“I Partake the Common Feeling”:

Helen Maria Williams’ Political Writings on The French Revolution (1790-1827)

Paula Yurss Lasanta

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 “I Partake the Common Feeling”:
Helen Maria Williams’ Political Writings on
The French Revolution (1790-1827)

Paula Yurss Lasanta

 PhD Thesis in English Studies

“I Partake the Common Feeling”: Helen Maria Williams’

Political Writings on The French Revolution (1790-1827)

Candidate:
Paula Yurss Lasanta

Supervisor:
Dr Carme Font Paz

Departament de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística

Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2021
 Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr Carme Font Paz for her support and

encouragement throughout all of these years, including these stressful times of pandemics

and lockdowns. Thank you, Carme, for all the work and effort you have put into this

dissertation and your contributions to my research and my writing. I also appreciate your

guidance for conferences, publications, and teaching.

My sincere thanks to my colleagues at Project WINK for their encouragement

during the last years of the PhD. I wish to mention Francesca Blanch Serrat in particular

for always being there for me, both professionally and emotionally. I also want to

acknowledge Jordi Coral Escola and Joan Curbet Soler for being part of my ‘seguiment’

(follow-up) doctoral committee and for their insightful comments and advice.

I gratefully acknowledge Project WINK, European Research Council (StG Nr.

805436), under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme,

for granting me a predoctoral position and funding part of my research. I am also thankful

to the Department of English Studies at the UAB for granting me the funds to share my

research in the international conference “Reputations, Legacies, Futures: Jane Austen,

Germaine de Staël and their Contemporaries” at Chawton House Library, Hampshire,

UK, July 2017.

It has also been a pleasure to take part in the ERASMUS+ scholarship that allowed

me to conduct part of my research at Edinburgh University. I appreciate all the work that

Dr Séverine Genieys-Kirk put into making my stay in Edinburgh possible. Likewise, I

want to thank the Fulbright program for granting me the opportunity to grow

professionally as a Teaching Assistant at Haverford College PA during the academic year

2018/2019.
 On a personal note, I want to thank my family for being by my side during this

long process. Gracias a mi madre, mi padre y mi hermana por su apoyo incondicional y

por inculcarme desde pequeña los valores feministas y el amor por la literatura. Gracias

Dani por ser mi compañero y estar a mi lado tanto en los buenos momentos como en los

más difíciles y por haber enfrentado juntos estos confinamientos. Gracias por visitarme

y hacerme compañía durante mis estancias en Escocia y en USA. Quiero hacer una última

mención a mi yayo, que vivió los inicios de este proceso con mucha ilusión.
Note about Format

This thesis has been written in general accordance with the Style Sheet of the Departament

de Filologia Anglesa i de Germanística (UAB). Wherever the Style Sheet was

inconclusive, the Modern Language Association (MLA) style guide (8th edition) has been

followed.
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Note about format

Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1
i. Research Question .................................................................................................. 4
ii. Primary Sources .................................................................................................... 8
iii. State of the Art ..................................................................................................... 13
iv. Thesis Outline....................................................................................................... 21

Chapter 1
The Historical and Intellectual Context of Eighteenth-century British Radicalism .. 24

1.1.The French Revolution Debate in Britain ........................................................... 24

1.2. Epistolary Writing .............................................................................................. 33
1.2.1. Habermas’ Theory of the Public Sphere...................................................... 34
1.2.2. Offering the Private to the Public ................................................................ 35
1.2.3. Epistolary Novels ........................................................................................ 40
1.2.4. Letters and Politics ...................................................................................... 44
1.3. Sensibility ........................................................................................................... 46
1.3.1. Moral Sense Theory .................................................................................... 46
1.3.2. Sentimental Heroines and Men of Feeling .................................................. 49
1.3.3. Radical Sensibility ....................................................................................... 51
1.4. Travel Writing .................................................................................................... 56
1.4.1. The Grand Tour: Travelling for Educational Purposes ............................... 60
1.4.2. Women’s Travel Writing ............................................................................. 63

Chapter 2
“The Golden Age of the Revolution”: Letters Written in France (1790) and Letters
from France; Containing a Great Variety of Original Information (1792) .............. 66

2.1. The Fête de la Fédération: Politics as an Affair of the Heart ............................. 67

2.2. The Value of Direct Observation: Challenging the Anti-Revolutionary
Forces in Britain ........................................................................................................ 75
2.3. Madame de Genlis: The Exemplary Aristocrat .................................................. 78
2.4. Du Fossés: A Revolutionary Tale with a Happy Ending ................................... 85
2.5. Letters from France; Containing a Great Variety of Original Information
(1792-1793) ............................................................................................................... 89
2.6. The Golden Age of the Revolution is Gone ....................................................... 90
2.7. British Spectator of the Events in France ........................................................... 95
2.8. Conclusions for this Chapter .............................................................................. 99
Chapter 3
“The experience of a year of revolutionary government is equivalent to that of fifty
years of ordinary life”: The Reign of Terror and Letters Containing A Sketch......... 102

3.1. “A silence like that of death”: Writing the Terror in Retrospective ................... 104
3.2. The Prison Community....................................................................................... 109
3.3. Madame Roland: Martyr of the Revolution ....................................................... 114
3.4. Suspect, Prisoner and Fugitive ........................................................................... 121
3.5. “The Polluted Festival Instituted by a Tyrant”: Festival of the Supreme Being 124
3.6. The Authorities of Terror at the Guillotine ........................................................ 130
3.7. “Happy Revolution”: The Fall of Robespierre ................................................... 137
3.8. Conclusions for this Chapter .............................................................................. 144

Chapter 4
“I already behold everything around us with new optics”: The Beginning of
the Napoleonic Era .................................................................................................... 147
4.1. A Tour in Switzerland (1798): Writing as a Political Act .................................. 147
4.1.1. A New Era in Swiss History: Supporting the Invasion ................................ 149
4.1.2. “The Mild Wand of Philosophy” .................................................................. 158
4.2. Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic (1801) 163
4.2.1. Individual Happiness in the Age of Revolutions .......................................... 165
4.2.2. “On the State of Women in the French Republic” ....................................... 172
4.3. Conclusions for this Chapter .............................................................................. 182

Chapter 5
“The Testimony of a Witness will be Heard”: End of the Napoleonic Era and the
Revolution in Retrospect ........................................................................................... 186
5.1. Narrative of the Events and Letters of the Events .............................................. 186
5.1.1. The Boulevards and the Battlefield .............................................................. 188
5.1.2. The Basilisk’s Eye: Napoleon as a Villain ................................................... 194
5.1.3. Religious Toleration ..................................................................................... 201
5.2. Writing for Posterity ........................................................................................... 207
5.3. Souvenirs de la Révolution Française ................................................................ 211
5.3.1. “J’ai pu me tromper, mais j’ai toujours été sincère” .................................... 214
5.3.2. Attached to France: Williams’ Revolutionary Identity ................................ 222
5.4. Conclusions for This Chapter ............................................................................. 229

Conclusions and Further Research

6.1. Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 233
6.2. Further Research ................................................................................................. 239

Works Cited ............................................................................................................. 241

 Introduction

“Indeed I become every day more philosophical, and perhaps what was hitherto appeared to me
the greatest of misfortunes, may prove to be my greatest good”
Helen Maria Williams in a letter to Ruth Barlow, Paris April 6-16, 1794

The British divine and writer William Beloe (1756-1817) published in 1817 The

Sexagenarian, or, the Recollections of a Literary Life in which he discusses the life and

work of his fellow contemporary writers. Beloe dedicates Chapter LIII to “H_M_W”,

which stands for the British author settled in France Helen Maria Williams (1761-1827).

The words that Beloe addresses to Williams are not particularly kind or flattering: “How

great a contrast is exhibited between this female’s first appearance on the theatre of the

public, and her last, fatal ending! [...] What is she now? If she lives, (and whether she

does or not, few know, and nobody cares) she is a wanderer - an exile, unnoticed and

unknown” (1817: 357). Beloe portrays Williams as a former successful author who has

fallen out of grace. She has lost so much popularity that her audience has completely

forgotten about her, to the point that they are unsure if she is alive or not, and what is

worse, they do not care either way.

Williams was perfectly alive and well in 1817, residing in Paris and surrounded

by a group of friends who were active in political and intellectual circles. In that same

year, Williams had obtained her French citizenship. Her literary career had not ended

either, as she had just produced an English translation of Researches (1814) by famous

naturalist and explorer –and Williams’ close friend– Alexander von Humboldt (1769-

1859), and had also began the fifteen-year long translation of the numerous volumes of

Humboldt’s Personal Narrative (1814-29). In fact, according to Deborah Kennedy, it was

Williams’ translation of von Humboldt’s work that Charles Darwin (1809-1882) read and

1
which sparked his interest in becoming a naturalist (2002: 186). Apart from translating,

Williams was also authoring new chronicles of the French Revolution, and Narrative of

the Events which Have Taken Place in France (1815) had been published just two years

prior to Beloe’s mean-spirited comments. The way in which Beloe described Williams is

certainly exaggerated, since, despite the fact that she had left her home country

permanently in 1792, she continued to receive visits by British authors who regarded her

as a literary star. In 1816, for instance, Irish author Sydney Owenson (1781-1859), known

as Lady Morgan, visited her in Williams’ home in the Rue de Bondy in Paris. The

following year, in 1817, she was called on by publisher and bookseller Mary Jane Godwin

(1768-1841). The circle of friends and connections that surrounded Williams in the mid-

1810s attests to the fact that, despite the loss of popularity that her works encountered in

Britain, she was still a well-respected literary figure.

Helen Maria Williams rose to fame in the 1780s, a decade in which she published

a large number of poetical works, 1 which were very well-received in Britain and granted

her the favour of Elizabeth Montagu (1718-1800), William Wordsworth (1770-1850) or

Anna Seward (1742-1809). Williams followed the tradition of sensibility to display in her

poems the suffering of innocent victims devastated by war and colonialism. In 1790, she

published Julia, a Novel Interspersed with Some Poetical Pieces, which constitutes a

reworking of Rousseau’s best-selling epistolary novel, Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse

(1761). Among the poetic pieces interspersed by Williams in her narrative, “The Bastille:

A Vision” is of particular interest to literary historians, as it constitutes Williams’ first

commentary on the French Revolution, a political struggle that would become the main

concern for the rest of her literary career. The poem, set in 1776, celebrates the Storming

of the Bastille as the poetic voice is a prisoner who narrates the terrible conditions in

1
For the full list of Williams’ poetical works published in the 1780s, see the following section i.

2
which he is kept and dreams of the day in which the fortress is destroyed. Williams

travelled to Paris in 1790 to participate in the celebrations for the first anniversary of the

French Revolution. The experiences that she went through during her trip led Williams

to publish her first and best-known chronicle of the French Revolution entitled Letters

Written in France (1790). Two years later, in 1792, she embarked on a second trip to

France which would become her permanent home from then on. As she recounts in

Souvenirs de la Révolution Française (1827), the motivation behind her trip is primarily

of a political nature: “The reason, or rather the excuse behind this immigration, was the

wish to speak French [...] but the secret and true reason was the hope to closely help in

the triumphs of freedom” (1827:10-11). 2 From then on, Williams devoted the most part

of her career to produce chronicles of the events she had not only witnessed but also taken

part in during the French Revolution. As Gina Luria Walker had already anticipated,

“Williams offered a new brand of female dissident proto-journalism using a range of

genres to communicate the complexity of issues and early events of the Revolution”

(2011: 151). Both the content of these chronicles as the genres in which these are written

are a key aspect of Williams’ corpus and identity as an author.

Even though the French Revolution was viewed in Britain with moderate respect

in 1789 and 1790, the popular opinion increasingly started to regard it with suspicion. By

1798, when Williams had published eight volumes of Letters on the Revolution, the

periodical The Anti-Jacobin Review portrayed her as a fierce Jacobin and interpreted her

pro-revolutionary feelings as treason to her native land. Besides, Williams started to lose

touch with her British acquaintances, such as Anna Seward and Hester Lynch Piozzi

(1741-1821) who urged her to return from France and abandon her writing on political

2
My translation of “Le motif ou plutôt le prétexte de cette immigration, c’était le désir de bien parler
français [...] mais la raison secrète et véritable, c'était l’espoir d'assister de près aux victoires de la liberté”.

3
matters. Due to the increasingly negative reception of her work, and the opposition to the

French Revolution in Britain, Williams started to lose the appeal of the British public. In

fact, her last work, Souvenirs, was only available in French. In posterity “as the British

literary canon was developed with a nationalistic fervour, Williams’s exclusion was

inevitable” (Duckling, 2010: 88). In the late 1980s and 1990s the writings of Helen Maria

Williams began to receive critical attention thanks to the work of feminist scholars who

undertook the task of recovering texts written by women. However, Letters from France

(1790-5), and especially its first volume, Letters Written in France (1790), have received

most of the critical attention when compared to other political texts by Williams. In her

own words: “without a doubt, my writings are nothing more than detached and scattered

notes, but they make a part of the most magnificent volume” (1827: 3). 3 Williams

understands her chronicles as partaking in one of the most glorious times in history.

However, Williams’ chronicles, as we shall see in this thesis, are original when compared

to other narratives of the time due precisely to her unique position with regard to both her

gender and nationality. For these reasons, this thesis examines all the chronicles that she

produced during the French Revolution.

i. Research Question

The objective of this dissertation is to offer a complete analysis of Helen Maria Williams’

involvement in the political debate surrounding the French Revolution. Due to the

feminist endeavour to recover texts penned by women, the writings by Williams began to

receive critical attention since the late 1980s. Her works have been gradually included in

the canon of eighteenth-century British women writers. Williams is mentioned in the

3
My translation of “Mes écrits ne forment sans doute que des notes détachées et éparses, mais ces notes
font partie du plus majestueux volume”.

4
seminal study by Dale Spender Mothers of the Novel (1986). Spender includes Williams

in the list of women novelists but she does not provide an examination of her texts.

Another feminist scholar, Janet Todd, discusses Williams’ work in The Sign of Angellica

(1989), mostly in connection with Mary Wollstonecraft. In Todd’s book, Williams is

included in the group of British women writers that supported the Revolution together

with Barbauld, Hays and Smith. From then on, and as I shall discuss in section ii of the

present chapter, most of the studies on Williams have been focused on Letters (1790-5).

Writing in the second part of the eighteenth century, Williams was inevitably

influenced by the literature of sensibility, explained in more detail in section 1.3. The

trend of sensibility has been traditionally understood as focused on physical reactions.

However, as the eighteenth century progressed, sensibility started to take on a strong

moral and intellectual dimension. This literary mode of expression was considered

suitable for women as it appealed directly to their emotions instead of being based on

pure reason. The appeal to sensibility by women writers has been mostly studied in

connection to poetry and the novel. 4 As a consequence, most women writers of the

eighteenth century “are highlighted as novelist, poets, literary critics and playwrights”

(Looser, 2000: 5) while their contribution to other areas of knowledge is overlooked and

superficially read. The present thesis contends that the use of sensibility as a means to

influence political opinion needs to be reassessed, as Williams’ writings prove the

potential of sensibility for engaging in intellectual debates of political and social nature.

Williams’ appeal to sensibility is not so much informed by an urge to appear feminine or

acceptable or by any assumption of her inferior intellectual capacities. Instead, she

4
For specific studies on the tradition of sensibility in poetry and the novel in the British context see
Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (1990) by John Mullan, The
Poetics of Sensibility: a Revolution in Literary Style (1996) by Jerome McGann, Eighteenth-Century
Sensibility and the Novel: the Senses in Social Context (1993) by Ann Jessie Van Sant, Revolution and the
Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825: Intercepted Letters, Interrupted Seductions (1994) by Nicola J.
Watson.

5
believes that in order to construct a fair and just society, emotions are the force that brings

together public and private interests.

When it comes to women writers’ engagement in matters of social change, the

focus has been put on their discussion of the status and education of women, being Mary

Wollstonecraft’s work the clearest exponent of this. 5 Even though these studies engaged

in the necessary task of researching women’s participation in the public sphere with their

writings, this study explores Williams’ participation in social inquiries not limited to the

woman question. I am interested in observing how deep and involved was Williams’

engagement in subjects of political debate and whether she felt either included or

excluded in the political discussions by dint of her gender. It is also compelling to see if

her discussion of the French Revolution was connected to women’s rights issues.

Williams shows a degree of self-awareness about her intellectual contribution to political

history as she writes in Poems on Various Subjects (1823): “I have there been treading on

the territory of History and a trace of my footsteps will perhaps be left. My narratives

make a part of that marvellous story which the eighteenth century has to record to future

times, and the testimony of a witness will be heard” (1823: x). Nevertheless, Blakemore

(1997) considered that in Williams’ description of Revolutionary events, she aimed at

convincing her readership of her fictional approach to the incidents she narrates. As

women writers frequently approached history and politics with epistolary and

autobiographical genres, their engagement with social and political issues has tended to

be dismissed as purely subjective. One of the objectives of the present study is to

demonstrate that Williams aimed at providing accurate and detailed political and

5
See Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination by Barbara Taylor (2003), Mary Wollstonecraft,
Pedagogy and the Practice of Feminism (2013) by Kristin Collins Hanley, Revolutionary Feminism: the
Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (1992) by Gary Kelly, Mary Wollstonecraft: The Making of a
Radical Feminist (1990) by Jennifer Lorch.

6
historical content. Besides, she precisely wields authority by emphasizing the veracity of

her account when compared to other writers of the period.

It should also be noted that Williams found herself in a very unique position

compared to other British women writers of her time. Williams developed the largest part

of her writing career in France. While other fellow women writers visited France during

the revolutionary period, Williams’ expatriate status makes her an unconventional figure.

Wollstonecraft spent a few months in Paris between 1792 and 1793, and left when the

reign of Terror was starting to escalate. Frances Burney, married to a French émigré,

stayed in France between 1802 and 1815, coinciding with the largest part of the

Napoleonic era, while travelling to England back and forth. By contrast, Williams

witnessed the subsequent phases of the French Revolution on the spot and even acquired

the French citizenship during the Restoration. For that matter, this study also seeks to

explore the extent to which Williams was influenced by the French intellectual context.

She was particularly interested in providing her readers with information that was only

available in France and which marked the difference between her writing and that of other

British authors. Since most of her works were translated into French and, interestingly,

her last work was only published in French, this thesis explores whether Williams wrote

with a French or British audience in mind. Williams was a mediator of political ideas

between Britain and France, and she aimed at offering an alternative to the counter-

revolutionary ideas that became increasingly ingrained in Britain. Taking this into

account, I am interested in seeing how Williams aimed at influencing the political

atmosphere of the country she took residence in. Besides, this study is also concerned

with the degree in which Williams feels a participant or an outsider in the intellectual

discussions of France due to her nationality, as well as the ways in which her

circumstances shape her identity as a writer and intellectual.

7
 This thesis departs from Gary Kelly’s statement that the culture of sensibility

formed Williams “as an intellectual and writer” (1997: 227). Nevertheless, Williams’

narratives of the French Revolution have been studied either in isolation from the rest of

her corpus, or together with her early production and reception. For that matter, a

complete critical study focused only on her chronicles of the French Revolution is still a

necessary task of recovery insofar as Williams’ political and social discourse finds a home

in them. In taking Williams’ corpus as a whole, my research points towards the fact that

Williams’ aim was to take a stand within the trend of enlightened ideas and, also, spread

her views to a general public. Williams’ writing displays a method, a style and work

discipline that triggers consistent lines of elaborated intellectual thought in order to

influence the political debate on the French Revolution.

ii. Primary Sources

The production of Helen Maria Williams spanned over a period of 45 years, being Edwin

and Eltruda (1782) her first publication and Souvenirs de la Révolution Française (1827)

her last work. She was a prolific author in a variety of literary genres including poetry,

translation, travel-writing, epistolary texts and journalistic chronicles. In the 1780s, while

based in London, she produced a large number of poetic works following the tradition of

sensibility. Her first poem was entitled Edwin and Eltruda (1782), followed by An Ode

on the Peace (1783) and Peru (1784). In 1786, Williams published her first book of

poems, Poems. From the early stages of her career, Williams used poetry to discuss

political and social concerns. In A Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating Slave

Trade (1788) she directly alludes to an act passed by the parliament in 1788, the Slave

Trade Act. The last work that she produced before delving in the analysis on the French

Revolution was the first and only novel Julia (1790), already mentioned in the previous

8
section. The scope of Williams’ output changed after 1790 with Letters Written in France,

as she put poetry and fiction aside in order to focus on the social and political commentary

of the French Revolution. Williams went back to England after her first trip to France,

and as mentioned earlier, she decided to move to Paris for two years in 1792, although

she ended up staying in France permanently. Before embarking for France, she released

a poem entitled A Farewell for Two Years England (1792). In the 1790s, she published

eight volumes of Letters, Letters Written in France, three volumes of Letters from France

(1792-3) and Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France (1795-6), which offer

an account of the Terror. Williams travelled to Switzerland in 1794 escaping political

persecution and there she gathered the material to publish her travelogue A Tour in

Switzerland, published in 1798.

Moving into the nineteenth century, coinciding with the early years of the

Napoleonic Era, she produced two volumes of Sketches of the State of Manners and

Opinions in the French Republic (1801). In 1803, Williams translated a series of letters

attributed to the former king that appeared in print under the title of The Political and

Confidential Correspondence of Louis XVI. Nevertheless, the correspondence that

Williams transcribed from French into English turned out to be forged, which suggested

that Williams had been deceived by the people who sold the correspondence as being

original (Kennedy, 2002: 181). As explained by Deborah Kennedy, The Political and

Confidential Correspondence was received unfavourably by both royalists and

Bonapartists and put Williams under the radar of Napoleon’s censorship (2002: 181). For

that matter, Williams did not produce another chronicle of the Revolution until 1815, after

Bonaparte’s defeat in the Hundred Days War. In 1809, Williams returned to poetry with

Verses addressed by H.M.W to Her Two Nephews on Saint Helen's Day, published in

Paris despite being written in English. Narrative of the Events Which Have Taken Place

9
in France (1815) and Letters on the Events which Have Passed in France (1819) offer an

analysis of the Napoleonic era in France, as well as commentaries on the recently

established Restoration, focusing on the Second White Terror and the repeal of

Napoleon’s policies. Williams last book of poems was published in 1823 entitled Poems

on Various Subjects, which combines already published poems with new ones and a

reworking of some of her most well-known poetical productions, such as Peru, which

was refashioned in 1823 as Peruvian Tales. In Poems (1823), Williams looks back at a

life-long career as a poetess, while in Souvenirs de la Révolution Française (1827) she

offers a retrospective account of the events she had described in her chronicles from 1790

to 1819. This last work was translated into French by Williams’ nephew Charles Coquerel

and it constituted the only text by Williams to be available in French only and not in

English.

The purpose of the present study is to reconstruct the main tenets of Helen Maria

Williams’ political thought in her political writings on the French Revolution. To this

end, I will examine the intellectual discourse that Williams unfolds through a variety of

genres and registers, availing herself of an eclectic base of literary traditions, readings

and social contacts that position her as a unique and authoritative voice as an intellectual,

one which previous studies on Williams, albeit not scare, have not registered to its full

consequence. We shall see how Williams relies on a method of first-hand observation,

which is grounded on experience and emphatic emotions to shape her discourse and

become an intellectual referent to other contemporary writers. The portrayal emerging

out of this analysis, grounded in feminist criticism and the historiography of the French

Revolution, is a Helen Maria Williams as a full intellectual, which in turns raises

questions about the scope and influence of eighteenth-century women political writers in

the intellectual construction of ideas such as freedom, social equality and religious

10
toleration. My analysis will survey the following works, not taken before as an integrated

corpus of political thought: Letters from France, Letters Containing a Sketch, A Tour in

Switzerland, Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions, Narrative on the Events,

Letters on the Events and Souvenirs de la Révolution Française. The only poetical work

analysed in this thesis is A Farewell for Two Years England (1782), since it was written

at a decisive moment in Williams’ career that determined the course of her writing. I have

also paid attention to the preface in Williams’ translation of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s

Paul and Virginia (1795) and Poems (1823). Williams directly delves in a political

analysis of the French Revolution in these prefaces. In Paul and Virginia, she discusses

incarceration and persecution during the Terror, and in 1823 she examines the impact that

the French Revolution has had on literary production. These prefaces are worth analysing

for this study in order to better examine Williams’ self-representation as an author in two

key turning points of her career, the Reign of Terror, which marked the beginning of

Williams’ disillusionment with revolutionary politics, and the Restoration, when she

looks back at a life-long literary career reflecting upon the French Revolution. Williams’

discussion of the French Revolution transgresses the boundaries of literary genres, as is

characteristic of women’s participation in the intellectual debates at the turn of the

eighteenth century.

For my study, I have focused on the first editions of Williams’ texts which are

available for the most part in digital format in Google Books, Hathitrust, and Eighteenth-

Century Collections Online. Regardless of the online availability of these works for

reading purposes, my research for this study has taken me to consult the original items

found in the following libraries: the Centre for Research Collections (CRC) at the

University of Edinburgh, the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, the Carl

H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and his Circle, which is part of the New York Public

11
library, the National Library of France (BnF) and the Historical Library of the City of

Paris. These items have revealed contents of great interest such as marginalia and notes.

In my visit to the British Library in London, I had access to Horatio Nelson’s own copy

of Sketches whose annotations evidence the disagreement between the admiral and

Williams’ analysis of the Revolutionary wars. 6 However, I have not discussed the

marginalia for the sake of the discussion of my thesis, as the reception of Williams’ work

has been dealt with in detail in Deborah Kennedy’s monograph. Nevertheless, Nelson’s

engagement with Williams’ writing reveals the complexity of her involvement in the

debates of her day as it demonstrates that her work was taken into consideration by the

highest military and political actors of her time. Thus, the relevance of Williams’ work

during her own time deserves to be reconsidered, as she provided to the British readership

with the latest information regarding the political atmosphere in France in Revolutionary

times, despite the decline of her popularity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

6
Horatio Nelson concentrates his annotations on Williams’ rendering of the military actions that put an
end to the Neapolitan Republic (June 1799). Williams did not travel to Naples, and, for that matter she
does not provide an eyewitness account on this instance. Nevertheless, she clarifies that she has obtained
information directly from witnesses, although she keeps the identity of the informants a secret:

The sketch I shall send you, is a plain and unadorned narrative of the leading events which brought
about the Revolution and counter revolution of Naples; and though the person to whom I am
chiefly indebted for this information, held a distinguished post in the republic, and may
consequently be supposed under some undue influence as an historian, yet the facts which he has
related are so confirmed by other testimony, that far from having reason for with-holding my
assent, I shall probably be accused in many instances, of softening rather than heightening the
colours of this dreadful catastrophe” (1801: 123-4).

Besides, she annexes in the appendixes the historical documents (in Italian or French, and she provides a
translation into English) that demonstrate the accuracy of her sources. Most of Nelson’s comments refute
the historical facts provided by Williams. More often than not, Nelson’ just underlines the sentence or
words that are inaccurate from his perspective and writes “not true” or “lye” next to it. At other times, he
contradicts the information provided by Williams. Williams writes that “the court of Naples sent the pilots
of its own marine on board the English vessels” (1801: 129). On the side of the page, Nelson writes the
following: “Not true No pilot was seen or asked for”. Writing about Nelson, Williams claims that he
returned to Sicily “after a month’s delay in the ports” (1801: 130). Nelson, nevertheless, writes that it took
him only “five days”. Apart from disagreeing with the facts provided by Williams, his disparaging political
stance from Williams also becomes evident in Nelson’s notes. Referring to the Neapolitan Republicans
executed, labeled by Williams as “illustrious martyrs of liberty” (1801: 222), Nelson writes that “Miss
Williams has in my opinion constantly proved that the persons she has named desired Death from the
monarchy”.

12
iii. State of the Art

Helen Maria Williams’ participation in the political debates of the French Revolution

became of interest for the first time in the twentieth century with the publication of Lionel

D. Woodward’s thesis dissertation Une Anglaise Amie de la Révolution Française: Helen

Maria Williams et ses Amis (1930). This is the very first study devoted in its entirety to

Helen Maria Williams and it focuses, from a historical framework, on the networks,

connections and friendships that Williams forged while in France. It was not until the late

1980s, with the rise of feminist interest in recovering literature penned by women writers,

that Williams’ work started to receive attention by scholarship in English. Dale Spender’s

influential publication Mothers of the Novel (1986) includes Williams on her list of

women authors before Jane Austen, but it does not provide an examination of her work.

Following this line of recovery of women writers, Janet Todd pays attention to Williams

in The Sign of Angellica (1989), which constitutes an important publication for the

recognition of women’s professional participation in the literary market of the eighteenth

century. Williams is mentioned in the last section of Todd’s study, which focuses on the

latter part of the eighteenth century, coinciding with the times of the Revolution. As

previously noted in section i, Todd discusses Williams in relation to other authors that

supported the Revolution in France, primarily Mary Wollstonecraft, presents Williams as

a novelist (1989: 231) and considers her approach to the Revolution to be less thorough

than Smith’s and Hays’ (1989: 226). Todd also brought attention to Williams’ writings

by editing the facsimile reprint of Letters From France in 1975.

The recovery of Williams’ work continued in the following decade, 1990s,

especially in the area of Romanticism studies. At the turn of the decade, Chris Jones

published his article “Helen Maria Williams and Radical Sensibility” (1989)

13
acknowledging that, for Helen Maria Williams, the rhetoric of sensibility had the potential

to inspire political action, as she focuses on collective feelings at the service of the

common good, rather than on purely individual emotion. I concur with Jones when he

observes that Williams did not only understand the principles of the Revolution at a

theoretical level, but she was constantly concerned with the actual implementation of

these principles. Vivien Jones (1992) also notices this aspect of Williams’ works, which

she also finds in Wollstonecraft’s writings and that Todd labels as ‘Active Sensibility’.

For both Chris Jones and Vivien Jones, Williams features in comparison with other

canonical names of the period, mainly William Wordsworth and Mary Wollstonecraft.

Another example of Williams included together with canonical authors is Nicola

Watsons’ article “Novel Eloisas: Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Narratives in

Helen Maria Williams, Wordsworth and Byron” published in 1992. Watson’s article

explores how the revolutionary ideas of Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise

influenced Williams’ Letters (1790-6), Wordsworth's Prelude (1805) and Byron’s Don

Juan (1818). Watson focuses on sensibility as a primarily novelistic device, and thus, she

analyses how Williams translates the plot of sensibility into her works of non-fictional

nature (1992: 81). Watson’s study of Williams still presumes that her engagement with

political chronicles should be understood through the lens of fictional devices. Focusing

particularly on Williams, 1993 proved a fruitful year for studies on her with the

publication of Mary A. Favret’s Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics, and the

Fiction of Letters, which includes a chapter entitled “Helen Maria Williams and the

Letters of History” and deals only with the first volumes of Letters. Here, Favret claims

that Williams understands the potential of letters as detached from the novelistic tradition

as she alludes to the ‘Lettre de Cachet’, which brings attention to the political implications

14
exerted by letters in pre-revolutionary France. 7 Favret also pays attention to Williams’

allusion to General Dumoriez’s correspondence, which brings attention to the uses of

letters for political plotting. Thus, Favret concludes that Williams distanced herself from

purely individualist experience in her letters to offer her political opinions to the public

(1993: 95). Gary Kelly’s Women, Writing and Revolution, 1790-1827 and Eleanor Ty’s

Unsex’d Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790’s were published in the same

year as Favret’s book. Ty focuses on Helen Maria Williams’ facet as a novelist and reads

her first and only novel Julia (1790) a strong statement against patriarchal rule. At the

denouement of the plot in Julia, Williams envisions a community only for females that

survives without any economic coverage by men. Ty focuses on Williams’ engagement

with the domestic world and disregards her allusions to the French Revolution in the

novel. Also in 1993, Anne K. Mellor published Romanticism and Gender and, even

though she does not explicitly mention Williams in the chapter’s titles, she devotes

several pages to an overview of her work on the Revolution. In his study of British authors

who championed the Revolution of 1789, Crisis in Representation: Thomas Paine, Mary

Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams and the Rewriting of the French Revolution

(1997), Steven Blakemore chooses Helen Maria Williams as one of his case studies that

explores the British debate surrounding the French Revolution. In Blakemore’s view,

Williams aims at presenting her chronicles more as a work of fiction than as an accurate

chronicle (1997: 174). However, as he sees it, the appearance of romance that Williams

gives to her Letters point towards the fact that fiction might be closer to the truth than

superficial facts. This study maintains that Williams presented at all times her account as

factual and grounded on observation rather than on the imagination. The works dedicated

7
For an explanation of how the ‘Lettres de Cachet’ were used in pre-revolutionary France to impose
royal authority see section 2.4.

15
to Williams tend not to explore her writing beyond the first volumes of Letters as

exemplified by “Perishable Goods: Feminine Virtue, Selfhood and History in the Early

Writings of Helen Maria Williams” (1994/5) by Mark Ledden; “Public Loathing, Private

Thoughts: Historical Representation in Helen Maria Williams’ Letters from France” a

chapter by Jack Fruchtman Jr in The Intersections of the Public and Private Spheres in

Early Modern England (1996); or “Politics and Commercial Sensibility in Helen Maria

Williams’ Letters from France” (1997).

The early 2000s is a landmark when it comes to the publication of studies on

Williams. First, a modern edition of Letters written in France was published for the first

time in 2001 edited by Neil Fraistat and Susan Lanser. In their introduction to the edition,

Fraistant and Lanser highlight Williams not as a single observer of the Revolution but

inscribe her writing within a tradition of Enlightened thought that culminated in a political

struggle to establish a society grounded on justice and equality. In 2002, Deborah

Kennedy released the first, and so far the only one monograph devoted to Helen Maria

Williams: Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution. Kennedy’s main contribution

is biographical and contextual. She provides a complete background of Williams’ literary,

cultural and personal influences paying attention to her published works, correspondence

and reception of her corpus. Kennedy’s book illustrates how Williams progressively lost

the favour of British readership, as an increasing conservative tendency demonized the

radicalism of the French Revolution. Besides, Kennedy’s study demonstrates that

Williams paid her incursion on political subjects as a woman writer at a high price, as she

became in her native country the example of everything a proper female writer should

avoid becoming: unfeminine, violent and disengaged from domestic affairs. Scholars

working on Williams are highly indebted to Kennedy’s reconstruction of her biographical

facts, literary connections, political networks and reception of her work by her

16
contemporaries. Kennedy had already written about Williams in “‘Storms of Sorrow’:

The Poetry of Helen Maria Williams” (1991) and “Responding to the French Revolution:

Williams’ Julia and Burney’s The Wanderer” that appeared in Jane Austen and Mary

Shelley, and their Sisters (2000). The book allows Kennedy the opportunity to move

beyond Julia and Letters in order to offer an overview of Williams’ complete corpus.

During the 2000s, the efforts to locate Williams within the ‘big names’ or

Romanticism lost momentum in favour of including her works in conversation with other

lesser-known women writers of the period. The analysis of the specificities of women

writers of the period, and their challenges in professional status within a patriarchal

context, led to a critical interest in gathering a canon of Romantic women writers that

counterbalanced the traditional one based mainly on male authors. Angela Keane writes

a chapter on Williams in her Women Writers and the English Nation in the 1790s:

Romantic Belongings, and, as she had done in her article “Helen Maria Williams Letters

from France: A National Romance” (1992), she only deals with the chronicles that

Williams published in the 1790s. In her approach to Williams’ Letters, Keane emphasizes

that Williams constructs her narrative of the French Revolution as a romance (2000: 70)

and pays attention to the metaphors she employs to convey her political stance. Keane

concludes that the predominant metaphors “are of reciprocal commerce, rather than of a

specialised access to the collective psyche of the nation” (2000: 15). In British Women

Writers and the French Revolution: Citizens of the World (2005), Adriana Craciun

dedicates one chapter to Williams’ rendition of ‘The Terror’ and the Jacobins. For the

chapter “Romantic Patriotism as Feminist Critique of the Empire: Helen Maria Williams,

Sydney Owenson and Germain de Staël” in Women, Gender and Enlightenment (2005)

and for the article “‘The Colour of a Riband’: Patriotism, History and the Role of Women

in Helen Maria Williams’ Sketches of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic

17
(1801)” (2006), Caroline Franklin moves beyond the 1790s and pays attention to

Williams’ Sketches (1801) written in the Napoleonic era. In Women, Gender and

Enlightenment, Franklin argues that since women were denied a space in politics, they

turned to history in order to discuss the French Revolution (2005: 555). For her article

“The Colour of a Ribband” (2006), Franklin finds that Williams highlighted her role of

spectator to not appear as an authority on political matters, but this thesis aims at showing

that Williams used her eyewitness positions precisely to grant authority to her texts.

Franklin also describes Williams as an “anti-historian” since “she refused to adopt the

distanced objective stand of male scholars” (2006: 495). In an article published in 2009

and a book published in 2010, Richard Gravil’s provides a comparative approach to

Williams and Wordsworth’s writings. Gravil observes that Wordsworth’s main source for

his writings on the French Revolution were Williams’ Letters, which demonstrates that

her work influenced the political debates of the French Revolution in Britain.

