Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stael J. Christopher Herold 1958

 Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Stael by J. Christopher Herold | Goodreads

I know nothing about the French Revolution. I was taught the French Revolution was tyrannical inept King, mob violence, The Terror, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington saves the day at Waterloo. French people get on with being very French. I've decided to read a couple books about it.

This is from my shelf full of old books. It is a biography of one Madame Germaine de Stael. An influential and notorious figure during the French Revolution, she was an eccentric intellectual that hosted one of the famous salons of pre-revolution France. It was in these salons and other social clubs that the philosophy of the revolution was developed. Critically, it was then disseminated to the public by the numerous printing houses of Paris in almost real time. Madame de Stael can be described as a political provocateur whose every plan and intrigue failed miserably. She published plays and books with thinly disguised parallels of current events and primarily stories of her own trials and tribulations in those turbulent times. Unfortunately, Madame de Stael was suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder compounded by an equally large family fortune. Before reading this book I’d never heard of her. She was in fact the William Randolf Hurst or the Rupert Murdock of the French Revolution. Her need for attention and to be at the center of the machinations of societal intellectualism was supreme. There was no controversy in the public domain she did not insert herself into. Like Hurst and Murdock, she espoused principles of liberty and freedom, but primarily she was about having all things revolving around her. And like Hurst and Murdock, she applied any means necessary to achieve her ends. Her ends exactly? This was the age of the rise of the bourgeois class, the Nuevo Riche, and Germaine Necker was the daughter of a speculator/banker that helped fund the French Imperial Court of Louis the XVI. Jacques Necker was not a royal, but he was richer than the royals, as were so many of his compatriots at the time. Madame Germain de Stael was to spend her whole life demanding that everyone see her as the new royalty she her family and friends had achieved through commerce and hard work. Marrying a petty royal of Sweden was her play to acquire her own noble title of Madame de Stael. She was a proponent of the Enlightenment and corresponded heavily with all the main players.

She and her social group talked of high ideas but there was no care for the actual functioning of the government or its responsibility towards the people that were to be governed. She wished all the trappings and privilege of royalty but like so many of the period, she cared nothing for the suffering of the peasants and workers that constituted “the mob”. She was smart, bold and rich. She was the extreme of woman's suffrage at the time, but her motivation was completely and obviously a selfish demand for attention. It was effective. She was worshipped and adored by thousands. Her entourage travelled Europe spreading some vague idealistic notion of enthusiasm and love and emotion that was to bring forth a new world order. Plays and books and commentaries were written and published. Courts were visited and royalty courted. The author praises her contributions to both Enlightenment and Romantism movements in literature. She was there at the center of it all and she left a prolific collection of correspondence, plays and stories. Her salons and her elitist social circles contributed much to the literary revolution of the period, but her actions caused chaos. She was an interlocutor, provocateur, instigator, and conspirator in the horrors of the revolution that followed and unsurprisingly, she seemed to take no responsibility for any of it. Throughout, she portrayed herself as a victim.

She exclaims that her handicap of being a woman inhibits her ability to rise to the station in life that an intellect such as hers should. It isn't true. Had she been a man she would have been crushed like a bug. She would have been treated as her father was. The fact that she was a woman allowed her involvement to exacerbate and make the Revolution far more destructive than it was. She absolutely refused to compromise on anything that wasn't in line with her ideological view. She cajoled, lied, manipulated to have it her way and about herself. Her views, her ideas, her vision of a utopian society. She was able to do so much damage and cost so many lives in fact because she was a woman. The men she surrounded herself with absolutely refused to recognize her for what she was, a narcissistic tyrant, because women were incapable of possessing those qualities. This was an awful woman. Her histrionics and displays of absolute idiocy are just fuckin' amazing. A 38-year-old child doesn't get her way and throws a tantrum. Bully men until they do her bidding. And the men. Every single one of them spineless cowards. It was Napoleon that finally recognized her for what she was and drove her into exile and obscurity. She lived out her life as an aging debutante, with all the ridicule and disparagement associated with an absence of relevance. According to the author it was during this period she produced her most profound and lasting contributions to the literature of the day.

            This was an excellent biography of a key and celebrated figure in the French Revolution. The author appeared to be a fan and presented her in the best light, but my own prejudices and biases are front and center. I have encountered narcissistic personalities, and they are all consuming. The book does leave me with a clearer impression of the people of the period. The ignorance and gullibility is so profound. Why is it that we must apply every wrong answer before we stumble onto the one that kinda works. I suppose the life and times of one Madame Germaine de Stael may provide an example.