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Madame de Stael: Culture as Social Control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Steve Golin
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Extract

What gives consistency to Madame de Staël's thought from 1795 to 1800, and makes it interesting today, is her sense that a new era has begun, in which art, philosophy and politics alike will become vehicles of integration. Beyond the creation of republican constitutions, institutions or authorities, she wanted to create new habits of respect and obedience. She saw that social and political control in the democratic era meant the control of the minds and feelings of the population. This insight gives coherence to her diverse and unsystematic works: an essay and a book on politics, Réflexions sur la Paix Intérieure (1795) and Des Circonstances Actuelles qui Peuvent Terminer la Révolution … (1799); a treatise on happiness, De l'Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur … (1796); and an essay and major study on literature, Essai sur les Fictions (1795) and De la Littéture Considéréé dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales (2 volumes, 1800). The unifying element of all these works is her focus on social control.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 342 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1971

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References

1 Des Circonstances Actuelles qui Peuvent Terminer la Révolution et des Principes qui Doivent Fonder la République en France, ed. by Vienot, John (Paris, 1906), p. 165. This work is hereafter cited as C.A.Google Scholar

2 “Réflexions sur la Paix Intérieure,” Oeuvres Computes de Mme. la Baronne de Staél, ed. by Staël, Auguste de (17 vols.; Paris, 1820), II, 149 and 151. Hereafter cited as “La Paix Intérieure,” O.C.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 129.

4 C.A., pp. 108–9 and 159. All translations are my own.

5 “La Paix Intéieure,” O.C., II, 155, 117, and 152. Her term “propertyless” includes peasants and craftsmen.

6 Ibid., 148.

7 Letter of Nov. 24, 1796, Revue des Documents Historiques (Paris, 1873–1881), 5th year, 121Google Scholar.

8 “De l'Influence des Passions sur le Bonheur des Individus et des Nations,” O.C., III, 26. Hereafter cited as “Des Passions.”

9 C.A., pp. 127–8.

10 “Des Passions,” O.C., III, 267.

11 C.A., pp. 122 and 142.

12 1795: “Equality of political rights is much more fearsome than the state of nature” (“La Paix Intérieure,” O.C., II, 151). 1799: “The guarantee of civil liberty is in political liberty, and political liberty is one and the same thing as political equality” (C.A., p. 345. Also see C.A., pp. 35, 37).

13 Her rhetoric still works its magic. Most secondary works are inaccurate; the best are uncritical. Gautier, P. (in Revue des Deux Mondes, 11 1899)Google Scholar and B. Munteano (1931) saw the unity of de Staël's work in the Thermidorian period, but accepted her ideological goals as their own. The republican treatise of 1799, which she left in manuscript form when Napoleon's seizure of power made it obsolete, was finally published in 1906, with an enthusiastic introduction by J. Vienot. No longer considered a great novelist, she has become a liberal heroine; her “love of liberty” is acclaimed by A. Sorel (1890), E. Faguet (1899), P. Kohler (1916), and I. Benrubi (1940). H. Guillemin's counter-attack (1959), accusing her of mere self-seeking, misses the point. The latest study of her republican period, Grosclaude, P., in Revue Politique et Parlementaire (11, 1966)Google Scholar takes her word for everything. Recent American praise of her liberalism comes from J. C. Herold (1958), R. Forsberg and H. Nixon (1963), and M. Berger (1964). Gwynne, G. E., Madame de Staël et la Révolution Française: Politique, philosophic, litérature (1969)Google Scholar, appeared after this article was completed. It is much more careful in its treatment of details than the usual literature, but shares the general unwillingness to deal with de Staël's ideas about property, inequality, and social control.

14 C.A., p. 122.

15 Ibid., p. 41.

16 Ibid., pp. 83 and 188.

17 “Des Passions,” O.C., III, 289 and 294.

18 De la Littérature Considéréé dans ses Rapports avec Us Institutions Sociales, ed. by Van Tieghem, Paul (Geneva, 1959), p. 31.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as De la Litt.

19 “La Paix Intérieure,” O.C., II, 131.

20 De la Litt., p. 267.

21 C.A., p. 81 (my italics). On the role of property-owners in England in determining the war policy, see “Réflexions sur la Paix Addressée à M. Pitt et aux FranÇais” O.C., II, 74. Hereinafter cited as Réflexions Addresséé à Pitt.

22 De la Litt., pp. 90 and 328–329; “La Paix Intàrieure,” O.C., p. 125.

23 C.A., pp. 128, 190 and 167.

24 Ibid., p. 277.

25 De la Liu., p. 31.

26 C.A., p. 98. Even a decade later, despite her opposition to Napoleon, she defended his censorship of papers, “because newspapers exercise a popular influence, while books, for the most part, are read by educated men and can enlighten opinion, but not inflame it.” Dix Anniés d'Exil, ed. by Gautier, Paul (Paris, 1904), p. 24Google Scholar.

27 C.A., pp. 41 and 97.

28 “Opinion has never been determined by opinion itself; … it is to some powers different from it, to the support of some superstition, that its strength was due” (“Des Passions,” O.C., III, 55). “ The magic which is inseparable from glory is impossible to preserve,” when there are “pamphlets every day and every hour” “Réflexions Addressée a Pitt,” O.C., II, 44 ).

29 C.A., p. 242.

30 Ibid., pp. 196–7; De la Litt., p. 368; C.A., p. 242.

31 De la Litt., pp. 282–283; C.A., pp. 196 and 242.

32 Letter to Gibbon, Dec. 28, 1792, Correspondance Générale de Madame de Staël, ed. by Jasinski, Beatrice W. (Paris, 1960), II, part 2, 375Google Scholar.

33 C.A., pp. 183–184.

34 “Réflexions Addressée à Pitt,” O.C., II, 50.

35 “Considérations sur les Principaux Événements de la Révolution FranÇaise,” O.C., XIII, 111 and 130. This work, a three-volume history and apology, was written after the fall of Napoleon, and published posthumously in 1818. See also “Des Passions,” O.C., III, 30.

36 C.A., pp. 45 and 169.

37 Ibid., p. 199.

38 Ibid., pp. 32 and 170. She first described the method of “positive calculation” in “Des Passions,” O.C., III, 11ff.

39 C.A., pp. 115 and 47. “Des Passions,” O.C., III, 26; C.A., pp. 9 and 57.

40 “Des Passions,” O.C., III, 177.

41 Ibid., pp. 297–8.

42 C.A., 48–9.

43 Ibid., p. 343.

44 Ibid., p. 279. See also De la Litt., p. 312. “It will be necessary for them to attend to their esteem much more attentively than when aristocratic dignity sufficed to guarantee those who had it the regard and respect of the multitude …”

45 De la Litt., pp. 327–8.

46 “Des Passions,” O.C., III, 91–92, “Réflexions Addressée a Pitt,” O.C., II, 46 and 73; C.A., p. 83.

47 C.A., p. 212. De la. Litt., p. 27.

48 De la Litt., pp. 346 and 343–344.

49 C.A., pp. 199–200 and 10.

50 De la Litt., p. 218; C.A., pp. 199–200.

51 De la Litt., p. 231.

52 “Essai sur les Fictions,” O.C., II, 196ff. Hereafter cited as “Les Fictions.”

53 Ibid., pp. 178, 210, and 197.

54 De la Litt., pp. 238 and 90. See also ibid., 364 and “Les Fictions,” O.C., II, 213.

55 C.A., pp. 220–7 and 214.