The recovery of Williams’ work and the interest in her texts continued to grow in

the following decade. A modern edition of Julia appeared in 2010 (edited by Natasha

Duquette), A Tour in Switzerland was edited by Patrick Vincent and Florence Widmer-

Schnyder in 2011, and Peru in 2015 by Paula R. Feldman. In their introduction, Vincent

and Widmer-Schnyder challenge Gary Kelly’s persistence in seeing Williams’ writing as

a “feminization of the revolution”, a point that Gravil had mentioned before by saying

that “Gary Kelly, [...] hardly ever speaks of Williams’ view of the revolution without the

curious epithet “feminized” as if “her” revolution were a world away from the real world

of men” (2009: 58). Curiously enough, Vincent and Widmer-Schnyder find an

“unabashedly masculine ambition” (2011: 47) in Williams’ Tour, as if the adjective

‘masculine’ were indicative of Williams’ confidence in her intellectual abilities.

18
 Although Williams’ facet as a translator has attracted a lot of attention in the

recent years, 8 there have also been publications dealing with Williams’ involvement in

politics. In Novel Histories: British Women Writing History, 1760-1830 (2012) by Lisa

Kasmer, there is a chapter entitled “Helen Maria Williams and the “Regendering” of

History” which follows Kelly’s emphasis on the epithet ‘feminine’, as well as Chris

Jones’ and Janet Todd’s interest in ‘Active Sensibility’. However, Kasmer does not use

Todd’s terminology –‘active’ sensibility– but she rather sees “sympathy as an agential

tool” (2012: 80) in Williams’ texts. Kasmer pays attention only to Williams’ Letters

(1790-5) and she shows interest in observing the different manners in which women

approached history writing. Kasmer concludes that in Williams’ case she accesses history

writing through the emotions. Jones, by contrast, focuses on the potential of sensibility

for social change in Williams’ thinking. Georgina Green also brings attention to the

political power of sensibility in A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1700-

1800 (2014). Focusing on the enlightened emphasis on transparency, Green explains that

Williams sees the Jacobins’, and especially Robespierre’s attempt to control people’s

emotional responses as a way to rule over their ideology, again linking emotions with

political action. Orianne Smith (2013) also contextualizes Williams’ use of sensibility as

a force for social and political reform. However, her analysis is different from the authors

mentioned above since she pays attention to the religious context in which she

participated. Smith observes that, following the Presbyterian tradition in which Williams

was raised, and drawing from progressive millennialism, she saw the Revolution as a sign

8
Examples of this are: “Emotions in Translation: Helen Maria Williams and “Beauties Peculiar to the
English Language” (2011) by Louise Joy, ““The Ocean of Futurity, which has no Boundaries”: The
Deconstructive Politics of Helen Maria Williams’ Translation of Paul and Virginia” (2012) by David Sigler,
Paul Hague’s doctoral dissertation Helen Maria Williams: The Purpose and Practice of Translation, 1789-
182 (2015) and the chapter on Williams in Melissa Bailes’ book British Women’s Scientific Writing and
Literary Originality, 1750-1830. Here, Bailes pays attention to Williams’ translations of Bernardine de
Saint-Pierre, Louis-François Ramond and Alexander von Humboldt.

19
of the coming of an improved society that would eventually lead humanity as a whole

towards perfection. On a similar line, Natasha Duquette’s “Dissenting Cosmopolitanism

and Helen Maria Williams’s Prison Verse” (2020) analyses Williams’ translation of a

French religious hymn by paying attention to her religious background. Duquette’s article

shows that, for Williams, religious toleration was one of the main goals to be achieved by

the revolution in France.

Revolutionary Women Writers: Charlotte Smith and Helen Maria Williams by

Angela Keane appeared in 2013. Here, Keane breaks with the interest in locating

Williams within the Romantic canon and considers that Williams is not a Romantic author

when compared to Charlotte Smith. She argues that Williams does not focus so much on

her individual experiences but in collective history. Due to her constant emphasis on

stories in which the oppressed are victimized, Keane observes that Williams’ early

writings –since Keane only studies Williams’ writings until 1798– lack complexity and

end up being monotonous. From a different approach, Amy Culley’s British Women’s

Life Writing, 1760-1840: Friendship, Community, and Collaboration (2014) identifies

that history is not the background but the main concern of authors such as Mary

Wollstonecraft, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, and, of course, Helen Maria Williams. I would

add that these authors’ interest in contemporary history cannot be detached from their

political concerns. In her survey of the first twenty-six letters in Williams’ chronicles

Louise Duckling claims that Williams “succeeded in establishing a distinct political

philosophy” (2010: 75), but there is no consensus among the scholarship, as exemplified

by Karen Green in A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1700-1800 (2014)

in which she offers a very brief analysis of Williams’ contribution to the political

discussion of her time. Green explicitly mentions that she does not consider Williams a

political theorist, as she fashions her analysis of the Revolution as a love story, providing

20
the story of the Du Fossés as an example. Besides, Green finds that Williams relies on

poetic justice instead of analysing the causes that trigger the different outcomes of the

Revolution (2014: 202).

iv. Thesis Outline

The present thesis is organized in six chapters. Chapter 1 offers an overview of the

historical and conceptual framework of my study and starts with a discussion of the

different trends of ideas colliding in Britain on account of the French Revolution in

France. Section 1.1. contextualizes Williams’ work within the debate in order to highlight

Williams’ unique perspective as an eyewitness of the events in France. The following

section, 1.2., provides an overview of the evolution of the epistolary genre throughout the

eighteenth century, in order to differentiate the political nature of Williams’ Letters from

the educational or novelistic slant traditionally offered by this genre. Section 1.3.

discusses the tradition of sensibility and points towards the different uses given to this

literary tradition, that range from a conservative and individualistic tendency of

sensibility to a vehicle for social reform, as found in Williams’ works. Since Williams’

first chronicles of the Revolution, as well as A Tour in Switzerland, were fashioned as

travelogues, the last section of chapter one is devoted to travel writing, focusing at the

end on the particularities of this genre when cultivated by women writers.

Chapter 2 delves into the analysis of Williams’ chronicles of the French

Revolution. This chapter is concerned with her first volumes of Letters, Letters from

France (1790-2) which narrate Williams’ first experiences in the continent. The purpose

of this chapter is to study how Williams initially engages with both the politics and

intellectual climate of the French Revolution. Besides, my analysis of Letters focuses on

how Williams reinforces her position as an observer to ground the veracity of her account.

21
In Letters from France; Containing a Great Variety of Original Information, also

discussed in this chapter, the optimism of Williams’ first account starts to decline as the

Jacobins start to gain political ground and displace the Girondin party as the leader of the

Revolution. I pay attention to Williams’ disillusionment to observe the extent to which

she displays her critical thinking as a commentator of the events.

Chapter 3 discusses the second series of Letters, Letters Containing a Sketch,

published in 1795. In these volumes, Williams focuses on the period of the Reign of

Terror and positions herself against the revolutionary authorities. This chapter explores

Williams’ account of her own imprisonment, her rendering of the violent events of the

Terror and her involvement with Madame Roland. All of these episodes provide an

insight into how Williams envisions herself at the core of the political resistance. Besides,

her description of women’s executions allows for seeing the connection between

Williams’ revolutionary and feminist inclinations. Chapter 3 also deals with the Festival

of the Supreme Being, in which Williams reveals the complexity of her understanding of

the role of feelings for political purposes, as she criticizes that Robespierre restrains the

spontaneity of feelings of the attendants to the Festival.

Chapter 4 pays attention to A Tour in Switzerland (1798) and Sketches of the State

of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic (1801). For the analysis of A Tour in

Switzerland, this study has focused on Williams’ engagement with the ideas expounded

by Rousseau, William Coxe, and Frédéric-César de La Harpe. As she opposes the

representation of Switzerland as a land of democratic values in Rousseau’s and Coxe’s

view, Williams shows her confidence in intellectual discussion, as she does not hesitate

to challenge leading intellectuals of her time. Besides, through her commentaries on

Napoleon and her meeting with Caspar Lavater, Williams displays her understanding of

political success, which for her is not based on heroic deeds but on collective emotions.

22
In the section dedicated to Sketches, the analysis is focused on Williams’ evaluation of

the improvement of society after the Revolution as she assesses the success of

revolutionary political measures. Besides, she focuses on the improvement that the

Revolution has had for both peasants and especially for women, which is useful for this

study since Williams’ reveals herself as an informed and critical commentator of the

Revolution.

Finally, Chapter 5 explores Williams’ chronicles written at the end of the

Revolutionary period with the arrival of the Restoration. In Narrative (1815), Letters on

the Events (1819), and Souvenirs (1827) Williams maintains a life-long commitment to

the ideas of the French Revolution and defends herself against the attacks coming from

the British press. Analysing the arguments that she gives to maintain her reputation as a

staunch revolutionary is useful for this study since Williams evaluates in retrospective

her own contribution to the fray of political ideas of her time. Besides, Chapter 5 reveals

the connection between the French Revolution and other social concerns for Williams,

particularly in matters of religious toleration. To conclude, Chapter 6 provides the

answers to the research questions this dissertation has posed and develops the final

conclusions of this study.

23
 Chapter 1

The Historical and Intellectual Context of Eighteenth-century British Radicalism

1.1. The French Revolution Debate in Britain

Helen Maria Williams’ literary career spanned, both chronologically and thematically,

‘the war of ideas’ in ‘the French Revolution debate’ and its aftermath. Although the

Revolution starts with the Fall of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1789, the ‘war of ideas’

did not start straightforwardly in Britain. The expression ‘war of ideas’ here refers to the

different opinions in Britain regarding the Revolution in France. Originally, the news of

the revolt was overall well-received in Britain. Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the

Revolution in France (1790) is considered to be the leading text of the

counterrevolutionary side of the French Revolution debate, was captivated by the French

insurrection, as we know from his correspondence. Burke, whose case is paradigmatic of

the intellectual climate of the time in Britain, reconsidered his political position

Regarding the Revolution in France as well as other well-known authors such as

Coleridge, Wordsworth, or Southey. The concern of British writer Hannah More was the

education of the lower classes. More, who is known for her essays written in an accessible

language, produced Village Politics (1793) a translation of “Burkean philosophy into

working class prose” (Fraistat and Lanser, 2001: 282) in opposition to Thomas Paine’s

The Rights of Man (1791), which defends the need of the people to protect their rights

when the government does not. More’s Remarks on the Speech of M. Dupont (1793)

explains that the British had welcomed the insurrection because they were unaware of the

violent turn that the Revolution would take:

What English heart did not exult at the demolition of the Bastille? What lover of his
species did not triumph in the warm hope, that one of the finest countries in the world
would soon be one of the most free? Popery and despotism, though chained by the gentle

24
 influence of Louis the sixteenth, had actually slain their thousands. Little was then
imagined, that anarchy and atheism, the monsters who were about to succeed them, would
soon slay their ten thousands (More, 1793: 7).

As More describes in this excerpt, the crimes committed by the revolutionaries had

outnumbered those of the monarchy they had initially destroyed. More finds it ironic that

the revolutionaries overthrew the aristocracy due to their disproportionate use of power.

Just a few months after the insurrection, on the 4th of November 1789, non-

conformist -that is to say, a protestant from a church other than the Anglican- minister

Richard Price gave a sermon entitled A Discourse on the Love of our Country delivered

on Nov. 4, 1789, at the Meeting-House in the Old Jewry, to the Society for

Commemorating the Revolution in Britain in order to commemorate the anniversary of

the Glorious Revolution in Britain. Due to its recent history, comments and analyses of

the French Revolution in Britain tended to establish comparisons with the Glorious

Revolution (1688) and/or the American War of Independence (1775-1783). Price had

been a defender of the American Independence, and he acknowledged that he had a sound

opinion of Louis XVI because he had supported the American cause. However, Price

rejects absolutism and recognizes that the king must always be at the service of its people.

As a result, if the king fails to do so, resistance and revolt are not only justified but

necessary: “power abused justifies resistance” (Price, 1790: 32). The fact that Price

produced this text first as an oral discourse, addressed to the Society for Commemorating

the Revolution in Great Britain, is significant for how radicalism worked in Britain.

Radicalism refers here to a political movement in Britain that started in the 1790s, which

was inspired by the discourse on natural rights of the American and French Revolutions.

The goals of the movement were political education and parliamentary reform,

particularly: “extensions of the franchise, equitable districts of representation and

frequency of elections” (Johnston, 2013: 4). Among the participants of the movement

25
were Joseph Priestley, or Andrew Kippis, Williams’ mentor. Examples of radical

societies are the London Reforming Society, the London Corresponding Society or the

London Revolution Society, to whom Price first delivered the Discourse in the form of

speech. Radicals celebrate what they considered political victories. In July 1790, there

were dinners and celebrations across Britain to commemorate the first anniversary of the

Fall of the Bastille (Macleod, 2013: 387). Another example would be the aforementioned

meeting on the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution.

Price’s text also shows how the French Revolution was seen in Britain through

the lens of its own history –in this case, the revolution of 1688. Besides, Richard Price

was a Dissenting preacher. When the monarchy was restored in England in 1660 after the

failure of the Commonwealth, British laws such as the Act of Uniformity of 1662 limited

the rights of those who did not conform to the Church of England to participate in the

public life of the nation. The Corporation Act of 1661 and the Test Acts (1673-1678)

banned dissenters from public offices to earn a degree from certain schools such as

Cambridge or Oxford. As a result, a large number of dissenters migrated to the American

colonies. The dissenting community in Britain was largely supportive of the cause for the

American Independence.

A Discourse on the Love of Our Country also connects Price to the radical

movement, both for its content and for the situation in which it was delivered. For the

radical movement, “reading and discussion [...] were the way forward” (38). Radicals also

considered the press and pamphlets to be the best medium to spread their ideas because

these allowed them to avoid intermediaries. According to Kevin Gilmartin, Burke’s

Reflections also shows the author’s “anxieties about the subversive work of newspapers,

pamphlets, reprinted sermons [...]” (2007: 4). Burke responds directly to Price in his text.

For Burke, the events in France were subverting the order of things and this was inevitably

26
going to lead the French nation to chaos and tragedy: “The very idea of the fabrication of

a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror” (1790: 44). His main

argument, ‘the Age of Chivalry is gone’, shows the nostalgia for the former social order,

which he considered to be natural in contrast with the egalitarian discourse on natural

rights defended by the revolutionaries. 9 The ‘Age of Chivalry’ refers to a time where

society was characterized by their firm emphasis on patriarchal rule, religious fervour and

social distinctions according to rank, with the king at the top. For Burke, once people

subvert the pre-established social order they become inhuman, animal and thus,

dangerous. He applied the same argument to gender, since the female activists of the

revolution abandoned all traits of femininity in his account, for instance the women who

marched on Versailles on the 5th of November 1789. The event of the 6th is also narrated

with a special gender key since it evokes a rape scene. The queen was deprived by force

of her social position, her belongings and her femininity as well. After telling the incident

at Versailles, Burke regrets the loss of the status quo: “Never, never more, shall we behold

that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience,

that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an

exalted freedom” (1790: 113). Thus, the Revolution for Burke goes beyond affairs of state

and it includes gender, moral conduct, and ultimately, social rules.

That same year, Mary Wollstonecraft published her own defence of the French

Revolution as a letter to Burke: A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right

Honourable Edmund Burke. Catharine Macaulay went one step beyond, by publishing

her plea for the cause in France as a commentary on Burke’s text: Observations on the

Reflections of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France (1790). Although

9
The Declaration of the Rights of Man, approved by the French National Assembly on the 26th of August
1789 establishes that “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded
only upon the general good” and that “the natural and imprescriptible rights of man [...] are liberty, property,
security, and resistance to oppression”.

27
Macaulay never defended the abolition of the monarchy explicitly, she positions herself

against aristocracy. Also, in her revision of British history, she criticizes Hume for being

too partial to the sovereign (Green, 2014: 183). In Observations, Macaulay writes about

the Glorious Revolution, as she had already done in previous texts, where she had claimed

that the revolution was incomplete (Looser, 2008: 54). According to Macaulay, “the

revolution of 1688-9 and succeeding governments had done nothing to ensure liberty and

honest government” (Looser, 2000: 133-134). Her main argument for contradicting Burke

is that the French Revolution has not ended yet, so it is impossible to predict if it will

conclude badly for French society. Published the following year, 1792, A Vindication of

the Rights of Woman by Wollstonecraft defines Macaulay as “the woman of the greatest

abilities, undoubtedly, that this country has ever produced” (1790: 112). In an Olympe de

Gouges’ manner, 10 Wollstonecraft defends in her text the rights of bourgeois women to

participate in public life by having access to paid work and formal education.

Interestingly, Wollstonecraft subverts Burke’s representation of the French nation as a

sexually assaulted wife by changing it for a family in which they all protect each other

and, besides, both parents make efforts in educating their children (Mellor, 1992: 256).

Another influential reply to Burke was Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man in two parts

(1791-2). Paine was already well-positioned as a political commentator and author due to

his participation in the American Revolution, choosing the revolutionaries’ side. Rights

of Man reviews recent French history to account for the sociopolitical oppression endured

by the French people. Thus, according to Paine, the insurrection in France was justified

on moral grounds. Similarly, the book challenges Burke by stating the idea that inequality

is a social construct and humans are born equal. Paine also argues that European countries

10
French author Olympe de Gouges published in 1791 the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the
Female Citizen bringing attention to the fact that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen excluded
women from the new French citizenship.

28
should dismantle their despotic governments, as the Americans and French had already

done. In the second part of Rights, Paine uses the United States as an example of

revolutionary success and he believes that the rest of Europe should opt for America as

their model. At the same time, Paine is contradicting Burke’s argument that the

Revolution is necessarily going to be pernicious for society, since the American example

proves the opposite. In the second part of the text, Paine suggests radical reforms in

economics and social politics. It was published in 1792, the year in which Robespierre

accessed power and British newspapers were packed with descriptions of bloody

executions and terrible anecdotes. The second volume aroused fierce controversy

precisely for its radical agenda, and Paine, accused of seditious libel, fled to France. He

was convicted in absentia.

Paine was already popular for his participation in the American Revolution, and

once in France he became involved in politics. As a result of his reputation in America,

and after the success of Rights of Man, he was granted a seat at the National Convention.

In 1793, the Law of Suspects –which ordered the imprisonment of everybody suspicious

of being against the revolutionary cause, even on account of the language they spoke–

was enacted. Since Britain was at war with France, all British citizens were considered

to be suspects and Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg palace (Macleod, 2013: 389),

which operated as a prison at the time. Due to the same law, Helen Maria Williams was

also imprisoned there by French authorities in October 1793. Being British during the war

between France and England made them both potential suspects or

counterrevolutionaries. Before the war, in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft visited France and

met Helen Maria Williams as we know from Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of

the Rights of Woman (1798) by William Godwin: “Mary carried with her introductions

to several agreeable families in Paris. She renewed her acquaintance with Paine. There

29
also subsisted a very sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author of

a collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided in Paris” (1987

[1798]: 238). In France, Wollstonecraft compiled her opinions and experiences on the

French Revolution in order to write An Historical and Moral View of the French

Revolution, published in Britain in 1795. Williams and Wollstonecraft both met Ruth

Barlow in France and established with her a long friendship through correspondence.11

American diplomat Joel Barlow, Ruth’s husband, together with John Stone, close friend

of Imlay –in turn, Wollstonecraft’s lover and father of her first daughter, Fanny– were

members of the British Club also known as “The Friends of the Rights of Man, associated

at Paris”. In 1792, the British Club praised British author Charlotte Smith and Helen

Maria Williams at one of their meetings in Paris for promoting the French Revolution in

their writings.

During the last decade of the eighteenth century, opposition to the Revolution

grew bigger. In the Birmingham riots of 1791, also known as the Priestley riots, a group

of counterrevolutionaries attacked the attendants to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of

the 14th of July. Their meeting place was destroyed, and the participants were accused

by the rioters of plotting a revolution for Britain. Among the attendants, Joseph Priestley,

dissenting minister and scientist, was the main target of the attacks and the protesters even

broke into Priestley’s own residence. His reformist thinking was already known by the

public and he had openly supported the American Revolution. After the riots and fearing

further retaliations, Priestly fled to the United States.

Counterrevolutionaries also formed their own political associations such as the

Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans. The

repression towards radicals became an open matter when the government started to

11
Four New Letters: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001188845

30
legislate against progressive publications. The king issued the Royal Proclamation

Against Seditious Writings and Publications in May 1792 which allowed for the

prosecution of Paine’s texts, as previously mentioned. This measure reveals in which

ways Burke’ concern about the power of writing to undermine the established political

power and challenge the existing social order was reaching the public opinion. The

execution of Louis the XVI in January 1793 worsened the tension towards the

sympathizers of the Revolution. His death and that of Marie-Antoinette 12 were perceived

in Britain as an example of how cruelty was rampant since the Jacobins, the political club

that held government during The Terror, had ousted the Girondins, the more moderate

faction. Adding to this, the National Convention declared war on Britain in February

1793, and, from then on, showing alliance for the Revolution in France became to be

perceived as being against the British Nation. During the Treason Trials of 1794

approximately thirty members of Radical societies were arrested for, presumably, having

plotted against the British government. The Seditious Meeting Act -that limited the

number of attendees to public meetings- and the Treason Act -that made possible to

charge with high treason those who plotted, or even dreamed of plotting, against the king-

of the following year (1795) further made evident that the state repression towards

radicalism was harshening.

The opposition towards the French Revolution not only became more evident

through state measures. The counterrevolution was also increasing in the British public

opinion through the written world. New journals were produced towards the end of the

decade and their title could not be more significant: The Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly

Examiner (1797) and The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine (1798-1821). After The

12
An example of this is Penelope Pickering’s poem “On the Death of the Queen of France” that pities the
queen for having endured distress like no one else before. Also, she violently claims for a divine retaliation:
“sure that God [...] will make thy murd’rers tremble for that day” Poems by Mrs. Pickering. To which are
added Poetical sketches by the author, and translator of Philotoxi Ardenæ. Birmingham [1794].

31
Terror, Jacobinism in Britain became a synonym for all advocates of the Revolution in

France, whether they were supporters of the Girondins, Jacobins, Thermidorians or any

other political position in between. Williams clearly exemplifies this situation, since she

was labelled as Jacobin in Britain multiple times, even though she maintains her support

for the Girondins and throughout her career, as it will be explained later. According to

M.O. Grenby, “Jacobinism was simply a label for all that conservatives found detestable

within society” (2001: 8). As a result, the expression “Anti-Jacobin” in the title of the

magazine already appealed to a public with the same political sensibilities and that

identified with the term Anti-Jacobin. To further tarnish the reputation of the Jacobins,

the Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797-8) was translated into English

in 1799. Memoirs was authored by the royalist priest Auguste Barruel and offered an

exaggerated account of the crimes committed by the Jacobins during their time leading

the French National Convention.

The literature of the last decade of the eighteenth century also reveals the political

climate of the moment. In 1792, Charlotte Smith published her epistolary novel Desmond,

in which the main homonymous character embodies the political opinion of the radical

movement and defends his views against the conservative Brethel. Desmond’s arguments

eventually change Brethel’s mind. For his part, William Godwin decided to present his

political ideal in the form of a novel and published Caleb Williams in 1794, in which he

showed the misfortunes caused by political oppression and legitimizes rebellion against

tyrannical power. In opposition to this, quoting Kevin Gilmartin “By the end of the 1790s,

deliberate counterrevolutionary expression had worked its way through the entire print

register, from newspapers and magazines to satirical prints and verse, history, travel

writing, conduct books, and works of devotion” (2007: 15). Of course, the conservative

discourse that opposed the revolution also imbued the realm of fiction, particularly with

32
the novel, producing the ‘Anti-Jacobin’ novels. These novels did not seek to convince

radicals of changing their minds, rather, they were directed to a counterrevolutionary

public (Grenby, 2001: 9). Just the existence of Anti-Jacobins challenged already the

conservative anxieties about the use that the radicals made of the printed word in order to

spread their beliefs. Maria Edgeworth’s Leonora (1806) offers a good example of how

counterrevolutionary discourse and a conservative view of gender roles were

intermingled in the French Revolution debate, as already explained. In the novel, one of

the characters, Olivia, unmarried, embodies the traditional assumptions about French

women: licentiousness, artificiality and vanity. By contrast, Leonora, recently married,

represents British manners and shows modesty and virtue. Women who supported the

French Revolution, as is the case of Helen Maria Williams, were routinely accused of a

deviant sexuality and for transgressing their proper place in society (Blakemore, 1996).

What resulted from the ‘war of ideas’ was a defence in Britain of their values against the

French. Quoting Johnston: “Britain emerged from the revolutionary era of 1776-1815 a

more conservative country than she had been before” (2013: 12).

1.2. Epistolary Writing

Burke’s Reflections, Macaulay’s Observations and Wollstonecraft’s Vindication (1790)

are all epistolary texts. Burke’s text appeared as “a letter intended to have been sent to a

gentleman in Paris”, as it is indicated by the last part of the title. Macaulay and

Wollstonecraft stated in their titles that their works were designed as responses to Burke.

However, although they were letters addressed to Burke this does not mean that he was

the recipient. These letters did not start a private correspondence between authors, but

they were addressed to the general public in the form of a political pamphlet that

contributed to a debate open to the public. As opposed to private correspondence, this

33
public conversation did not take place through the postal service but through print.

However, the range of texts written in epistolary form during the eighteenth century was

not limited to pamphlets. Some of the novels mentioned in the previous section such as

Leonora by Maria Edgeworth or Desmond by Charlotte Smith were epistolary. The case

of Desmond is especially compelling because it shows an awareness by the author of the

potential of the letter for political discussion, showing that politics permeated private

communications. As Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook writes in Epistolary Bodies “the letter

became an emblem of the private while keeping its actual function as an agent of the

public exchange of knowledge” (1996: 6), and idea that will be developed in this section.

1.2.1. Habermas’ Theory of the Public Sphere

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, published in English 1989 from

the German original published in 1962, 13 Jürgen Habermas describes the eighteenth

century as “the century of the letter”. In this influential philosophical work, Habermas

develops his theory of the public and private spheres. 14 In Structural Transformation,

Habermas studies how society moved from an absolutist government to the democratic

model by focusing on the rise of the printed world as the driving force behind it. In his

view, before the eighteenth century, government was based on voluntas, that is to say, on

the sovereign’s resolutions. This form of government excluded its subjects 15 from

decision making in secrecy and opacity. The increasing accessibility to printed media by

13
Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 1962.
14
There are several theories of the public and private spheres. Habermas’ Structural Transformation enters
in conversation with Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958). Arendt does not talk about ‘spheres’
but ‘spaces’ because they are geographically divided. The space of politics is labelled by Arendt as ‘the
space of appearances’, which takes place in the city. The space of appearances is the realm controlled by
the state and its apparatus. Here, individuals behave merely as “economic producers, consumers, and urban
city dwellers” (Benhabib, 1997: 4). The other space defined by Arendt is that of the economy and family.
15
Especially after the rise of absolutist monarchies, subjects outside the court were banned from
participating in state affairs.

34
a larger public outside the court changed the system of policy-making from voluntas to

ratio, meaning that through print, citizens could reach a consensus on public matters. This

debate took place in a realm outside of state control, the public sphere or Öffentlichkeit,

also translated into English as ‘public opinion’. Citizens could now demand more

information and transparency which allowed the force of public opinion to question and

challenge the absolutist power of the king, before ultimately undermining it in the French

Revolution. The rise of the public sphere brought as a consequence the development of a

private consciousness, as Habermas asserts. In the public sphere, individual views were

spread through pamphlets, books, newspapers, letters or speeches. This polyphony

formed what Habermas calls ‘the Republic of Letters’ in which individual opinions were

either validated or refuted, thus the relevance that Habermas gives to private reason in

collective discussion.

1.2.2. Offering the Private to the Public

As Samuel Johnson famously wrote in 1777 to one of her correspondents, Welsh author

Hester Thrale Piozzi –known for her travelogues, diary and published private letters: “In

a Man’s Letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of

this breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process”

(1788:14). Johnson describes in this quotation the mode of expression that was expected

in a letter. By claiming that letters emanate directly from the heart, he implies that it must

be a reflection of individual subjectivity and truth. As explained by Dena Goodman in

Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters (2009), all letters were also supposed to mirror

the author’s morality. This inner self could be communicated to others provided that the

author expressed their subjectivity unfiltered by scientific or literary expressions. Letter-

writing became the perfect form for this purpose since it was considered to capture oral

35
speech. Ideas in letters were expected to flow naturally and spontaneously as they do in

oral expression. The publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions (1782) was key

in securing the letter as the main medium for self-reflection. In Confessions, Rousseau’s

autobiographical passages are complemented by his private correspondence, reinforcing

the idea that letters are essential to understand someone’s psychology. However, the

reader of Confessions never engages in the conversations with the Swiss philosopher,

because the replies to his letters are not reproduced and the attention is focused only on

Rousseau's own written words. Rousseau’s correspondence was published during his own

lifetime, and he carefully was in control of what was published in order to construct his

own self-image. Quoting Mary A. Favret, “Throughout the eighteenth century, the letter’s

ability to define and confine personal experience had already been subject to a centripetal

force which carried the private into the public realm, offering the individual’s most

intimate self for mass consumption” (1993: 12).

It was not uncommon that the correspondence of a renowned literary figure was

made accessible to the public. For instance, the case of the Marquise de Sévigné is

paradigmatic. Initially, Sévigné’s correspondence circulated clandestinely until its

publication between 1734 and 1754, which contained letters penned by Sévigné herself

along with the responses that she received. The volume also includes letters by members

of her close circle at court in order to provide further insight on the anecdotes that Sévigné

narrates. Another instance of the posthumous publication of correspondence, this time in

the British tradition, is The Correspondence of Alexander Pope (1735), containing letters

written by Pope as well as letters addressed to him. In the cases of Sévigné and Pope,

their style and ability to communicate ideas to others are used to capture the attention of

the reader rather than the inner psychology of the author. Pope gave careful instructions

to his editors on how he wanted his posthumous letters to be published (Keymer, 1992:

36
9), but this was not a unique case. For instance, the British scholar and poet Anna Seward

personally selected those letters that she wanted to be included in the posthumous

publication of her correspondence. She even made some changes and alterations to the

original letters as Barnard demonstrates in Anna Seward: A Constructed Life: A Critical

Biography (2009). This practice by authors such as Pope or Seward evidence the fact that

the spontaneity and frankness that they claimed to offer in their letters responded in fact

to a social and literary convention.

Throughout the century, letter-writing established itself as one of the

accomplishments that women were supposed to master (Goodman, 2009: 2). While men

were taught rhetoric and the formalities of literary expressions, women were encouraged

to reproduce their conversation in writing in the most candid possible way. According to

Keymer, even mistakes in grammar and spelling were regarded as “emblems of sincerity”

(1992: 8). Since women were denied a formal education in the same manner as their male

counterparts, letters became the ideal form of expression for them as they would not need

formal instruction to master it. Although this trend started in the late seventeenth

century 16, during the eighteenth-century manuals on letter-writing became a must in a

young lady’s library (Goodman: 2009). Manuals reinforced the idea that women learnt

through imitation rather than instruction, since most manuals provided models for the

user to imitate, such is the case of Louis Philipon de la Madelaine’s Modèles des lettres

sur différent sujets (1761). In English, The Universal Letter Writer (1790) includes a wide

variety of models ranging from everyday activities such as “soliciting the loan of money

from a friend”, scholarly topics such as “On the history of England” or philosophical

discussions such as “On the practice of virtue”, “on death”. The Universal Writer even

16
Puget de la Serre’s Le Secrétaire de la Cour, ou La maniere d'escrire selon le temps (1634) includes
examples of letters grouped together under different sections: Letters of appreciation, Condolence Letters,
Compliment Letters etc. Also by de la Serre, Le Secrétaire à la Mode (160) contains an essay giving
instruction and devices on letter writing followed by several examples.

37
includes a letter “from a sailor at Plymouth, to his wife in London” which consists of a

short paragraph on financial matters.

Apart from books and manuals, both men and women were also expected to learn

how to become proficient in letter-writing by engaging in letter exchange and by using

the letters of their correspondents as models. There was a universal model that was

supposed to be followed by all ladies, and that was Madame de Sévigné. Most of her

published letters were addressed to her daughter and this reinforced the assumption that

the letter was an intimate and familiar medium of communication. Since women were not

expected to receive formal education, they were educated, theoretically, at home by their

mothers. This model of female education elicited the publication of conduct books

especially targeted to women. The early conduct books offered rules of behaviour to

members of high society, being the Italian The Book of the Courtier (1528) by Baldassare

Castiglione the most representative in this tradition. Castiglione’s book is written in the

form of a dialogue –following the model of classical philosophical books such as the

dialogues of Plato or the Socratic dialogues.

During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, coinciding with gradual

abandoning of aristocratic values, as we have seen in the section dedicated to Haberman’s

public sphere, conduct books started to target bourgeois society. Lord Halifax’ The Lady’s

New-Year’s-Gift: or, Advice to a Daughter (1688) shows this change of focus. Written

by a Marquess, and dedicated to his daughter, the book exerts authority based on

patriarchal values and the hierarchical father-daughter relationship inside the home.

Besides, the prescriptions directed to the daughter emphasize how she is expected to

behave as a wife and mother rather than at court, as it is indicated by the title of the

different sections of the book: “Husband” –the longest section–, or “House, Family, and

Children”. Although it is not written in letter form, the Advertisement starts with “dear

38
daughter” (1), the formula that opens correspondence. During the eighteenth century, it

is not uncommon to find books written in epistolary form as in the example of Charles

Allens’ The polite lady: or, a course of female education. In a series of letters, From a

Mother to her Daughter (1760). Even though they were written by a male author, he

appropriates the voice of the mother, to whom was attributed the role of educating

daughters always within the limits of the domestic realm. Allen’s conduct book also

follows the structure of the most influential correspondence of the period, Madam de

Sévigné’s letters to her daughter. According to the Advertisement, the text aims at

teaching the “virtues and good qualities, which [...] constitute the character of a polite and

accomplished lady” (vii-viii). Each letter deals with one of the accomplishments that a

good lady was supposed to master such as “Sewing” or “Dancing. In the chapter dedicated

to writing, the fictional mother writes that the main advantages of literacy are engaging

in correspondence and keeping records of relevant information (1760: 10). According to

this book the letter does not fulfil a public purpose for a woman. However, the book

claims that no accomplished woman can be considered to be such if they “cannot write a

distinct and legible hand” (10).

Nevertheless, not all conduct books meant the hidden assertion of patriarchal

authority on women’s behaviour, although until the latter part of the century most conduct

books continued to be written by men (Zuk, 1999: 258). A few years after the publication

of Allen’s work, Hester Mulso Chapone published one of her major works: Letters on the

Improvement of the Mind (1773). Chapone was a first generation of bluestocking writers

in London and her work appealed to Mary Wollstonecraft for its systematic and rational

approach to women’s learning (Sutherland, 2000: 41). Chapone was associated with the

circle of Elizabeth Montagu, who corrected her Letters on the Improvement of the Mind,

which underwent fifty-seven editions or reprintings between 1773 and 1851 (Staves,

39
2006: 292). Chapone’s Letters is, according to Rhoda Zuk, “an innovative work that sets

out to construct a course of self-education for girls that would approximate the standard

education established and institutionalized for boys” (258). Although women had to

educate themselves in a quasi-amateur way when compared to men’s academic education,

Chapone’s conduct book recognizes the intellectual abilities of women (258) as well as

the relevance of women’s education. In 1790, the aforementioned Catharine Macaulay

published Letters on Education with Observations on Religious and Metaphysical

Subjects (1790). Although the title might be reminiscent of the conduct books mentioned

in this section, the first two parts of the book uses letters to discuss education as such,

which means that the book in fact is a tract on education. She analyses how different

branches of knowledge are taught, while including her own observations. Letter XXII is

entitled “No Characteristic Difference in Sex”, in which Macaulay argues that both

women and men possess the same intellectual capacities. The third section deals with

theology and metaphysics, which are scholarly matters. Disguised in the form of letters,

and with a title that might be reminiscent of a conduct book, the spontaneity and fluidity

associated with letters enabled Macaulay to include and combine a large variety of topics.

1.2.3. Epistolary Novels

While letters became more and more associated with female expression, the models they

were given to follow tended to be dictated by men. One of the earliest texts in this tradition

is Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1669), attributed to the count of Guilleragues.

Guilleragues was a French courtier during the times of Louis XVI who was also involved

in the world of letters by directing the first weekly periodical in France, Gazette de

France. He was also a friend of Madame de Sévigné. The Letters of a Portuguese Nun

40
fictionally assembles the love letters of a Portuguese nun to a French military man. As it

can be read in the preface to the English edition of Guilleragues’ Letters (1669):

The chief excellence of the language of the language of nature, is the force and truth with
which it represents our sentiments and emotions, and the power which it possesses of
commanding our sympathy.

In this language has the Portuguese nun written her impassioned letters. Letters, which
have never yet been read without emotion. (1808: iv)

The spontaneity in letter writing (‘language of nature’) and strong emotions that had

prevailed over the eighteenth century is here associated with one of the first epistolary

novels ever produced. The French author Claude Joseph Dorat, also quoted in the English

edition of the book, penned a poem on Letters of a Portuguese Nun in which he writes

that “the Portuguese Letters display the heart of woman” (iv). Dorat himself produced his

own epistolary novel Les Victimes de l'amour, ou lettres de quelques amants célèbres

(1776), a retelling of the love plot of Heloise and Abelard, a narrative dynamic that Letters

of a Portuguese Nun also evoke. The two quotations from the 1808 text show how the

fictional letters of the Portuguese nun had become an emblem of how women should

write, even if they were written by a man.

