which she preached and the morality which she professed in her writing, one always meets in her later novels something of the easiness of her earlier morals; one always finds in them love affairs and illegitimate children."[5]

She died in Paris on 31 December 1830 and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Career

Her relative, Madame de Montesson (1738-1806), was also known for her beauty and intelligence, later becoming a playwright. She married the duc d'Orléans in 1773, although barred from using the title 'Duchess of Orléans.' With her support, Stéphanie-Félicité became lady-in-waiting to Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, wife of the Duke's son Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Chartres, and with her husband joined the Duke's entourage in the Palais-Royal in early 1772, drawing a stipend of 10,000 livres.

She began an affair with Chartres almost immediately, their love letters being published in 1904 by Gaston Maugras as L’idylle d’un gouverneur.[6] As Talleyrand noted, "The Duc de Chartres found her charming, told her this, and was quickly listened to, for Madame de Genlis, to avoid the scandal of coquetry, always yielded easily."[7] Although their affair was short-lived, in 1777 he appointed her governess to his daughters, who were joined by two 'adopted' English girls, Stephanie Caroline Anne Syms or "Pamela" and Hermine Syms. This was in line with her theory of educating her pupils with children of different nationalities to better learn foreign languages; the household already contained English and Italian servants.[8] Although it has often been suggested Pamela was the product of her relationship with Chartres, this has been challenged by recent scholarship.[9] In 1781, Chartres took the then unusual step of putting her in charge of his sons' education, which led to the resignation of their existing tutors; she and Charles-Alexis formally separated the following year.

For her husband's amusement, Madame de Montesson set up their own theatre, for which she and Madame de Genlis wrote plays, the parts being taken by their children. Audiences numbered as many as 500 aristocrats and writers, including Diderot and D'Alembert. This developed her approach to education, later set out in Théâtre d'éducation (4 vols., 1779–1780), a collection of short comedies for young people, Les Annales de la vertu (2 vols., 1781) and Adèle et Théodore (3 vols., 1782). Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve claims she anticipated many modern methods of teaching; history was taught using magic lantern slides and her pupils learnt botany from a botanist during their walks.

In 1785, Chartres succeeded as duc d'Orléans; her brother Charles-Louis Ducrest became his secretary.[10] When the French Revolution began in 1789, both he and Charles-Alexis joined the Girondins faction and were executed in 1793 with many of their political colleagues. Stéphanie-Félicité and her pupil Mademoiselle d'Orléans took refuge in Switzerland, before moving to Berlin in 1794. Considered too liberal by Frederick William II, she was forced to live in Hamburg but returned when his son succeeded him in 1797.[11]

After Napoleon came to power in 1799, she returned to France. Her aunt was a close friend of Napoleon's wife Joséphine de Beauharnais and this connection resulted in her being given rooms at the Arsenal and a small pension. Her best known romance Mademoiselle de Clermont was published in 1802, along with a number of other novels. Her government pension was discontinued after the 1814 Bourbon Restoration; her former pupil Louis Philippe gave her a small pension but she relied on the income from her writing.

Her later years were occupied with literary quarrels, notably those arising from her 1822 publication Diners du Baron d'Holbach, which attacked what she viewed as 'the intolerance, fanaticism, and eccentricities of the philosophes of the 18th century.' She survived long enough to see her former pupil, Louis Philippe, become king in 1830. The vast majority of her works are now little read but provide interesting historical background, especially Mémoires inédits sur le XVIII' siècle, published in 1825.

Legacy

In Britain, she was best known for her children's works, which many welcomed as they presented many of Rousseau's methods, while attacking his principles. They also avoided libertinism and Roman Catholicism, concepts often associated with the French by the British, who appreciated her innovative educational methods, particularly her morality plays. According to Magdi Wahba, another reason for her popularity was the belief she was as moral as the Baronne d'Almane in Adèle et Théodore. They discovered this was not the case when she fled to London in 1791 but while she lost the esteem of some, including Frances Burney, it had little effect on her book sales.

