Isabelle de Charrière (1740–1805)

Isabelle de Charrière (1740 – 1805), in the Netherlands better known as Belle van Zuylen published her first novella or short novel in 1763. The publication was deemed scandalous so her parents tried to buy up and destroy all copies. In many ways, the small book expresses the rebellious ideas of its author.

The short novel was a satire against the nobility and proposed free marriage. As such it was considered unacceptable.

It is a good thing this early work was re-translated from its original French and made available in a new edition, together with an essay on this work and a long afterword, both reflecting on the significance of this work, and its place in the oevre of its author.… (mais)

Belle van Zuylen was a Dutch aristocratic woman who lived in the Eighteenth century. However, as was customary at that time, she wrote in French and she is also known under her (married) French name Isabelle de Charrière (1740–1805).

From an early age Belle wrote letters in French. This books presents a selection of her letters written between 1760-1805. Among her correspondents are many well-known Eighteenth century writers, such as Constant D'Hermenches, James Boswell, Benjamin Constant, while there are also references to other famous figures of the Enlightenment, such Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Belle van Zuylen had met James Boswell during his visit to the city of Utrecht.

The letters in this edition were selected and translated by Simone DuBois, and first published in 1971. Regretfully, it is a very modest selection. It also seems the letters were selected to show the mind of their author, her personal development rather than the historical times. There are very sparse references to the French Revolution, which must have affected many of her friends and correspondents tragically.… (mais)

This is an extraordinary work about class & gender, written in the wake of the French Revolution by the brilliant Dutch aristocrat who has only recently garnered much attention. In the first part of the novel in a sort of conte told by "the Abbe de la Tour" we read the story of how a French aristocrat, having fled to a village in Germany, learns a different way of looking at life & reality from her maid, Josephine, & ends up abandoning her Kantian ethics for a more humane (& practical) ethics. The second part of the novel, which is an intellectual, epistolary discussion, has two other characters in the novel conducting social experiments (for instance, persuading peasant parents to switch the names & clothing of a mixed-sex pair of twins at birth, so that they'll be raised until puberty in the opposite gender; & inadvertently mixing up a pair of babies born within an hour of one another, one from a peasant the other from an aristocrat, thus upsetting the aristocrat, who unable to tell which is her "blue-blooded" progeny, refuses to have anything to do with either of them). The style's easy & plain & engaging. The characters are all very human. But nevertheless the book has a Utopian dimension in much the same way as the film "Antonia's Line" does.… (mais)