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Woman In France: Madame De Sable
by
Surely, the meet ardent admirer of feminine shallowness must have felt some irritation when he found himself arrested by this dead wall of stupidity, and have turned with relief to the larger intelligence of Madame de Sable, who was not the less graceful, delicate, and feminine because she could follow a train of reasoning, or interest herself in a question of science. In this combination consisted her pre-eminent charm: she was not a genius, not a heroine, but a woman whom men could more than love–whom they could make their friend, confidante, and counsellor; the sharer, not of their joys and sorrows only, but of their ideas and aims.
Such was Madame de Sable, whose name is, perhaps, new to some of our readers, so far does it lie from the surface of literature and history. We have seen, too, that she was only one among a crowd–one in a firmament of feminine stars which, when once the biographical telescope is turned upon them, appear scarcely less remarkable and interesting. Now, if the reader recollects what was the position and average intellectual character of women in the high society of England during the reigns of James the First and the two Charleses–the period through which Madame de Sable’s career extends–we think he will admit our position as to the early superiority of womanly development in France, and this fact, with its causes, has not merely an historical interest: it has an important bearing on the culture of women in the present day. Women become superior in France by being admitted to a common fund of ideas, to common objects of interest with men; and this must ever be the essential condition at once of true womanly culture and of true social well-being. We have no faith in feminine conversazioni, where ladies are eloquent on Apollo and Mars; though we sympathize with the yearning activity of faculties which, deprived of their proper material, waste themselves in weaving fabrics out of cobwebs. Let the whole field of reality be laid open to woman as well as to man, and then that which is peculiar in her mental modification, instead of being, as it is now, a source of discord and repulsion between the sexes, will be found to be a necessary complement to the truth and beauty of life. Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness.
FOOTNOTES:
{1} 1. “Madame de Sable. Etudes sur les Femmes illustres et la Societe du XVIIe siecle.” Par M. Victor Cousin. Paris: Didier. 2. “Portraits de Femmes.” Par C. A. Sainte-Beuve. Paris: Didier. 3. “Les Femmes de la Revolutions.” Par J. Michelet.
{2} Queen Christina, when Mme. Dacier (then Mlle. Le Fevre) sent her a copy of her edition of “Callimachus,” wrote in reply: “Mais vous, de qui on m’assure que vous etes une belle et agreable fille, n’avez vous pas honte d’etre si savante?”
{3} The letter to which we allude has this charming little touch: “Je hais comme la mort que les gens de son age puissent croire que j’ai des galanteries. Il semble qu’on leur parait cent ans des qu’on est plus vieille qu’eux, et ils sont tout propre a s’etonner qu’il y ait encore question des gens.”