The trend that associated women with love letters spanned throughout the century

and attracted authors despite their gender. Letters from a Peruvian Woman was published

in French in 1747 by the French Madame de Graffigny, whose plays were performed at

the Comédie Française. Graffigny’s epistolary novel narrates the story of Zilia, a Peruvian

woman brought to France through the colonial process. The trope of love appears in the

plot, since Zilia is deeply in love with her fellow Peruvian Aza and her friend the

Chevalier Déterville who proposes to her –a marriage proposal that Zilia rejects.

However, the storyline deals mainly with Zilia’s discovery of French manners and

culture. Interestingly, the novel includes footnotes which provide further information on

41
Peru’s culture. According to Jonathan Mallison “it is one of the rare eighteenth-century

novels to have footnotes, a form of textual writing which allies the novel to the works of

scholarship” (2009: xviii). Paula R. Feldman identifies Graffigny’s epistolary novel as

one of the sources that influenced Williams’ Peru (2015: 195).

In the British literary tradition, Richardson’s Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1748)

are regarded as paradigmatic representations of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel

in English. In The Rise of the Novel (1757), Ian Watt presents Samuel Richardson as one

of the authors that contributed to the development of the English novel. According to

Watt, Richardson’s intention, as well as Daniel Defoe’s, was to achieve formal realism,

that is to say “full report of human experience” (1957: 32). Richardson delves into the

psychology of his characters through their letters but he also pays careful attention to the

setting of the novel in order to imbue realistic aspects to the narration. Careful settings of

time and place are achieved through the epistolary format, since letters were always dated.

Pamela tells the story of a maid seduced by her employer, and all the letters are told from

Pamela’s viewpoint. Interestingly, Mary Favret specifies that “Pamela was an anomaly in

its day” (1993: 35). Favret points out that while the epistolary love plot was developing

as a subgenre in the eighteenth century, other epistolary texts about court intrigue, politics

and social matters were already well established (1993: 35). The epistolary novel started

to increase in complexity throughout the century, moving from single voices narratives

to a polyphonic structure. This is already noticeable if we put Pamela and Clarissa side

by side, since the latter includes a variety of narrative levels. Although the letters between

Anna and Clarissa cover the greatest part of the first volume, as the plot advances new

voices start to interfere in the plot by giving different versions of the incidents that

concern Clarissa (Keymer, 1993: 46). As a result, Clarissa’s structure allows Richardson

to portray the different psychologies of the letter writers, further reinforcing the trope that

42
associates letter writing with the inner self. At the same time, by giving different versions

of the events, Richardson disassembles the idea that letters contain the truth. The

polyphony in the text gives a new dimension to the realism that Richardson already

strived to find in Pamela.

In order to give the most complete version of a story, different voices juxtapose

in epistolary novels. The variety of voices not only provides different versions of the

story, but these also supply details that are lacking in other characters’ point of view

which are necessary for the reader. Rousseau’s Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), also

follows this structure. Robert Darnton describes Julie as “perhaps the biggest best-seller

of the century” (1985: 242). The different styles in the letters gives each character its own

voice, which gives further complexity to both the characters and the story. As Rousseau

himself claims in the preface to the book:

Whoever may resolve to read these letters should arm himself with patience against faults
of language, rusticity of style, and pedantry of expression; he ought to remember that the
writers are neither natives of France, wits, academicians nor philosophers; but young and
unexperienced inhabitants of a remote village. (1767: iv)

Here, Rousseau is displaying the convention of the author as editor, claiming that the

letters were found by chance. In this excerpt, Rousseau displays the convention that the

‘true’ expression in a letter rejects formality. Besides, the protagonists’ level of education

does not allow them to reproduce scholarly expressions. Julia’s own psychological

reflections together with the praising tone in which other characters refer to her, give a

complete picture of her character and thus Julie became the paradigmatic romantic

heroine. The alias that Rousseau gives to Julie, “the new Eloisa” makes reference to

Eloisa and Abelard. The very title of the novel already associates the protagonist with a

well-known love story with a dramatic ending. The storyline develops itself around a love

triangle between Julie, her instructor Saint-Preux and Wolmar, Julie’s husband chosen by

43
his family. It is set in Julie’s country house in Switzerland on the banks of lake Geneva.

La Nouvelle Héloïse deeply influenced Helen Maria Williams, whose Julia (1790) is a

rewriting of Rousseau’s text. As these examples demonstrate: the love plot reinforces the

association of letters as pertaining to the realm of women in love while the setting of these

novels reinforces a connection between letters, women and domesticity.

1.2.4. Letters and Politics

Scholarship has traditionally linked the eighteenth-century epistolary novel with a love

story set on the domestic realm. However, the love plot progressively developed during

the eighteenth century while it coexisted with multiple uses of the epistolary form. In

Romantic Correspondence, Women, Politics & the Fiction of Letter (1993) Mary Favret

shows that the letter was also an important political tool for eighteenth century authors

(9). For her work, Favret focuses on women writers claiming that “women writers used

the familiar letter for entry to the world of politics.” However, men did too, and such is

the case of Burke’s Reflections. Regardless of this, Burke decision to use the letter form

responded to a deliberate decision, since he had already published philosophical treatises

such as A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

(1757), proving that he mastered the form. However, the letter form ensured a broader

audience.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a British author whose marriage to Edward

Montagu, a British diplomat, allowed her to travel and even spend two years, from 1716

to 1718, in Turkey. During her travels in The Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Turkey,

she wrote letters in which she combines a large variety of topics, since she describes the

politics in each country as well as their customs. Montagu and her husband spent two

years outside Britain, mostly in Turkey, where he worked as ambassador. In 1763, only a

44
year after her death, her Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M__y W__ty M__e: Written

during Her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa was published. Of all the countries that

she visited, she is mostly remembered for her writings on Turkey, known by convention

as “Turkish Embassy Letters”. Once in Turkey, Montagu observed how the local women

inoculated the smallpox to their children, protecting them from contracting the illness.

Montagu applied this method on her own child, and she circulated the practice upon her

return to England. Montagu’s example illustrates that letter writing allowed women to

deal with a variety of related topics, including scientific discovery. “Turkish Embassy

Letters'' also offer “brief history lessons and treatises on architecture, literature (Turkish

and English), manners, and government” (Looser, 2000: 78). In her letters, Montagu

repeatedly defies British assumptions about Turkish culture: “These people are not so

unpolished as we represent them” (1825 [1763]: 50). She also offers comparisons

between British and Turkish on a variety of topics such as government, law, architecture,

fashion or literature. There is no nationalistic project behind these comparisons since

Montagu’s intention is never to enhance the British morals in detriment of the Turkish.

In fact, she attempts to translate a foreign culture for her British readers in order to better

understand both the British and Turkish characters: “I am almost of opinion they have a

right notion of life. They consume it in music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating, while

we are tormenting our brains with some scheme of politics, or studying some science to

which we can never attain” (1825 [1763]: 50-51). At the same time, these comparisons

allow the author to be critical of her own country. In her travelogue, Montagu also enters

a conversation with previous authors who have written about Turkey, mostly by

criticising and refuting their reports (Looser, 2000: 79). For instance, Montagu’s

comments on the distinguished works of adventurer and travel writer Giovanni Francesco

Gemelli Careri, whose travels in Turkey are included in his major work Giro del Mondo

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(1699), translated into English in 1704 as Voyage Round the World. Although Montagu

praises Gemelli “I honour him in a much higher degree than any other voyage writer”,

she finds inaccuracies in his narrative: “he says that there are no remains of Calcedon;

this is certainly a mistake: I was there yesterday” (1825 [1763]: 48). Montagu

demonstrates that she is well informed about what other authors have previously written

on the subject matter of her writing, while showing her own analytical skills.

1.3. Sensibility

1.3.1. Moral Sense Theory

In the eighteenth century, the term “sensibility” was understood as a mode of expression

that gives prominence to spontaneous emotions over controlled thought. The

enlightenment movement sought to discern how humans acquired knowledge of the world

around them from the perspective of natural philosophy. As the century progressed,

natural philosophy was gradually being substituted by the scientific revolution and the

subsequent appearance of the different scientific fields as we know them today –physics,

chemistry, geology, biology, etcetera. This was especially noticeable during Williams’

career. For instance, when she translated Humboldt’s travel narratives, geology and

botany were established fields of knowledge. Apart from the relationship between

humans and the natural environment, thinkers of the age such as the Earl of Shaftesbury,

Hume or Adam Smith, were concerned with the relationship among the members of

society and, thus, the question of sympathy became central. Each of these philosophers

gave their own nuances to their understanding of sympathy, but they all shared in common

the understanding of sympathy as the emotional bonds between human beings. One of the

earliest proponents of sentimentalism, or moral sense theory, in Britain philosophy was

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury. Cooper moves beyond Locke’s

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sensationist theories presented in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

that consider sensation as the source of ideas. Locke determines that all human knowledge

is acquired through experience, through the medium of the five senses. However,

according to Shaftesbury’s Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Time (1711),

beyond the five senses there is another sense, the heart, which is capable of recognizing

natural virtue. As a result, moral sentiments originate from the heart in a spontaneous

manner preceding the intellect. For Shaftesbury, every human being, regardless of the

culture or religion they were raised in, is naturally capable of judging if an act is morally

reprehensible or not. However, natural sentiments could be perfected through reflection,

but never depend on fear of retaliation from any figure of authority. To act morally in

order to avoid punishment, is not considered a moral act in Shaftesbury’s eyes.

Anticipating Rousseau, Shaftesbury claimed that “benevolent feelings are natural to man”

(Sambrook, 1986: 54).

David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) theorized that people were

moved to act as a means to experience pleasure or avoid pain. As a result, their actions

came directly from feelings and experience rather than reason. When it came to

interpersonal relationships, observing other people’s actions produces in the beholder a

feeling of pleasure or pain. Sympathy, arising from pleasure, is for Hume a moral

mechanism that makes one approve of others, even if we are not affected by them. As a

result, sympathy allows a community of people to act according to the general interest. If

a good action awakens feelings of pleasure, the observer sees it as a beautiful one. Hume

here connects, as Shaftesbury did earlier and as Burke would do later on, the ethic and

the aesthetic dimension of any given action. Hume’s fellow Scotsman, Adam Smith was

also deeply concerned with sympathy in his The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) as it

can be inferred from the titles of the chapters than open his book, ‘On Sympathy’ and ‘On

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the Pleasure of Mutual Sympathy’. Here, Smith differs from Hume. For Hume, an

individual should not be moved by self-interest in order to see the moral value of any

action, while for Smith, spectators have to be impartial while imagining themselves in the

position of others. Smith also claimed that the natural feelings that approve or disapprove

of a situation on moral terms do not have to coincide with the expectations imposed by

society. He believed that being virtuous meant possessing a superior sensibility to others:

“Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above

what is vulgar and ordinary. The amiable virtues consist in that degree of sensibility which

surprises by its exquisite and unexpected delicacy and tenderness” (1768: 33). This idea

of someone who is naturally predisposed to good and superior actions, would later on

develop into the heroes and heroines of the novels of sensibility, an idea that I will

elaborate further in the following section. Smith also brought up an issue that would worry

eighteenth century writers of fiction, the fact that intense feelings could be pretended. In

Smith’s moral theory, actions can be guided either by rule or virtue. The latter

demonstrates that someone possesses true sensibility, since acting according to virtue

proves that the action has been guided by what Smith, and others such as Shaftesbury or

Hume, considered a natural impulse. According to Chris Jones, as the works of these

philosophers were available “in the school-rooms, universities, and Dissenting

Academies of the time, and were cited in the leading periodicals” (1993:10).

Philosophical discussion reached a large part of the literate population, which explains

the widespread influence of the theory of moral sentiments among readers.

According to Northrop Frye, in his essay “Towards Defining an Age of

Sensibility” (1956), sympathy is one of the characteristics that defines the literature of

sensibility. Frye sees the literature of the second part of the eighteenth century as

concerned with the process of writing itself rather than the product, which means that the

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texts are more concerned with the mood of each episode, rather than with building up an

atmosphere that reaches its climatic point in the dénouement. As a result, “Where there

is a sense of literature as process, pity and fear become states of mind without objects,

moods which are common to the work of art and the reader, and which bind them together

psychologically instead of separating them aesthetically” (1956: 149). What Frye defines

as ‘pity without an object’ triggers the feelings of sympathy with natural elements,

animals, and especially between individuals, or, to use Frye’s words, “the sense that no

one can afford to be indifferent to the fate of anyone else” (1956: 150).

1.3.2. Sentimental Heroines and Men of Feeling

After the growing popularity of the novels of sensibility in the second half of the

eighteenth century, there was an intense fear of sensibility as being a dangerous trait that

would cause fatal outcomes. Going back to the aforementioned Rousseau’s Julie ou La

Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), the eponymous heroine, Julie, is an archetypical sentimental

heroine whose intense feelings of sexual attraction for Saint-Preux -and reciprocated by

him-, leads them to have sexual encounters outside marriage, and even an unwanted

pregnancy. However, through reason and male guidance, she walks the virtuous path by

marrying an older man, Wolmar. Saint-Preux then becomes the tutor of her children, and

Julie finds herself in a position where she has to exercise a strong self-control of her

emotions in order to remain virtuous. Rousseau distinguishes between two kinds of love,

the one between Saint-Preux and Julie, based on eroticism and bound to terrible outcomes,

and the one based on friendship, such as the one between Julie and Wolmar, that brings

harmony to the family. In the end, Julie dies in an accident. More often than not, death

seems to be the only possible ending for many sentimental heroines within the trend of

sensibility. In the case of Richardson’s Clarissa (1748), the protagonist is happy to die

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because she finds herself in a world where it is impossible to maintain her standards of

virtue.

Rousseau himself became one of the epitomes of the sentimental hero, or man of

feeling. In his Confessions, Rousseau presented himself as someone whose ability to

experience strong emotions granted him a superior understanding, which was in turn a

curse, since his emotions made him deviate from the right path of virtue when he was not

able to control them. However, this man of feeling still possessed sympathy towards

others, but a world corrupted by self-centered individuals results in the moral corruption

of the hero, who is misunderstood by the society he inhabits. The most tragic ending for

a man of feeling would be suicide, rather than accidental death in the case of women, as

exemplified by Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). Sensibility in literature

had brought attention to the idea that the feelings that connected one another in society

through sympathy could also cause someone’s ruin when the feelings were excessive and

uncontrolled, and it would most often than not result in self-harm. Sensibility became

negatively connoted as the century advanced, and the novels of sensibility, with their

devious sexual conduct, were increasingly regarded as bad examples. Even though

Rousseau states in the preface that the story of Julie and Saint-Preux should be taken as a

warning instead of a role model, there was a general belief that sentimental fiction could

have a negative effect on the reader (Watson, 1994: 28). This idea is exemplified by Henry

Mackenzie, author of The Man of Feeling (1771). Helen Maria Williams knew Mackenzie

personally, as he had visited her literary salon in London before she migrated to France

(Duquette, 2020: 85). In his article published in the Scottish periodical The Lounger,

Mackenzie writes:

All whose necessities or vanity prompted them to write, betook themselves to a field,
which, as they imagined [...] in which a heated imagination, or an excursive fancy, were
alone sufficient to succeed; [...] The effects of this have been felt, not only in the
debasement of the Novel in point of literary merit, but in another particular still more

50
 material, in its perversion from a moral or instructive purpose to one directly the reverse.
Ignorance and dullness are seldom long inoffensive, but generally support their own
native insignificance by an alliance with voluptuousness and vice. (1786: 78)

According to Chris Jones, Mackenzie is namely attacking Rousseau (1993: 3). Strong

feelings could make the reader lose connection with reality and even cause madness. In

women’s case, there was the added danger of being seduced outside the boundaries of

respectability. Besides, women were considered to be more easily impressionable, since

medical theories of the time that studied the nervous system, established that women’s

system was weaker than that of men. For example, this idea could be found in Bernard de

Mandeville’s, author of The Fable of the Bees (1714), A Treatise of the Hypochondriack

and Hysterick Passions (1711).

1.3.3. Radical Sensibility

Sensibility reinforced social relationships but, over time, it also came to be understood as

a movement that emphasized individualism. Sensibility has to be understood as a complex

trend with its own contradictions. Different interpretations and understandings of

sensibility coexisted together during the last decades of the century. The fact that

sensibility stressed social bonds was used as an argument either to defend traditional

social structures or to disrupt them. On the conservative interpretation of sensibility,

individuals readily sympathize with those they feel connected to, i.e. family, neighbours

and fellow-country women and men. Radicals for their part believed that this sympathy

was a universal matter that connects all. Love and loyalty towards a husband, father or

benefactor were innate and spontaneous and, in order to maintain the patriarchal order,

the hierarchical structure within the family was seen as a ‘natural mechanism’ that

allowed for the survival of the family unit. This idea could be extended to a whole nation,

where the king acted as a father figure. Burke’s reasoning here is diametrically opposed

51
to the ideas that Rousseau presented in A Discourse on Inequality (1755) and Social

Contract (1762). Rousseau saw that the aristocratic powers were ruling for their own

interests only, without taking into account the common interest of the citizens, that

Rousseau called general will. Rousseau suggested a model based on horizontal social

relationships rather than hierarchy. If the nation was to be understood as a family, the

authority comes from the general will of the people, as brothers, not as children of the

government/king, hence the motto “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. This is not to say that

pre-revolutionary writers did not believe in natural family bonds. In the case ‘The Story

of Perourou’ by Helen Maria Williams, a child recognizes his father even though he has

never seen him. Father and children automatically bond in the story, emphasizing the

relevance of family ties. Contradictory as it seems, the aforementioned idea of fraternity

was based on the equality of middle-class men, and, as a result women or low-income

population were considered ‘passive’ citizens according to the law of 22 December 1789.

Some French authors such as Olympe de Gouges and Marquis de Condorcet did not

understand equality on these terms. Gauges wrote The Declaration of the Rights of

Woman and the Female Citizen (1791) and Condorcet his “On the Admission of Women

to the Right of Citizenship” (1790) asking for gender equality. Condorcet’s text is a short

pamphlet in which the author points at the different inconsistencies in the arguments given

by the patriarchal society to exclude women from citizenship. At a time when politicians,

replacing the former aristocratic model, strove for universal rights, Condorcet believes

that it is a contradiction to exclude half of the population from these universalist claims.

The philosophe believes that women have the same capacity for reasoning and feeling,

and mentions Elizabeth of England or Catherine Macaulay as examples, among others.

Condorcet is suspicious of the patriarchal idea that women’s voices are already heard in

politics through their husband’s votes and argues that if their voices were taken into

52
consideration, women would be allowed to vote themselves. De Gouges’ text is framed

in a different manner. She follows the structure of the Declaration of the Rights of Man

and of Citizen (1789) and extends these rights to women. She goes beyond Condorcet’s

argument to ask not only for votes, but also for women’s participation in the National

Assembly. According to de Gouges, if women are judged by the law under the same

conditions as men, their voices should be taken into consideration in law making. While

Condorcet aims at drawing the attention of the political spheres responsible for women’s

oppression, de Gouges urges women to become aware of their oppression.

According to Nicola J. Watson in Revolution and the Form of the British Novel

(1994), conservatives and radicals alike accused the opposing party of being misguided

by their own respective excessive sentiments (27). Watson cites the example of Mary

Wollstonecraft, who accused Burke of “muddy sentimental thinking” (1994: 27). Another

example would be Laetitia Hawkins’ response to Helen Maria Williams’ Letters.

Hawkins presents herself as someone who is able to avoid her feelings clouding her

judgement: “I [...] have been early taught to distinguish between appearance and reality”

(1793: 3). However, as Chris Jones elaborates in Radical Sensibility: Literature and Ideas

in the 1790s (1993) the attacks were increasingly directed to those who embraced

progressive political ideas. By the end of the century, the trend of sensibility became

associated with radical politics. Also, it must be taken into consideration that Rousseau’s

political philosophy was endorsed by the Jacobins in France, who rose to power in 1792.

Rousseau rejected the aristocratic lifestyle since he considered it artificial and that it

corrupted the natural benevolence of people. As a result, from the British side, Rousseau,

who was already disregarded as the epitome of the excessive and dangerous sensibility,

became associated with the politics of the The Terror, and thus, sensibility was to be

regarded under the suspicion of Jacobinism. Chris Jones considers that, by contrast to

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other literary trends, that become obsolete when aesthetics preferences change,

sensibility’s demise had to do mainly with political, social and moral reasons (1993:4).

By 1798, the magazine The Anti-Jacobin Review (1798-1821) was exerting an

important smear campaign against British supporters of the revolution in France. James

Gillray’s engraving ‘The New Morality’ illustrates a poem under the same title by George

Canning, Tory politician who became Prime Minister three decades later. The poem

mocks and satirizes the language of sensibility and mentions well-known pro-

revolutionary personalities. Among the names dropped by Canning there is Stone,

Williams’ live-in lover, together with others such as Roland or Rousseau. The engraving

pictures a theophilanthropic mass. Theophilanthropy was a deistic movement founded

during The French Directory, that became prominent when one the members of The

Directory, Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux, endorsed it. On the altar of the deistic

mass stand Justice, Philanthropy and Sensibility, all three of them wearing Phrygian caps,

a revolutionary symbol. Phrygian caps and revolutionary cockades are also worn by most

attendants to the mass, together with other revolutionary symbols, such as the French

Tricolor, adopted in 1796 as the French flag. In Gillray’s engraving, Sensibility is holding

a book in her hand, in which the only name visible on the title page is Rousseau, who is

also mentioned in Canning’s poem for his ‘sickly fancy’. Besides, the allegory of

sensibility is crying over a dead bird while cruelly putting her foot over Louis XVI’s head.

As identified by Frye in ‘Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility’, sympathy towards

animals marks a characteristic of the trend of sensibility, exemplified by Robert Burns’

poem ‘To a Mouse’ (1785) or Anna Letitia Barbauld ‘The Mouse’s Petition’ (1773). The

comical element here is that those supporters of sensibility show an exaggerated

sympathy towards animals while they display cruelty towards their fellow human beings.

Under the altar, there is a pile of publications, including rival periodicals such as Critical

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Review, Monthly Review and Analytical Review; and titles that had been recently

published such as Wrongs of Woman (1798) by Wollstonecraft, ‘Mrs Godwin Memoir’ –

mocking Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

(1798)–, Charlotte Smith’s The Young Philosopher (1798), or Copies of Original Letters

Recently Written by Persons in Paris to Dr. Priestley in America (1798), being these

persons in Paris John Stone and Helen Maria Williams. Near the books on the floor there

is a donkey reading Godwin’s Political Justice, and a crocodile studying Paine’s Rights

of Man. The engraving dehumanizes supporters of the Revolution and reinforces the

complex connections between the trend of sensibility, Rousseau, the French Revolution

and Williams’ circle.

The counter revolutionary side of the debate especially picked on radical women

writers. Quoting an article from the first volume of The Anti-Jacobin: “a contempt of

truth, decency, and decorum, [...] constitutes the general characteristic of a female mind

infected with the poison of democracy” (1798: 147). Again in 1798, the poet Richard

Polwhele published The Unsex’d Females, in which he used the verse form to attack pro-

revolutionary women writers. Polwhele’s argument was that these authors had rejected

their natural roles, since he presents them as “a female band despising nature’s laws”.

Wollstonecraft is the first one mentioned and appears as having lost track of reality since

“the fine romances of Rousseau” had ignited her feelings. Godwin’s, Memoirs of the

Author of a Vindication had caused scandal by alluding to her erotic relationships and the

resulting pregnancies outside marriage. Wollstonecraft's biographical facts were seen as

endangering the ‘natural’ order of the family, which conservatives read as an extension

of her efforts to destroy the traditional monarchical order in France. Besides, the book

mentions Wollstonecraft suicidal tendencies, a passage marked by the language of

sensibility: “Moral reasoning is nothing but the awakening of certain feelings: and the

55
feeling by which he is actuated, is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him

with other feelings, that should have force enough to counterbalance it” (1987 [1798]:

251). Here, Godwin is speaking in general terms, hence the use of the masculine form

‘he’, to justify Wollstonecraft’s mental state at the moment, caused by intense emotions,

and in which the rational picturing of a future time ahead can have little effect over the

impressed mind. By 1798, the author Mary Wollstonecraft had become a heroine of

sensibility of flesh and bone by having sexual intercourse –and pregnancies– outside

marriage, much as Julie, and considering suicide, much as Werther. The negative

consequences of strong passions found in fictional literature, were now beginning to be

ascribed to radical women writers. The fact that Helen Maria Williams was involved in a

romantic relationship with the married John Hurford Stone in France also became a result

of her misguided sensibility. She was portrayed as promiscuous in the Anti-Jacobin

Magazine, such as in this line from volume 9: “Then came Maria Williams Stone [...]

Dearly she loves a philanthropic sin call’d fonication, and doth it commit; Nor careth she

for modesty a pin” (1801: 519). In order to further reinforce the connection between

sensibility and the French, in the review to Polwhele’s Unsex’d Females, the critic writes

that Williams suffers “her mind to be infected with the Gallic mania” (1799: 113). The

stories of Madame Roland or Charlotte Corday’s involvement in politics and their

subsequent executions, further strengthened the negative view of French women in

Britain for crossing the boundaries of respectability.

1.4. Travel Writing

As the question of sympathy and emotional bonds became a central issue in the

eighteenth-century culture of sensibility, as discussed in the previous section, so did

discussions on the nature of individualism, especially at the close of the century.

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Travelogues provided a great opportunity to explore the self. Even though travelogues

were allegedly written to inform the public about a trip and satisfy their curiosity about

far distant places, the writer/observer also included their feelings and experiences while

traveling, focusing on the self. According to Mirella Agorni, this comes from the

enlightened preoccupation with the empirical method, that appears in autobiographical

writing as the compulsive reporting of small details (2002: 99). Likewise,

autobiographical details were seen as a mark of the authenticity of the text (Agorni, 2002:

101).

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, travel writing was associated with

navigation. Spanish conquistadors such as Cristopher Columbus or Hernan Cortes

recorded their chronicle in which they encountered unprecedented natural environments

and civilizations. Lacking an understanding of these new sights, reality and fantastical

tales are blurred in these chronicles. A well-known example, for instance, would be

Colon’s encounter with sirens, that today’s scholars have identified possibly as manatees.

The dreamlike atmosphere of travel narratives became the perfect setting for Thomas

More’s philosophical text, Utopia (1516). The book is set on a fictional island, Utopia,

located in the ‘New World’, which is described by an imaginary explorer, Raphael. The

fictitious setting allows More to construct a society in accordance with the humanistic

ideas he wants to offer. Utopian fictions of the following century, such as Tommaso

Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1602) or Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626), follow

this model. From a satirical point of view, English author Delarivier Manley reversed the

tradition of utopian fiction with her The New Atalantis (1709). Manley’s New Atalantis

is a dystopian place in which women are systematically oppressed. Comparison between

cultures provides a fruitful strategy for spreading philosophical ideas, either by praising

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other’s cultural values and using them as a model to follow, or by presenting the negative

aspects and urging the author’s community to avoid them.

In Britain, the seamen who travelled to North America published their accounts

as well, as in Richard Hakluyt’s Divers Voyages Touching the Discouerie of America

(1582) and Voyages and Discoveries (1589), which defined the colonization process.

Continuing this process of European colonization of the Americas, the celebrated

eighteenth-century British explorer Captain James Cook published the chronicles of his

travels around the world and southern hemisphere in the 1770s. Cook was celebrated by

Williams’ mentor Andew Kippis in The Life of Captain James Cook (1788), to which

Helen Maria Williams added an ode entitled “The Moirai”. In the nineteenth century,

Alexander Von Humboldt travelled to America with the intention of classifying and

mapping its nature. To circulate the results of his work, Von Humboldt wrote Personal

Narrative (1807) and Researches (1814) –among other titles–, both works translated into

English by Helen Maria Williams. By the early nineteenth century, travelogues were

adopting an increasingly scientific discourse, which was also reflected in Williams’ texts.

For instance, in A Tour in Switzerland (1798), Williams includes as an appendix a

scientific essay on the formation of Alpine glaciers. The essay was not penned by

Williams herself: it is in fact a translation of Louis-François Ramond de Carbonnières,

French botanist and geologist, who was also a deputy during the French Revolution.

In Women, Writing and Travel (2018), Katrina O’Loughlin brings attention to the

diversity of travel writing when it comes to its form, but finds the epistolary to be the

most notorious one (2018:5). The reason behind this is, according to O’Loughlin, that

“the letter [...] is particularly powerful in its representation and connotation of direct

experience: staging empiricism, immediacy, and lack of reserve as key components of its

authority and form” (2018: 5). Some of the most influential intellectual figures of the time

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produced their own travelogues or used this genre to spread their political or philosophical

ideas. Amongst the best-known travelogues of the century are Montagu’s Turkish

Embassy Letters, that was mentioned in the section 1.2.4. on epistolary writing, or

Voltaire’s Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733), popularized as Letters on

England. Montesquieu also chose the genre of travel writing in his Persian Letters (1721),

even though it is purely fictional here, following the sixteenth and seventeenth traditions.

Montesquieu, however, departs from sixteenth and seventeenth century conventions since

he does not create an imaginary place, but chooses France and Persia. It has to be taken

into consideration, however, that Montesquieu’s rendition of Persia is romanticized under

the western gaze. The titles just mentioned present the individual in contrast to a foreign

culture, hoping to answer the question if the self is entirely formed by the environment.

At the same time, travel accounts allowed for the veiled or unveiled critique of the

author’s home country. In the case of Letters in England, by exploring the political system

of Britain, Voltaire wants to provide an alternative to the French aristocratic model that

he had attacked and mocked –which resulted in his banishment from Paris and, later on,

the whole of France, having to spend some time in England. It does not come as a surprise

then that the Royal censor forbade its printing and distribution in France and copies

already in circulation were destroyed. In Montesquieu’s Letters, fictional Persian

characters arrive in France, and observe that nation through the eyes of ‘the other’, which

allows them to point out the hypocrisy of French high society.

One of the characteristics of travel writing is its hybrid nature. All the texts

mentioned move beyond the scope of politics or social criticism and include descriptions

of fashion, social life, historical landmarks, landscapes or scientific discoveries. For

example, Montagu introduced vaccination in England, a custom that she had observed in

Turkey and that she wrote about in her Letters. More than a decade afterwards, Voltaire

59
observed it in England, dedicating a chapter to ‘Inoculation of Smallpox’. There is also a

chapter on Letters on England dedicated to telescopes. Voltaire paid a lot of attention to

the intellectual climate of the country he was staying in, as a result, the book includes

chapters such as “On Chancellor Bacon”, “On Mr. Locke” or “On Descartes and

Newton”.

1.4.1. The Grand Tour: Travelling for Educational Purposes

Although from the aforementioned travel writers only one of them is British, the interest

in travel literature was thriving in England in the second half of the eighteenth century.

So much was the case that Goethe makes an allusion to British travelers in Faust Part II

(1832): “The British now –they’re a much-travelled nation– they seek out old battlefields

and waterfalls, musty old classic sites and ruined walls” (1994 [1832]: 82). The type of

travel mentioned by Goethe here is markedly different from Montagu’s husband’s

diplomatic journey or Voltaire’s banishment due to political persecution. Goethe is

referring here to travelling with the purpose of polishing the traveller’s education, as was

the case of the Grand Tour. After enlightened philosophers during the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries had theorized about the benefits of travelling, the British elite started

to consider travelling through the continent, especially Italy, France, Switzerland and

Germany, as the perfect grand finale in a gentleman’s education.

Francis Bacon, known in philosophy for advocating for the method of

observation, included an essay entitled ‘Of Travel’ in the third edition of his Essays

(1625). The essay opens as follows: “Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education;

in the elder a part of experience” (1996 [1625]: 374). In Bacon’s eyes, traveling was an

important mechanism for self-development, but also for understanding the world around

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us. For that reason, he encouraged travellers to keep notes and diaries of what they had

observed:

It is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and
sea, men should make diaries; but in land travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for
the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation. Let
diaries, therefore, be brought in use. (1996 [1625]: 374)

Bacon gives relevance here to first-person observation. Although in Bacon’s time travel

was mainly restricted to courtiers and the high aristocracy, as the bourgeois classes started

to accumulate wealth through commerce, it also became increasingly more accessible to

the upper middle classes. An example of this non-aristocratic traveller would be the

British novelist Laurence Sterne, who came from a military family. Sterne talked about

the advantages of travelling as follows:

-To learn the languages, the laws and customs, and understand the government and
interest, of other nations, - to acquire the urbanity and confidence behaviour, and fit the
mind more easily for conversation and discourse; - to take us out of the company of our
aunts and grandmothers, and from the track of nursery mistakes; and, by shewing us new
objects, or old ones in new lights , to reform our judgements; - by tasting perpetually the
varieties of Nature, to know what is good, by observing the address and arts of man, to
conceive what is sincere; - and, by seeing the difference of so various humours and
manners, - to look into ourselves, and form our own. (1873: 224)

Travelling was useful for gaining social skills, such as conversation, that were considered

necessary for making good impressions in high society. At the same time, Sterne

emphasizes travelling as a masculine domain, since it allowed young men to distance

themselves from the female-dominated space of the household. Finally, from a

philosophical standpoint, traveling is central for self-development, since it teaches the

traveller what is genuinely good and truth, which were central categories in the Theory

of Moral Sentiments or the Cult of Sensibility, as explained in the section On Sensibility.

In 1760, Johnson moved beyond the individual aspect of travelling to find in travel writing

a social purpose. In his essay number 97, Johnson implies that with the flourishing of the

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Grand Tour, travelogues have become monotonous and uninteresting: “The greater part

of travellers tell nothing, because their method of travelling supplies them with nothing

to be told” ([1760]: 387). Johnson argues for an educational type of touring that is

pedagogical not only for the author, but also for the readers:

He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object
of remark is human life. Every nation has something peculiar in its manufactures, its
works of genius, its medicines, its agriculture, its customs and its policy. He only is a
useful traveller, who brings home something by which his country may be benefited
([1760]: 389).

On the one hand, Johnson is here following the enlightened belief that human progress is

linear, while, on the other hand, justifies the colonization process for the improving of the

metropolis. This essay by Johnson exemplifies how, by the second half of the century,

travellers were expected to follow a patriotic agenda.

As mentioned earlier, one philosopher who was very active in this literary and

philosophical trend was Rousseau, and, not surprisingly, he also devoted a section of his

Émile, or Treatise on Education (first published in 1762 and translated into English in

1763) to travelling for educational purposes. Travelling is a part of the education of the

young Emile:

Travel pushes a man toward his natural bent and completes the job of making him good
or bad. Whoever returns from roaming the world is, upon his return, what he will be for
his whole life. More men come back wicked than good, because more leave inclined to
evil than to good. In their travels ill-raised and ill-guided young people contract all the
vices of the peoples they frequent and none of the virtues with which these vices are
mixed. But all those who are happily born, whose good nature has been well cultivated,
and who travel with the true intention of informing themselves, return better and wiser
than they left. It is in this way that my Emile will travel. (2010 [1762]: 645)

Again, the emphasis on self-development can be noted. According to Rousseau, travels

would mould someone’s character for the rest of their lives. However, Rousseau, in his

fixation with moral corruption warns the reader about the dangers that might arise from

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travelling. Since young men tended to travel by themselves, being far from the

supervision of their parents or tutors, the experience could be regarded as a test.

1.4.2. Women’s Travel Writing

According to Barbara Korte, “The Grand Tour was for a long time a male preserve” and,

when women traveled, “they were mostly accompanied by their husbands and families”

(2000: 43).

However, travel writing was not a masculine domain only, especially after

circulation in print of Montagu’s Letters, that “inaugurate both a belles lettres and

polemical genre of writing available to women [...] creating a new language of authority

and subjectivity for women through travel” (O’Loughlin, 2018: 15). Besides, In the

1770s, the decade after the publication of Montagu’s Embassy Letters, the number of

travel accounts published by women rose exponentially” (O’Loughlin, 2018: 12).

O’Loughlin also situates the interest in women’s travel writing within polite culture,

which favoured the circulation of private letters as exemplified by Sévigné (2018: 8). The

recovery of women’s writing in the eighteenth century focused primarily on the novel,

overlooking travel writing. As a result, to this day the number of studies devoted to

women’s travel narratives is comparatively very small (O’Loughlin, 2018: 8). In spite of

this, from the 1990s onwards feminist scholars have identified some particularities in

women’s travel writing. In 1991, Sara Mills published Discourses on Difference: An

Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism, paying attention mainly to the

period that spans from the 1850s to the early twentieth century. Later on, in An Anthology

of Women’s Travel Writing (2002), Mills together with Shirley Foster, recognize that the

scholarship has focused particularly on those travel narratives by women that present the

woman traveller as adventurous and exceptional. This tendency has neglected the

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narratives by women who assumed a more conventional understanding of femininity

(2002: 1). Bohls, focusing specifically on the eighteenth century, explains that while

women were excluded from the production of treatises, they were encouraged to write

about their picturesque tours (1995: 2), responding to the belief that travel writing did not

require formal education as treatises did. In travel writing, authors could naturally collect

their emotional responses to different sceneries and situations encountered along the way.

As a result, Bohls reaches the conclusion that travel writing “gave women writers the

opportunity to engage with philosophical concepts without directly trespassing on the

more forbidding territory of the treatise” (1995: 6). Mirella Agorni has observed how

travel writing has been approached differently depending on the gender of the writer.

Travelogues by women have tended to be assimilated to autobiographies (2002: 98).

