AN ALTERNATIVE ENLIGHTENMENT: THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF JEANNE MARIE LE PRINCE DE BEAUMONT (1711-1780) by Margaret P. Schaller A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida August 2008 Copyright by Margaret P. Schaller 2008 ii AN ALTERNATIVE ENLIGHTENMENT: THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF JEANNE MARIE LE PRINCE DE BEAUMONT (1711-1780) By Margaret P. Schaller This dissertation was prepared under the direction of the candidate's dissertation advisor, Dr. Jan Walsh Hokenson, Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literatures, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor ofPhi1osophy. Dr. obin N. Fiore, Committee Member Dr. il!:!r: A.~er, Committee Member Dr. Marcella L. Munson, Committee Member ~ nath Pendakur, Dean, The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters Dr. Barry T. osson, Dean, Graduate College 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the many professors, colleagues, and friends who have supported me in this academic achievement. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the continuing support and mentorship of my dissertation director and professor, Dr. Jan Hokenson, whose outstanding scholarship and guidance have inspired me to reflect, to question, and to ')ust say it" during my masters and my doctoral studies at Florida Atlantic University. I am also grateful to have an exceptional dissertation committee; Drs. Marcella Munson, Robin Fiore, and Patricia Kollander have all been extremely generous with their time, their expertise, and their encouragement. In addition, I would like to thank Florida Atlantic University, the Lifelong Learning Society and the National Alumni Association for their recognition of my scholarship with several academic fellowships and scholarships. This funding provided financial and psychological support, helping to pay the bills but also encouraging me through that recognition to continue forward in the pursuit of this often daunting academic goal. Finally, I would like to thank my closest supporters in this process. My wonderful children Emilie and Philippe, my brothers Tom and Peter, and my dear friends Alessandra, Carolyn, Dennis, George, Lois, Mary, Pam, Rebecca, and Teresa, have all iv played important roles in my life over these past four years. Their patience has been equal to their pride during these years of study, even when the subject itself escaped them. Their ability to see my vision as it unfolded and then to remind me of it during my times of temporary blindness has been a critical part of my ultimate success. For this I am blessed and grateful. v ABSTRACT Author: Margaret P. Schaller Title: An Alternative Enlightenment: The Moral Philosophy of Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (1711-1780) Institution: Florida Atlantic University Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Jan Walsh Hokenson Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Year: 2008 The ceuvre of Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, the public intellectual whose pedagogical journals and epistolary novels were routinely shelved in private eighteenth­ century libraries alongside the works of the period's most famous philosophes, today remains virtually unknown. Beyond the scant available studies limited to her pedagogy and fairy tales, it is time to explore the theoretical aspects of those and other of her texts as significant alternatives to traditional Enlightenment discourse as epitomized in the contemporary philosophes. Through her personal roles of governess to British and French aristocracy, editor of a French-language periodical featuring such contributors as Voltaire and Graffigny, Vl and author of internationally recognized pedagogical manuals, the most famous of which included her timeless version of "Beauty and the Beast," Beaumont challenged a nascent female audience to actively participate in the intellectual discourse of their society, and used her real-world experience to develop a pedagogical methodology founded on the ideals of thought, debate, and action ("penser, parler, agir"). A Cartesian insistence on the separation of mind and body informed much of her argument in favor of women's intellectual capacity, and carried through to her discussion of such socio-political topics as women's equality, agrarian reform, religious tolerance, and social stratification. Not just a gatekeeper of information or a synthesizer of male-produced theories on education and other issues of social concern, she was rather an innovative thinker advancing active, personal commitment to public issues at all levels regardless of gender or social status. Also, promoting theories rooted in the mentoring of women by women as a means of personal realization, Beaumont further advanced French Enlightenment universalism through debate, reason, and action. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .................................................................................. 1 Chapter I: A Climate of Change .......................................................... 28 A. Enlightenment Women and the Public Sphere: The Salon .............. 32 B. Enlightenment Women and the Public Sphere: Beyond the Salon .... .43 C. The Missing Philosophes: Enlightenment Women in Print. ............52 D. The Modernist Viewpoint: Enlightenment Women and the Critics ... 61 Chapter II: The Feminine Voice ..........................................................79 A. Achieving Authorial Authority ......................................... 81 B. Portraying the Feminine Voice ....................................... 100 C. The Beaumont Difference: A Feminine Alternative ................ 110 Chapter III: Education: an Enlightened Alternative ................................. 128 A. Education in the Eighteenth Century ................................. 129 B. Beaumont's Objectives and Methodology ........................... 150 C. Tales, Tasks, and Tools of the Trade ................................. 158 Chapter IV: Alternatives in Enlightenment Social Consciousness ................. 170 A. The Religious Debate ................................................... 172 B. Enlightenment Social Morality ........................................ 190 viii C. Reform and Utopianism ................................................ 201 Conclusion: Beaumont's Alternative Enlightenment ................................ 235 Bibliography .............................................................................. 250 IX Introduction In the 1770s, the typical French author of some renown would have held royal court positions, published philosophical debates, edited scholarly periodicals, written scores of volumes in many genres and with numerous translations, and frequently traveled abroad. Most scholars and critics today, partly responsible for this stereotype, would quickly adduce Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, or many other well-known philosophes of France's Enlightenment period as exemplars of this heroic figure in the history of Western thought. Few people realize that several eighteenth-century women also meet or exceed this impressive list of accomplishments, although in their time- as in ours - cultural authorities tended to discount them. Emilie du Chatelet' s groundbreaking work in physics and mathematics was overshadowed by her love affair with Voltaire, even as Madeleine de Puisieux's controversial philosophical writings were regularly attributed to her famous lover Diderot. These women writers and a handful of others like Fran~oise de Graffigny, Felicite de Genlis, and Isabelle de Charriere, have recently begun to attract attention from an international movement to recover women's history, slowly revitalizing interest in them through biographies, histories, and critical analyses of their ' works. One other such woman is Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, still very much 1 overlooked and yet, I will argue, surpassing even Chatelet and Graffigny in public influence. This extraordinary individual, whose pedagogical journals and epistolary novels were routinely shelved in private eighteenth-century libraries alongside the works of Voltaire and Rousseau, and who played an influential role in European thought and behavior well into the nineteenth century, is now almost unknown. 1 This study reviews the complete oeuvre of Mme Le Prince de Beaumont, who published more than seventy volumes during her thirty-two year career as educator and public intellectual. There is limited published research available on this woman, whom Joan Hinde Stewart describes as "catalogued but not studied" ("Novelists and Their Fictions" 199). This analysis broadens the scope of that research and advances the recognition of this woman as a noteworthy thinker whose intellectual contribution to eighteenth-century debates deserves inclusion in the canon of Enlightenment discourse. Beaumont created works of fiction and non-fiction, authored essays and epistolary novels, and published what are now recognized as the first educational magazines for children.2 In France, where she first lived and was trained as a teacher, she served as a governess to royals and aristocrats, a trade that she marketed in London from 1748 to 1763, focusing primarily on works of pedagogy during this period. After returning to France for the last seventeen years of her life, she turned