Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Germaine de Staël: schrijver, balling en feminist avant la lettre > Status Update

De Staël flees from France to England, via Austria, Moscow, and Sweden in 1812. She is in Moscow a month before Napoleon, while there she met the historian and novelist Nikolai Karamzin, who had translated her novels Delphine and Corinne into Russian.

1810 proofs of de Staël's book on Germany are sent to the French censor. Police were sent to the publisher to seize all printed copies, de Staël is sentenced to exile. The minister of Police wrote to her personally to explain her book was in French,it was improper for the French to look to model themselves on people's who de Staël happened to admire.

"Voyager est un des plaisirs Les plus tristes de la vie"
From de Staël's novel Corinne

1805 in north Italy de Staël meets educated professional women - doctors and lawyers and finds herself having to explain that she had not had a formal education like theirs

De Staël is in Frankfurt aM in 1803. She finds the climate bad, she thinks this inclines people to lethargy - which is why the French were beating the Germans in battle. She notices authors holding public readings of their work, finds the men materialistic, therefore their wives feel misunderstood and take refuge in reading poetry instead.

1803 de Staël is sent into exile by Napoleon, apparently in response to a pamphlet published by her father, Jacques Necker, "derniers vues de politique et de finance" which argued against the concentration of power in one man's hand as anti-democratic and contrary to the will of the people.

1794 De Staël meets Benjamin Constant. Later he will accompany her into exile in Germany.

Constant was the author of the book that the main character in Anita Brookner's novel "Providence" teaches. It's a small world, from a literary point of view

For de Stael 'northern' literature (Scandinavia, Britain, Germany) like the people was meditative, melancholy, and somber, while in the south (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) it was light, airey, and full of imagination. She followed Montesquieu and felt this had political consequences. In the north was a thoughtful longing for freedom, in the south an easy-going acceptance of despotism.

1795 "essai sur Les fictions"
1800 "de la literature consideree Dans ses rapports Avec Les institutions socials"
For de Steel if the french novel was mostly about love written by womne for women, if held enormous potential to convey emotion, to teach the reader, and to provide comfort. Also she felt that novels revealed a nation's character.

De Staël's parents chose the Swede Erik Magnus de Staël-Holstein to be her husband. He was Protestant, a foreigner and a paris resident, good looming, also a gambling addict. Her Father arranged the deal with King Gustav III of Sweden - de Staël was to become ambasador to France for life and be made a noble, in return France was to sell the island of St. Barth in the Carribean to Sweden. Marriage a la mode ❤