Valérie Cossy
Une égalité particulière: Rousseau et les
incohérences de la domination masculine selon Isabelle de Charrière
Abstract
In this article, Valérie Cossy wonders about the way Isabelle de Charrière negotiated a universal concept of “equality” under the auspices of Rous-seau, whose writings she generally admired. In her “Eloge de Jean-Jacques Rousseau”, she presents him as the thinker whose vision (which she calls “dreams”) makes it possible to think of and act about social pro-gress. Without the theoretical concept of men that are innately good and innately equal to each other, she argues, one would not bother to change the world. How then could she reconcile her dynamic and progressive in-terpretation of Rousseau with what he had written about women in the fifth chapter of Emile? There, his definition of “Sophie” as an individual whose human existence is entirely relative to that of her future male com-panion and in need of an education absolutely distinct from that given to Emile strikes us, indeed, as being completely at odds with Isabelle de Charrière’s – and for that matter with the younger Belle de Zuylen’s – customary impatience with the patriarchal order. And yet, while Rous-seau is explicitly named by her as the “patron” of her last collection of novellas (the “recueil de l’Abbé de la Tour”), she does not express the slightest critique against what she must have considered the rigid and de-basing assignment of women to a subservient and unthinking role. Or does she? This paper argues that Charrière relies on her usual indirectness to address, through irony, the problematic inheritance of Rousseau in matters of gender without giving ammunition to his conservative enemies. Through Sainte Anne, in particular, Charrière invites us to take into con-sideration the possibility of a human understanding unmarked by gender. Through novelistic situations and through irony she manages to maintain her life-long belief in a form of human equality that would include aristo-crats and non aristocrats as well as men and women.
SvD, December 2012
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