Agorni also observed that travel writing allowed women to delve into their personal

experiences, which became worthy of attention in the context of travel. While women at

home were constrained by a rigid patriarchal order, their experiences on the road allowed

them to reimagine their position in society.

Foster and Mills find that travelogues by women tend to pay more attention to

domestic life (2002: 10). As a result, women travellers often display a particular attention

to women’s situation in different cultural contexts, as exemplified by Montagu interest in

the seraglio or harem. When traveling, women had access to places restricted only to

women. In this manner, women writers could offer alternatives to men’s orientalist

construction of eastern women. Montagu emphasized in this manner that her account

offered a unique perspective and unparalleled subject matters: “I am sure I have now

entertained you with an account of such a sight as you never saw in your life, and what

no book of travels could inform you of, as it is no less than death for a man to be found

in one of these places” (1825 [1763]: 97). Being gendered a woman gives Montagu an

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authority, that she acquires from experience, to openly challenge the male orientalist gaze:

“Now that I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring either the

exemplary discretion or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given accounts of

them” (1825 [1763]: 112). However, British women observed their counterparts overseas

from a western stance that tended to reinforce the them/us paradigm. In the case of

Montagu, for example, she describes the Turkish bath as ‘the women’s coffee house’,

filtering a Turkish tradition under western eyes. This strategy also served the purpose of

translating a foreign culture for the reader’s at home by using familiar terms. At the same

time, the last quotation by Montagu exemplifies the new emphasis on elite sociability,

characteristic of late seventeenth- and eighteenth- century culture, which was moving

away from the realm of the court (O’Loughlin, 2018: 1).

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 Chapter 2

‘The Golden Age of the Revolution’: Letters Written in France (1790) and Letters

from France; Containing a Great Variety of Original Information (1792)

Williams’ Letters written in France, published in 1790, has attracted most of the scholarly

attention when compared to the rest of her works. Angela Keane indicates that Williams’

early production is lacking in “depth and variety in social discourse” (2013: 87), while

Karen Green states in A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe 1700-1800

(2014) that “rather than giving a political analysis of the frightful events that she relates,

Williams falls back on poetic justice” (202), and thus minimize her contribution to

political thinking when compared to other contemporary women writers such Catharine

Macaulay or Mary Wollstonecraft. Jacqueline Leblanc goes in the same direction when

she indicates that Williams’ “‘emotional ecstasies’ as of political restructuring often strike

readers as lacking serious critical perspective” (1997: 26). In this chapter, I will try to

prove that Williams’ intensity of feelings towards the revolution respond to the

philosophical and political atmosphere of the time and serve Williams to assert her

position on the debates about the French Revolution. Williams’ emphasis on feelings goes

much further beyond what Gary Kelly identifies as “feminine sympathy” as her strategy

to convey her political arguments. In Crisis in Representation, Steven Blakemore presents

Williams’ strong emotions as an antithesis of Wollstonecraft’s rationality and even

suggests that Letters should be read as a work of fiction (174). Reading it as fiction,

though, would mean neglecting Williams’ input into the lively debates sparked by the

French Revolution in Britain, and the reasons behind choosing sensibility as a mode of

expression. I concur with Vivien Jones, who considers that “the Letters offer an

authoritative analysis of the revolutionary debates” (1992: 191), and I also maintain that

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it is necessary to provide a further analysis of the political and intellectual dimensions of

Williams’ texts.

2.1. The Fête de la Fédération: Politics as an Affair of the Heart

Williams’ first volume of Letters, Letters Written in France to a Friend in England

(1790), offers an account of Williams’ first trip to France in the midst of the French

Revolution. Williams sails to Paris exactly twelve months after The Storming of the

Bastille, since she dates her first letter on “the day before de Federation” (1). Deborah

Kennedy confirms this information in Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution

after a letter from Williams to her friend Colonel Barry in which she details her travel

plans (2002: 57). The volume narrates Williams’ trip during three months in the summer

of 1790, with visits to Paris and Rouen, where her sister was hosted by the family friends,

the Du Fossé family (Kennedy, 2002: 54). Monsieur Du Fossé became Williams’ friend

escaping imprisonment in France before the revolution, and the whole story of this family

is detailed in section 2.4. According to Williams seeing the injustice endured by his friend

is what awakens her support for the French Revolution. As a result, in her travelogue,

Williams goes far beyond the simple narration of France’s monuments or costumes, since,

as I will explain next, there is a clear interest in politics from the very beginning. Williams

was visiting France during a crucial moment in their national history, and the defence of

the French Revolution is evident throughout the volume. Williams sees the Revolution as

“the triumph of human kind” (1790: 14), noting that the Revolution was a landmark not

only for France, but for global history.

Williams’ arrival, on the 13th of July 1790, coincides with an early stage of the

Revolutionary process, in which an initial optimism prevailed. As it has been explained

in 1.1., the revolution had just been well received in Britain even by those who would

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later on turn against it, such Anna Seward or Edmund Burke, who would not publish his

Reflections until November in that same year. In France, the representatives of the Third

State had formed the National Assembly, ending with the Estates-General, and thus, the

interdependence between politicians and the court. Williams comments on this event in

her Letters, as exemplified by the following excerpt, that also shows the hopeful attitude

of the author towards the Revolution at this point in her career:

I cannot help remarking, that, since the Assembly does not presume to set itself up as an
example to this country. We seem to have very little right to be furiously angry, because
they think proper to try another system of government themselves. Why should they not
be suffered to make an experiment in politics? I have always been told that the
improvement of every science depends upon experiment. (219-220)

The National Assembly was intensely debating the future of the French monarchy - The

Royal Family had just left Versailles for the Tuileries in Paris in October-. Williams sees

this political atmosphere in a positive light. The National Assembly had finally separated

itself from the aristocratic powers and had even gained the authority to limit the

monarchy’s power, which had held an absolutist rule until 1789. In order to justify her

political stance, in this excerpt, Williams makes use of the rhetoric of the Enlightenment,

approaching political events as an experiment worth trying. With the publication of An

Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) a century earlier, Locke had

attacked the rationalist philosophy that had prevailed in the Cartesian model by

rejecting the existence of innate ideas. In turn, Locke believed that knowledge was

only acquired through observation and direct experience, and that experiences would

imprint ideas on the mind that worked as a tabula rasa. The following century, Hume

established with his theory of Causal Inference that even if the cause of any given

event was the same, the result would not always turn out in the same manner. Drawing

from this philosophical environment, Williams concludes that the nation will know

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how to govern themselves after they have experienced different forms of Government.

The outcomes of the Revolution could not be predicted, even if other revolutions had

happened in Europe, such as the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Politics also appears

here as a scientific discipline. Natural philosophies were conducted upon experiment and

Williams argues in very explicit and straightforward themes in favour of extending the

same method to the social sciences, in this case, politics. Here she connects philosophical

theory with specific current events: the example that the Assembly purports itself to be.

Williams’ opinion of the National Assembly is further legitimated after she

narrates her visit on Letter VI. Compellingly, she compares French and British politics,

favouring the French. Emphasizing the politeness of the French, Williams explains how

she managed to gain access to the National Assembly:

My sister and I were admitted without tickets, by the gentleman who had the command
of the guard, and placed in the best seats [...] We had no personal acquaintance with this
gentleman, or any claim to his politeness, except that of being foreigners and women; but
these are, of all claims, the most powerful to the urbanity of French manners (1790: 42).

Consistent with a burgeoning tradition of travel writing by women, as explained in 1.4.2.,

her status as a woman allows Williams to enter public spaces that would have been denied

to her in Britain. She makes this claim even stronger by stating: “I believe, however, that

if the fame of Mr. Fox’s eloquence should lead a French woman to present herself at the

door of Westminster Hall without a Ticket, she might stand there [...] without being

permitted to pass the barrier” (1790: 43). France thus becomes for Williams a place where

she can observe and mingle with the political spheres. At the same time, the fact that

foreigners are allowed to enter the National Assembly shows that the French are

completely open when disclosing their form of government. This offers a sharp contrast

with French politics of the ancien régime, which were conducted in secrecy. What is

more, she discharges all accusations of conspiracy that have been spread in Britain: “I am

69
told that everyday [France] witnesses a conspiracy” (1790: 217). Williams’ uses her visit

to the National Assembly to highlight the progress that the French have achieved with the

Revolution. At the same time, her personal experience gives her evidence that contradicts

the rumours extended in Britain.

As the previous quotes from the travelogue show, Williams directly delves into

politics with her travelogue, as the quotation from pages 219-220 demonstrate. Even

though it is clear from Williams’ previous texts that she had been invested in writing for

political causes, throughout Letters, she presents her commitment to the Revolution as a

spontaneous sentiment that had only arisen once she had visited Paris and experienced

the new revolutionary atmosphere:

Did you expect that I should ever dip my pen in politics, who used to take so small an
interest in public affairs, that I recollect a gentleman of my acquaintance suprized me not
a little, by informing me of the war between the Turks and the Russians, at a time when
all the people of Europe, except myself, had been two years in the possession of this
intelligence? (103).

This claim seems completely contradictory with Williams’ previous writings for its

apparent indifference. Duckling writes that “Williams is following a well-established

female literary tradition” (2010: 79). Self-effacement was common in eighteenth-century

texts by women and it tends to disguise the author’s real ambitions. Not presenting

themselves as authorities also allowed women writers to avoid criticism, and thus, reach

a larger audience. Duckling also points out that in 1790 Williams “strongly denies any

personal pretensions to intellectual debate” (2010: 78) and “her writing appears to operate

within apparently normative gender ideals” (2010: 78) but Duckling sustains that

“Williams’ persuasive performance actually enables her to move beyond traditional

gender boundaries” (2010: 78). As explained in 1.2., spontaneity was associated with

truthfulness in epistolary and travel writing. At the same time, the radical branch of

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sensibility understood that spontaneous empathic feelings moved society towards a

common goal. Following that line of thought, Williams observes that:

It is very difficult, with common sensibility, to avoid sympathizing in the general

happiness. My love of the French Revolution is the natural result of this sympathy, and
therefore my political creed is entirely an affair of the heart; for I have not been so absurd
as to consult my head upon matters of which it is so incapable of judging (1790: 66).

Williams’ political claims in Letters (1790) are strong, but she maintains that they are the

product of sympathy rather than scholarly thinking. Williams seems to be self-deprecating

when she admits that her head is not capable of forming political judgements. I coincide

with Angela Keane when she writes that “Williams claims to ‘feel’ rather than ‘judge’

the revolution, not simply to appear more feminine and therefore less threatening to her

readership, but to foreground the significance of emotion and sensation in the public

world” (2013: 101). In this quotation, Williams is embracing the Theory of Moral

Sentiments, in which sympathy is the force that brings together the members of a

community. Anthony Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury argued that “man is endowed with a

moral sense or natural faculty which [...] enables him to distinguish right from wrong [...]

immediately, spontaneously and intuitively” (Sambrook, 1986: 53). Williams presents

herself as an active woman of feeling, whose empathic feelings take her to participate in

the political debate. She was living at a time in which feelings were at the core of the

intellectual discourse.

This emphasis on feeling was not limited to printed literature, but it also became

part of the political harangues. Historian of the French Revolution Lynn Hunt explains in

On Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (1986), that, in the meetings in

the National Assembly: “Orators spoke directly to the hearts of the auditors [...], and they

expected to produce in them immediate emotion. This expectation was the translation into

political practice of Rousseau’s notion of authenticity, the condition in which citizens are

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transparent to each other” (1986: 45). Rousseau, who deeply influenced the political

theories of the French Revolution, as already noted in 1.3.1. and 1.3.2. He had advocated

for political transparency in contrast to the obscurity of court politics. In order to dispel

any doubts on potential hidden interests, revolutionaries “placed a premium on authentic

emotion” (Hunt, 1986: 45). To rely on the head, that is to say, rational thinking, and

complicated modes of expression, was disregarded inasmuch as they resembled the

opacity and secrecy of the aristocratic privilege. Rousseau, in his Letter to D’Alembert on

Spectacles (1758):

The heart of a man is always right concerning that which has no personal relation to
himself. In the quarrels at which we are purely spectators, we immediately take the side
of justice, and there is no act of viciousness which does not give us a sentiment of
indignation so long as we receive no profit from it. (1960 [1758]: 24)

In the famous epistle to one of the main authors of The Encyclopedie, Jean le Rond

D’Alembert, Rousseau rejects that a theatre is established in his hometown, Geneva. As

a result, Letter to D’Alembert provides a perfect example for Rousseau’s theories that

reject artificiality and affection, so influential for Radical Sensibility as previously

explained. This quotation shows that, in the trend of thought developing during the second

half of the eighteenth century, the ‘heart’ became the centre for legitimate selfless

feelings. Williams wants to inscribe herself in this line of thought, and legitimate her

support of the Revolution inasmuch as it is purely disinterested. Her only commitment is

to the improvement of society, without claiming any personal gains from the Revolution.

Thus, Williams appears as a heroine of feeling, which legitimizes her political opinions,

and reinforces her ideological alliances.

Williams also praises the leaders of the Revolution for catalysing the power of

emotion in order to spread the positive values of the revolution among the French:

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 The leaders of the French Revolution are well acquainted with the human heart. They
have not trusted merely the force of reason, but have studied to interest in their cause the
most powerful passions of human nature, by the appointment of solemnities perfectly
calculated to awaken that general sympathy which is caught from heart to heart with
irresistible energy, fills every eye with tears, and throbs in every bosom (1790: 61-62)

At this stage of the Revolution, a moderate political stance was dominating the political

atmosphere. Williams, as I shall explain throughout my dissertation, aligned herself with

the Girondin creed. For that reason, she finds herself in line with the ideological stance

of the revolutionary leaders, who, at this time were preparing the first anniversary of the

14th of July, or Fête de la Fédération, “probably the most elaborate public spectacle in

European history” (Fraistant and Lanser, 2001: 9). Williams admires how such a spectacle

is capable of awakening the people’s emotion and bond them together for a political

cause, but, more importantly, she praises the revolutionary leaders for recognizing the

potential of emotion in political propaganda.

La Fête Révolutionnaire, 1789-99 (1976), published in 1988 in English as

Festivals and the French Revolution, by French historian and philosopher Mona Ozouf,

recovers the significance that revolutionary festivals had in shaping political culture

during the revolutionary period in France. The book specifically dedicates one complete

chapter to the Fête de la Fédération. Mona Ozouf had already explored this aspect of The

French Revolution in academic articles such as, “Space and Time in the Festivals of the

French Revolution” (1975). Hunt echoes Ozouf’s theories and explains that these festivals

replaced the displays of power of the king, a tradition initiated by Louis XIV to solidify

among his subjects the legitimacy of the Bourbon family. These celebrations consisted,

for example, of Royal entrances, in which the subjects were expected to receive the king

after a successful political trip; or the erection of temporary –and sometimes even

permanent– monuments, such as arches the triumph or carrousels, which was the name

given at the time to equestrian and military paraders. As the eighteenth century advanced,

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the enlightened fray of ideas had criticized these festivities for their intricacy and

obscurity, which was assimilated to superstition (Ozouf, 1988: 3). Although these

traditions lost force during the rule of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the revolutionary leaders

saw their potential for strengthening the loyalty of the people to the revolutionary

enterprise. According to Hunt, “The festivals reminded participants that they were the

mythic heroes of their own revolutionary epic” (1986: 28). The festivals were much more

than a celebration of power, they were the means to consolidate the power of the recently

born National Assembly. Festivals also served to educate their attendants on the

principles of the new form of Government.

In section “XI” of the aforementioned Letter to D’Alembert, Rousseau welcomes

popular festivals as an alternative to the theatre, where people gather “in the open air,

under the sky” (1960 [1758]: 24). The festival envisioned by Rousseau celebrated love

and what he considered to be ‘natural’ bonds, and it consisted of young members of the

community finding potential spouses. The festival, according to Rousseau, reinforced

sympathy and horizontal connections, rather than rigid hierarchies, as in the case of Louis

XIV’s festivals. In 1790, political leaders saw the relevance of exalting the rupture with

the aristocratic hierarchical order. As a result, in the festival of the 14th of July 1790, the

king sat together with the politicians just like all the other political leaders, a gesture that

became a very powerful symbol of the new order of Government in France. Williams

praises this spirit on ‘Letter II’: “Already in the Champ de Mars the distinctions of rank

were forgotten; and, inspired by the same spirit, the highest and lowest orders of citizens

gloried in taking up the spade, an assisting the persons employed in a work on which the

common welfare of the state dependent” (1790: 6). Again, following the ideals of Radical

Sensibility, what brings the citizens together is working towards a common goal. There

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are no personal gains represented in the festival, and this reinforced the revolutionary

spirit among the attendants, including Williams herself.

The Fête de la Fédération became a very important date in the memories of those

who had attended the Revolution. The relevance that Williams gives to the celebration is

paralleled in other accounts of the history of the French Revolution. For instance,

Madame de Tourzel, Governess of the Children of France between 1789 and 1792,

dedicates a complete chapter to describing the Federation in her Memoirs, published in

French in 1883. However, Tourzel held an open royalist stance which is evident in her

account of the Federation. She coincides with Williams in that “Everyone wanted to take

part in the work” (1886 [1883]: 156). By contrast, Tourzel describes the same works at

Champs de Mars in the following manner: “At one and the same time there might be seen

at work labourers, citizens, Carthusian and other monks of various orders, soldiers, pretty

women, men and women of every class and social status, all working to the best of their

ability. Some concealed the feelings aroused by the constraint to which they were

condemned” (1886 [1883]: 156). Tourzel’s choice of words “constraint” and

“condemned” dismantle the idealized picture of the event as it was pictured in pro-

revolutionary accounts, such as Williams’. All in all, the Federation became a central

element in understanding the revolutionary atmosphere of 1790, and Williams describes

it in a manner that aligns her own feelings with the revolutionary ideology of the time.

2.2. The Value of Direct Observation: Challenging the Anti-Revolutionary Forces in

Britain

Williams was perfectly aware of the strong opposition that the French Revolution

provoked in Britain and therefore, the main objective of her Letters is to challenge these

assumptions and defend the Revolution. As a result of her observations, Williams is able

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to draw her own conclusions and move in a separate direction. This objective is especially

evident in the last letter. Only a few pages before, Williams writes that: “I was told, before

I left England, that I should find that French liberty had destroyed French urbanity. But

everything I have seen and heard, since my arrival in France, has contradicted this

assertion” (1790: 197). Williams turns to the enlightened argument that considered that a

society was as advanced as its display of civility. Williams brings attention to France’s

‘urbanity’ to prove that the Revolution has not submerged France into chaos and

primitiveness, and that the country is moving towards progress and not the opposite -as

claimed by Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France. At the same time,

similar to Elizabet Montagu’s approach in her Turkish Embassy Letters, and explained in

1.4.2., the experience obtained by visiting the country gives Williams the authority to

challenge widespread opinions in her native country. For instance, as mentioned in 2.3.,

the example of Madame de Genlis dismantles the misconceptions in Britain regarding the

manners of French women.

The last chapter of Letters narrates Williams’ trip back to England by boat. The

purpose of the last letter, as I shall elaborate on, is to offer an alternative account to the

misconceptions in Britain regarding the Revolution in France. However, the first two

pages of Letter XXVI narrate the hardships of her trip by boat when crossing the English

Channel. Williams endures a “violent storm” (1790: 215) that “became so serious as to

exclude every idea but that of preparing to die with composure” (1790: 215-216).

Williams is here following the trope of the adventurous traveller, increasingly popular

during the eighteenth century and consolidated by the Romantic movement. British author

and literary critic, William Hazlitt, “depicts the English Traveller –or, at least, the best

and properly ‘English’ sort of English traveller– as someone who courts adversity, who

seeks out suffering and discomfort” (Thompson, 2007: 2). As explained by Carl

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Thompson, “one of the distinctive self-fashionings sought by the Romantic traveller [...]

is that of the misadventurer” (2007: 8). Williams uses this trope, though, to introduce her

defence of France. After she has proven that she can be considered a ‘properly English’

traveller, to use Thompson’s terminology, and has secured a respectable position, she

follows on to criticize British attitudes towards the Revolution.

Despite the dangers of the trip, politics is the main subject matter of the last letter

of the volume. While she is entertaining the idea of dying, “I [Williams] could not help

being diverted with the comments on French customs, and French politics, which passed

in the cabin” (216). Williams is diverted because the arguments used in the conversations

that she hears are neither informed, nor serious enough to discredit the revolutionary

project. For instance, one of the sailors complains of the fact that he had not been able to

get drunk in France. Williams shows the rough manners of the British sailor without

stopping to consider or analyse his statement. However, the civility of the neighbouring

country, France, is reinforced throughout the travelogue. On her arrival on solid ground,

Williams finds that the misjudgements on the Revolution neither are limited to the less

privileged members of society nor are the result of lack of education. When she reaches

England, she hears the same judgement from her acquaintances: “I own it has surprised

me not a little, since I came to London, to find that most of my acquaintance are of the

same opinion with the sailor” (1790: 217):

I hear nothing but crimes, assassinations, torture and death. I am told that everyday
witnesses a conspiracy; that every town is the scene of a massacre; that every street is
blackened with a gallows; and every highway deluged with blood. I hear these things and
repeat to myself, Is this the picture of France? Are these the images of that universal joy,
which called tears into my eyes, and made my heart throb with sympathy? (1790: 217)

The France pictured here is a land of horrors, offences and violence. However, in her own

experience, she has found reasons to cry out of joy, not out of fear of pain. Her bodily

reactions, as it was understood in the trend of sensibility, prove her point. While the

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negative accounts that she has heard of are only based on descriptions (that she debunks),

she provides an account of her bodily sensations. Readers of Williams’ travelogue have

followed her across more than 200 pages that praise the improvement of French society

after the fall of the ancien régime in which Williams has never mentioned bloodsheds or

massacres. Thus, Williams states that the rumours circulating in Britain concerning

France are rough exaggerations.

2.3. Madame de Genlis: The Exemplary Aristocrat

Williams dedicates one full chapter, or letter, to her encounter with French author

Madame de Genlis. During the last decades of the eighteenth century, Genlis had acquired

fame for her tracts on education, especially Adelaide and Theodore, or Letters on

Education (1783). In this work, following the Enlightenment emphasis on experience, she

rejects that children’s education should be based on books and scholarly matters. Genlis

does not envision a different education for Madelaine and Theodore on account of their

gender, as opposed to Rousseau’s Émile and Sophie. Gillian Dow explains that Adelaide

and Theodore became a phenomenon across Europe (2007: ix), and not surprisingly,

Williams assumes that her readership is familiar with Genlis’ works. She opens Letter V

as follows:

I am just returned to a visit to Madame Sillery, whose works on education are so well
known and so justly esteemed in England, and who received me with the most engaging
politeness. Surely the French are unrivalled in the arts of pleasing; in the power uniting
with the most polished elegance of manners, that attentive kindness which seems to flow
warm from the heart. (1790:33)

Here, Genlis is referred to as Sillery, since her husband held the title of Marquise de

Sillery. After stressing French good manners once again, Williams praises Madame de

Genlis for her merits and intellectual achievements. Genlis was the tutor of the Duke

d’Orleans’ children, but Williams carefully decides not to disclose this information until

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she has highlighted her intelligence and courtesy. Besides, Williams attributes Genlis’

exquisite behaviour to the fact that she is French and not because she is a member of the

aristocracy. Steven Blakemore explains how “it had been common for writers on proper

female conduct, whatever their politics, to invoke the supposed behaviour of

Frenchwomen as exemplifying what must at all cost be avoided in Britain” (1996: 675).

Williams refutes this accusation by reversing the argument and presenting French women

as models of conduct.

In this regard, Blakemore (1996) explains that the British general opinion

regarded Frenchwomen’s behaviour as improper and dangerous since, in conduct books,

Frenchwomen were depicted as the antithesis to British femininity. French manners were

equated, according to Blakemore, to a venereal disease that had the potential to infect

British women, who would in turn lose their good qualities by assimilation to the French.

Again, Williams inverts this broad belief by narrating her meeting with a young British

lady educated by madame de Genlis. This lady must have been Stéphanie Caroline Anne

Syms or her sister, Hermine, two British young girls who were brought up and educated

by Genlis. The origins of these ladies or the reasons why they were put under Genlis’ care

are still unknown to this day. After praising her intelligence, Williams adds that “this

young lady talked of her own country with a glow of satisfaction very grateful to my

feelings” (1790: 41). Contrary to what would have been expected at the other side of the

channel, this young lady has not lost her patriotic feelings. Instead of being influenced by

France’s lifelong enmity with the British, madame de Genlis has cultivated all positive

qualities in her pupil, including the love of her country. Williams suggests here that love

and appreciation for the French and French culture is not incompatible with honouring

Britain.

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 Although at the beginning of letter V Genlis is introduced as ‘Madame Sillery’

the nomenclature changes as the chapter unfolds and she is called after her husband's

family name, Brûlart, since both Sillery and Genlis refer to the names given by their

aristocratic titles. This does not respond to Williams’ revolutionary ideology only, but to

Madame de Genlis’ convictions: “she was renounced with her title the name of Sillery,

and has taken that of Brulart” (1790: 36). Williams uses this encounter with Madame de

Genlis to exemplify that, despite the news of the émigrés that were fleeting France for

fear of losing their status or property, there were French aristocrats who avidly supported

the Revolution. According to Williams, these émigrés are to be held responsible for the

misrepresentation of the French reality in Britain: “One cause of general dislike in which

the French revolution is held in this country, is the exaggerated stories which are carefully

circulated by such of the aristocrats as have taken refuge in England” (1790: 222). Genlis’

example provides the opposite opinion. Again, Williams suggests that the scope of the

Revolution in Britain is limited, and by travelling there herself, she could compose the

real picture. Genlis discusses her political opinions in an interview with Helen Maria

Williams:

She talked to me of the distinctions of rank, in the spirit of philosophy, and ridiculed the
absurdity of converting the rewards of personal merit into the inheritance of those who
had perhaps so little claim to honours, that they were a sort of oblique reproach to their
character and conduct (1790: 36).

Madame de Genlis’ political stance changed with the course of the events, today, she is

mostly known for her support of Napoleon and, later, her support of the monarchy.

Carolina Armenteros –who describes Genlis as “a royalist with republican sensibilities”

(2013:55)– has demonstrated that “Genlis shares with Rousseau the fundamental

conviction that the quality of the soul is the primary determinant of politics” (2013: 63).

At this point in the Revolution, Madame de Genlis was defending a monarchical

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constitution. Although letter V is not dated, the conversation between Genlis and

Williams had to take place during the summer of 1790, and this coincides with the

National Assembly passing the Decree Abolishing Hereditary Nobility and Titles on June

19th of the same year. Genlis welcomes the recent political changes, shared with

Williams, as it is obvious from her defence of meritocracy, which constituted a burning

issue in Enlightened thinking. For instance, Voltaire had praised Chinese meritocratic

system in his Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations:

Mankind cannot possibly frame a better government than where everything is decided by
great tribunals, subordinate to each other, the members of which are not admitted till after
severe examination [...] In such government, it is impossible the emperor should exercise
any arbitrary power. The general laws flow from him: but, according to the constitution,
he can do nothing without taking previous advice of persons educated in the study of
laws, who are elected by votes. (1759: 296-297)

For Voltaire, meritocracy limited the power of the monarch. Since the members of the

tribunals were chosen for their knowledge and abilities, their authority was well respected

and they could act independently from the king’s wishes. Another influential example is

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), that attacks the monarchy, and especially

hereditary rights. Paine considered, in the Spirit of the American Revolution, that “For

all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family

in perpetual preference to all others for ever” (1819 [1776]: 14). Paine defends that a

hierarchical social structure goes against creation since all people are equal in a natural

state.

In Genlis’ case the defence of meritocracy was not at odds with her support for

the Royal Family. She tutored the princes of Orleans, Louis Charles, Adélaïde and Louis

Philippe –referred to here as Monsieur de Chartres. The latter would become King of the

French in 1830. In Genlis’ views, their lineage was not sufficient to hold claims for the

throne –in fact, at this time, Louis Philippe was not in direct line of succession– and

providing them with a superior education was the means to secure their place in the
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highest echelons of political power. Williams put the focus on Genlis’ achievement by

describing the merits of the princes, who, through education, would be fitted to be active

members in a post-revolutionary society, despite their social status. In Williams’ rendition

of the princes, they lack any of the vices attributed to aristocrats, since they are “remote

from arrogance” (1790: 36). Arrogance was one of the negative outcomes in hereditary

succession according to Thomas Paine (1792 [1776]: 10), but the example provided by

Genlis’ efforts demonstrate that arrogance can be prevented when the members of the

royal family are educated on Revolutionary principles. Williams’ meeting with the young

Louis Philippe surprises her in a positive manner, as she finds him “a confirmed friend to

the new constitution of France, and willing, with the enthusiasm of a young and ardent

mind, to renounce the splendour of his titles for the general good” (1790: 35). Williams

demonstrates thus the commitment of the aristocrats who have remained in France to the

new forms of policymaking when the future king shows here an inclination and

predisposition to accept the claims of his subjects. By the end of the volume, Williams

reaches the following conclusion: “Must I be told that my mind is perverted [...] because

I do not weep with those who have lost a part of their superfluities, rather than enjoy that

the oppressed are protected, that the wronged are redressed, that the captive is set at

liberty, and the poor have bread?” (1790: 218). The examples that Williams has provided

show how the stories of the émigrés circulating in Britain present, according to her, a

superficial, privileged and selfish viewpoint. The well-being of the majority must be a

priority, and even more so when the highest members of the French aristocracy that she

has met welcome the Revolution.

Williams nevertheless recognizes that not all aristocrats in France hold the same

opinion in this regard:

There may be arguments against hereditary rank sufficiently convincing to such an

understanding as Madame Brulart’s; but I know some [my italics] French ladies who

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 entertain very different notions on this subject; [...] who have carried their love for
aristocratical rights so far as to keep their beds, in a fit of despondency, upon being
obliged to relinquish the agreeable epithets of Comtesse or Marquise, to which their ears
had been so long accustomed (1790: 36).

Madame Brûlart’s superior understanding, resulting from her knowledge of the

philosophical and educational trends of the enlightenment, makes her the perfect fit to

embrace the revolutionary ideology. Williams presents the other side of the coin, those of

the aristocrats who regret their loss of power and status. However, she renders their

inability to adapt themselves to the new situation as nothing more than a “fit of

despondency”. At the same time, the negative of these ladies to renounce their titles, show

that Genlis has chosen to go by the name Brûlart not only due to the new decree, but

because she is truly convinced with the idea. Be that as it may, Williams highlights that

the nostalgic ladies she has described constitute only an exception. This is evident in the

quotation aforementioned by using the adverb some with my italics. On the following

page, Williams continues to demonstrate that counter-revolutionary aristocrats are by no

means representative of the majority:

But let me do justice to the ladies of France. The number of those who have murmured at
the loss of rank, bears a very small proportion to those who have acted with a spirit of
distinguished patriotism, who, with those generous affections which belong to the female
heart, have gloried in sacrificing titles, fortune, and even personal ornaments, so dear to
female vanity, for the common cause (1790: 37).

The French Revolution has given women the opportunity, as Williams shows here, to

publicly participate in politics and to support a common cause. These ladies provide

another contrast to the émigrés she has mentioned before, who grieve for the loss of their

property. Williams demonstrates that the loss of titles and possessions is not a

revolutionary imposition by force, but a deliberate gesture by revolutionary supporters.

The exemplary attitude of the women who have donated their belongings to support the

revolution, leads Williams to affirm that “The women have certainly had a considerable

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share in the French Revolution” (1790: 37). Williams presents the Revolution in France

as a political fight in which women are welcomed while acknowledging their political

actions.

Both aristocratic men and women renounced their titles and properties, but

Williams pays a closer look to specifically feminine ways of supporting the Revolution.

For that purpose, she pays attention to Madame de Genlis’ fashion choices, which reveal

a full commitment to the French Revolution. On page 38, Williams describes madame de

Genlis’ medallion, made up of stones from the recently fallen Bastille with the word

‘Liberté’ written in gems. Besides, the stones are red, blue and white, the same colours as

the national cockade. Lynn Hunt explains that “all men were required to wear the tricolor

cockade” (1986: 59), while women such as Madame de Genlis chose to display their

political alliances in the same manner as men but by giving a feminine twist to it.

Medallions and cockades were not the only ornaments that indicated the support to the

revolutionary ideology, “colours, adornments, clothing, plateware, money, calendars and

playing cards became “signs of rallying” to one side or another” (1986: 53). The use of

revolutionary symbols offered women in France the chance to become part of the

revolutionary movement since symbols “constituted a field of political struggle” (1986:

53). While showing one’s political commitments, symbols were also used in a didactic

way. Much like the revolutionary festivals, mentioned in section 2.1, symbols were used

to educate the population on revolutionary values. In Genlis’ case, the word ‘Liberté’ on

her medallion emphasizes one of the three foundations of revolutionary thinking in France

‘Liberté’, ‘Egalité’, ‘Fraternité’.

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2.4. Du Fossés: A Revolutionary Tale with a Happy Ending

The part of Letters Written in France that has drawn more scholarly attention is the story

of Williams’ friends the Du Fossés. Williams devotes seven chapters to it –letters XVI to

XXII–, approximately one quarter of the whole book. The Du Fossés were a French

married couple, in which the husband had to migrate to Britain, where he became the

French tutor for the Williams sisters. Williams narrates how the couple, even though they

belong to different social classes, fall in love and decide to marry. Monsieur Du Fossé’s

father does not approve of the marriage, since he wants his son to marry someone

belonging to the same social scale. In order to prevent the marriage, the father decides to

appeal to a ‘Lettre de Cachet’. During the ancien régime, French subjects could appeal to

the king in order to intervene in their affairs without the need of a proper trial in a court

of law. Through the ‘Letter de Cachet’, the king authorized an arrest. When the ‘Lettre

de Cachet’ was issued, Monsieur Du Fossé was imprisoned and, later on, he managed to

escape to Britain. In March 1790, the Constituent Assembly suppressed the ‘Lettres de

Cachet’ since they saw it as an example of the arbitrary power of the king. Thanks to the

Revolution, Monsieur Du Fossé is able to reunite with her wife and son since he is then

protected from being imprisoned again. Besides, the Baron Du Fossé, Monsieur’s father,

dies at the end, liberating his son from the constraints of his prejudices and control.

In Letters (1790), Williams has already positioned herself against a hierarchical

social structure, as shown in Williams’ passage on Madame de Genlis. For Jacqueline

Leblanc, the couple represents the revolutionary values of social equality, since they each

belong to different social classes (1997: 36). The example of the Du Fossé shows that,

once despotism has fallen, the ties of love and sympathy have the potential to become

stronger. As the emergence of the Revolution allows the family to reunite, the couple

becomes an embodiment of the recent story of their country, symbolising the

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achievements of the Revolution at an individual level (1997: 223). Duckling goes on the

same line when she points out that Williams blends the public and the private in the story

of the Du Fossé family, that becomes an example “of how personal lives are inextricably

linked with the machinery of national politics” (2010: 80). The story of the Du Fossés

also offers a counterpart to Burke’s Reflections. Burke emphasized the distress and

vulnerability of the Royal family, showing feelings of a more private kind. In the case of

the Royal Family, and according to Burke, the French Revolution destroys the natural ties

and order of the family. However, Williams shows with her tale that the unlimited

despotic power of the king had the potential of disrupting family life in France. For her

part, Williams chooses to tell the story of an unknown family, with whom none of her

readership could relate with, as opposed to Burke’s example. Burke extols patriarchal

rule, since, as stated on 1.1., the king acts as a father for the whole nation. The oppressive

Du Fossé father incarnates the arbitrariness of both despotic monarchy and patriarchy.

The whole story of the Du Fossés attacks the ‘Lettre de Cachet’ as an example of

the absolutist power of the French monarchy, much in line with the ideas defended by

Mirabeau in his Les Lettres de cachet et des prisons d'etat (1782), translated into English

as Enquiries concerning lettres de cachet. After 1789, Mirabeau became a prominent

political leader of the Revolution -he would be elected President of the French Assembly

in January 1791-, and, in her visit to the National Assembly, Williams witnesses

Mirabeau’s intervention: “We also saw Monsieur Mirabeau l'aîné, whose genius is of the

first class” (1790: 47). Before starting his political career, however, Mirabeau had been

imprisoned twice as a result of two ‘Letters de Cachet’ requested by his father. In the

introduction of Mirabeau’s Enquiries, he presents the ‘Lettres de Cachet’ as “the strongest

arm of arbitrary power” (1787 [1782]: xiv). Mirabeau draws from enlightened debates,

primarily natural rights and the separation of powers to defend his position. According to

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him, all people are born free, and the ‘Lettre de Cachet’, having the power to illegitimately

imprison anyone, goes against this right. At the same time, the Lettres show the illimited

power of the king, who has the power to unfairly contradict or declare himself above the

judicial power: “Wherever monarchy is not limited, chance alone can preserve it from

tyranny” (1787 [1782]: 133). The word tyranny, which was characteristic of the pre-

revolutionary discourse, is frequently used by Mirabeau in his argumentation. For her

part, Williams considers that his friends’ incarceration present a particular example of the

tyrannical use of power arising from the ‘Lettres de Cachet’. In Williams’ views, the

misfortunes undergone by Monsieur Du Fossé were “the inflictions of tyranny, and you

will rejoice with me that tyranny is no more” (1790: 109). Once again, Williams’ opinions

coincide with the predominant discourse among the supporters of the Revolution in

France.

