Madame de Sévigné

Comprehensive Aktualizováno: 2025-12-07

Research Status: Comprehensive Last Updated: 2025-12-07 Diary Coverage: Referenced in Book 00 (1884 preface)

Identity

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (5 February 1626 – 17 April 1696), known as Madame de Sévigné, was a French aristocrat celebrated for her letters and epistolary style.

Biographical Overview

Born in the fashionable Place des Vosges (then Place Royale) in Paris to an old and distinguished family from Burgundy. Her father was Celse Bénigne de Rabutin, baron de Chantal, son of Saint Jeanne Françoise de Chantal.

She married Henri, Marquis de Sévigné in 1646 but was widowed at age 25 on February 5, 1651, when her husband was killed in a duel over his mistress. Despite many offers, she never remarried.

The Letters

Sévigné is remembered for her remarkable collection of approximately 1,500 letters written predominantly between 1671 and 1696. These letters:

Were primarily addressed to her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, after her marriage and move away from Paris
Capture the essence of high society in Paris during the reign of King Louis XIV
Offer valuable insights into social dynamics, cultural events, and daily life of both urban and rural France in the 17th century
Are celebrated for their wit, vividness, and literary quality

Literary Significance

Sévigné's letters are revered in France as icons of 17th-century French literature and are acknowledged as models of French epistolary style. Beginning in the 19th century, French secondary schools used her letters in textbooks and anthologies to provide students with a model of epistolary French prose.

Her writing style is characterized by:

Polished, carefully crafted prose
Wit and observational acuity
Apparent simplicity masking sophisticated construction
"Ouvragé" (worked, elaborated) quality beneath surface casualness

Cultural Impact

Proved especially influential on subsequent generations of women authors
George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Virginia Woolf praised Sévigné as a pioneer of the writing woman
Featured prominently in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time as favorite reading of the narrator's grandmother
Model for María, Marquesa de Montemayor, in Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Marie Bashkirtseff's Critique

In her diary preface (dated February 2, 1876, though written in 1884), Marie strongly rejects Sévigné's style as a model for diary writing:

"Son style est si affecté, si ouvragé sous son apparente simplicité qu'il me fait mal au cœur, tandis que mon style à moi n'a pas de style, je fais des fautes mais au moins je ne farde pas mes écrits."

> ("Her style is so affected, so elaborated beneath its apparent simplicity that it makes me sick, whereas my style has no style, I make mistakes but at least I don't put makeup on my writings.")

Marie's reaction reveals:

Her commitment to authentic, unpolished diary writing
Rejection of the studied, literary epistle as a model
Self-awareness about her own "faults" but pride in authenticity
Preference for spontaneity over crafted perfection

The comparison is significant: both women wrote private documents (letters/diary) that became literary landmarks, but Marie explicitly rejects the polished approach in favor of raw immediacy.

Marie's Self-Assessment

Despite her harsh critique of Sévigné, Marie makes the audacious claim: "j'aime encore mieux mes lettres que celles de Mme de Sévigné!" ("I still prefer my letters to those of Mme de Sévigné!"), immediately acknowledging readers will think her an "ânesse" (she-ass, fool) but standing by her preference because "je ne puis pas faire autrement" ("I cannot do otherwise").

Historical Context

The phrase Marie uses—"tiré à quatre épingles" (literally "pulled by four pins")—means meticulously arranged or overly perfect, emphasizing her perception that Sévigné's letters were too carefully constructed to be truly authentic.