Jane Austen was familiar with her works, although she returned the novel 'Alphonsine' to the Lending Library, claiming it "did not do. We were disgusted in twenty pages, as, independent of a bad translation, it has indelicacies which disgrace a pen hitherto so pure".[12] However, in Emma her heroine suggests her governess would raise her own daughter the better for having practised upon her, "like La Baronne d'Almane on La Countesse d'Ostalis in Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore".[13] Modern critics claim other themes addressed by Genlis appear in both Emma and Northanger Abbey.[14] Austen continued to read (and lend out) her works however, complaining in 1816 for example that she couldn't "read Olimpe et Theophile without being in a rage. It is really too bad! – Not allowing them to be happy together when they are married."[15] Austen's nieces Anna and Caroline also drew inspiration for their own writings from Madame de Genlis.[16]

British women writers of the late eighteenth century were particularly inspired by Genlis's novel of education Adèle et Théodore, which Anna Letitia Barbauld compared to Rousseau's Emile as a type of "preceptive fiction."[17] Anna Barbauld admired Genlis's "system of education, the whole of which is given in action" with "infinite ingenuity in the various illustrative incidents."[18] Clara Reeve described Genlis's educational program as "the most perfect of any" in Plans of Education (1794), an epistolary work loosely based on Genlis's novel.[19] Adelaide O'Keeffe's Dudley(1819) was modeled directly after Genlis's work, and other texts such as Anna Letitia Barbauld and John Aikin's Evenings at Home were inspired by Genlis's Tales of the Castle, a "spin-off" of Adèle et Théodore. As Donelle Ruwe notes, Genlis's emphasis on the mother as a powerful educating heroine was inspirational, but so too were her books' demonstrations of how to create homemade literacy objects such as flash cards and other teaching aids.

In literature

Félicité de Genlis appears as a character in the works of Honoré de Balzac (Illusions perdues) and Victor Hugo (Les Misérables), among others. She is also mentioned in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Our Village by Mary Russell Mitford, Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov, humourist story M-me Genlis's spirit by Nikolai Leskov, The Angel in the House by Coventry Patmore, The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss, Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, Emma by Jane Austen, and A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel.

Selected works

Madame de Genlis was a prodigious author. As Saint-Beuve observed in one of his Causeries de Lundi, "if the inkstand had not existed, she would have invented it."

Sources

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Caroline Stephanie "Félicité" du CREST de SAINT AUBIN Madame de Genlis . Geneanet.org . 27 June 2019.
  2. Book: Mather . Laura . The Life and Networks of Pamela Fitzgerald, 1773-1831 . 2017 . Mary Immaculate College, Limerick . 13 .
  3. Web site: Pattou . Etienne . Famille de Brûlart & Sillery, Genlis, etc, Page 15 . Racines Histoires . 30 June 2019.
  4. Wyndham, p. 68
  5. Quote from Wyndham, p. 68
  6. Mather, p. 15
  7. The Memoirs of Prince Talleyrand, trans. Raphaël Ledos De Beaufort, London : Griffith Farran Okeden and Welsh, vol.1, page 124.
  8. Mather, p. 24
  9. Mather, pp. 15-17
  10. Web site: Charles-Louis Ducrest (1747-1824).
  11. Book: Hertz . Deborah . Jewish High Society In Old Regime Berlin . 2005 . Syracuse University Press . 978-0815629559 . 167.
  12. Deirdre Le Faye ed., Jane Austen's Letters (1995) p. 115
  13. Jane Austen, Emma (Penguin English Library) p. 444
  14. Web site: Watson . Geri . Madame de Genlis and Jane Austen . GeriWalton.com . 14 December 2016 . 27 June 2019.
  15. Deirdre Le Faye ed., Jane Austen's Letters (1995) p. 310
  16. David Nokes, Jane Austen (1997) p. 444 and p. 483
  17. Quoted in Donelle Ruwe, p. 3
  18. Quoted in Ruwe, p. 2.
  19. Quoted in Ruwe, p. 1.

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