Williams introduces the Du Fossé’s narrative as “the history of my friends” (1790:

123) reinforcing the emotional implications that this story has for her. Before Williams

delves into their story, they already appear in her travel chronicles, for example, when

Williams’ family, together with the Du Fossés, visit a convent in Rouen (1790: 116). In

his study on literature and Friendship, Mangano explains that “The language of friendship

saturated nearly every sphere of eighteenth-century life” (2017: 8), while it was frequently

exalted in epistolary literature (2017: 4). The most influential authors and thinkers of the

century frequently participated in this cult of friendship, such as Samuel Johnson, who

famously said that: “Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship” (1824

[1758]: 88). Williams insists on the fact that the intense affection between her and the Du

Fossés allows her to reinforce the emotional response of the reader. First of all, she

appeals to the feeling of sympathy of the reader: “You, my dear friend, who have felt the

tender attachments of love and friendship, [...] who understand the value at which tidings

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from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart, [...] You can judge of the

feelings of Mons. Du Fossé” (1790: 163). As explained in 1.3., the eighteenth-century

trend of sensibility emphasized emotional bonds based on sympathy to achieve a common

goal. Williams aims at her readership supporting Du Fossé’s cause, and this is achieved

through building a sympathetic reaction from her readership. Using the line of argument

characteristic of the literature of sensibility, Williams equates being able to forge

friendships with caring for others beyond self-interest. Following this logic, if the reader

has been able to connect emotionally with people outside the family, they should be able

to connect with the Du Fossés. Williams also appeals to friendship to justify her political

stance. “I am glad you think that a friend’s having been persecuted, imprisoned, maimed,

and almost murdered under the ancient government of France, is a good excuse for loving

the revolution” (1790: 95). As I have explained at the beginning of this chapter, Williams,

influenced by theories on moral sentiments, presents her support of the French Revolution

as arising from her empathy towards the French people. The private feelings of friendship

blend with a public cause, as Williams herself explicitly mentions: “I must acknowledge,

that, in my admiration of the revolution in France, I blend the feelings of private

friendship with my sympathy in public blessings” (1790: 71). The story of Williams’

friends shows how public affairs have a direct impact on the private sphere of the family.

While disclosing social and political problems, the story of the Du Fossés, with

its happy ending, resembles a typical love plot. In Williams’ words: “Has it not the air of

a romance? and are you not glad that the denouement is happy? - Does not the Baron die

exactly in the right place; at the very page one would choose?” (1790: 193). Williams’

readers, used to attending plays at the theatre, or accustomed to the novels of sensibility

that were so fashionable at the time, would have probably associated the narrative of the

Du Fossés with a traditional romance, but Williams makes sure that the readership reaches

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this conclusion by mentioning it explicitly. Lynn Hunt, when analysing the political

discourse of the French Revolution, determines that most rhetoric during its early stages

was unintentionally constructed in the form of comedy. Hunt follows Northrop Frye’s

definition of comedy: “The simplest form of comic structure is the one in which a young

man wishes to marry a young woman, with the sympathy of the audience, but is prevented

from doing so by some sinister or absurd social situation” (1965: 2). Specifically, in the

case of the early period of the French Revolution, the conflict typically confronts a father

and his son: “Comedy turns on a conflict between an older social order [...] and a new

one, and this conflict is often represented as one dividing a son who wants freedom from

his more arbitrary and conventional father” (1986: 34). The content, the plot, and

terminology of the story show a connection to the prevailing political discourses of the

French Revolution.

2.5. Letters from France; Containing a Great Variety of Original Information (1792-

1793)

Williams’ stay in Britain after the Summer of 1790 lasted less than a year. In July 1791,

she set for France with the intention of spending the next two years there, as she made

clear with the publication of the poem A Farewell for Two Years, England (1791).

However, despite a short stay of three months in June 1792, Williams spent the rest of

her life in the continent. In Farewell, Williams reinforces her commitment to the French

Revolution while showing awareness that the attitudes towards the political situation in

France were increasingly hostile in Britain. Williams’ adherence to the French Revolution

is for her a commitment to the improvement of humanity as a whole, not exclusively the

French people. She had insisted in Letters that her support for the Revolution in France

arises from a strong sense of sympathy, which she presents as a pure and innocent feeling.

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The attacks on the British supporters of the Revolution, such as herself, is for Williams

the result of lack of understanding: “those narrow souls [...] who meanly think that

sympathy is a crime” (1791: 7). Her support for the Revolution does not mean for her the

loss of patriotic feelings towards her native country, and she emphasizes her patriotic

enthusiasm with the following lines: “my heart to thee [Albion] shall spring,/To thee its

first, its best affections bring” (1791: 6). Williams shows in this manner that supporting

the French cause is not a betrayal of British morals and values. In fact, she sees that her

country people have forgotten their recent story, and laments that a country that has

already fought for freedom in The Glorious Revolution (1688), would condemn the

events across the channel: “Shall her [Albion’s] sons, in this enlighten’d age, assume the

bigot-frown of papal rage nor tolerate the vow to Freedom paid, if diff’ring from the ritual

they made?” (1791: 7). Here, Williams places at the same level the counterrevolutionaries

in Britain and the supporters of the ancien régime. In France, the counter-revolutionary

movement did not only mean adherence to the monarchical institution, but also the

support for the former state of affairs and the privileges held by the clergy. Williams

implies that Britons, due to their lack of awareness of the revolution in France, were siding

unknowingly with the Catholic church, disregarded in Britain after the Restoration as an

oppressive system and attacked during the Enlightenment as being superstitious.

2.6. The Golden Age of the Revolution is Gone

The volumes published after Williams travelled to France in 1791, mark a change in her

point of view regarding French politics, since she is no longer a casual traveller but,

rather, she becomes a resident in France. The political situation had also dramatically

changed since her first visit. In Letters (1790), Williams presents herself as committed to

the Revolutionary cause in a broad sense. After 1791, Williams begins to take sides on

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the disputes held between the different revolutionary parties. Williams starts to present

herself as a supporter of the Gironde, known for being more moderate in comparison to

the opposing party, the Jacobins. The political divisions were complex and more nuanced,

and the dichotomy Girondin/Jacobin is seen today as simplistic. However, as I shall show,

Williams fully embraces this distinction. From, the second volume of Letters onwards,

she aligns herself explicitly with the Girondins, and thus situates her ideology within the

then-current French historical context and intellectual climate, since in Britain the debate

was principally divided between the supporters of the revolution and its detractors, the

Anti-Jacobins, as explained on 1.1. As she is no longer a traveller, she does not see the

conflict from a British perspective anymore. Williams always believed in the revolution

as a necessary stage to obtain freedom and social equality, however, this does not restrain

her from being critical of those who, according to her, betray the revolutionary ideals.

The sphere of influence of the Jacobin party began to increase in 1791, and the

election of Mirabeau, a member of the Jacobin party, to preside over the French

Assembly, was a clear example of this. However, her criticism is not directed to

Mirabeau, who Williams had explicitly admired in the first volume, but to Robespierre.

Besides, within the Jacobins themselves the tensions were noticeable: “Mirabeau, as

president, once dared to call Robespierre to order for talking against a decree already

passed by the National Assembly” (Brinton, 2011 [1930]:117). In 1792, the Girondins

continued to lose their influence. The events of the year 1792, such as the insurrection of

the 10th of August or the September Massacres, made evident that the Revolution was

taking an increasingly radical turn. Letters from France: Containing A Great Variety of

Interesting and Original Information Concerning the Most Important Events that Have

Lately Occurred in that Country was published in 1793 and narrates the events of the

previous year. The first letter opens with the Insurrection of the 10th of August, when

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armed supporters of the revolution attacked the Royal Family at the Tuileries Palace,

resulting in a fight between the protesters and the Swiss Guard, who protected the king.

Six weeks later, on the 21st of September, the National Convention declared the Republic.

The episode that concerns Williams the most throughout the volume published in

1792 is the September Massacres. Compared to the insurrection, the massacres are “a

conflict far more terrible: a conflict between freedom and anarchy, knowledge and

ignorance, virtue and vice” (1793:3). She divides the actors of the Revolution between

two separate categories “the real patriots” (1793: 3), those who defended the Revolution

in its early days, and “a set of men” (1793: 3), referring to the Commune Provisoire de

Paris. During the summer of 1792, the Paris Commune, in charge of the Government of

the city of Paris, refused to comply with the orders of the Legislative Assembly, the

primary organism of political power at that stage of the Revolution. Adding to this, on

September 2nd, members of the Paris Commune encouraged the killing of more than one

thousand prisoners held in Parisian prisons. To this day, the name of the revolutionary

leader behind the orders for the executions is still uncertain, as well as the identity of the

executioners. When referring to the events of early September, Williams goes as far as

proclaiming that: “Never in the annals of tyranny have we heard of power more

shamefully abused” (1793: 3). Williams renders the Jacobins as a more tyrannical power

that the absolutist monarchy the French people had revolted against back in 1789. The

argument that Williams introduces here, is sustained throughout the rest of her writing

career, especially in Letters Containing a Sketch (1795), as I will elaborate on in Chapter

3 of this thesis.

In her emphasis on distinguishing the essence of the early Revolutionary

movement from the atmosphere of 1792, Williams presents the leaders of 1792 as

desecrating the revolutionary symbols: “They have beheld the inhuman judges of that

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night [Second of September 1792] wearing the municipal scarf which their polluting

touch profaned” (1793: 4). She had supported the revolution before the British public, but

Williams disassociates her early revolutionary creed from the actions of the Paris

Commune led by Danton, Hébert, Desmoullins and, especially, Robespierre. The Jacobin

leader is presented as a dictator and the greatest enemy of the revolution:

At the head of this band of conspirators is Robespierre [...] fanatical and exaggerated
imprudence in his avowed principles of liberty, possessing that species of eloquence which
gives him power over the passions, and that cool determined temper which regulates the most
ferocious designs with the most calm and temperate. His crimes do not appear to be the result
of passion, but of some deep and extraordinary malignity, and he seems formed to subvert
and to destroy (1793: 7).

From the first pages of the book, she repudiates a leader that she portrays as fanatical and

manipulative. Furthermore, it is his lack of feelings that makes him a dangerous figure

inasmuch as in Williams’ ‘active sensibility’, emotions are necessary to attain a just

revolution. Williams connects feelings with positive qualities and their absence acquires

negative connotations.

While Robespierre appears as a horrific villain, those who support them are, in

Williams’ words, “conspirators”. Williams describes the leaders of the commune as

plotting the massacres while hiding their true intentions from the National Legislative

Assembly. Some of the more moderate leaders, such as Condorcet, Brissot or Veginaud,

were still members of the Assembly in September 1792. By presenting the massacres as

a plot by the radical faction, Williams renders the moderates innocent: “they [the

conspirators] contrived to make the Assembly itself ignorantly acquiesce in their

diabolical projects” (1793: 11). In this manner, Williams minimizes the responsibility of

the Assembly, which she still firmly defended. Between pages 14 and 17, Williams

reproduces some excerpts of the accusation against Maximilien Robespierre, in which

moderate politician Louvet de Couvray, accuses Robespierre of the massacres. The

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accusation was printed by the National Convention, and Williams translated some of its

parts, thus making the document available to the British readership.

After studying revolutionary rhetoric, Lynn Hunt has demonstrated that there was

an obsession with conspiracy in the French Revolution (1986: 39). Rousseau had insisted

on the relevance of authenticity, see 1.3.1., and, simultaneously, the public imagination

associated obscure politics and conspiracy to the absolutist monarchy of the ancien

régime. Hence, the revolutionaries in power tended to accuse other revolutionary factions

of obscurantism in order to secure that power. In François Furet’s words:

Obsession with conspiracy thus became a discourse common to all, to be held on either
side of power. Those who were excluded from it used the discourse to conquer power.
Those who held power used it to warn the people of the constant and formidable threat
posed by that other and less fragile power. So the Revolution eventually had to face a
cynical version of the aristocratic plot in which those who wielded power might call for
the unmasking of a conspiracy only in order to reinforce their own position. (1981: 55-
56)

The unified nation that Williams had rendered in 1790 becomes after 1791 the arena of

factional politics in which ones accused the others of betraying the original revolutionary

spirit.

Williams is aware of the fact that the events of 1792 would tarnish the reputation

of the cause in France: “Surrounding nations, who might perhaps have been animated by

the example of a country which has served as a model to the rest of Europe, have heard

of the Second of September, and have shrunk back into the topor of slavery” (1793: 4).

Williams believed, as it had been already demonstrated, in the Revolution as a universal

cause. Absolutist monarchies were still common in Europe in 1792, exemplified by

Prussia, Spain, Russia or Sweden. In her enthusiasm for the cause, Williams hoped that

these countries would sooner or later follow the events in France. She thus concludes that

the spirit of the events of 1792 is in fact detrimental for the universal cause. At the same

time, as it has been explained with the Fête de la Fédération, she admired the feelings of

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fraternity and collaboration that she had witnessed in 1790. She now observes how the

factions and divisions between the political actors are confronting the revolutionaries,

who have deviated from the original common cause, which was the destruction of the

ancien régime. She laments the increasingly confrontational atmosphere: “What is

become of the transport which beat high in every bosom, when an assembled million of

the human race vowed on the altar of their country, in the name of the repressed nation,

inviolable fraternity an union - an eternal federation! This was indeed the Golden Age of

the Revolution” (1793: 6). She describes the earlier days of the Revolution described in

Letters Written in France as a Golden Age that is no more. However, she still keeps hope

and believes that the early spirit can be retrieved: “Those disorders which may for awhile

convulse the infant republic, will cease with the lives of their perpetrators, who can

assassinate individuals, but cannot assassinate opinions, which appear to be widely

diffused” (1793: 17-18). Williams maintains that the ideals she had herself ascribed to in

1790 are still held by the majority, and the responsibilities of the massacres form just a

small number of the supporters of the French Revolution. The state in which the recently

proclaimed republic finds itself is just temporary, which justifies, despite the violent

crimes committed in the name of the Revolution, that she continues to support the

Revolution.

2. 7. British Spectator of the Events in France

Scholars such as Blakemore and Leblanc have argued that Williams presents the events

as a spectacle, a mere theatrical representation which diminishes her point of view as

lacking accuracy. The term spectacle was well extended to refer to the events in France,

as exemplified by the following excerpt from Edmund Burke’s correspondence: “As to

us here our thoughts of everything at home are suspended, by our astonishment at the

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wonderful Spectacle which is exhibited in a Neighbouring and rival Country –what

Spectators, and what actors!” ([1789] 2013, 377). However, for Williams, the fact that

she is able to see with her own eyes what is going on in the neighbouring country,

validates her account. She has already expressed this idea in Letters (1790): “one must

have been present, to form any judgment of a scene” (1790: 5). As opposed to Burke,

Macaulay or Wollstonecraft (see 1.1.), Williams was describing the Revolution onsite.

Wollstonecraft would travel to France later on, in 1792, for a short visit, but her

Vindication of the Rights of Men was written before she travelled to the continent.

Williams takes advantage of her unique perspective and uses this argument to confer

authority to her texts: “While you observe from a distance the great drama which is acting

in France, I am a spectator of the representation-. I am placed near enough the scene to

discern every look and every gesture of the actors, and every passion excited in the minds

of the audience” (1793: 2). This ‘you’ also applies to the readership, who is British, and

thus Williams secures her position as an informed author on revolutionary matters. She

emphasizes that she has experienced the events first-hand and she can provide a truthful

testimony of the real situation.

The position of the ‘spectator’ here implies an enlightened emphasis on

observation. In the British context, for instance, the Earl of Shaftesbury uses the term

‘spectator’ in a similar manner. When he describes how our minds identify virtue in other

people’s character he writes that “The mind, [...] is spectator or Auditor of other minds”

(1714: 29). Appropriately, this philosopher’s employment of ‘spectator’ in this example

serves him to emphasize in which ways detailed observation is the basic element of his

thought process. This term was even chosen by Addison and Steele for their daily

publication, The Spectator. In 1744, British author Elizabeth Haywood founded The

Female Spectator (1744-46). “Like the original Spectator of Addison and Steele,

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Haywood’s periodical and conduct books of this period mingle abstract advice with short

narratives designed to illustrate the advice; the narratives are usually said to be true

stories, sometimes of events directly witnessed by the writer” (Staves, 2006: 246).

Williams’ insistence on observation follows the journalistic tradition of her time, and she

extends it to her role of British correspondent of the Revolution in France.

Another aspect that differentiates the volumes published after Williams’ second

trip to Paris from Letters Written in France, is the attention that Williams pays to

footnotes and appendixes. Although footnotes are already in use in the 1790 text, these

are usually employed to translate a French sentence into English or to make a French

concept understandable to a British readership. In contrast, in the later volumes, footnotes

tend to be employed to refer to her sources. Other women writers of the period had already

extensively quoted her sources, such as the French author Louise-Félicité de Kéralio-

Robert. Carla Hesse explains that, in her History of Elizabeth, Queen of England (1786),

Kéralio-Robert is aware of the preconceived ideas considering women writers of history

as not being reliable enough (2001: 88). In British Women Writers and the Writing of

History, 1670-1820, Devoney Looser writes that despite their valuable impact on

historical discourse: “What women had to face that men did not, of course, was the

“problem” of their sex, assigned by a culture that usually did not imagine for them an

equivalent place in history or in history writing” (2000: 27). In order to avoid these

accusations, footnotes abound in Kéralio-Robert’s History, as well as the publication of

a Fifth Volume dedicated entirely to reproduce documents she has consulted and quoted.

In a similar manner, Williams includes appendixes at the end of each volume. For

instance, she includes the correspondence between Dumorier and General Miranda,

Williams’ friend, regarding the campaigns of the war in 1792. Being a woman, Williams

was denied access to military matters, but she gains knowledge of them through her

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friendships. Being close to the actors involved in the Revolution gives her access to

information that she would have been otherwise deprived of, which allows her to present

herself as an informed writer and witness of historical developments just unfolding.

The multi-authored aspect of the volume also makes it original when compared to

the first. Culley comments on this aspect of Williams’ work, observing that: “Her letters

therefore accrue new layers of relational exchange and reinforce her earlier experiments

with collaborative authorship” (2014: 165). Letters 2,3,4,5,6 and 12 deal with military

matters and are not written by Williams. Williams justifies these letters as being penned

by authors who have “the best information on the subject that France could afford” (1993:

advertisement). The authors of these letters, however, are not explicitly identified. The

review of Williams’ Letters on The Analytical Review (1793) considers that “all the

letters, except those respecting the campaign of 1792, which are said to have been written

by Mr. Stone, and the concluding one, which is attributed to Mr. Christie, are from the

elegant penn of Miss Williams” (127). Mary A. Favret (1993: 81) and Deborah Kennedy

(2002: 98) sustain that these letters are authored by John Stone and Thomas Christie.

Stone would have been present in the military campaigns as a gun-runner (Favret, 1993:

232), while Christie was one the founders of the Analytical Review. It is thus significant

that the Analytical Review in particular identifies Christie’s hand in the letter. Christie

belonged to the group of British authors who sided with the revolutionaries in France.

Similarly to Williams, Christie had travelled to France in 1790 and subsequently

published his two volumes of Letters on the Revolution in France in 1791. The difference

between Christie’s Letters and Williams’ Letters (1790) is noticeable. Christie employs a

less casual tone, and his book is not organized according to the trip’s itinerary and

chronology, as Williams’ is. Christie organizes his text responding to the different points

he aims at proving, for instance, Letter I is a direct criticism of Burke, and Letter IV is

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dedicated to “the Territorial Division of the Kingdom, Administrative Assemblies, and

National Assembly”.

2.8. Conclusions for This Chapter

This chapter has explored Letters Written in France (1790) and Letters from France;

Containing a Great Variety of Original Information Concerning the Most Important

Events that Have Lately Occurred in that Country (1792). Both texts were written during

the early years of the French Revolutionary project, in which the moderate parties, that

share Williams’ ideology, dominated the political arena. In the first volume, with the Fête

de la Fédération, Williams identifies herself with the values and beliefs celebrated at the

festival. Green observes that “rather than giving a political analysis of the frightful events

she relates, Williams falls back on poetic justice” (2014: 202). However, through her

description of the Federation, she offers an analysis of the changes experienced by the

French citizens after the Revolution by praising the erasure of distinctions of rank and the

feeling of fraternity. The spirit of fraternity especially moves Williams as she sees the

French people move together towards a common cause, the overthrow of the absolutist

monarchy. She describes her meetings with renowned intellectual French figures, as in

the case of Madame de Genlis, that Williams’ quotes, in order to show the reader that

both she and Genlis shared their views on the Revolution. Even though Leblanc considers

that Williams’ Letters (1790) “often strike readers as lacking serious critical perspective”

(2016: 26), my analysis has shown that she engages in the political discussions of the

time. Through her conversation with Madame de Genlis, Williams provides a

condemnation of hereditary rights, as well as a defence of the necessity of giving the royal

family a Revolutionary education. As the Revolution advances, the Girondin start to lose

political force, and Williams describes de Jacobins as responsible for the violence.

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Williams divides the political actors in two groups. On the one hand, there are the

moderates, which she considers to be the only true revolutionaries as they represent the

values of the political climate at the Fête de la Fédération. For her rejection of the

opposing party, the Jacobins, Williams draws from the rhetoric of the French Revolution

by alluding to accusations of tyranny and conspiracy. Together with her denouncement

of the ‘Lettres de Cachet’, Williams also aligns her political argumentation to that of

relevant revolutionary figures, such as Mirabeau.

The Story of the Du Fossés also coincides with the rhetoric of the French

Revolution. As is characteristic of the optimism of the early phases of the Revolution,

Williams embeds in her observations of France the story of her friends, the Du Fossés.

Duckling (2010:82) has identified that the structure of the story of the Du Fossés

coincides with sentimental novels. This study has connected their story with the

prevailing structure of the political discourses at the time. As explained by Hunt, the

political rhetoric at the National Assembly offered a comedic structure (1984: 34), that is

also found in the story of the Du Fossés. The comedic plot revolves around a couple who

are not allowed to be together due to external forces, but they finally overcome the

barriers to achieve a happy ending. In the case of the Du Fossés, the couple must come

apart due to a ‘Lettre de Cachet, but, thanks to the Revolution, they are able to reunite,

and thus the family embody the political situation of their country, liberated with the fall

of the oppressive ancien régime. In this manner, Williams shows that the political

atmosphere has a huge impact on people’s private life, and thus intermingles the public

and private spheres. In order to obtain the support of her readership, Williams chimes

with the eighteenth-century moral philosophical theories based on sympathy. She follows

the logic of the theories of sensibility throughout both Letters Written in France (1790)

and Letters from France (1792).

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 This chapter has also examined Williams’ position as an eyewitness of the events

in France. Franklin (2005: 552) and Duckling have (2010: 79) interpreted the witness

stance as a literary strategy to distance herself from the events in order to appear more

feminine and thus, more acceptable. However, this study considers that the significance

that Williams gives to her role as an observer, situates her in a tradition of empirical

thinking, dominant during the Enlightenment. During the eighteenth century, the

observer, or spectator, was a conventional figure in the journalistic discourse. The fact

that she has visited France during the Revolution, something that most of her

contemporary British authors have not, provides strength and credibility to her account.

At the same time, she obtains from experience the arguments that contradict the extended

misconception in Williams’ native island regarding the Revolution in France.

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 Chapter 3

‘The experience of a year of revolutionary government is equivalent to that of fifty

years of ordinary life’: The Reign of Terror and Letters Containing A Sketch.

Letters Containing A Sketch of the Politics in France, from the Thirty-First of May 1793,

till the Twenty-Eight of July, 1794 (1795) deals with a crucial moment in the history of

the French Revolution, The Reign of Terror. Historians have established the duration of

the Reign of Terror between September 5, 1793, when Bertrand Barère, a member of the

Committee of Public Safety, famously declared that “terror would be the order of the day”

and July 28, 1794, marking the execution of Robespierre. It nearly coincides with the

dates of Williams’ Letters Containing a Sketch. The Terror is characterized by the

execution and mass incarceration of French citizens on account of being ‘counter-

revolutionary’, as I shall later elaborate on. At the same time, besides the French

Revolutionary Wars, there was a civil war in the French department of La Vendée.

Sympathizers of the monarchical government and defenders of Catholicism, took up arms

and formed the Catholic and Royal Army, confronting the Republican Army. Historians

choose to mark the 5th of September as the beginning of the Reign of Terror, with the

mass incarceration of people without trial. Williams was herself affected by the ‘Law of

Suspects’, but she chose to start her account of the Terror with the Insurrection of 31st

May, that definitely marked the fall of the moderate party from the Revolutionary

Government. Interestingly, after her third volume, the second part of the title changes and

the third volume is published as Letters Containing A Sketch of the Politics in France

from the Various Scenes which Passed in Various Departments of France During the

Tyranny of Robespierre (1795). The title explicitly alludes to Robespierre as the main

responsible leader for the Terror. Williams had already presented him as a villain in her

Letters from France (1793), and she continues to do so in Letters Containing A Sketch.

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The twenty-eight of July 1794, the closing date in the series, marks the arrest and

execution of Robespierre.

As a firm defender of the Girondins, the Insurrection of the 31st of May meant the

beginning of a new era in Revolutionary politics for Williams. By that time, the Republic

was experiencing a strong economic crisis, the enormous debts incurred by the Bourbon

administration –the original reason behind the calling of the States General in 1789- were

added to the enormous cost of the Revolutionary Wars, which was increasing since the

French Coalition was defeating the Revolutionary Army in 1793. The inflation stemming

from the economic crisis, resulted in the exorbitant inflation. After four years, the general

feeling was that the revolution had not improved the living conditions of the French.

Hébert, a Jacobin and Montagnard, explicitly blamed the Girondin party (Slavin, 1999:

141), which still held a majority at the National Convention. On the 31st of May,

representatives of different Paris sections and sympathisers of the more radical factions,

declared that Paris was in insurrection against the Girondins (Slavin, 1999: 146). This

action was followed by an attack on the Tuileries. On the 2nd of June, 6000 armed

insurgents entered the convention and forced the suspension of Girondin politicians. The

ceased politicians were tried together on the 24th of October 1793. As a supporter of the

Girondins, Williams saw the events in May as the end of an era in French Politics. As it

has been explained in the previous chapter, even after the September massacres, Williams

was still optimistic and believed that the spirit of the early years of the Revolution would

soon be restored. As we shall see, Williams takes on a more pessimistic stance in Letters

Containing a Sketch and emphasizes the Girondins as the martyrs of the Revolution. The

law of suspects put Williams in jail between October and November 1793, where she

shared the experience of imprisonment with the Girondins, and, as a result, she became

part of the repressed community.

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3.1. “A silence like that of death”: Writing the Terror in Retrospect

The first volume of Letters Containing A Sketch (1795) opens in a dramatic manner,

already pointing to the unfortunate situations that Williams will narrate throughout the

nine letters that follow. Following a lapse of two years, Williams resumes the

correspondence: “After so long a suspension of our correspondence, after a silence like

that of death” (1795, vol. I: 2). Williams’ last volume of Letters from France was

published in 1793, the same year that she was imprisoned under the ‘law of suspects.’ In

1794, the year after her incarceration, she travelled to Switzerland escaping the political

uncertainty of France, as I will develop on Chapter 4, and in fact, Williams located the

writing of Letter I in Switzerland, September 1794. The distance between the first set of

letters and the second does not only result from the chronological separation, it also draws

attention to the life-changing experiences undergone by the author. The first volume deals

mainly with Williams’ incarceration, which she writes in retrospective since the letters

are dated afterwards. During the lapse of two years, from 1793 to 1795, several of her

friends, such as Madame Roland or Lasource, were executed. At the same time, during

her time in prison, her life was at the hands of the Committee of Public Safety. Naturally,

Williams’ experience is fraught with uncertainty, as she was aware of the fact that she

could be sent to execution. For that reason, resuming the correspondence bestows the

letter with “life-giving power” (1993: 90), to use Mary A. Favret’s expression. Being able

to write and receive letters again is, for Williams, a symbol of her recently acquired

freedom and a reminder that she has survived the Reign of Terror.

In her preface to her translation of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul and Virginia

(1795), Williams explains the reasons behind the two-year period of silence. As indicated

by David Singler, Williams’ “translation of Bernardin’s novella was, during her lifetime,

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her most popular and well-regarded work. It was the most successful of some twenty

translations of Paul et Virginie” (2012: 575). Paul and Virginia was published in the same

year as Letters Containing A Sketch, and Williams explains in the preface that, during her

time behind bars, she set herself the task of working a few hours a day on the translation.

The preface offers a denunciation of the situation endured by authors during the Terror.

In her translations, Williams does not limit herself to reproduce the story of the original

text, but she includes political information in order to spread her opinion. Here, Williams

refers to the Reign of Terror again as the “the tyranny of Robespierre” (iii), pointing to

‘the Incorruptible’ as the main political actor of the period. The most obvious outcome of

Williams’ persecution is her time in prison. However, she tells the reader that she had

endured domiciliary searches:

Amidst the minute vexations of Jacobonical despotism, which, while it murdered in mass,
persecuted in detail, the resources of writing, and even reading, were encompassed with
danger. The researches of domiciliary visits had already compelled me to commit to the
flames a manuscript volume, where I had traced the political scenes of which I had been
a witness (1795: iv).

According to this anecdote, Williams had already produced a volume of Letters

Containing A Sketch, that she had to sacrifice to escape arrest, imprisonment, and

potentially death in the guillotine. Siding with the Girondin party was a strong enough

reason at that stage of the Revolution to be sent to death. Besides, her attacks against the

most radical parties of the political entourage could have been interpreted as ‘counter-

revolution’. Williams was aware of the fact that, due to the circumstances, writing had

become for her a political act. This idea transpires when she recounts about some of her

writings being seized by the authorities: “some [sonnets] are indeed lost [...] having been

sent to the Municipality of Paris, in order to be examined as English papers; where they

still remain, mingled with revolutionary placards, motions and harangues” (1795: vii-

viii). The other types of texts mentioned by Williams, placards, motions and harangues,

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are clearly connected to the sphere of political activism. Placards and harangues spread

political ideas among the people, while the harangues are directed to political actors, and

the ways that the authorities treat literature is not different from other forms of political

texts. Even though Williams writes her account of the Terror in retrospect, she still

emphasizes her role as an eyewitness and her reliance on observation: “If the pictures I

send you of those extraordinary events be not well drawn, it is at least marked with the

characters of truth, since I have been the witness of the scenes I describe, and have known

personally all the principal actors” (1795, vol. I: 2). As explained in 2.7., her status as a

British woman living in Paris confers reliability to Williams’ account. As many of the

authors involved in the debate surrounding the French Revolution in Britain - see 1.1.-

did not stay in France for long, the fact that she is witnessing the event makes her

chronicles unique. Williams’ reputation as a political writer, together with the situation

in which she found herself when translating Bernardin’s texts embroils Williams’

translation in the politics of the moment. Besides, it also anticipates the political situation

of the near future, since during the Napoleonic wars France and Britain disputed the

colony of Mauritius, or Île de France, where Bernardin’s story is set (2012: 577). Williams

chooses the name Mauritius for her translation, even though Bernardin had chosen the

name Île de France, something that Singler interprets as Williams “accomplishing at the

literal level what the British government would achieve in actual fact some twenty years

later” (2012: 576). However, this study shows that Williams explicitly decides to make

her translation political through her preface, in which she demonstrates has not been a

mere passive spectator of what was going on in France, but she has also personally

suffered the consequences of the political turmoil.

Taking into account all the volumes of Letters, Williams is never more entangled

in the political turmoil as she is during her arrest and time served in prison. Despite her

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continuous and explicit support for the Girondin party, whose members were largely

imprisoned while Williams spends time in jail, this is not the reason behind Williams’

arrest. As it has been mentioned earlier, ‘The Law of Suspects’, issued on the 17th of

September 1793, makes Williams one of the seven thousand people that entered Parisian

prisons between the years 1793-94 (Olivier, 1981: xiii). The Law allowed for the

imprisonment of people without trial just on the grounds of being suspicious of counter-

revolution. The term ‘counterrevolutionary’ was not only used to refer to the royalists,

who wanted to restore the Bourbon monarchy, but it was also applied to those who wanted

to overthrow the ancien régime and believed in a moderate stance that separated their

views from those of the Committee of Public Safety. One could be imprisoned because

of their friendships and family ties with a political dissident, or because someone had

accused them of saying, writing or acting in a counter-revolutionary way. The relatives

of émigrés, people that had migrated outside France, were sent to jail. Interestingly, those

who had done the opposite, that is to say, migrated to France, were considered suspects

under the law as well. This is the case of Helen Maria Williams and her family. As a result

of the broad definition for suspect, they became “the bulk of the prison population”

(Olivier, 1981: xii). According to Olivier, “This new law laid down a very wide definition

of suspects that made it possible to reach all the enemies of the Revolution with the utmost

ease” (1981: xii). As explained on 2.6., however, Williams claims that she is not an enemy

of the revolution, but its friend, and subverts the rhetoric employed by the political power

on the Terror by rendering the Jacobins responsible for the downfall of the Revolution in

France. Williams, having positioned herself against any form of abusive power,

condemns the ‘Law of Suspects’: “This impolitic and savage decree, in open violation to

the rights of nations [...] was put into execution, and though it met with universal

reprobation, yet as terror was the order of the day, no one felt sufficiently bold to demand

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its repeal” (1795, vol. I: 149). Williams explains that the public opinion generally

disapproves of the ‘law of suspects’, but the government has taken such a violent turn

that people fear voicing their disagreement. Here is another instance of the leaders of the

terrors as even more repressive and arbitrary than the absolute monarchy, since they have

silenced people’s opinion by force of fear.

The abusive power exercised by the government is also noticeable in the constant

atmosphere of tension and anxiety that Williams describes. Before being arrested, one of

Williams’ friends, who remains anonymous in the narrative, brings her the news

regarding the passing of the new law: “a friend, who rushed into the room, [...] with great

agitation told us that a decree had just passed” (1795, vol. I: 6). Both the news, and the

way in which her friend communicates them, add to the anxious mood of Letter I. The

news perturbs Williams and her family who “passed the night without sleep, and the

following day in anxiety and perturbation not to be described” (1795, vol. I: 6). The

tension continues to build up during the following day, until they start to believe that they

are not going to be imprisoned after all. Even though Williams fits into the category of

suspects, the arbitrariness of the authorities becomes evident one more time. Williams

and her family do not receive any notification, and no legal procedure is followed, for

that reason, their arrest depends on the caprice of the administration. Instead of arresting

her in broad daylight, she is arrested in the middle of the night, showing that the detention

is conducted in secrecy and obscurity, which goes against the transparency that a

democratic government should strive for: “At two in the morning were awakened by a

loud knocking at the gate of the hotel, which we well knew to be a fatal sign of our

approaching captivity” (1795, vol. I: 7). From that moment on, Williams spent the months

of October and November incarcerated, first in the prison of Luxembourg and later on in

the Anglaises, former convent of English Conceptionists or ‘blue nuns’.

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3.2. The Prison Community

Williams is arrested by two commissionaires of the revolutionary committee of her

section. After 1790, Paris was divided in 48 sections –or districts– and each had its own

civil and revolutionary committee. While the civil committee dealt as mediators between

the neighbours and the Commune, the revolutionary committee was dedicated to

surveilling foreigners. Before going to prison Williams is taken to the committee-room,

where, among all the detainees, the only women there are Williams and her family.

However, they are the only ones taken to the Luxembourg prison, while the rest of

prisoners are sent to the Madeleines: “We discovered afterwards that this was owing to

the humanity of the commissionaires who arrested us” (1795, vol. I: 10) since in “the

Luxembourg, [...] we should find good accommodations, while at the Madelonette’s

scarcely a bed could be procured” (1795, vol. I: 10-11). The Luxembourg, according to

Olivier “was the pleasantest, perhaps the most comfortable of the ‘political prisons’”

(1981: 30), it had been a royal palace built in the 17th century, surrounded by gardens in

the French style. Inside the prison, the conditions were better than in other ‘maisons d’

arrêt’ and the rules less strict, owing to the benevolence of the prison keeper, Benoit.

Williams uses her gender as the only differentiating mark between her and the rest of the

prisoners, and she attributed the favourable treatment to being a woman: “our two

commissionaries behaved towards us as if they remembered that we were defenceless

women in a land of strangers” (1795, vol. I: 11). In 2.2, I explained how Williams had

access to the National Assembly because the guard favours them for being both foreigners

and women. Here is another example of how Williams deals with her situation in France,

to gain access to certain spaces that would have been otherwise denied to her.

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 In the Luxembourg, men and women were allowed to spend time together during

the day, and the prisoners killed time together by playing cards and also making music.

As a result, Williams found herself as part of a united prison community: “Our prison was

filled with a multitude of persons of different conditions, characters, opinions and

countries” (1795, vol. I: 18). This diversity, instead of separating the inmates, brings them

together in the true spirit of fraternité that characterised, for Williams, the early moments

of the Revolution (see 2.1.):

The system of equality, whatever opposition they met with in the world, was in full extent
practised in the prison. United by the strong claim of common calamity, the prisoners
considered themselves as bound to soften the general evil by mutual sacrifices; and
strangers meeting in such circumstances soon became friends. The poor lived not upon
the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table, but shared the comforts of the repast;
and here was found a community of the small stock of goods, which belonged to the
whole without the necessity of a requisition (1795, vol.I: 20).

