Women and Nature in the Works of French Female Novelists, 1789-1815 Christie Margrave A dissertation submitted to the University of St Andrews in accordance with the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts, Department of French 28 November 2014 DECLARATIONS 1. Candidate’s declarations: I, Christie Margrave, hereby certify that this thesis, which is 89,867 words in length, has been written by me, and that it is the record of work carried out by me, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. I was admitted as a research student in September 2009 and as a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in September 2009; the higher study for which this is a record was carried out in the University of St Andrews between 2009 and 2014. Date Signature of candidate 2. Supervisors’ declarations: I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of PhD in the University of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date Signature of supervisors 3. Permission for publication: (To be signed by both candidate and supervisor) In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use unless exempt by award of an embargo as requested below, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis. I have obtained any third-party copyright permissions that may be required in order to allow such access and migration, or have requested the appropriate embargo below. The following is an agreed request by candidate and supervisor regarding the publication of this thesis: PRINTED COPY (a) No embargo on print copy ELECTRONIC COPY (b) Embargo on all of electronic publication of thesis for a period of 5 years (maximum 1 five years) on the following ground(s): Publication would preclude future publication. (c) Permanent embargo on part of the electronic copy, specifically the two reproductions of images which feature in Appendix IV: Constance Mayer-Lamartinière, L’Heureuse mère, and Constance Mayer-Lamartinière, La Mère infortunée. Date Signature of candidate Signature of supervisors A supporting statement for a request for an embargo must be included with the submission of the draft copy of the thesis. Where part of a thesis is to be embargoed, please specify the part and the reasons. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS p.6 ABSTRACT p.7 ABBREVIATIONS p.8 INTRODUCTION Women and Nature in Late Eighteenth- p.9 and Early Nineteenth-Century France Part 1 Corpus p.9 Part 2 Literature Review p.11 Part 3 The Contribution Made by this Study p.20 Part 4 Nature p.22 Part 5 The Link Between Women and Nature p.32 Part 6 The Author-Reader Relationship p.42 Part 7 Methodological Approach p.48 Part 8 Socio-Political Historical Contexts p.52 CHAPTER 1 Nature, Love and Marriage p.56 Part 1 Forbidden Love and Arranged Marriage in p.56 Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth- Century France Part 2 The Garden Utopian Idyll in Souza’s Émilie et p.59 Alphonse and Cottin’s Malvina Part 3 The jardin à la française and the jardin à l’anglaise p.72 in Souza’s Adèle de Sénange Part 4 Conclusion p.86 CHAPTER 2 Nature and the Woman Writer p.89 Part 1 The Situation for Women Writers in Late p.89 Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century France 3 Part 2 Women and Writing as Reflected in p.93 Contemporary Views of Britain and Scotland in Corinne ou l’Italie and Malvina Part 3 The Ossianic landscape and the Woman p.99 Writer in Cottin’s Malvina Part 4 The Foundation of ‘True Liberty’ and the p.110 Importance of Women’s Writing and Education in Staël’s Corinne ou l’Italie Part 5 Conclusion p.123 CHAPTER 3 Mother Nature and Motherhood p.126 Part 1 Changes in the View of Motherhood p.126 Part 2 Changes in Art and Literature, and the p.130 Importance of the Image of Nature Part 3 The Grieving Mother as Landscape Gardener p.133 in Krüdener’s Valérie Part 4 Nature and the Abandoned Child in Genlis’s p.143 Les Mères rivales ou la calomnie Part 5 Conclusion p.154 CHAPTER 4 Nature and Madness p.156 Part 1 Changes in the Treatment of the Insane p.157 Part 2 The ‘Female Malady’ p.160 Part 3 The Madwoman and the Natural Asylum in p.164 Cottin’s Malvina and Mathilde, ou mémoires tirés de l’histoire des croisades Part 4 Conclusion p.179 CHAPTER 5 Nature and Female Mortality p.181 Part 1 Death, Women and Nature in the Late p.181 Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries Part 2 Feminine Mortality and the Natural p.189 Deathscape in Staël’s Corinne ou l’Italie 4 Part 3 Water and the Bosquet: Natural Deathscapes in p.197 Cottin’s Amélie Mansfield Part 4 Conclusion p.202 THESIS CONCLUSION p.205 BIBLIOGRAPHY p.211 APPENDIX I Synopses of Primary Texts p.234 APPENDIX II Publication History p.245 APPENDIX III Contemporary Reactions to Women Writers p.247 APPENDIX IV Images: Constance Mayer, L’Heureuse mère and p.252 La Mère infortunée APPENDIX V The Decription of the Comtesse de p.253 Rosmond’s Allegorical Garden in Mme de Genlis’s Les Mères rivales ou la calomnie. APPENDIX VI Table 1: État des fous furieux, des folles p.256 furieuses, des imbéciles, des épileptiques renfermés dans les Maisons de force et les Hôpitaux de Paris. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ‘Thank you’ are two very small words, which scarcely do justice to what I wish to express with these acknowledgements. My first and foremost thanks go to Dr David Culpin and Dr David Evans who have co-supervised my doctoral thesis, and who have generously and unfailingly brought kindness, support, time, patience and fascinating discussions to the table during the course of this project. I am more indebted to them than I can say. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the University of St Andrews for granting me a University Scholarship over the course of my doctoral research, and from Santander for awarding me a bursary to attend the NeMLA annual convention in 2013. I am also grateful to La Sorbonne, Bangor University and the Universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh and Sheffield, who have all given me gainful employment throughout the course of my PhD work, enabling me to finance my research. I would like to thank the Réunion des musées nationaux in Paris for their permission to include reproductions of two of Constance Mayer’s paintings: L’Heureuse mère and La Mère infortunée, both from the salon of 1810, and both now in the Louvre. My thanks go, too, to the staff of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Library of Scotland, the Taylorian, and Special Collections in St Andrews who have helped me to locate the texts I needed. A number of scholars, colleagues and friends have helped me by responding to queries, by listening to and discussing my ideas, or simply by encouraging me over the course of my research. Thank you to Helen Abbott, Caroline Aoudia, Danielle Berrow, Marie Brogly, Nicolas Bourgès, Miriam Buncombe, Jennifer Cadman, Ellen Carter, Géraldine Crahay, Gillian Dow, Jonathan Ervine, Ian Fookes, Chloe Goodall, Alison Hales, Anna Hawksworth, Beth Irvine, Anja Krüger, Barbara Le Lan, Ann Lewis, Peter Lindfield, Kristin Lindfield-Ott, Aimee Linekar, David McCallam, Lorna Milne, Daniela Omlor, Jennifer Rowe, Anna Saunders, Linda Shortt, Tatjana Silec, Benjamine Toussaint and Margaux Whiskin, who have all, between them, provided hours of stimulating discussion and many reassuring words. Particular thanks go to David McCallam, Aimee Linekar, Kristin Lindfield-Ott, Linda Shortt and Elaine Margrave who have proofread sections of this thesis at various stages of its development. Last but very far indeed from being least, I would like to thank my parents, Elaine and Colin Margrave. They have provided the greatest moral support of all over the years I have worked on this research project, and have been its chief financial source. This thesis is dedicated to Mum, who first taught me to read and appreciate books, and to Dad, who worked nights, so I would never have to. 6 ABSTRACT On account of their supposed link to nature, women in post-revolutionary France were pigeonholed into a very restrictive sphere that centred around domesticity and submission to their male counterparts. Yet this thesis shows how a number of women writers – Cottin, Genlis, Krüdener, Souza and Staël – re-appropriate nature in order to reclaim the voice denied to them and to their sex by the society in which they lived. The five chapters of this thesis are structured to follow a number of critical junctures in the life of an adult woman: marriage, authorship, motherhood, madness and mortality. The opening sections to each chapter show why these areas of life generated particular problems for women at this time.