Anna Louisa Geertruida Toussaint (1812-1886)
Abstract
Toussaint is the only Dutch female writer of her time who could actually manage to live on her literary work. Since her debut in 1837, she has been considered a writer with a masculine style who was a master in the masculine genre of the historic novel: one of the boys. The way she used historic knowledge (masculine!) in fiction, and the way she connected historical events with individual characteristics (masculine logic!) caused admiration. What also made her acceptable: she was conventional as far as religion and the place of women in society were concerned.
The one novel in which she explicitly presents a gender issue - Majoor Frans (1874) - shows how a neglected young girl led by a sympathetic man, develops from a brash female into a mature feminine woman. Toussaint herself said she had not enough experience with the issue of woman emancipation to have a strong opinion about it; the only topic she always emphasized was the right to education for women.
In literary history she is always presented as a writer of historic novels with a religious zeal and no interest in women issues. From 1897 to 2006, she has generally been considered a conventional woman with possibly an uncommon talent – for a woman.
In more than a hundred years nothing has changed in the way most people look at Toussaint and her work: she is almost always identified with some of her characters; their ideas are hers, their adventures reflect her opinions. This thematic approach of the work produces conventional images and situations. In The Count of Devonshire (1838), for example, we find a title hero who seems to have stolen the heart of the author, as is told in many reviews. Toussaints denial didn’t work: this Lord Courtenay must be her ideal of a man: beautiful, strong, elegant, and tender.
When we read with the narrator and let him lead us through the story, Courtenay is an ideal. But if we read in our own way, look at the text itself and investigate some aspects of the story, we see things in a different light, we see the way Toussaint tells us things. It’s then that we discover a completely different story, a different fabula. Here, we find Toussaints commitment to women.
Annemarie Doornbos, November 2007
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