Williams presents the prison as a place where the universal values of the French

Revolution, such as equality, solidarity and comradery, bring the community together.

This contrasts with the atmosphere of conspiracy, confrontation and uncertainty in the

Parisian streets which, as explained in the previous section 3.1. I agree with Amy Culley’s

analysis when she finds that in Williams’ autobiographical account “the prison is

imagined as a temporary community and a space invested with the social values lacking

outside its walls” (2014: 152). Contrary to the leading political discourse that justified the

mass incarcerations of citizens as being a threat to the Republic, Williams finds the prison

as one of the only repositories of the early revolutionary spirit.

“The strong claim of common calamity” was the spirit that united the community

of the Luxembourg during Williams’ time there, but his excluded those associated with

Robespierre and Jacobinism: “Whenever any new prisoners arrived, the rest crowded

among them, and hastened to calm their minds by the most soothing expressions of

sympathy. Not such were the emotions excited by the appearance of Maillard, who was

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one of the murdered on the second of September” (1795, vol. I: 33). Williams had blamed

Robespierre for the September Massacres, as explained on 2.6. According to Williams’

words, even though the jail population of the Luxembourg was diverse, they ideologically

rejected anyone associated with the Jacobins. In Williams’ account, prison becomes the

space for the Girondin resistance. Even though she was arrested due to her nationality,

her imprisonment allows her to become part of the Girondin community. Since the very

first moment she enters the Luxemburg, the recollection of the moderate politicians

permeates her account. Williams describes how after the Insurrection of the 31st, the

prison is devised to receive the political prisoners: “Our apartment, with several

adjoining, had soon after the event of the 31st of May been prepared for the imprisonment

of the deputies of the coté droit” (1795, vol. I: 15). She occupies the room that had been

allotted to Charles Éléonor Dufriche-Valazé, known as Valazé, who had been imprisoned

on the 2nd of June 1793 together with other Girondins (see 3). Valazé had become a

powerful symbol of the recent persecution of the Girondins, since, before being

condemned to death on the guillotine, he committed suicide in front of the Revolutionary

Tribunal. He had been tried with the other Girondins arrested on the 2nd of June, and he

had preferred to take his own life rather than dying in the hands of their persecutors.

Williams’ involvement with the imprisoned Girondin community is most evident

in the relationship that she forged with politicians Charles Alexis Pierre de Genlis Sillery

and Marc-David Alba Lasource “two members of the convention” (1795, vol. I: 40).

Sillery was Madame de Genlis’ husband. In Letters written in France (1790), Williams

had praised the political ideas of madame de Genlis, as discussed on 2.3. For his part, the

marquise de Sillery had been involved in the politics of the French Revolution from the

very beginning, as he had been a deputy of the Estates General in 1789. In 1793, he was

arrested with other Girondin deputies of the National Convention. Meanwhile, Lasource

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was the President of the Convention between April and May 1793. Williams specifies

that the political prisoners and her family had already bonded outside the walls of prison,

since they were “two persons in whose society we had passed some of the most agreeable

hours of our residence in France” (1795, vol. I: 40). Williams continues to develop this

idea when she compares her meetings with Lasource in jail with the ones outside.

Williams explains how Lasource frequented her home prior to her arrest: “After the day

had passed in the fatigue of public debates, he was glad to lay aside the tumult of politics

in the evening, for the conversation of some literary men whom he met occasionally at

our tea table” (1795, vol. I: 44). With these words, Williams shows that she had created

a space at her own home where she mingled with the most important literary and political

figures of the moment such as Lasource. On the one hand, this further reinforces her

position as an informed writer due to her viewpoint at the very core of the events. At the

same time, it highlights her involvement with the Girondins, since this shows her

participation in their social circles, which fashions her as a trusted and respected figure

among the Girondin politicians.

Williams was well aware of the fact that being a suspect on account of her

nationality was a smaller risk than being accused of her support of the Girondins. She

knows perfectly well that the meetings with Sillery and Lasource could cause her

execution: “the discovery of these visits would indeed have exposed us to the most fatal

consequences; but our sympathy prevailed over our fears” (1795, vol. I: 44). The word

sympathy here goes beyond the affections of friendship, and shows involvement with the

political cause. As explained in 2.1., Williams describes her involvement with the French

Revolution as a matter of sympathy. In this quotation from page 44, the author shows the

extent to which she is willing to put herself at risk with her involvement with the

Girondins. During the Terror, jail had become a place for the political resistance of the

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Girondins, in which Williams participates, for example when she describes how she talks

with Sillery in whispers, knowing that their political rivals are constantly controlling

them. Williams also transcribes in French and, later on translates into English, a religious

hymn composed by both Sillery and Lasource, that Natasha Duquette has analysed in her

study of dissenting cosmopolitanism and Williams’ prison verse. Duquette writes that

“Williams’s background as a religious Dissenter informed her willingness to secretly

meet with two political prisoners” (2020: 87). Lasource was a Huguenot, and Williams

firmly defended the freedom of the protestants in France as I will elaborate on in Chapter

5. Although Williams religious sentiments might have played a part in her relationship

with Sillery and Lasource, the fact that they were both Girondin leaders imprisoned after

the 31st of May, a cause that Williams had discussed at length in Letters Containing a

Sketch, also motivated their proximity in the Luxembourg.

Lasource and Sillery were two of the twenty-one deputies that had been expelled

from the national convention in early June. This was the first trial against members of the

Gironde since the 31st of May. Williams narrates how upon their arrival after the trial,

both of her friends “related to us what had passed” (1795, vol. I: 53). Through the

friendships reinforced in jail, Williams gains access to the testimony of the accusers in

one of the events that marked the course of the French Revolution. With the telling of the

anecdote, Williams renders her friends as martyrs for the cause of the French Revolution,

something that she will continue to develop through her Letters Containing a Sketch.

Despite the verdict of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which condemns the accused to death

on the guillotine: “Our friends returned from the tribunal with their minds much elevated.

Lasource described in his eloquent language the noble enthusiasm of liberty, the ardent

love of their country, the heroical contempt of death which animated his colleagues”

(1795, vol. I: 53). In this excerpt, Lasource and their colleagues meet the conditions to be

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considered martyrs. Following Janes and Hoen’s historical analysis of martyrdom and

terrorism (2014), they show in their chapter devoted to the French Revolution that martyrs

remain faithful to their beliefs, regardless of the consequences this might have, including

death, in the same manner as the early Christians did not recant their religion despite

persecution. Lasource, until the very last moment of his life, maintains his commitment

to the cause of their liberty and the improvement of the French nation. Besides, following

the precedent of the passion of Jesus Christ, martyrs are ready to accept death in an

exemplary and stoic manner. Janes and Hoen bring attention to the fact that, in order to

be considered a martyr, one had to suffer for their whole community, not just for

themselves (2014: 5). This is the case of the Gironde deputies here, who died for having

represented a political opinion shared by many outside the convention.

3.3. Madame Roland: Martyr of the Revolution

Throughout the volume, Williams continues to emphasize her friendship and connections

with Girondin martyrs. According to Kennedy, “of the many distinguished friends she

paid tribute to in her published works, none was more revered than Madame Roland”

(2002: 95). As I will explain in this section, Williams admires Roland, and she inscribes

her memory along with the Girondin martyrs of ‘The Reign of Terror’. Williams claimed

in 1795 that she and Roland had been acquainted for a long time (195). Three decades

later, in Souvenirs de la Révolution Française (1827) Williams writes that before the

Terror, they participated together in the political life of Paris: “I went with her to the

jacobin meetings many times, but I am not talking about the jacobins of Robespierre’s

race, but of the times when Brissot and Vergniaud climbed to their tribune” (1827: 73). 17

17
My translation of “Je fus plusieurs fois avec elle aux séances des jacobins, mon pas les jacobins de la
race de Robespierre, mais du temps où Brissot et Vergniaud montaient à leur tribune”.

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Williams’ Girondin friend set the example of the early days. At the same time, she

distances herself from Robespierre’s political ideas as much as possible. While Williams

presents Roland as a great friend, there is no mention of Williams in Roland’s memoirs.

Interestingly, Williams’ Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French

Republic (1801) was translated into French that same year by Sophie Grandchamp, who

is described by Siân Reynolds as “one of the Mme Roland’s few close female friends”

(2012: 151). Grandchamp was very close to the Roland couple, since she also worked as

an editor and proof-reader of Monsieur Roland’s texts (Reynolds, 2012: 159). In the

preface to her translation of Sketches, which consists of an open letter to Williams,

Grandchamp claims that it was her friendship with Williams that motivated her to pursue

her translation (1801: v).

As she had done with Lasource, Williams also admires the resilience shown by

Madame Roland. Williams celebrates her firmness during her trial: “When brought before

the revolutionary tribunal she presented the most heroical firmness, though she was

treated with such barbarity, and insulted by questions so injurious to her honour, that

sometimes tears of indignation started from her eyes” (1795, vol. I: 197). As shown on

1.3.1., self-control was the main characteristic of a virtuous heroine of sensibility. In

Walker’s words: “The concepts of virtue and self-sacrifice became intimately linked over

the course of the eighteenth century as novels of sensibility grew in popularity” (2001:

405). The identification with Roland and a heroine of sensibility is further reinforced by

the adjective ‘heroical’ paired with firmness, which refers to her self-restraint. Even

though Roland in this instance is constantly mistreated by her judges, she endures the

suffering. However, she allows her emotions to flow albeit maintaining her composure.

A heroine of sensibility is someone who feels intensely but manages in the end to exert

self-control over her emotions, and this is precisely what Roland does here. Her tears

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completely differentiate her attitude from the coldness and lack of feelings that Williams

had reproached the Jacobins (see 2.6.). Besides, the description of her trial consolidates

Williams’ dichotomy that constructs the Girondins as virtuous and the Jacobins as

villains/monsters. To further strengthen this dichotomy, Roland’s last words give further

evidence of Williams’ defence of the Girondin party as the true believers in the cause of

freedom. Right after perishing, she exclaims: “Ah Liberty! how hast thou been sported

with!” (1795, vol. I: 201). Her last words go to the cause of liberty she had strongly

defended since 1789, showing a strong commitment to it since the very last moment of

her life. Walker writes that “with those words, faithfully described by her friends, she

became a martyr passing into history and legend as a great heroine” (2001: 412). ‘Her

friends’ here refers to the Girondin supporters, and Williams contributes with her Letters

Containing a Sketch to consolidate the image of Roland as the heroine of the French

Revolution.

Roland’s attitude towards death enhances her virtuousness and further elevates

her to the status of a martyr: “her memory is embalmed in the minds of the wise and the

good, as one of the glorious martyrs who have sealed with their blood the liberties of her

country” (1795, vol. I: 199). Williams did not witness Roland’s execution because she

was imprisoned at the time. Nonetheless, Williams describes an anecdote that took place

that day to further prove the strength of mind of her friend. During the Terror, the

prisoners were sent to the guillotine in groups. In this situation, being the first one to be

executed was considered a privilege, since they could spare themselves of seeing the

others die while waiting their turn. On the 8th of November 1793, that privilege was

granted to Roland for being a woman. However, observing the fear and constraint

demonstrated by one of the prisoners, Roland yields her privilege to him. This contradicts

the stereotype of the time, that considered that due to women’s weaker nervous system,

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they were more prone to be impressionable. At the same time, this meant that they were

less capable than men to control their impulses, as explained in section 1.3.1. However,

in this anecdote it is Roland and not the condemned man in this anecdote who shows

control and courage. Williams goes to the extent to explicitly claim that, in front of the

guillotine, women show more courage than men:

Among the victims of the tyrants, the women had been peculiarly distinguished for their
admirable firmness in death. Perhaps this arose from the superior sensibility which
belongs to the female mind, and which made it feel that it was less terrible to die, than to
survive the objects of its tenderness. (1795, vol. I: 213)

Sensibility, associated mainly to women and weakness, is in this except the source of

courage and strength, traditionally male qualities.

According to Janes and Hoen, “it is important to understand the work of

martyrdom as being a collective effort” (2014: 4). Madame Roland herself inscribes her

death within the common sacrifice of the Gironde: “You think me worthy, then, of sharing

the fate of those great men you have assassinated. I will endeavour to go to the scaffold

with the courage they have displayed” (1795, vol. I: 199). Williams only reproduced the

words uttered by Roland, without analysing the implications of Roland’s statement. Even

though she is a woman, and hence she is being denied public participation in politics, she

is tried and executed as one of them. On the one hand, this brings attention to the injustice

that women face when denied political rights, as claimed by Olympe de Gouges in The

Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791) (see 1.3.2.). On the

other hand, it demonstrates that even though denied a place as a deputy in the Convention,

women negotiated the public sphere and managed to exert influence in political matters,

even if they claimed that they only participated in politics by showing support and

commitment to a cause. In her defence, published as Appendix III in the first volume

Letters Containing a Sketch, Roland claims to have never overstepped the boundaries of

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women’s property: “I have never overpassed the limits prescribed me by my sex” (1795,

vol. I: 283). In contrast, in her Memoirs, published in 1795, despite all the claims for

female property Madame Roland describes having written official letters which were

signed by her husband, and in this manner, she exerted influence over political affairs

(Thomas, 1989: 78).

Roland was executed on the 8th of November 1793, which coincides with the time

Williams was imprisoned. For that reason, she cannot offer a witness account of her

execution. However, Williams is able to paint a first-hand picture of Roland’s

incarceration. Roland was arrested in June, while Williams was not incarcerated until

October. Madame Roland was arrested on June 1st right after the Insurrection of the 31st

of May and taken to the Abbaye prison. After complaining to the authorities of the

irregularities surrounding her arrest and imprisonment, she was released to be detained

on the same day, this time following all the standard procedures (Thomas, 1989: 76). She

was then taken to Sainte Pélagie on the 25th of June, where Williams paid a visit: “I

visited her in the prison of St. Pélagie, where her soul, superior to circumstances, retained

its accustomed serenity [...] and I found her reading Plutarch” (1795: 196). The fact that

Roland is reading Plutarch is by no means a mere coincidence. First of all, as explained

by Mortimer N.S. Sellers, the eighteenth-century republican tradition looked at the

Romans as the models to follow: “American and French republicans thought of

themselves as part of a 2,000-year-old tradition originating in Rome” (2004: 248).

Although Plutarch wrote his most famous work, Plutarch’s Lives, after the fall of the

Roman republic, his work collects the biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and

many of them belong to the republican period. For instance, it includes the biographies

of Poplicola, involved in the overthrow of the monarchy, or Cicero, who defended the

republican model when it started to lose power. The aim of Plutarch’s book was to present

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heroic lives as models for virtue that the readership should follow. Finding Roland

reading Plutarch, inscribes her in the tradition of republicanism and, at the same time, the

stoic attitudes displayed in Lives. Plutarch was also associated by Rousseau to the

republican tradition. In the Confessions, Rousseau found in Plutarch the origin for his

political ideas: “Plutarch, in particular, became my favourite author [...] These interesting

books, and the conversations they occasioned between my father and me, shaped that free

and republican spirit” (2000 [1782]: 8-9). In her Memoirs, originally published in 1795,

Roland makes a similar statement: “Plutarch seemed to be exactly the food that suited my

mind. [...] From that period, I may date the impressions and ideas which rendered me a

republican, though I did not dream at the time that I should ever become the citizens of a

republic” (1825 [1803]: 64). Rousseau and Roland here had their political ideas

developed at an early age in an almost spontaneous manner. This is consistent with the

eighteenth-century tradition that considered children learnt through ‘impressions’ that

would later on form their character. Roland shows in her Memoirs that her political beliefs

were republican even before the revolution had not yet started, contradicting the

accusations of having plotted against the Revolution. Williams follows and reinforces this

idea in her description of Roland’s imprisonment, and wants to demonstrate that Roland

is a life-long republican and that she has been unfairly accused.

Williams explains in her Letters Containing a Sketch that her involvement with

the imprisoned Madame Roland did not end with her visit to Sainte Pélagie. She explains

that Roland confided her with some documents that would exonerate her, if not before

the Revolutionary Tribunal, at least before the public opinion:

I must add, that some papers in her justification, which she sent me from her prison,
perhaps with a view that some happier period, when the voice of the innocent may be
heard, I should make them public, I was compelled to destroy, the night on which I was
myself arrested, since, had they been found in my possession, they would inevitably have
involved me in her fate (1795, vol. I: 198).

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This excerpt shows the extent to which Williams was willing to risk her own safety in

order to participate in the resistance of the Girondins. Her attitude is also consistent with

what has been discussed in 3.2., when Williams brings attention to the fact that if her

meetings with Sillery and Lasource were discovered, this would have had fatal

repercussions for her and her family. At the same time, Williams hints at the fact that very

valuable political documents of the time were circulating in her possession. In this sense,

her friendship with Madame Roland puts Williams in the midst of political affairs. When

she started to fear that she was going to be persecuted or imprisoned herself, Williams

explains how she tried to hand down Madame Roland’s documents to others, but they

refused to do so in order to save their lives:

I employed every means in my power to preserve those precious memorials, in vain; for
I could find no person who would venture to keep them amidst the terrors of domiciliary
visits, and the certainty, if they were found, of being put to death as an accomplice of the
writer. (1795, vol. I: 198-199)

Williams presents herself here as an accomplice to Madame Roland. By telling this

anecdote, Williams shows, on the one hand, that she agrees with Roland’s political creed

but, most importantly, she demonstrates that she has not only witnessed the events, but

she has participated, acted and been involved in the Revolution together with the major

actors of the French political scene. Right before and during her imprisonment, Roland

together with the Girondin party had been attacked in pamphlets and speeches, which

made Madame Roland a well-known figure in France. Less than a decade after the

publication of Roland’s Memoirs, British author Mary Hays presents Roland as “the

heroine of the French Revolution” (1807 [1803]: 307) and vindicates the role that Roland

played during the Revolution since Female Biography is the first compilation about

women that includes Roland (Walker, 2011: 157). Hays shared political opinions with

dissenting philosophers, mainly Wollstonecraft and Godwin, with whom she closely

worked with as well as sharing her friendship. According to Andre McInnes,

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Wollstonecraft’s influence on Hays’ Female Biography is noticeable in her account of

Roland (2011: 276). Hays praises Roland for her ability to manage her intellectual

education together at the same time as she copes with her duties in the household, which

would go in line with both Hays’ and Wollstonecraft’s agenda for female education. In

McInnes’ words Hays implicitly agrees “with Madame Roland, and Wollstonecraft

herself, that women’s education must be improved not only in order for women to

accomplish their domestic function, but in order to fully develop their potential in private

and public life” (2011: 282). For Williams’ part, by telling this anecdote, Williams shows

on the one hand, that she agrees with Roland’s political creed but, most importantly, she

demonstrates that she has not only witnessed the events, but she has participated, acted

and been involved in the Revolution together with the major actors of the French political

scene.

3.4. Suspect, Prisoner and Fugitive

After her stay at the Luxembourg, Williams is taken to a different Parisian prison, together

with her family and other British women. They were taken to The Anglaises, which had

previously been a convent for English Benedictine nuns, hence its name. The nuns had

been imprisoned within their own convent, so they constituted a great part of the prison

population. Williams’ lodgings here were less comfortable, but again, it is the prison

community what makes the imprisonment tolerable: “One circumstance tended to make

our situation tolerable, which was that true spirit of fraternity that prevailed in our

community, consisting of about forty female prisoners besides the nuns” (1795, vol. I:

185). As explained on 3.2., the community inside prison represents the true values of the

French Revolution, in this case fraternity. I agree with Tonya J. Moutray when she writes

that “valorizing their Enlightened ethos and collective endeavours in the community,

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Williams argues that these English Catholic women, although resistant to the Revolution,

embody the very principles of the New Republic” (2016: 91). During her previous

volumes of letters on the French Revolution, Williams had been very critical with the

Catholic Church, that she saw as a symbol of the old regime in France. Using the rhetoric

of the enlightenment, Williams had written that Catholicism was “a sad stumbling-block

to reason” (1790: 113). However, by 1795 her perspective was completely subverted,

since, in Williams’ eye, it is the Jacobins who act arbitrarily by imprisoning the nuns.

After spending two months with the nuns and the community of the Anglaises, in

November 1793, Williams was finally released from prison thanks to a French

connection. In Letters, Williams omits most of the details of her liberation and she keeps

the identity of her connection unknown. Nevertheless, in Souvenirs, written in 1827 and

revisiting her past experiences, the reader learns the name of her liberator, Jean Derby,

president of the National Convention between March and April 1793. In Souvenirs,

Williams wants to give Derby the recognition he deserves for putting himself at risk in

order to obtain Williams’ and her family’s freedom: “Jean Debry was an ardent

revolutionary, yet he did not associate himself with the Jacobins. In this position,

responding for foreigners was a dangerous service to return, especially for the English”

(1827: 74). 18 Williams understands that revealing Debry’s involvement in her release

could potentially put him in danger. For that matter, she provides a less thorough

description of the events in Letters:

He [...] saw a long procession of coaches pass through the streets filled with English
prisoners, whom, just torn from their families and their homes, were weeping bitterly.
Deeply affected by this spectacle, he flew to Paris with the resolution of obtaining our
liberty, or of sharing our prison. (1795, vol. I: 204)

18
My translation of “Jean Debry était un ardent révolutionnaire, et cependant il ne frayait pas avec les
jacobins. Dans cette position, c’était un dangereux service à rendre que de répondre pour des étrangers, et
surtout pour des Anglais”.

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In Letters Written in France, sensibility works as a call for Williams to support the

Revolution, as explained in 2.1. In the lines quoted above, sensibility awakens in his

friend the strength to involve himself in the release of Williams and her family. However,

her release from prison does not put an end to Williams’ troubles. The second volume of

Letters Containing A Sketch of the Politics in France opens with Williams’ return from

prison “immediately after our release from prison we quitted our apartments in the centre

of the town, and tried to shelter ourselves from observation in an habitation situated in

the most remote part of the fauxbourg Germain” (1795, Vol. II: 2). Williams renounces

the active social life she held in Paris among the supporters of the Revolution, in order to

protect herself. This reinforces the ideas developed in 3.2. and 3.3., when Williams shows

that her social connections put her under the radar of the authorities.

While in the first volume she had been persecuted by the law of suspects, she now

falls victim to the law of the 26th of Germinal, that prescribed all nobles and foreigners

to leave the city of Paris. As a result, Williams is sentenced to wandering the Paris

provinces. However, Williams situation is swiftly resolved: “Two benevolent

commissaries of the revolutionary committee [...] enabled us to return to Paris, and thus

snatched us from the class of the suspected and the proscribed” (1795, Vol. II: 11).

Similarly to her release from prison, sensibility again awakens the commissaries’ sense

of justice that allows Williams to be exempted from leaving Paris: “To their humanity we

probably owe them; and I shall ever recollect with gratitude that noble courage which led

them amidst the cruel impulse of revolutionary government [...] to pause and succour the

unfortunate” (1795, Vol. II: 11). In Williams’ eyes, these commissaries go against the

revolutionary tribunal to defend a fair cause. Sensibility is aligned with the principles of

the early French Revolution, based on justice and the common good.

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3.5. “The Polluted Festival Instituted by a Tyrant”: Festival of the Supreme Being

Williams was finally freed from political persecution and this allows her to stay in Paris

and witness the events that happened in the French capital during 1793 and 1794. As

explained in 2.1., when Williams arrived in Paris, the very first event she observed was

the Fête de la Féderation, which she received with enthusiasm and praise for its display

of Revolutionary values. Four years later, during the Reign of Terror, Williams witnesses

the Fête de l’Être Suprême, or Festival of the Supreme Being. In contrast with her

description of The Federation, she receives this new festivity in a negative light,

describing it as “the polluted festival instituted by a tyrant” (1975, vol. II: 86). This time,

the celebration did not commemorate a revolutionary landmark, but the implementation

of the new state religion that was supposed to unify the beliefs of the French. During the

Revolution, the political power had aimed at limiting the privileges held by the Catholic

church. In November 1793, a state religion was established, named the Cult of Reason,

replaced the following year by the Cult of the Supreme Being. The Cult of Reason

rejected that religious truths were obtained through revelation, as in Catholicism, and

considered that creeds needed to derive from rational thinking. On the 10th of November

1793, a celebration of the cult of reason took place in Notre Dame, in which religious

symbols were burned. As a result, the Cult of the Supreme Being became to be interpreted

as a synonym for atheism. Robespierre, who considered atheism as a disruptor of the

social order, established the Cult of the Supreme Being on the 7th of May 1794, six

months after the celebration of Reason. This new revolutionary religion recognized the

existence of a god and creation, and rejected all forms of atheism. According to the

revolutionary agenda, the new religion needed a festival to consolidate the latest faith.

Nira Kaplan explains that “Festivals [...] with their symbols, parades and public

participation, were particularly important in encouraging the correct social behaviour for

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republican citizens” (2003: 245). The differences between the two cults became

especially evident by the symbolism of the festival in which an allegory of atheism was

burned.

The Festival of the Supreme Being was designed by painter Jacques-Louis David,

who choreographed the representation. This was the first thing that Williams criticizes

regarding the celebration since she considered spontaneity as a symbol of transparency

inspired by the theory of moral sentiments (see 2.1.). The restrained atmosphere in the

Festival of 1794 is the main difference that she finds with the Federation, which she had

immensely enjoyed:

Ah, what was then become of those civic festivals which had hailed the first glories of
the revolution! [...] What was become of those moments when no emotions were
preordained, no feelings measured out, no acclamations decreed; but when every bosom
beat high with admiration, when every heart throbbed with enthusiastic transport, when
every eye melted into tears, and the vault of heaven resounded the bursts of
unpremeditated applause! (1795, vol II.: 87).

Williams portrays the festivals of the early days of the revolution as spaces in which

emotions were given free reign. Besides, in the Federation, people’s feelings are in

unison, not because they are directed, but because the festival itself inspires the same

emotions among the spectators and participants. In 1790, the fact that people experienced

the same emotions brought them together in the common cause of the Revolution. In

Williams’ account, the Festival of the Supreme Being acquires monotonous tones and its

attendees behave as unenthusiastic automats. However, other accounts of the time,

motivated by other political agendas present a different description of the celebration.

Joachim Vilate, who had been a member of both the Revolutionary tribunal and the

Committee of Public Safety, describes the festival in his Causes Secrètes de la Révolution

du 9 au 10 Thermidor (1794). Even though the book was written by Vilate to disassociate

himself with Robespierre, Vilate describes a happy atmosphere at the Festival: “hope and

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happiness shone on every face: women enhanced their embellishment with the most

beautiful fineries” (1794: 32). 19 As in 2.1., when a royalist understanding of the festival

is at odds with Williams rendering, Vilate offers a different interpretation. For that reason,

in her passage on the Festival of the Supreme Being, Williams sides with an anti-Jacobin,

and more particularly, anti-Robespierre construction of the event.

Vilate’s account of the festivity omits one of the details that shocks Williams the

most. When the celebrations in honour of the Supreme Being are taking place, the

guillotine is noticeable in the background:

From this profusion of gay objects, which in happier moments would have excited
delightful sensations, the drooping soul now turned distasteful. The scene of carnage
seemed mingled with these lavish sweets; the glowing festoons appear tinged with blood;
and in the background of this festive scenery the guillotine arose before the disturbed
imagination. (1795, vol. II: 89)

In contrast with Vilate, Williams offers an appalling interpretation of the scene. In her

view, it is impossible to distinguish between the religious festivity promoted by

Robespierre and the transgressions of his government. The political point of view filters

the scene in a way that recalls her first visit to France. In Letters Written in France,

Williams writes after her trip to Versailles: “We are just returned from Versailles, where

I could not help fancying I saw in the back ground of that magnificent abode of a despot,

the gloomy dungeons of the Bastille” (1790: 83). In this case, even though the Bastille

was not actually visible from Versailles, it is the first thing that comes to Williams’ mind.

As in the example of the Festival, in her visit to Versailles, Williams makes her own

political position evident when describing the scene. Regardless of Versailles being a

magnificent building, she cannot help thinking about it as a symbol of oppression, since

while the king lives comfortably in Versailles, the victims of the absolutist monarchy are

19
My translation of “L'espérance et la gaieté rayonnaient sur tous les visages: les femmes ajoutoient à
l'embellissement par les parures les plus élégantes”.

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deprived of liberty in prison, much like her friend Monsieur Du Fossé (see 2.4.). Now,

once the monarchy has been overthrown, the authorities of the Reign of Terror represent

in Williams’ account the excesses of an oppressive government. Williams presents them

as lacking humanity and compassion, since while they celebrate the religious festivity,

martyrs have perished at the guillotine, such as her friends Lasource, Sillery, and Roland

(see 3.2. and 3.5).

In order to further prove that the Festival of the Supreme Being had deviated from

the original spirit of the early festivals, Williams brings attention to Robespierre's actions

and attitudes that day. In her representation of the Jacobin politician, Williams goes

beyond the negative representations that show him as a ruthless human being devoid of

emotions, as explained in 2.6., and adds biblical elements to further reinforce the

depiction of Robespierre as a tyrant and agent of evil:

Upon a tribune in the centre of the theatre, Robespierre as president of the convention
appeared; and having for a few hours disencumbered the square of the revolution of the
guillotine, this high-priest of Molock, within view of that very spot where his daily
sacrifice of human victims was offered up, covered with their blood, invoked the Parent
of universal nature, talked of the charms of virtue, and breathed the hope of immortality.
(1795, vol. II: 90).

Williams highlights that the festivity is only temporary, a short hiatus among the daily

executions. The scene depicted here acquires gory tones and Robespierre appears as the

“high-priest of Molock”. Molock, or Moloch, is the Canaanite god of human sacrifices

mentioned in the Bible. In Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), Moloch is one of the fallen

angels, who constantly engages in violence and declares war to the Gods. Metaphorically,

Williams presents Robespierre as an evil force who attacks the ‘true’ values of the French

Revolution. While the victims sacrificed for Moloch were thrown into the fire,

Robespierre’s sacrifices occur in the guillotine. This gruesome image appears in stark

contrast with Robespierre words, that underscore virtue and universal nature. With this,

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Williams depicts Robespierre as a hypocrite, who momentarily turns a blind eye to scenes

of violence he himself has ordained, to present himself to the nation as concerned with

virtue. In his analysis of Robespierre’s understanding of virtue, Jonathan Smyth writes

the following:

Robespierre had a very singular and personal sense of rightness of action, both public and
private, and this led him to an almost circular concept of morality. For him, an action
could be classified as ‘good’ for no other reason than that it arose from ‘good’ principles,
and if it was then performed by a ‘virtuous’ man the circle was complete. If these criteria
were fulfilled, any action, however stark, however apparently unfeeling, however
heedless of any claims of friendship or of the solidarity owed to close associates must, by
definition, be in and of itself ‘virtuous’, and therefore something from which only good
results could flow. (2016: 11)

Robespierre moral principles derive, like Williams’, from the eighteenth-century trend of

sensibility, see 1.3. However, Williams and Robespierre understand virtuous actions in

an entirely different manner. For Williams, the feelings of friendship, family ties and

solidarity are inseparable from any good deed. For instance, in 3.4., Debry, when he

obtains Williams’ freedom is moved by a strong sense of solidarity. In the case of the Du

Fossé family, explained in 2.4., individual happiness is as important as the common good.

Williams vindicates this idea all throughout her literary career, from Letters Written in

France with the story of the Du Fossés, to Souvenirs. In 1827, reconsidering her

experiences in France as a whole, Williams writes that, from a historical point of view,

“without a doubt, the duration and the fate of an individual life is nothing. It is too

insignificant an atom within the history of nations, but this atom is something of concern

for the individual” (1827:3). 20 In this passage, Williams detaches herself from an

understanding of history that disregards each individual life, because for her, reaching the

common good is only a worthy endeavour if it guarantees that it will have a positive

impact at an individual level.

20
My translation of “Sans doute la période et le sort d’une vie individuelle n’est rien. C’est un atome tout-
à-fait insignifiant dans l’histoire des nations, mais cet atome est bien quelque chose pour l’individu”.

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 The fact that Robespierre occupies the centre space of the main celebration in

Paris is used by Williams to further delve into Robespierre’s hypocrisy. Between pages

90 and 91, Williams describes how the president of the Convention descends the tribune

in order to set fire to the image of atheism. Thus, he works as the leader of the ceremony,

or priest. This is surprising since, on the one hand, the revolutionary government had

attacked priests as symbols of the old regime. On the other hand, in his speech delivered

on the 7th of May 1794, that proclaimed the new religion, Robespierre had detached the

Cult of the Supreme Being from Catholicism and had claimed that there would be no

priests involved (Smyth, 2016: 22). Williams elaborates on her criticism of Robespierre

when she writes that: “Robespierre [...] caused a line of separation to be made between

himself and the other deputies of the convention, and marched at some distance before

them, like a captain at the head of his band” (1795, vol. II: 92). According to Williams’

rendering, Robespierre himself establishes a hierarchy during the procession that puts him

on a superior level compared to the rest of politicians. Interestingly, in her comment on

the Festival of the Federation, she had written that the king was presiding the ceremony

together with his family and the members of the convention (1790: 12), showing that

there were no hierarchical distinctions among those at the head of the celebration.

Consequently, Williams again presents Robespierre as despotic, who has forgotten that

in the early days of the Revolution, all politicians occupied the same space.

Williams’ initial enthusiasm evolved into a harsh criticism of the revolutionary

government after 1793. In Letters Containing a Sketch, she goes to the extent of aligning

herself with Edmund Burke’s words. Williams and Burke were in 1790 on opposing sides

of the debate in Britain, as elaborated on 1.1. When describing the festival, Williams

quotes a well-known statement from Reflections on the Revolution in France: “I thought

of that passage in Mr. Burke’s book, “In the groves of their academy, at the end of every

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vista I see the gallows!” Ah Liberty! best friend of mankind, why have sanguinary

monsters profaned thy name, and fulfilled this gloomy prediction!” (1795, vol. II: 89-90).

In his book on the Revolution, Burke had anticipated that by overthrowing the power of

the old institutions, French society was destined to violence and chaos. Williams evokes

this prediction and admits that, in a way, Burke had guessed correctly. However, she

specifies that those to blame for the increase in violence are “sanguinary monsters” who

have “profaned” the cause of liberty. Again and again throughout the volumes of Letters

Containing a Sketch Williams insists that only a small portion of the revolutionary leaders

are responsible for the Reign of Terror, and, having other politicians managed the course

of events, Burke’s prediction would have never been fulfilled. Williams believed that The

Terror was a result of a lack of understanding of the ideals of the French Revolution. By

contrast, Burke believed that terror was the revolutions’ only possible outcome, and this

point of view differentiates the position of the two authors. Nevertheless, the fact that

Williams agrees with Burke in the passage quoted above shows Williams' pessimistic

view of the revolution during the years 1793 and 1794.

3.6. The Authorities of Terror at the Guillotine

In the first volume of Letters Containing a Sketch, Williams had focused on the

executions of the Girondins, that she depicted as martyrs of the cause of liberty, as

explained on 3.2. and 3.3. The first volume deals mainly with the early days of the Terror,

while on the second one, Williams moves to the events of 1794. As already mentioned

before, historians date the end of the terror with Robespierre’s execution, 28th July.

However, in the months prior to Robespierre’s downfall, political leaders of the Terror

were successively tried and executed. The first leader to be condemned to perish at the

guillotine was Jacques-René Hébert. Hébert held a prominent role in the downfall of the

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Girondins in 1793, but he disagreed with Robespierre on key events of the Revolution.

Hébert was a member of the Cordeliers, or ultra-radicals, and he had been the proponent

of the Cult of Reason, substituted by Robespierre’s Supreme Being (see 3.5.). Besides,

Hébert had accused queen Marie Antoinette of sexual depravity and having had

intercourse with her own son. For all these reasons, Williams sees his execution as a

matter of justice: “There appeared so much of retribution in the circumstances that

attended the death of Hébert and his colleagues, that it seems as if Heaven were visibly

stretching forth its arm to punish the guilty” (1795, vol. II: 17). The fact that Williams

explicitly expresses that Hébert is guilty, is in stark contrast with the opinions she had

displayed concerning the executions of the Girondins, who she had presented as innocent

victims.

The greatest difference between Hébert’s and the Girondins’ execution is the

attitude they show when facing death. Williams had presented the leaders of the Terror

as conspirators and the Girondins as the true defenders of the Revolution. In the following

passage, Williams moves one step forward and, while she praises Girondin courage, she

ridicules the radicals as cowards: “The behaviour of Hébert and his associates upon the

approach of death was far different from that of the innocent sufferers who had

consciences void of reproach” (1795, vol. II: 17). On the following page, Williams

describes how Hébert and his associates start to imagine dreadful scenes: “terrific

phantoms covered with blood seemed to pursue their steps, and with menacing looks

prepare to drag them to the abysses of deeper horror: they fancied they saw the headless

trunks of murdered victims encumbering the ground; they heard human groans and

shrieks sounding hollow through the vaulted passages; while the knife of the guillotine,

like Macbeth’s aërial dagger, hung suspended before their affrighted imagination” (1795,

vol. II: 18). The comparison with Macbeth further reinforces the fact that Hébert is guilty.

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Macbeth, the protagonist that gives name to Shakespeare’s famous play, gives

prominence to his ambitions of gaining political power over the morals of his actions.

