I am currently working on my dissertation project: “Literature and Liberalism: Mme de Staël, Early Liberal Thought, and the Novel”. In this dissertation I argue that Staël, who has been overlooked as a thinker in anglophone literature, can provide a refreshing look at how the individual, governments, and society interact through the medium of culture, specifically literature.

Who is Mme de Staël?

Mme de Staël (1766-1817) was a political theorist, novelist, and informal politician who lived through the French Revolution and became known as one of Napoleon’s most ardent opponents during his reign. Her life was varied and interesting, but is often this means she is reduced to a biographical curiosity, cameoing in biographies of intellectuals she corresponded with, hosted at her Swiss home of Coppet, and sparred with across various writings. Her contact list was a who’s who of late 18th and early 19th century luminaries, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, A.W. Schlegel, the Marquise de Lafayette, Juliette Récamier, Lord Byron, and most productively, Benjamin Constant. Staël was famous for her conversation at salons, but also wrote treatises and novels, including De la littérature, De l’Allemagne, Delphine, Corinne, ou l’Italie; and Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution. These works show Staël’s interesting and novel contributions to various debates about constitutions, politics, literature, and more. Reading Staël carefully gives great insight to the varied beginnings of liberal thought, adding social and literary elements to discussions about history and governments.

The Dissertation

My work seeks to situate Staël’s oeuvre in the history of liberalism, with particular focus on the individual in liberalism, and in feminist thought. Her writings span across political, philosophical, and literary contexts, but remain interconnected, allowing readers to see how all three ideas relate to one another.

Staël understood she was living in a tumultuous time, where old theories of politics and the individual no longer held true in her context. Alongside Benjamin Constant, Staël began developing ideas which have been recognized as foundational to liberal thought, including freedom of the press, limited governmental power, respect for the individual as a private person, and the importance of public opinion. Her work specifically focuses on building up a liberal society capable of founding and maintaining a limited government based off of the English constitution.

In this brave new world of modern politics, the individual became more important than ever before, but Staël was insistent this individual cannot be without connection. Fearing the danger of factions, what she called “the spirit of party”, Staël emphasized the necessity of viewing even one’s enemies as fellow human beings. Through the cultivation of sympathy, individuals are able to exist in private and public with others, allowing for the strong, stable foundation of toleration necessary for liberal government. Staël saw a grand opportunity for the cultivation of this necessary sympathy through the newly popular novel. By displaying and making legible the interiority of others through the depiction of the “ordinary” lives of characters, novels convincing evidence of the reality of the innate dignity of other human beings, making a strong argument for the necessity of respecting others regardless of difference. Such arguments are often grounded in Staël’s consideration of the role of women in early politics, as she foregrounds women in cultural roles such as writers as politically relevant, although she does not provide a wholehearted endorsement of women in politics.

I argue such views on the individual, sympathy, and the cultivation of these goods through literature, become the basis for Staël’s views on public opinion, which, in turn, functions as a check on governmental power. While these ideas are clearest in Staël’s thought, they appear scattered throughout and modified in Constant’s work as well. This points to early French liberals having unique resources for thinking through political relationships, the kind of individual in individualism, and the idea of a liberal ethos.

Working Papers

“Investigating the Political Use of Pity: An Analysis of Pity in Smith, Rousseau, and Mme de Staël”

“Literature, Liberalism, and Public Opinion: Their Relationship in the Thought of Mme de Staël”