Abstract
Aglaé-Marie-Louise de Choiseul-Gouffier (1772-1861), wife of Marie-Casimir de Saulx, Count of Tavanes, and daughter of the famous Duc de Choiseul, probably did not intend to write her memoirs, neither for posterity nor for posthumous publication. Her text, which has come down to us thanks to a first edition in 1934, deserves its place among the women's memoirs written in the first half of the nineteenth century. The author recounts the illusory aspirations of the nobility to preserve the monarchy, the spectre of death on the scaffold or the battlefield, and her many travels until her arrival in St. Petersburg. There she criticizes the factuality of the Russian Imperial Court, where she is nevertheless warmly received, and casts a weary eye on the political intrigues and power plays. But beyond these themes, her memories follow the twists and turns of a catastrophe whose consequences for her life as a woman go far beyond the experience of emigration. The Duchess invites us to a double reading of her memoirs: the first, relatively limited, offers a descriptive narrative of the hardships of emigration and a chapter in the history of the French nobility; the second, more secret, more discreet, but deeper and more intimate, reveals the omnipresence of the emotional dimension of a story marked by disillusionment and melancholy.
Translated title of the contribution | Emigration Roads |
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Original language | French |
Place of Publication | Paris |
Publisher | Societe Francaise d'Etude du Dix-Huitieme Siecle |
Number of pages | 136 |
Volume | 1 |
ISBN (Print) | 9791092328257 |
State | Published - Jan 2025 |
Keywords
- Aristocratic Ethos
- Emigration
- Feminine writing
- French revolution
- Memoirs