However, he cannot escape guilt and lives terrified by the remorse which sometimes takes

shape as visions, as in the case of the flying dagger that Williams mentions. The reference

to Macbeth implies that, like the Shakespearean protagonist, Hébert and his followers

have claimed their way to the political top by renouncing their morals. Besides, Macbeth

believes himself to be undefeatable, but he dies beheaded in the end. There is a parallelism

in the way both Macbeth and Hébert perish, and Williams suggests that Hébert was so

sure of his political position he was not expecting to be accused, tried and executed. The

visions that Hébert and his followers experience tell the reader that they are truly guilty

since the ghosts of their crimes follow them before death, causing fear and restlessness.

Hébert is nevertheless not the only one tortured by their past political actions. Another

example is Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, whose political opinions were in line with Hébert.

Even though he was arrested at the same time as Hébert, Chaumette was not executed

until the following month. Chaumette was executed together with Gobel, former

archbishop of Paris, who renounced his faith and defended anti-clericalism, which

brought him close to both Hébert and Chaumette. According to Williams, Gobet is guilty

of apostasy and having promoted atheism. For his part, Chaumette is “one of the leaders

of the conspiracy of the 31st of May” (1795, vol. II: 37). Not surprisingly then, Williams

assesses both Chaumette’s and Gobel’s facial expressions to find fear and remorse: “Their

aspect testified that Death appeared to their perturbed spirits, not in the form he wears to

suffering innocence, to whom he comes the messenger of peace, but armed with all his

stings, and clad in all his terrors” (1795, vol. II: 37). Williams explicitly defends that

while the innocent, as in the example of Roland (3.3.), adopt a calm stance, meaning that

they are sure of their innocence.

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 The case of Hébert is dealt with in the first letter (or chapter) of the second volume.

Letter II addresses the executions of other relevant political leaders, particularly Danton,

Desmoulins, Fabre d’Eglantine and Philippeaux. Danton was a well-known politician -

president of the Convention in 1793- who led the moderate side of the Jacobins, also

known as ‘the Indulgents’. Fabre d’Eglantine, author and poet apart from politician, had

been the right-hand man of Danton during his time as a Minister of Justice in 1792. Apart

from a politician, Desmoulins was a noted journalist. In December 1793, Desmoulins

started the publication of the newspaper Le Vieux Cordelier, which promoted the views

of the Indulgents. Philippeux, also an Indulgent, had been sent to the Vendée (see 3) to

defend the Republican side. These four politicians were executed together on the same

day, 5th of April 1794, only a few days after Hébert who perished on the 24th of March.

What differentiates Williams’ approach in Letter II from the account of Hébert’s

execution is that the execution of Danton, Desmoulins and Fabre enables her to further

criminalize and attack Robespierre. Meanwhile, with Hébert’s case, as previously

explained, Williams’ aim is to demonstrate that Hébert is a criminal, and the same goes

for Chaumette and Gobet.

The stories of Danton and Desmoulins as told by Williams show Robespierre as

a cruel figure, devoid of any personal feelings or attachments. First of all, Williams

explains the attachments that bring together Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins at a

personal rather than political level. Danton had defended Robespierre in front of the

convention from the accusations of being responsible for the September massacres, a

situation that could have put an end to Robespierre’s political career. In the case of

Desmoulins, Robespierre’s ruthlessness becomes even more evident, since they had both

been very close friends since their school days. In Williams’ view, the attachments of

friendship were inseparable from politics, as exemplified by the story of the Du Fossés,

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see 2.4. Besides, both Danton and Desmoulins have the capacity to feel empathy while

Robespierre is always cold and emotionless. For Williams, drawing on the trend of

sensibility explained on 2.1., emotions are a symbol of transparency. Thus, Robespierre’s

lack of emotions renders him a manipulative and calculating person. For instance,

Desmoulins shows compassion when he opposes the law of suspects (1795, vol. II: 25),

the same law that put Williams in prison. In the case of Danton, he had decided to confront

Robespierre about his arrest, but the latter adopts an unyielding demeanour: “Danton,

after a long conversation, finding that he was unable to move the implacable Robespierre,

who listened to him with a look of insulting malignity, shed some tears, and left the room”

(1795, vol. II: 27). Danton’s tears disclose his more vulnerable and human side, while

Robespierre’s lack of them make him unnatural. In the excerpt just quoted, Robespierre

appears as completely unaffected by Danton’s distress. Robespierre and Saint-Just had

warned their revolutionary colleagues of the dangers of pity: “To have pity and spare the

life of a convinced aristocrat, of a nonjuring priest, of a counter-Revolutionary peasant,

endangered the larger acts of benevolence by which the Revolution had dismantled the

Old Regime and restored to the people what they had lost” (Reddy, 2001: 195). While

Williams was also determined to achieve the common good, she criticized those like

Robespierre aimed at completing the Revolution at the expense of neglecting sympathy.

In her Letters, Williams partakes in a narrative of the French Revolution that

would become established in the mid-nineteenth century with the chronicles by Michelet,

Carlyle or Lamartin. These historians: “considered the private emotions of its subjects as

a legitimate part of the historian’s concern [...] [and] the revolutionaries were depicted as

rounded individuals, with private lives as well as public faces, whose lives, hearts, and

minds were as relevant as their formalized ideas” (Linton, 2013: Introduction).

Interestingly enough, Williams recognizes Danton’s responsibility in two crucial events

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of the revolution, the September Massacres and the Insurrection of the 31st of May 1793.

However, she focuses on his humane and compassionate side: “Yet will all these crimes

upon his head, Danton still possessed some human affections: his mind was still awake

to some of the sensibilities of our nature; his temper was frank and social, and humanity

in despair leant upon him as a sort of refuge from his worst oppressor” (1795, vol. II: 31).

Here, Williams subverts the dichotomy Robespierre/Danton constructed by the rhetoric

of the Terror that compared them as “as virtue to vice, incorruptibility to veniality,

industriousness to indolence, faith to cynicism” (Furet and Ozouf, 1988: 214).

Throughout all the volumes of Letters Containing a Sketch, Williams illustrates her

disagreement with Jacobin values. The incorruptibility that made Robespierre a virtuous

figure, is for Williams a sign that he prioritized his own interests to the common good of

the French Nation, and thus, this characteristic makes him monstrous in her account.

As seen in 3.3., not only the politicians who held chairs at the conventions or who

led political clubs were sent to execution. The case of Madame Roland shows that those

who involved themselves in political affairs on a more private sphere were also

susceptible to fall victims of political power. On the Jacobin side, Lucile Desmoulins and

Marie Marguerite Françoise Hébert, who climbed to the guillotine together on the 13th

of April 1794, share the same fate as their Girondin counterpart Madame Roland. Lucile

Desmoulins was a journalist like her husband Camille, while Marie Marguerite Hébert

was a former nun who married Jacques René in 1792. The case of Madame Desmoulins

serves Williams once again to bring attention to the cruelty of the authorities of the Terror,

since she was innocent of the crime she was accused of: “the unfortunate Madame

Desmoulins was dragged to the scaffold because a letter was written to her which it was

clearly proved had never been sent” (1795, vol. II: 34-35). Madame Desmoulins’

accusation shows that the administration of the revolution, in their implacable search of

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enemies of the Revolution, become increasingly paranoid, to an extent that it is eventually

absurd. The law of suspects and the executions of Girondins, as Williams had depicted

them (see 3.1. and 3.2.) were already indicative of the fact that people had been accused

on very feeble grounds. The fact that they are now accusing their own colleagues and

their families, shows that the political situation has completely gone astray. Besides,

Williams continues to reinforce the inhumanity of Lucile’s accusers: “For her [Lucile

Desmoulins’] fate no eye except those of her barbarous judges refused a tear” (1795, vol.

II: 31). Here, the lack of feelings of the judges separates the authorities of the Reign of

Terror from the people they rule over. While in the early days of the Revolution Williams

had portrayed the political leaders as in unison with the people’s feelings, as explained

on 2.1., the judges of 1794 are the only ones unmoved by Madame Desmoulins’ unjust

situation. Williams even calls the judges “assassins in the robes of justice” (1795, vol. II:

34), insinuating that occupying a position of authority does not mean that they are using

power in a righteous manner, further reinforcing the depiction of the Jacobins as despots.

Madame Desmoulins also faces death in a courageous manner and again she

incites the sympathy of the crowd: “The people, as Madame Desmoulins passed along the

streets to execution, could not resist uttering exclamations of pity and admiration” (1795,

vol. II: 36). Compared to Jacques-René Hebert’s or Chaumette’s executions, whose sense

of guilt and remorse torment him, Williams’ account of Madame Desmoulins demeanour

corresponds to someone innocent. This contrast is made explicit when Williams claims

that: “Far different from the meek and placid resignation with which Madame Desmoulins

made the sacrifice of life in all its bloom and freshness, was the behaviour of Chaumette”

(1795, vol. II: 36). Interestingly, Chaumette, Lucile Desmoulins and Marguerite Hébert

all attend execution together. However, Madame Hébert’s disposition is completely

different to that of her husband and Chaumette: “She [Lucile Desmoulins] [...] went with

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a placid smile upon her countenance to execution, conversing with her companions in the

cart, particularly with the wife of Hebert, who was put to death at the same time, and met

her fate with equal firmness” (1795, vol. II: 35). What is striking here, is that these two

women’s husbands had been political rivals. In fact, Williams considers Desmoulins

responsible for Hébert's fall. Strangely enough, their wives stand above the political

quarrels and offer support to each other. Instead of exchanging accusations on their

respective spouses' death, they “deplored their mutual loss” (1795, vol. II: 36) together.

Right before passing away, they embrace each other. As had happened to Williams in

prison (see 3.2.), undergoing the same adversities –not only their execution but also the

fact that they have very recently widowed– brings them together. As Williams illustrated

in her account of the Fête de la Fédération, explained in 2.1., what she admired in politics

is the potential to bring people together towards a common goal. However, she condemns

the spirit of rivalry that had filtered political life after 1792. Madams Hébert and

Desmoulins present a lesson in humanitarianism by giving prominence to familial ties

over political alliances.

3.7. “Happy Revolution”: The Fall of Robespierre

As Williams had promised with the title, Letters Containing a Sketch ends with the arrest

and execution of Maximilien Robespierre. The third volume depicts a complete new

picture of French society after the downfall of the Incorruptible that sets an optimistic

tone again, which resembles the enthusiasm of Letters Written in France (1790). Letter I

opens as follows:

My pen, wearied of tracing successive pictures of human crimes and human calamity,
pursues his task with reluctance; while my heart springs forward to that fairer epocha
which now beams upon the friends of liberty - that epocha when the French republic has
cast aside their dismal shroud, stained with the blood of the patriot, and bathed with tears
of the mourner; and presents the blessed images of justice and humanity healing the deep
wounds of their afflicted bosom: when the laws of mercy are but the echo of the public
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 opinion, of that loud cry for the triumph of innocence, of that horror of tyranny which
hangs upon every lip, and thrills at every heart. The generous affections, the tender
sympathies so long repressed by the congealing stupefaction of terror, burst forth with
uncontrollable energy; and the enthusiasm of humanity has taken place of the gloomy
terror of despair, as suddenly as, when the massy ice dissolves in the regions of the north,
summer awakens her clear rills, her fresh foliage and her luxuriant flowers. Not to have
suffered persecution during the tyranny of Robespierre, is now to be disgraced; and it is
expected of all those who have escaped that they should assign some good reason, or
offer some satisfactory apology for their suspicious exemption from imprisonment (1795,
vol. III: 1.2).

In this passage, Williams shows France as healing after Robespierre’s fall. The end of the

Terror is more than a victory for the opposing party, but for the nation as a whole since it

is the French Republic who casts away the shroud. Besides, the victims being called

‘patriots’ without any mention of political labels, renders them as victims for their

country. The fact that Williams mentions the public opinion and finds that “every lip”

raises their voice against Robespierre, further reinforces the idea that all citizens of France

rejoice for the fall of the last government. Throughout not only Letters Containing a

Sketch, but also in Letters From France (1793), Williams had criticized Robespierre and

his associates for their lack of empathy, as explained on sections such as 2.6. or 3.6. As a

result, generosity and sympathy appear to be restored, which were the emotions that

Williams considered necessary to move people together towards a common future. It

makes sense then that Williams uses the metaphor of ice to represent the lack of sensibility

that became illustrative of the period, in her view. The fall of Robespierre is represented

in the passage as the arrival of summer after a long cold winter in which feelings were

suppressed as indicated by the words “congealing stupefaction”. The arrival of the

summer brings back prosperity to Paris, as indicated by the metaphors that allude to

abundance, “luxuriant flowers”, “fresh foliage”. Finally, Williams explains how the

victims of the oppression during the Terror, including Williams herself, wear their

misfortune as a badge of honour. Their persecution shows that they were brave enough

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to position themselves against the trend of ideas defended by the authorities of the terror,

and this leaves them clear of any suspicion of having supported their way of ruling.

Williams, however, is suspicious of this exaltation of feeling. Writing at the turn

of the eighteenth century, when the trend of sensibility started to be questioned, as

explained in 1.3., Williams nevertheless distrusts the outbursts of feeling in the summer

of 1794:

Happy, thrice happy is he who has been immured in a dungeon, and has been unfortunate
beyond the common lot! To him the social circle listens with attention, for him the tender
beauty wakes her softest smile -- for him await all private and public honors; he might
lay claim to the possession of the highest offices of the state, and may aspire in proportion
as he has suffered (1795, vol. III: 3).

During the aftermath of the terror, the narrative that exalts the victims as martyrs has

favoured the appearance of a myth in which misfortunes are exalted, a narrative in which

Williams herself has taken part. Historian of the French Revolution Colin Jones writes

that: “Greater press freedom after 9 Thermidor and the release of many prisoners soon

generated freewheeling horror stories about the atrocities committed on Revolutionary

journées and about the prisons of the Terror” (2014: 22). 21 As explained in this excerpt

by Williams, persecution during the terror opens the door to social respectability and

political prestige. Victimization, thus, becomes a way of obtaining political advantages.

Williams believed that empathic feelings had to be directed towards the common good,

whereas in the quotation they are used to obtain personal gains. Nevertheless, despite the

negative consequences that this spirit of sensibility may result in, they are surpassed by

its benefits: “But after all the cruelties that have passed, how soothing is the moment when

pity becomes the fashion, and when tyranny is so execrated that to have been its victim is

glory! The tears of compassion now flow even for those objects whom once to

21
The 9th of Thermidor in the Republican Calendar corresponds to the 27th of July in the Gregorian
calendar.

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commiserate was death” (1795, vol. III: 4). For Williams, French people need to express

their feelings openly in order to heal after what she sees as the traumatizing experience

of the Terror. Showing compassion for the victims is useful inasmuch as it discloses the

unfair oppression that was inflicted upon them.

Regardless of the truthfulness of the emotions and victimization, there is no

question that the 27th and 28th of July 1794 changed the course of the Revolution. Colin

Jones puts this date as a landmark of the French Revolution, together with the 14th of

July 1789, the 10th of August 1792, which marked the end of monarchical power, and the

day that Napoleon seized power, the 9th of November 1799 (2014: 689). Williams

dedicates the last letter of the third volume of Letters Containing a Sketch entirely to the

events that took place during the 26th, 27th and 28th of July 1794. In order to discredit

Robespierre’s political action and to justify his execution, Williams again presents him

as a dictator, which makes him an enemy of democracy and freedom, which were the

ideals for which the French Revolution initially stood up for. In order to highlight his

hypocrisy, Williams puts the focus on his tyrannical practices, his suspicious way of

making politics and his cowardice. All these three characteristics in Williams’ portrayal

of Robespierre’s behaviour on the last days of his life, make him the complete opposite

of the strong republican virtues that he had defended. For that reason, she refers to his

arrest and execution as a “happy revolution” (1795, vol. III: 177), because once again

France abolished a despotic government, as they did in 1789.

In 1793, Williams had described Robespierre and the Jacobins as a “band of

conspirators” (1793: 7), a statement that was analysed in 2.6., suggesting that they were

conspiring in order to obtain political power. Interestingly, after being the leaders of the

Republic, they continue to plot and deceive, betraying the Republic ideal of transparency.

This way of making politics would equate Robespierre to court politics, where royal

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favours, arbitrariness and secret schemes marked the political atmosphere. The day before

Robespierre was taken into custody, he had given a speech at the National Convention

implying that he was about to convict several deputies on charges of counter-revolution,

but he refused to give their names. Fearing for their safety, those members of the

Convention that took the accusations personally met that night to stop Robespierre the

following day. In Williams’ eyes, the Jacobins’ true intentions were to dissolve the

Convention and seize absolute power, as one of Robespierre’s collaborators advanced at

the Jacobin Club: “The president of the revolutionary tribunal was the next commentator

on Robespierre’s speech, and pronounced without any reserve, that the Convention

should be purified also, which implied the entire dissolution of the representative body”

(1795, vol. III: 160). The president of the tribunal at the time was René-François Dumas,

an open Robespierrist. However, according to Williams, dismantling the Convention was

not the only conspiracy that Robespierre and his followers were working on. In a modus

operandi that resembles the September Massacres of 1792, Williams explains that the

same day that Robespierre’s mysterious speech was being pronounced, very strange

activities were taking place in the Parisian prisons. In her account, the prison authorities

had ordained large excavations on the courtyards of Parisian prisons, implying that there

were going to be mass killings. This would mean that Robespierre and his associates from

the Jacobin Club had the plan to set up a dictatorship. They were going to obtain absolute

power by seizing political institutions and escalating their politics of terror.

According to Williams, Robespierre had already been controlling most of the

political agencies, even when he had not been appointed as the visible leader:

“[Robespierre’s] secession from the committees had not rendered him less the master of

their operations” (1795, vol. III: 164). It was commonplace at the time that Robespierre

was behind the Revolutionary Tribunal deciding who was sent to the guillotine. Fouquier-

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Tinville, public prosecutor of the Convention during the Reign of Terror, denies that

Robespierre was behind his actions. However, he describes that Robespierre was working

closely with the Revolutionary Tribunal:

I have never supplied to Robespierre the list of people that had to be judged every day. It
[the list] cannot have been [supplied] by any other than the heinous Dumas who went to
his [Robespierre’s] house everyday, and who was known to be one of the cooperators of
all his declamations (1911: 202). 22

Even though Fouquier-Tinville denies all charges to be saved from being condemned as

one of Robespierre’s accomplices, the fact that he points at others as being collaborating

with Robespierre shows that it was believed at the time that Robespierre was ruling

behind the scenes. Williams uses the term dictatorship only once to refer to the Committee

of Public Safety (1795, vol. III: 52). But when she refers to Robespierre’s abuses of

power, she tends to use vocabulary that recalls the time of the absolute monarchy, which

is not surprising given the political climate of the time. Williams describes Robespierre

as “the absolute monarch of the Jacobins” (1795, vol. III: 159). For Williams, regardless

of Robespierre having declared a war on counterrevolutionaries, his abuse of power was

a return to the injustices of the ancien régime.

To complete her criticism of Robespierre, and to further discredit him, Williams

caricatures and ridicules him as a coward. Robespierre, from the tribune, had always

exhibited a strong character and firmness of mind. However, Williams’ version of the

events would expose Robespierre’s true personality and demonstrate that his attitude was

an imposture. Besides, the Republican values entailed a life-long commitment to the

political cause and, as a result, true defenders of the Revolution accepted death in the

guillotine with composure and integrity, see 3.2. and 3.3. Williams narrates the last hours

22
My translation of “Je n’ai point fourni de liste à Robespierre des personnes qui dévoient être mis en
judgement chaque jour [...] elle n’a put l’être que par le scélérat Dumas qui se rendoit tous les jours chez
lui, et qui étoit même un des coopérateurs connu de toutes ses déclamations”.

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of Robespierre as follows: “Robespierre was found in an apartment of the hotel, and was

sternly reminded by a gendarme that a supreme being really existed. Robespierre held a

knife in his hand, but had no courage to use it; the gendarme fired at him with a pistol,

and broke his jaw bone” (1795, vol. III: 172-173). Williams alludes to the Supreme

Being 23 to imply that Robespierre had lost his own ideals, so he cannot commit to cause

forever. Besides, it further emphasizes Robespierre’s hypocrisy, imposing a belief on the

French nation to later on not follow it himself. Finally, he does not have the courage to

commit suicide, unlike the Girondin Valazé, as described on 3.2. There were different

accounts of the event circulating at the time. According to Marie-Helene Huet, the only

source of Williams’ version of the account were the words of the gendarme himself,

named Merda, who spread the rumour in Paris (1997: 198). Merda later published his

Précis historique des événements qui se sont passés dans las soirée du 9 Thermidor

(1825), perpetuating his version. Williams’ Letters Containing a Sketch, written before

Merda’s publication, echo the rumour. The official version, which is found in the reports

from the Committee of Public Safety, tell that Robespierre attempted at shooting himself

and ending his life but he missed. French historian Albert Mathiez wrote that: “the theory

of suicide has all contemporaneous testimony in its favour [...] The story of the shot fired

by Merda (or Méda) the gendarme is very dubious” (1927:217). Historians today such as

Collins Jones (2014: 91) opt for Mathiez’s interpretation.

After the fall of Robespierre, and with it the end of the Terror, Williams regains

hope in the cause of the French Revolution that she had lost during 1792, 1793 and 1794:

It is some relief, while I am struggling through the gloomy history of these horrors, that
I see again the dawn of that glorious light which will chase them away. The last stroke
has been given to that vile and degrading system, which ignoble usurpers had framed; we
may now approach the altar of Liberty with confidence and hope; the hideous spectres
that haunted it have fled for ever (1795, vol. II: 214).

23
The Cult of the Supreme Being is explained on 3.5.

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Williams sees the events of the Terror as a bump on the road that had momentarily

deviated the Revolution from its true course. Besides, she sees that having experienced

the worst of the Revolution, the revolutionaries will not allow for the situation to happen

again. However, Williams is aware of the fact that the Revolution’s recent history will

tarnish the reputation of the French Revolution for good:

These horrors must stain the page of the revolution for ever. The bloody characters must
remain indelible on the wall, a dreadful but instructive lesson to future ages, and to those
countries which are destined to labour through revolutions, and who will learn, while they
contemplate this terrific chart, how to avoid the rocks on which Liberty has been nearly
wrecked.
Dreadful indeed has been the crisis we have passed! Yet it is some consolation, amidst
this mighty mass of evil, that France is at length beginning to learn wisdom from the
things she has suffered. (1795, vol. II: 214)

In the end, the cause of the Revolution must learn the lesson from history. Williams sees

the Revolution as a universal cause, as she had defended in Letters Written in France, as

explained in 2.1. For that reason, the ‘crisis’, as Williams refers to the Terror here, offers

a teaching not only to France but to all those countries that will in the future fight against

an oppressive system.

3.8. Conclusions for This Chapter

This chapter has focused its analysis on Letters Containing A Sketch of the Politics in

France, from the Thirty-First of May 1793, till the Twenty-Eight of July, 1794, published

in 1795. This second series of Letters by Williams focuses on the period labelled by

historians as the Reign of Terror, marked by an authoritarian turn in the French

authorities, in which Robespierre became the most visible figure. Williams tells her

imprisonment under the law of suspects in Luxembourg and later on in The Anglaises

where she gains access to the repressed community of the Girondins, and she puts a

special emphasis in her connection with Madame Roland. She defends throughout the

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volume her criticism of the Jacobin rule since they exert power through fear and thus, she

celebrates the downfall of Robespierre. After my analysis, I conclude that in her work

Williams:

● The literature of sensibility put an emphasis on the role of the victim in order to

move the readership and achieve an aesthetic impact. Williams goes beyond the

aesthetic dimension of sensibility to explore its potential as a calling for political

action. She uses the example of her release from prison, as she is liberated by

Coquerel, who is moved to action after having observed the British prisoners

suffering on their way to jail. Unlike Charlotte Smith in The Emigrants where she

defends that the knowledge of suffering during the Revolution enables her to

connect with the natural environment, Williams’ sensibility is focused on the

urban context and sees sensibility as a force to further connect members of the

same political cause. As explained by Watson, “in post-Terror England, it

becomes harder to authorize the voice of individual feeling as a form of legitimate

rational protest” (1994: 39). However, in her narrative of the Terror, Williams

presents the story of the victims as the driving force behind her and others’ –such

as Debry– involvement in the political scene. Williams sees herself as a victim of

the terror, but at the same time, this status as victim informs her self-awareness of

being a participant in the French political scene.

● In order to assert authority and to gain accuracy and insight in her analysis of the

events, Williams presents herself not only as a spectator but as a participant of the

events. She participates in the events through writing, either by putting herself at

risk when openly denouncing the Jacobin Government or by keeping relevant

documents that contain valuable political information, as in the case of Madame’s

Roland papers. For that matter, I consider that Williams adopts the role of a

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 political activist in her writing. As we have seen, this approach adds a nuance to

how these episodes from the French revolution are narrated by British authors

who were witnesses to the Revolution, as Williams relies not only on her political

sympathies with the Girondins but her involvement in the Girondin resistance.

● Following the tradition of sensibility, sharing common misfortunes with other

political prisoners involved her in a community of prisoners. As explained by

Culley “in the autobiographical accounts of Williams and Elliott the prison is

imagined as a temporary community” (2014: 152). However, Elliott does not use

her experience in Jail to defend the political ideas of a revolutionary party as

Williams does when she highlights the collective effort of the Girondin when

resisting Jacobin rule. For that matter, Williams does not see herself as an outsider

within the Revolution but a participant, despite her nationality. Williams’

community is shaped not only by a common experience behind bars, but by the

adherence to a political creed.

In the next chapter, I will explore Williams’ account of her trip to Switzerland, A Tour in

Switzerland (1798) in which she defends the need for the Revolutionary troops to continue

to spread the cause of liberty in Europe. I will also offer an analysis of Letters Containing

a Sketch (1801), where she analyses if the Revolution has improved the well-being of the

French at an individual level, demonstrating that the impact of the Revolution has been

positive. Her factual and sensitive approach to the events and their purport as a key

historical moment leads her to adopt a feminist stance to challenge women’s situation in

France and denounce the fact that women are excluded from politics.

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 Chapter 4

“I already behold everything around us with new optics”: The Beginning of the
Napoleonic Era

4.1. A Tour in Switzerland (1798): Writing as a Political Act

In March 1798, the French army occupied Switzerland marking the end of the Old Swiss

Confederacy and the beginning of the new Helvetic Republic. In that same year, Williams

released her A Tour in Switzerland (1798). As explained by Deborah Kennedy, this timing

“automatically and deliberately involved the book in the politics of the moment” (2002:

128). After becoming a permanent resident in France in 1792, Williams nonetheless chose

the travel writing genre for her Letters. In A Tour in Switzerland, Williams actually

embarked on a trip to Switzerland in 1794 that lasted for six months, coinciding with the

last months of the Reign of Terror. During the trip, she took notes of the different places

that she visited. However, it was not until 1798 that she decided to publish them and turn

the notes into a travelogue. Throughout her Tour, Williams makes allusions to her diary:

“I made a number of notes of what I had myself seen” (1798, vol. II: 10). Williams had

used her position as an eyewitness of the events to substantiate her authority as a

commentator of French politics. Even though the travelogue was published four years

after her trip, she provides her readership with first-hand chronicles of the events she had

directly observed. A Tour in Switzerland is also fundamentally different from Letters from

France and Letters Containing a Sketch (see chapters 2 and 3) since in A Tour Williams

made no longer use of the epistolary form. She chose to organise her Tour in different

chapters, which are in turn divided into subtitles, providing a list of the contents in each

section. In this manner, the book resembles more an encyclopaedic structure in which the

reader can easily access specific information.

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 In 1798, when A Tour in Switzerland was published, the Directory had assumed

the position of the government, marking the end of the National Assembly. However,

Williams continues to comment on the Reign of Terror, connecting A Tour with the

previous series of letters, Letters Containing a Sketch. Williams’ trip to Switzerland took

place in the last years of the Terror, and it was during that time when she was taking notes

for the travelogue, which explains why Williams focused on the politics of Terror rather

than on the new Directory. Besides, the Anti-Jacobin, or, Weekly Examiner, a British

counterrevolutionary publication and forerunner of the Anti-Jacobin Review (see 1.1.),

had started to circulate in November 1797. These magazines demonized the French

Revolution, drawing on the crimes committed during the Terror, and equating all

supporters of the Revolution in France with supporters of the Jacobin Club, which had

dissolved on the 12th of November 1794. Since Williams’ works were published for a

British public, Williams wanted to distance herself from the Jacobins. Williams opens

chapter 1 with a strong criticism of the Jacobin regime calling it a “new species of tyranny

which assumed the name of revolutionary government” (1798: vol. I: 1). She slanders the

Jacobin leaders by portraying them as being as oppressive as the Bourbon monarchy, as

she had done in Letters Containing a Sketch and explained in Chapter 3.

In Letters Containing a Sketch, Williams explains how she is persecuted under

the law of Suspects and the decree that prevented foreigners to reside in Paris, as noted

in 3.1. and 3.4. At the same time, her connections with well-known members of the

Gironde, such as Sillery and Lasource (see 3.2.) and Madame Roland, for whom she held

relevant political documents (see 3.3.), made Williams vulnerable to accusations of

having conspired for the Girondins against the Revolution. Significantly, in Tour, she

claims for the first time that the political pressure that she underwent in 1793 and 1794

was due to her denunciation of the current political affairs through her writing:

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 I was not merely involved in the common danger which threatened every individual in
France, but had claims to particular proscription. It was not only remembered by many
of the satellites of Robespierre, that I had been the friend of the Gironde, of Madame
Roland, martyred names which it was death to pronounce, but that I had written a work,
published in England, in which I traced, without reserve, the characters of our
oppressors. (1798, vol. I: 1-2)

In this passage Williams is claiming her proximity to Madame Roland, a key figure in

Girondin politics, and, as a result, she is implying her own relevance and involvement in

the same cause. More importantly, she highlights the political repercussion of her own

writings on the Terror. In 1798, Williams had completely abandoned the timid stance she

had held in 1790, presenting her political writing as an affair of the heart, see 2.1. Now,

she involves herself in political action through her writings and goes one step beyond by

presenting herself as one of the first authors who dared to condemn The Reign of Terror:

“No danger could be more imminent than that of living under the very tyranny which I

had the perilous honour of having been one of the first to deprecate, and to proclaim”

(1798: vol. I: 2). She puts herself in the position of an influential writer whose political

opinions are not only heard by the British public but that also provoke distress in the

French government. As we shall see, Williams presents her writing as a political act in

itself as it seeks the intervention and transformation of public opinion.

4.1.1. A New Era in Swiss History: Supporting the Invasion

As explained on 1.4.1., one of the most common destinations of the Grand Tour was

Switzerland. However, Williams detaches herself from the Grand Tour by emphasizing

that the reasons that took her to Switzerland are mainly political, and that she is not

embarking on an educational or pleasure trip. As mentioned in the previous section, each

chapter in A Tour in Switzerland is outlined by different subtitles that anticipate the

content. In chapter 1, right after “Introduction”, Williams introduces “Motives of my

Journey to Switzerland”. In this section, she explains that the government of Robespierre
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had turned France into a bloodshed. Williams justifies her trip by explaining that she was

given the opportunity to obtain a passport at a time when it was difficult to escape the

country, see 3.4. The manner in which she obtained the passport, or the legitimacy of it,

is kept obscure. By maintaining this secrecy, her status as a political fugitive is reinforced.

Not only is the purpose of her travel connected to the political events, but also to the

publication of the work itself: “It is the present moral situation of Switzerland that justifies

the appearance of these volumes, in which an attempt is made to trace the important

effects which the French Revolution has produced in that country, and which are about

to unfold a new era in its history” (1798, vol. I: 1). This perspective differentiates her

Tour from other travel narratives of the time, such as Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written

During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796) in which personal

circumstances prompt the author to take the trip and, subsequently, publish the

travelogue. In Williams’ case, both the trip and the publication of the volume are

inseparable from the political atmosphere that she encounters in France.

France and the Revolution are a continuous presence in Williams’ description of

Switzerland, apart from the reasons behind her trip. In A Tour, she provides a description

of the political organization and customs of the different Swiss cantons, but she uses it as

an opportunity to also comment on the French capital: “I have endeavoured to give an

additional interest to my journal, by connecting the view of the manners and customs,

with a comparative picture of the present state of Paris” (1798, vol. I: Preface). Williams

had already published eight volumes on French politics, usually focusing on Paris as the

epicentre of revolutionary affairs. French politics was Williams’ main subject of interest

as well as her area of expertise. In the case of A Tour in Switzerland, Williams uses her

comments on France as an appeal to the originality of her own travelogue when compared

with other narratives of travels around Swiss lands.

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 At the same time, the comparative slant also marks the difference between A Tour

in Switzerland and Williams’ previous volumes of letters, which focused only on France.

The use of subtitles, for example, makes the comparison explicit: “Comparative View of

the Spirit of Commerce in France, before, and since the Revolution” or “Comparative

View of French and Swiss Peasantry before the Revolution”.

Apart from the claims of originality, Williams compares France and Switzerland

to highlight the former as a freer country than the latter. Gary Kelly, Chris Jones and

Deborah Kennedy argue that in A Tour in Switzerland Williams participates in a critique

of the government of the Swiss cantons in order to defend the French invasion. Patrick

Vincent and Florence Widmer-Schnyder go in the same direction when they write that:

“Her [Williams’] aim is to show, [...] that Switzerland was in reality not free in

comparison with the newly founded French Republic” (2011: 10). Every time she

describes her arrival to a new destination in Switzerland, she dedicates a few paragraphs

to analyse how the canton is governed, usually concluding that the government functions

in an aristocratic and hierarchical manner. For instance, in her visit to Fribourg, Williams

observes that “The government of Fribourgh, like those of Lucerne and Soleure, is a

confirmed aristocracy. The power is centred in the hands of a council of two hundred,

who, with various divisions, and subdivisions of authority, hold the absolute sovereignty”

(1798, vol. II: 193-4). The impenetrability of the political system that Williams describes

here, together with the hierarchical structure of power, resembles court politics. Besides,

the power structure in Fribourg is not an exception, as it also reproduced in other Swiss

areas, such as Lucerne and Soleure. In this manner, Williams challenges the myth that

constructed Switzerland as a stronghold of republican virtue and positions herself in line

with the ideas of Frédéric César de la Harpe (1754-1838), ideologist of the Helvetic

Republic. The tone with which Williams attacks Swiss governments is reminiscent of the

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strong language she had used in Letters Containing a Sketch, as elaborated on in the

previous chapter. She labels the Swiss power structure as “usurpation in the eyes of the

people” (vol. I: 172); “the abuses which exist in these Swiss governments” (vol I: 216);

“reins of arbitrary power” (vol.: 216); “the government is nothing but a mere oligarchy,

incompatible with every idea of free political institution” (vol. II: 58); “civic degradation”

(vol. II: 58); or “their governors have instituted the most illegal and arbitrary customs”

(vol. II: 140). The same tone is employed to attack the Jacobins. For instance, she labels

them as “the pestilential reign of terrorism” (vol. II: 89). The direct and harsh way of

criticizing the political organization of the country she is visiting serves two purposes. On

the one hand, as previously explained, she is challenging the widespread construction of

Switzerland as a bastion of republicanism. On the other hand, she is also asserting her

position as an outspoken reporter, a persona that she keeps throughout the book.

Marc Lerner explains that in the eighteenth century, Swiss cantons were governed

through three different models: “the patrician-aristocratic constitution in cantons such as

Bern, the guild-dominated republican constitution of cities such as Zurich or Basel, and

the “pure democratic” landsgemeinde constitution of the inner Swiss Cantons, the rural

cantons in the central part of the country” (2011: 11). Landsgemeinde is a German term

that refers to the system of government based on popular assemblies that participated in

decision-making through direct and non-secret vote. According to Sterhammer, Piccitto,

and Vincent, the French Revolution appropriated the Landsgemeinde with their popular

assemblies (2015: Introduction). Taking the Swiss territory as a whole, the

Landsgemeinde constituted only an exception. Fréderic César de la Harpe wanted to make

the public aware of the diversity in the Swiss forms of government as a way to demystify

Switzerland, bringing attention to the fact that not all cantons were governed by popular

assemblies. In fact, the Canton of Vaud, where he came from offered a very different

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picture of Swiss politics from the Landsgemeinde. In the 16th century, the canton of Vaud

was invaded by the canton of Bern. Despite the revolts in the early eighteenth century to

obtain independence from Bern, Pays de Vaud continued to be subject to the Bernese

Government until 1798. La Harpe published Essai sur la Constitution du Pays de Vaud

(1796) in Paris where he adopted a Vaud nationalist instance and urged for the

intervention of French troops to liberate the canton. In their introduction to the 2011

edition of Williams’ A Tour in Switzerland, Patrick Vincent and Florence Widnmer-

Schenyder argue that La Harpe knew Williams’ work on Switzerland and respected her

knowledge on political matters:

La Harpe clearly knew that Williams had reproduced him verbatim in her account. In the
margins of the copy of a French translation [of A Tour in Switzerland] dedicated by
Williams to La Harpe [...] he highlights his own ideas in several places. In a letter dated
19 March 1802, La Harpe recommended Williams to Alexander I as a literary
correspondent on English subjects, an arrangement that unfortunately never worked out.
A year later, he sent a copy of the French translation of Williams tour to the Tsar. (2011:
39)

The fact that La Harpe suggested Williams’ correspondence to the monarch proves that

he considered her an authority on English issues. At the same time, he also sent him

Williams’ Tour, which proves that he agreed with Williams’ rendering of his own native

country. Thus, through her writing, Williams involved herself in La Harpe’s nationalist

cause.

