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Madame DeStael The First Modern Woman (2000)

by Francine du Plessix Gray(Favorite Author)

3.46 of 5 Votes: 4

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English

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review 1: Francine du Plessix Gray has wound the multi-faceted life of Germaine de Stael, probably the most important woman in the political and cultural life of France in the Revolutionary period, into a slim volume of two hundred pages. The author's pace matches her subject's temperament, productivity and passion in MADAME DE STAEL.To unspool Germaine's fifty-one years is to begin with the most significant fact of her life...she is the daughter of Jacques Necker, the director of finance serving under King Louis XVI. Upon his death in 1804, she wrote, "I had lost in that absence my protector, my brother, my friend, the man I would have chosen as my life's unique companion, if destiny had not thrown me into a generation other than his!"Unraveling her temperament, the author highligh... morets an overabundance of verbage that could last all night or for days in her Paris Salon with Tsar Alexander, Wellington, Lafayette and Fouche, or in her summer home at Coppet with philosopher Benjamin Constant and August Wilhelm Schlegel who introduced her to Goethe and was the first to translate Shakespeare's plays into German.Politically Germaine was moderate, an anathema to those on the right and left including her nemesis Napoleon who frequently exiled her and censured her numerous writings on the French people's thousand year struggle for freedom.In an unhappy marriage, Germaine satisfied her intellect and desires with multiple liaisons. "Might it be that Germaine was chronically in love with love, addicted to the vocabulary of infatuation?" The author postulates that this addiction was linked to her bipolar personality with excessive enthusiasm and crisis of despair.Madame de Stael is a fascinating woman who, though tethered to the Enlightenment, lives on today through her letters, published materials, and witnesses. Though this is not an exhaustive account of her life, none will be given the range of her ideas and enthusiasm. Highly recommended!
review 2: A fascinating woman in tumultuous times, scandalous sexuality, political machinations, revolution, daring escapes, absurd fashions, literary genius, secret marriages, puritans and libertines, ridicule as only 18th century Parisians could provide, even glass coffins filled with alcohol -- what's not to love? Even when de Stael's histrionics become rather tiresome, du Plessix Gray's deep admiration (and pity) for her subject remain infectious. The author brings her compelling cast of bizarre characters alive in sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious detail and paints the epic sweep of their times in vibrant colors. less

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