In her defence of La Harpe’s ideas and the Directory’s subsequent decision to

invade Switzerland, Williams was also positioning herself against the tide of British

public opinion. The work of eighteenth-century writers Joseph Addison, Oliver

Goldsmith and William Coxe contributed to the consolidation in Britain of the stereotype

of the swiss people as virtuous and republican (Estherhammer, Piccitto and Vincent,

2015: Introduction). Another eighteenth-century phenomenon, Rousseau, had largely

participated in this mythification of Switzerland. Even though Rousseau’s popularity was

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decreasing in Britain at the turn of the eighteenth century for its association with the

French Revolution (see 1.3.2.), his writings had been immensely popular in Britain. For

instance, in his Letter to D’Alembert (1758), he had opposed himself to the opening of a

theatre in Geneva. According to Rousseau, the theatre would mean the downfall of the

city, because the industriousness of the swiss would be replaced by the lazy and luxury-

driven attitudes of the Parisian inhabitants. In The Social Contract, Rousseau praised the

Genevan form of government: “I was born a citizen of a free state and a member of its

sovereign body [...] How happy I am, each time that I reflect on governments, always to

find new reasons, in my researches, to cherish the government of my country!” (1994

[1762]: 45). As explained here, Rousseau highlights the freedom that the democratic

system grants its citizens and he presents it as the ideal system of government. Rousseau’s

popularity, together with the works by Addison, Goldsmith and Coxe drew together an

ideal of Switzerland as a democratic land whose inhabitants, living secluded in the

mountains, had not been spoiled by the emerging consumer society. Swiss cantons, that

worked as small republics, were the complete opposite of centralized states governed by

a despotic monarchy, as in the case of France in the Old Régime, Spain, Austria or Russia.

For that reason, “France’s controversial invasion of Switzerland in the winter of 1798 [...]

marked a significant turning point in British responses to the French Revolution” (Vincent

and Widmer-Schnyder, 2011: 11). According to the British view, the French

Revolutionary troops were not liberating Switzerland, but the complete opposite, they

were limiting their freedom. The events of 1798 also turned former British supporters of

the Revolution into their opponents. The invasion “helped Foxite Whigs and former

radicals, among them Coleridge and Wordsworth, turn away from Revolutionary politics,

making Swiss liberty as a counter-revolutionary alternative to French-républicanisme”

(Estherhammer, Piccitto and Vincent, 2015: Introduction). In order to counteract the

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growing outrage of the British people towards the French Revolution, Williams does not

hesitate to address the aristocratic and despotic way of ruling in Switzerland.

Of all the accounts of Switzerland pointed to earlier, the one that Williams

mentions the most in A Tour in Switzerland is the one by William Coxe. Compared to

Addison and Goldsmith, the publication of Coxe’s Travels in Switzerland in 1789 was

the closest in time to Williams’ trip. It had been published only five years before Williams

set foot on Swiss soil. Williams directly opposes Coxe’s rendering of Switzerland. Coxe

praises the city of Basel because its inhabitants are educated and interested in intellectual

pursuits and literature. For her part, Williams writes that “whatever were the Halcyon

days of taste and learning in the period of Mr. Cox’s visit, it is a melancholy fact that his

literary spirit has entirely evaporated since his departure” (1798, vol. I: 115). As explained

by Patrick Vincent and Florence Widmer-Schynder: “Williams’s narrative uses a

trenchant form of irony bordering on sarcasm that is often quite amusing and that

systematically deconstructs earlier, romanticized representations of Switzerland in

poetry, fiction and travel literature” (2011: 44). In this case, Williams, through irony,

leaves open the possibility of challenging Coxe’s description of Switzerland.

As explained on 1.1., Williams positioned herself in opposition to Burke’s

understanding of the French Revolution. Surprisingly, during the Terror, Williams

momentarily sides with Burke as explained on 3.5. However, in A Tour in Switzerland

she resumes her attack on Burke’s ideas, as she had previously done in Letters Written in

France (as in 2.2.). In 1798, Williams continued to demonstrate that Burke’s assumptions

about France were mistaken: “The irreverence of religion, however, which Mr. Burke

considered as one of the primary causes of the French Revolution, is not, as heretofore,

the ton amongst persons of former rank and fashion” (1798, vol. I: 73). Williams explains

that the love for religion is not extinguished in France, especially among the high classes,

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who maintain the religion of their parents. For that reason, Williams invalidates Burke’s

analysis on the French Revolution since the premise that he uses to predict the failure of

the Revolution is proven wrong by Williams’ observations regarding the state of religion

in France. Nonetheless, Burke is not only inaccurate in his analysis of the Revolution in

France, his rendering of Switzerland is also mistaken in Williams’ view. Interestingly

enough, Williams associates Burke’s ideas on Switzerland to those by William Coxe.

Chapter V narrates Williams’ visits to Berne, which she describes as an “aristocratical

canton” (1798, vol. II: 198) where the “power of the government of this canton is the least

limited of any in Switzerland (1798, vol. II: 199). For their part, Coxe and Burke had

praised Berne’s government: “To this testimony [Coxe’s] may be added that of Mr.

Burke, who asserts, that the Republic of Berne is one of the happiest, most prosperous,

and best governed countries on earth” (1798, vol. II: 199). Coxe and Burke describe the

government in Berne as always aiming at the well-being of their subjects. Williams

contradicts this assumption by alluding again to the situation of the Pays de Vaud. A

canton such as Berne that subdues another to their rule, and that represses the desires of

part of its subjects, who want independence of the Canton of Vaud, cannot be considered

other than an oppressive government for her. Williams bring attention to the appropriation

of Vaud property by the authorities of Berne: “some Sovereign Burgher of Berne [...]

lives in a fine chateau [...] which once belonged to the dignitaries of the Pays of Vaud”

(1798, vol. II: 153). Williams presents the Sovereign as an extension of aristocracy, as he

enjoys better living conditions than the majority of the population, but his properties and

estate have been acquired as the result of an act of undue appropriation.

Williams also offers an alternative to Rousseau’s description of Switzerland. As

previously explained, his writings had a profound effect in the mythification of

Switzerland as morally superior to corrupted Paris. Among all the works by Rousseau,

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and given its popularity, the influence of Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse, set in Switzerland,

“went a long way to popularize the Swiss as noble savages” (Estherhamimer, Piccitto and

Vincent, 2015: Introduction). For that reason, Williams directly alludes to Rousseau’s

epistolary work to present her alternative account of Switzerland. When visiting the

canton of Valais, where Rousseau’s novel is set, she writes that:

All in nature is still romantic, wild, and graceful, as Rousseau had painted it; but the
shooting charm associated with the moral feeling, is in some sort dissolved. The soft
image of the impassioned Julia no longer hovers around the castle of Chillen, which is
now converted into a Swiss Bastille, and guarded by a stern soldiery. (1798, vol. II: 179-
180)

Williams distinguishes between two myths surrounding Switzerland, one related to its

sublime landscape, that Williams confirms and that she frequently describes in her

travelogue, and another referring to the virtuousness of its governors and citizens. The

castle of Chillon, that Williams spells here as “Chillen”, had traditionally served as a

prison in the 16th Century for the House of Savoy. After 1733, it had become a state

prison that Williams labels here as the ‘Swiss Bastille’. In fact, after the French

intervention, Chillon ceased to be a prison and became an armoury. The allusion to the

fortress shows that the situation in France before the French Revolution and that of present

Switzerland is not so different as Rousseau promoted. The Storming of the Bastille

marked the beginning of the French Revolution, and Williams alludes to this powerful

and vivid image to justify the irruption of the French troops in Switzerland.

Williams also criticises Rousseau’s Social Contract. In Chapter XXVII, she

narrates her visit to the Canton of Glarus, that she refers to by the French name of ‘Glaris’.

This canton was actually governed by a popular assembly or Landsgemeinde. Williams

is aware of the fact that this type of government is praised by her republican

contemporaries: “The popular assemblies of the little Cantons have excited the

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enthusiasm of generous minds, who fancied that they saw in those democracies the return

of the age of the old Romans, and the republicans of Greece” (1798, vol. II: 79).

According to Marc Lerner, there was a tendency to idealize the history of Switzerland

and to describe its democracy as coming from ancient times. However, “the idea of

centuries-long republican continuity of the Swiss Confederation is a constructed myth”

(2011: 18). Williams dismantles the myth by describing the conflicts in the meetings,

which challenge the idealization of the direct democracy as peaceful: “the history of

Switzerland furnishes terrible examples of the furious passions at those meetings” (1798,

vol. II: 79). Thus, Williams wants to bring to the fore the downside of direct democracy

and suggests that a representative system would avoid pressures and clashes among the

government and citizens. Using an ironic tone, she mentions the Genevan author:

“Rousseau had probably overlooked those inconveniencies of Democracy, when, in his

Social Contract, he treated representative government as a political heresy” (1798, vol.

II: 80). Williams, by showing the negative aspects of direct democracy, puts Rousseau’s

political theories into question.

4.1.2. “The Mild Wand of Philosophy”

As it has been explained on 2.2., Williams appeals to experience in order to confer

authority to her writing. In Letters, she had emphasized that her chronicles were a first-

hand narration of the political situation in France, and she now assures her readership that

they can expect the same in the present volume about Switzerland. However, the trip took

place four years before the publication of A Tour in Switzerland and Williams’ travelogue

serves the ideological purposes of the political situation in 1798 rather than 1794. For that

reason, Williams also adds relevant information in the current state of politics. In a

journalistic mode, she goes over her previous notes and brings them up to date. Williams

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describes in detail how the French invasion has operated in the cantons. In Chapter XXV,

for example, Williams explains how the Revolutionary troops accede to mediate in the

conflict between the government of the canton of Grison and its citizens, who had recently

revolted. Due to the inefficacy of the Grisons, the French Army finally settles the matter

in favour of the revolted subjects. This example shows that, in A Tour in Switzerland,

Williams’ experiences from 1794 are blended with the journalistic report of the most

recent events. Williams also updates her narrative to praise Napoleon. In 1794, when

Williams travels around Switzerland, Napoleon had not even been appointed General of

the Army yet. However, by 1798, he had successfully won the battles of Lodi, Arcole and

Rivoli in the Italian campaigns against Austria, which had elevated Bonaparte to the status

of a military hero for the Revolutionary Army. The Napoleon described in A Tour in

Switzerland is the rising celebrity of 1798. She presents him as a great military man, but,

what is more, she praises him for expanding the cause of liberty:

What swells the heart with reverence, is not the hero standing in the breach, it is the
benefactor of his race converting the destructive lightening of the conqueror’s sword into
the benignant rays of freedom, and presenting to vanquished nations the emblems of
liberty and independence entwined with the olive of peace (1798, vol. II: 56).

Williams, who had adopted a pacifist stance throughout her whole literary career,

compliments Bonaparte for bringing peace to the liberated territories. In subsequent

works, especially after Napoleon’s coup d’etat in 1799, Williams harshly criticizes and

opposes him. However, A Tour in Switzerland is a reflection of Williams’ political

position at the time. She wants her travelogue to be more than a pleasure read and, for

that purpose, she keeps her readership informed by expressing her opinions on the latest

events.

After the exclamations of admiration towards Napoleon, Williams explains that a

new era is starting in the way history and politics are told and understood. The idea that

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the French Revolution was a complete rupture with the past was characteristic in the

thinking of revolutionaries and according to Lynn Hunt “the will to break with the

national past distinguished the French from previous revolutionary movements” (1984:

27). The clearest example of complete fracture with the old régime is the creation of a

new calendar that broke with the previous timescale. However, Williams had celebrated

the end of the Terror and, in 1801, she perceives the beginning of a more peaceful time:

“Happily a new era opens to the world; the maddening charm of the poet is at length

dissolved by the mild wand of the philosophy, and the heroes meed arises from other

exploits than those of multitudes destroyed, and provinces desolated” (1798, vol. II: 37).

Williams is referring to a time when historical events were narrated by poets and she

distances her writing from this historical and even epic tradition. She had already detached

herself from this epic tradition in page 56, when she decided to praise Napoleon for his

role as a benefactor rather than hero or conqueror. Williams places her work in line with

this new way of commenting politics, which is much more moderate and objective.

Before the French Revolution, Williams had inscribed herself in the tradition of

the poet/historian: “To describe an important event with accuracy, and to display with

clearness and force the various causes which combined produce it, would require all the

energy of genius, and the most glowing colours of imagination” (1786, vol. II: 53). After

1789, and as her work continues to mature, Williams claims that her work is becoming

more objective. In order to write about the recent events, her starting point is not

inspiration anymore as it was in 1786. The shift in Williams’ self-awareness is not only

noticeable in her published works. In her private correspondence, Williams expresses that

she increasingly sees herself as a philosopher. In a letter to her friend Ruth Barlow,

Williams writes: “Indeed I become every day more philosophical, and perhaps what has

hitherto appeared to me the greatest of misfortunes, may prove to be my greatest good”

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(1937 [1794]: 45). These words were written in 1794, precisely when Williams was

touring Switzerland, and just a year before the publication of Letters Containing a Sketch.

She implies here that with a philosophical thinking and method she can produce her best

thinking. In her personal correspondence, Williams acknowledges that she is embracing

a new mode of thinking that is inextricably bound up with an evolution in her style of

writing.

Contemporary reviewers of Williams’ work also saw a distinction in her facet as

a poet and as a commentator on political matters. In 1799, the Anti-Jacobin Magazine

lamented Williams’ turn towards politics: “Helen Maria Williams is doubtless, a true

poet. But it is not extraordinary, that such a genius, a female and so young should have

become a politician” (1799: 30). In June 1798, the London Review writes that “As a

Poetess, Miss Williams attracts us much more than as a politician” (1798: 390). The

reviewer grounds their argument on gender: “We cannot forbear to observe, that in our

opinion an English female of excellent natural endowments and acquired

accomplishments might have been much better employed than in thus energetically

advocating a cause, that has poured on almost every country in Europe the horrible

calamities of war and civil bloodshed” (1798: 390). Political conflicts are not a proper

subject of discussion for a woman writer in the critic’s eyes. In British Women Writers

and the Writing of History, 1670-1820 Devoney Looser writes that despite the fact of

being undoubtedly taking part in the construction of historical discourse, “what women

had to face that men did not, of course, was the “problem” of their sex, assigned by a

culture that usually did not imagine for them an equivalent place in history or in history

writing” (2000: 27). As previously explained, in A Tour in Switzerland, Williams does

not present herself as being in any inferior position to deal with history or politics on

account of her gender, but this is something that affected her reputation as a writer,

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especially after the publication of A Tour in Switzerland. The strong opposition that

women had to face in the public opinion might precisely be that which Williams

considered “the greatest of misfortunes” in her letter to Ruth Barlow.

On account of her gender, Williams’ role as an intellectual was denied by the

reviews in her own country. Meanwhile, in Paris, Williams was accepted by the leading

intellectuals and political figures of her time. Examples of this are her visits to Madame

de Genlis (see 2.3.), or to Madame Roland (see 3.3.), or her rendezvous with French

author Bernardin the Saint Pierre for tea at Williams’ house in Paris (1795: 6). However,

the physical distance from Paris does not hinder Williams from making social connections

with well-known personalities of her time. In Zurich, Williams visits Swiss philosopher

Caspar Lavater (1741-1801), whose political ideas were in line with Williams’ purpose

in A Tour in Switzerland. At an early age, Lavater had criticized the corruption in his own

country in a pamphlet entitled Der ungerechte Landvogd oder Klagen eines Patrioten

(1762) or The Unjust Governor or the Complaint of a Patriot. Here, he criticized the

governor of the Canton of Grüningen for being corrupt, and thus had already challenged

the well-spread view of Swiss governors as morally virtuous. Williams explains that it

was not uncommon for travellers who made a stopover in Zurich to visit the Swiss

philosopher: “We staid long enough at Zuric to visit its first literary ornament Lavater. It

being known that he is willing to receive strangers, no traveller of any lettered curiosity

passes through the town, without paying him the homage of a visit” (1798, vol. I: 66).

Surprisingly, Lavater returns the visit: “He came to pay me a visit, which I was taught to

consider as an unusual compliment, since it is his general rule not to return the visits of

strangers” (1798, vol. I: 70). In this manner, Williams differentiates herself from the rest

of the travellers, suggesting that she possesses more than ‘lettered curiosity’. The

reciprocity of Lavater’s visit implicitly attests of Williams’ status as a thinker. Williams

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briefly alludes to the topics of the conversation between her and Lavater, who talked

mainly about time and religion. Interestingly enough, he made an impression on Williams

in that “there was more of feeling than of logic in his conclusion” (1798, vol. I: 71). In

this manner, Lavater is here following the tradition of sensibility, explained on 1.3., in

which spontaneous feeling is given prominence to articulated thoughts. Williams hints

here at the fact that feelings are intrinsically connected to intellectual abilities and the

pursuits of the mind.

4.2. Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic (1801)

In 1801, three years after the publication of A Tour in Switzerland, Williams published a

new volume of letters about France entitled Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions

in the French Republic, Towards the Close of the Eighteenth Century, In a Series of

Letters (1801). With this work, Williams returns to the epistolary genre. Published in

1801, the political situation of both France and Switzerland had enormously changed

since 1798. Williams’ first allusion to Bonaparte is explained in 4.1.2., where she had

praised Napoleon for the success of his military campaigns as Commander of the French

Army. By 1801, when Sketches was published, Napoleon had seized power in France

after the Coup d’Etat of the 18th of Brumaire, which took place on the 9th of November

1799. This Coup meant the end of the Directory, that had ruled France since the overthrow

of Robespierre and the Jacobins in 1794, and the beginning of the French Consulate, with

Napoleon as First Consul. In Sketches, Williams criticizes the Directory for exerting

power in an arbitrary manner and not being professional enough to fulfil their roles as

governors:

They were not hypocrites, when they tyrannized, their tyranny was open, undisguised;
when they plundered, there was no dissimulation, it was equally overt, frank and liberal.
They felt not the worth of that fine patrimony of glory which had been bequeathed to

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 them by genius and heroism, - and which they, with foolish prodigality, threw away. The
fault, however, belongs perhaps less to themselves, than to those who committed to their
hands so precious a trust as that of public happiness. (1801, vol. I: 103).

Although the Directory acted in a tyrannic manner, to Williams, they do not seem as

dangerous as the Jacobins. As explained in section 2.6. of this thesis, Williams distrusted

the Jacobins and she saw malignity in their lack of transparency. Here, the fact the

members of the Directory do not conceal their misgovernment of France, shows them as

incompetent and disinterested governors rather than evil forces.

When it comes to Switzerland, the Helvetic Republic that Williams had so

enthusiastically welcomed was collapsing due to the Swiss resistance to the occupation.

Meanwhile, the Swiss territory became a battleground for the War of the Second Coalition

(1798-1802), in which monarchical powers such as Austria and Russia fought against the

Revolutionary Army. Williams, who had formerly praised the Revolutionary Army as

bringing peace to the Swiss territories, as explained throughout 4.1., criticises the troops

in Sketches for the brutality of their actions. Williams exclaims in a lamenting tone: “Alas!

Can no other offerings be made to liberty than those of human blood? [...] Must the

trophies of liberty be numbered by nations slain, and countries desolated” (1801, vol.I:

9). With these words, she shows that she had envisioned a different outcome for the

invasion of the French troops. As someone who has defended pacifist inclinations

throughout her career, her disappointment becomes evident. Interestingly, she holds The

Directory responsible of the failure of the troops in Switzerland: “Is it likely that when

armies of the Republic had swept away privileged despotism from the conquered

countries, the establishment of a directorial despotism more capricious and insupportable

could have been suffered?” (1801, vol. I: 102). According to Williams, the political

malpractice of the Directory is even worse than the aristocratic governments she had

found when she was travelling and conversing with others in the Swiss cantons.
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 Together with informing her readership of the latest political events in France

and neighbouring countries, the purpose of Sketches of the State of Manners is to make

amends to the claims she had made in 1798. Although she still defends that the French

troops had the potential to bring peace and freedom to Switzerland, she wants to clarify

that she has been deeply disappointed by the turn of the events she had failed to foresee.

At the same time, throughout Sketches, she defends herself from the attacks that her

previous publications have received, as mentioned in the preceding section 4.1.2. In

Sketches, she adopts an assertive and fearless tone facing the attacks. She writes of herself

that: “a certain traveller through Switzerland, who fled from France, to avoid becoming

the victim of that terror; and who will never be intimidated even by the insinuation of

being a revolutionary scribe, from declaring her aversion to injustice, or cruelty, whether

aristocratical, or demagogical” (1801, vol. I: 80). With these words, Williams reinforces

her independent thinking. Her political opinions do not come from a blind faith in the

revolutionary authorities, as she has demonstrated by criticizing the Directory. She

ensures her readership that she always displayed her genuine opinion, which is always

informed by her belief in the cause of liberty, instead of any alliance with revolutionary

factions.

4.2.1. Individual Happiness in the Age of Revolutions

Historians have traditionally delimited the period of the French Revolution from the Fall

of the Bastille, 14th of July 1789, to the Coup of Brumaire, 9th November 1799, which

brought Napoleon to power as leader of the Consul. The Coup of Brumaire marks the

beginning of the Napoleonic era. Although the periods were defined by historians in

retrospective, Williams evidences in her writing that she is aware that Napoleon’s rise to

power will take the course of the Revolution in a different direction. In Letter XII, entitled

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“The Return of Bonaparte”, Williams writes: “I already behold everything around us with

new optics” (1801: 317). As she anticipates a profound change in the French government,

Williams rethinks the political fights of the last decade and evaluates the outcome of the

Revolution. Instead of paying attention to the laws, measures, and advancements

conducted by the Government, Williams decides to examine how these revolutionary

measures have affected French citizens at an individual level. According to her, private

feelings are inseparable from historical discussion:

[…] in the enormous scales that weight the fate of nations private sufferings are as a
feather in the balance - if however, this be philosophy, my heart is still at a remote distance
from its elevated heights - I have not yet learnt to wipe away the bitter tears which fall
for actual, positive miseries, by speculations of future probable good, and to reason with
those calculators in the presence of their bleeding victims. (1801, vol. I: 13)

Even though Williams had admitted in private that she saw herself becoming everyday

more philosophical, as explained in 4.1.2., she distances herself from philosophy in this

passage. Using an ironic tone, she criticises the ongoing dispassionate direction that she

observes in the social sciences. Williams criticizes the authorities of the Revolution in its

subsequent phases, who saw themselves as heirs of the philosophes’ thinking. She

believes that in experimenting with new forms of government, they have overlooked the

impact of their decisions on the population. Williams rejects a detached approach to

politics and sees it as dangerous as it can potentially overlook and neglect the people’s

needs at an individual level. Her emphasis on private feelings is characteristic of the

literature of sensibility as explained on 1.3. Following this tradition of sensibility,

Williams’ had already shown in her writing a stern interest in recording particular

experiences, an example of this being the story of the Du Fossés, narrated in Letters

(1790), as already indicated in section 2.4 of this thesis.

In Letter V, after a decade of observing the Revolution in France, Williams

provides an evaluation of the improvements attained by the French population. She sets

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the discussion as a response to a question by her fictional correspondent: “you [...] desire

a reply from me to your question, whether the mass of individual happiness has been

increased, or lessened by the Revolution” (1801, vol. I: 36). After settling the topic of

discussion in her Letter, she provides an answer from different viewpoints, as she pictures

different answers by a Jacobin, a “friend of the Republic'' and an aristocrat. In her usual

denunciation of Jacobinism, Williams writes that Jacobins would not recognize that any

improvement has been made. For them, “despotism has only changed hands” (1801, vol.

I: 36). As explained by Williams, the Jacobins consider all political positions that depart

from their political creed to be royalists, even if they plead the cause of the Republic

(1801, vol. I: 36). Besides, the only glorious time in the Revolution was for them the year

that spans from the summer of 1793 to the one of 1794. On the other hand, the aristocrat

would lament the loss of their properties and titles, very much in line with the ideas that

Williams had already defended in Letters, explained in 2.3.

‘The friend of the republic’, the group in which Williams inscribed herself in,

would acknowledge that the French economy does not find itself in its finest hours.

However, the supporters of the Republic are not discouraged by the present economic

situation, since they understand that the Revolution is a long process. First of all, the

internal conflicts together with the war against the neighbouring countries is inevitably

having a negative impact on the economy: “it should be remembered that for ten years

past France has been struggling for its civil and political existence against the combined

powers of Europe, beyond the frontiers, and the partizans of despotism an anarchy,

within” (1801, vol. I: 37-38). However, Williams is hopeful that the internal upheaval

was coming to an end, as explained in 3.7. At the same time, she is convinced that the

liberating ideals of the French Revolution will eventually reach other countries, as she

had defended for Switzerland: “The contagion of liberty and equal rights, [...] may,

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perhaps, with infectious rapidity, spread far beyond its borders” (1801, vol. I: 60). If the

antagonist countries convert to the Revolution, they would cease in their resolution of

stopping the Revolution. The friend of the Republic also finds an advantage in the

Revolution that the aristocrat fails to see. While the aristocrat egotistically regrets the loss

of their property and richness, in a positive light, the friend of the Republic sees a more

equal distribution of richness among the citizens: “The abolition of the law of

primogeniture, by equalizing hereditary fortunes [...] has become the most sure and

powerful support of the Revolution” (1801, vol. I: 39). Williams is convinced that, in the

long run, the future generations that descend from the aristocracy will welcome the

measures rejected by their parents since their living conditions have been improved

through the fair distribution of inheritance among siblings.

Letter VI continues to answer the question of whether or not the Revolution has

increased the bulk of individual happiness in France, focusing this time on the rural

population. According to Williams, the Revolution needs to make the improvement of the

working conditions of the peasants a priority: “It is for that unfortunate extensive part of

the family of humankind that revolutions ought to take place” (1801, vol. I: 50).

According to her, the peasants were the part of the French inhabitants that suffered the

most from despotism, since they enjoy worse living conditions than the rich: “the wealthy

finds means to alleviate the weight of despotism. The rich man is sheltered from a

thousand evils that accumulate on the head of the indigent” (1801, vol. I: 51). As

explained by John Markoff, the peasantry had been an active force in the Revolution, and

at the same time, their situation had concerned revolutionary leaders since 1789. The

discussion of seigneurial rights marked the revolutionary drift of the peasants’

insurrections, since in the seventeenth century the peasantry had mostly complained about

royal taxes, while, towards 1789, Markoff identifies a tendency to attack seigneurial

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targets (2010: 12). However, the peasantry did not constitute a uniform mass with the

same interests across France, as they were very active in defending royalism in the

Vendean wars, for instance. In spite of focusing most of her political discussion on the

events happening in Paris, Williams believes that, since France is a “farming country”

(1801, vol. I: 58) where two thirds of its population work in agriculture, the improvement

of their situation is the most necessary to increase the overall happiness of the nation.

Williams celebrates the eradication of the corvée, which was the name given to the

compulsory work that peasants had to perform for the landlords without receiving any

wages. Due to the lack of remuneration, Williams equates the corvée to slavery. Besides,

according to Williams, the Revolution has not only granted the peasantry better working

conditions, it has also had a positive effect on their moral standards:

In the commune where he once dragged his reluctant steps to bend before some arbitrary
mandate of seigneurial vexation, or do fealty and homage for some privileged exactions,
he now stands erect, a free citizen; he finds none superior to himself, but such of as the
law, which is the same for the whole (1801, vol. I: 53).

Williams, who had asserted that “the principle of Revolution is resistance to oppression”

(1801, vol. I: 118), is following in this excerpt the Republican tradition that understands

freedom as lack of domination. While the peasants were under the sway of the landlords,

they could not be considered free, even if the landlord treated them in a kind manner.

In her discussion of the peasantry, Williams adopts a gender-based perspective to

denounce that agricultural work affects women more negatively than it affects men, as it

will be elaborated later on in this section. In order to denounce the hard living and working

conditions that women experienced in rural France, Williams quotes British author and

economist Arthur Young, specifically his travelogue Travels in France During the Years

1787, 1788, 1789 (1792). Young’s interest in agriculture came from his experience as a

farmer managing his family state, that resulted in the publication of several books on rural

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economy, being The Farmer’s Letters to the People of England (1767) the most well-

known, and later on he edited the agricultural magazine Annals of Agriculture. Young

then started to travel around the rural areas of Britain, where he directly observed

agricultural work, a practice that he continued in other places of Europe, mainly Ireland

and France. Young visited France during the years of the French Revolution, but, unlike

Williams, he was not in favour of the revolutionary cause. As much as he was favourable

to agricultural reform, Young did not believe that the context of the Revolution would

eventually improve agricultural labour and for that reason he published A Plain and

Earnest Address to Britons, Especially Farmers (1792), signed by ‘a farmer’, and The

Example of France, a Warning for Great Britain (1793). Coinciding with Burke’s views,

Young saw the Revolution as an attack on private property which was inevitably going to

impoverish the country in the long run: “The quarrel now ranging in that once flourishing

kingdom, is not between liberty and tyranny, or between protecting and oppressive

systems of government; it is, on the contrary, collected to a single point. - It is alone a

question of property” (1792: 4). Following this, Young declares that the British landlords

should protect their property by avoiding that their subordinates obtain the right to control

prices or wages:

Let the farmers of this kingdom represent to themselves a picture of what their situation
would be, if their labourers, their servants, and the paupers whom they support by poor-
rates, were all armed [...] decreeing what the price of all the farmer’s products should be;
what wages should be paid to servants, and what pay to labourers. Under such a system
of government I beg to ask, what security would remain for a single shilling in the pockets
of those who are at present in a state of ease and competence. (1792: 5-6)

In order to guarantee a peaceful continuation of the present state of affairs in the British

countryside, Young insinuates that landlords should prevent a revolt from the labouring

peasants, which would disrupt the forces of labour and consequently have a negative

impact on the economy. Interestingly enough, Young’s attitude towards the peasantry of

France during the French Revolution is at odds with Williams’ perspective, as it has just
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been explained. Williams believed that the least wealthy classes should be given priority

when it comes to reform. She also celebrates the fact that the peasantry can now survive

and prosper without being subject to the dominion of a landlord.

Williams reproduces word by word a passage from Young’s Travels that

describes the terrible condition in which a woman peasant finds herself. Williams sees

the origin of the peasant women’s misfortunates in the oppressive system of the ancien

régime, and acknowledges that the Revolution has had a positive impact on them: “while

I am speaking of the actual benefits derived to the peasant, let me not forget the partner

of its labours. For her the Revolution has done much” (1801, vol. I: 54). In this manner,

Williams contradicts Young's predictions, that the Revolution would bring chaos to the

countryside and in turn degrade the well-being of both landlords and labourers. Young’s

passage explains how the peasant woman lacks the money necessary to buy more cattle

and thus feed her seven children, since they owe a great part of their income to the

seigneur and taxes. In this manner, Williams proves the main point in her discussion of

rural economy, that seigneurial rights are oppressive to the workers. Besides, after getting

rid of seigneurial rights, the peasantry enjoys more money to invest in their well-being.

Following that line of argument, Williams clearly addresses Young: “let him write as

many warnings as he pleases, who will reflect without gladness that if the franchars of

wheat be lost to the Seigneur [...] the poor little horse eats the four franchars, and is

fattened, and the seven children are clothed, instructed, and fed?” (1801, vol. I: 57). In

this manner, Williams persists in her criticism of British counterrevolutionaries for being

more concerned with regretting the potential loss of their richness rather than the

improvement of the lower classes. Williams’ gendered approach to the discussion of the

peasantry is also compelling, and evidences the tendency in Sketches to focus specifically

on women’s issues. Williams observes that the woman peasant, apart from the oppression

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she suffers due to her class condition, is further burdened by her gender. Williams

ventures to say that: “I am inclined to think that they work harder than the men” (1801,

vol.I: 56), since they have to toil in the fields, while giving birth and taking care of the

family. Even though Williams believes that the Revolution has had a positive effect on

the peasants, and that extends to women peasants, she is doubtful whether the Revolution

has improved women’s lot as a whole, as it will be explained in the following section

4.2.2.

4.2.2. “On the State of Women in the French Republic”

Williams opens Sketches of the State of Manners answering the criticism she has received

in Britain. As Williams had already demonstrated in her writing her profound aversion to

the Jacobins (see 2.6. and chapter 3 in its entirety), she deplores the accusations of being

a Jacobin and refuses to defend herself on this point: “Against the imputation of

Jacobinism I should deem it degradation to make the least defence” (1801, vol. I: 6). Apart

from being accused of supporting the Jacobins, reviewers reproached her that, being a

woman, she had decided to write mainly about history and politics, as it was explained

on 4.1.2. On this issue, Williams writes: “I am aware if the censure which has been thrown

on writers of the female sex who have sometimes employed their pens on political

subjects, nor am I ignorant that my name has been mentioned with abuse by journalists,

calling themselves Anti-Jacobins” (1801, vol. I: 6). With these words, Williams shows an

awareness that due to the topic of her writing, she is overstepping the boundaries of her

gender. After acknowledging the criticism in the preface, she proceeds to offer two

volumes about politics that support the French Revolution, showing that the conservative

and misogynist attacks do not hinder her from writing.

Interestingly, Williams defends other women writers who have chosen a similar

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path to hers. This is the case of Italian writer based in Naples Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel,

who, like Williams, had been a celebrated poet in the early years of her career. However,

her political drive changed the course of her writing since she cast aside the form of poetry

in favour of journalism. After 1799, Fonseca Pimentel was in charge of the revolutionary

journal Il Monitore Napoletano. When the British army overthrew the Neapolitan

Republic in 1799 as part of the war of the Second Coalition, Fonseca Pimentel was hanged

in the summer together other defenders of the Republic, such as Francesco Carracciolo

who had led the military defence of Naples against the British. Williams first introduces

the Neapolitan writer for her intellectual and literary achievements, as she has previously

done when writing about other fellow female writers, as in the case of Madame de Genlis

(see. 2.3.): “Eleonora Fonseca, a woman highly esteemed for her literary acquirements,

and who had excited, at a very early period of her life, the particular notice of Voltaire”

(1801, vol. I: 215). Fonseca Pimentel is able to access through her writing the favour of

someone like Voltaire, hugely well-known for writings on social and political

commentary, areas of knowledge denied to women as previously explained.

Unfortunately, the same medium of expression that had granted her good reputation,

would in 1799 justify her execution: “Madame Fonseca was guilty of having loved the

cause of liberty, and of having written in its favour” (1801, vol.I: 220). Williams exposes

here the injustice to which women were subdued in a society in which they were denied

a voice in politics but at the same executed for their political opinions. Fonseca Pimentel

perishes in the same manner as Carracciolo, for example, a military man.

Williams’ claim in the preface anticipates a concern with women’s situation that

culminates in Letter XXVI, entitled “On the State of Women in the French Republic”.

Caroline Franklin refers to this section as “an uncharacteristically ‘feminist’ outburst”

(2005: 553). Williams had already anticipated her concern for women’s situation, or

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vindicated the political role of women, as explained in 3.3. and 3.6. However, she does

not frame those concerns as explicitly as in Letter XXVI, where she positions herself in

favour of women’s access to education and women’s access to the job market. Be that as

it may, the main purpose of the letter is to denounce that the French Revolution had been

a missing opportunity to advance towards women’s rights. Williams recognizes that the

Revolution has somewhat improved women’s situation, especially since the

establishment of equal division of hereditary property, that can potentially grant women

some economic independence. Women had also made progress since, after the

Revolution, they enjoyed more protection from “that cruel tyranny of paternal authority”

(1801, vol. II: 51), referring to the fact that parents are no longer allowed to send their

daughters to a convent or to choose their future husband.

Nevertheless, Williams considers these measures to be insufficient: “These

advantages may have been deemed sufficient to have obtained for the Revolution

somewhat more of female’s smiles. But the women may reply that the question is not

whether they have gained by the Revolution, but whether they have gained as much as

they thought” (1801, vol. II: 51-52). Letter XXVI was reprinted in The New Annual

Register, and through this medium Williams took part in the defence of women’s rights

in Britain, together with other authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft or Mary Hays.

Before introducing her arguments in favour of women’s rights, Williams defends

that women in France do not involve themselves in politics. “Amidst the war of domestic

factions which have disturbed the internal repose of the Republic, the ladies have hitherto,

whatever may have been their secret wishes [...] preserved a strict neutrality” (1801, vol.

I: 51). At first glance, this statement could be understood as if Williams was defending

that women in France consider politics and improper subject matter for them and, as a

result, they have pushed themselves into the background. The use of the expression

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‘whatever may have been their wishes’, indicates that they are actually inclined to voice

their opinion but they restrain themselves. At the same time, the phrase hints that the

reason for their lack of involvement in politics is not disinterestedness, an idea that is

reinforced by the following statement: “let no surly Republican suppose that this

indifference proceeds from insensibility” (1801, vol. I: 49). Be that as it may, the ‘strict

neutrality’ Williams refers to seems to be ironical, because, in her previous works she had

spoken about women who had voiced their political opinion, such as the example of

Madame Genlis in section 2.3. of this thesis.

Williams eventually states that their neutrality is the result of the lack of hope they

have in politics since their needs have been neglected:

That the almost universality of Frenchmen should have readily embraced, and,
notwithstanding all its phases and of ominous aspect, should have adhered to the
Revolution, is not surprising; the vast majority have been great and substantial gainers.
The women, indeed, participate in some of those advantages at second-hand; but they
may be allowed to entertain doubts whether the positive benefits they enjoy from the
change, form a sufficient subsidy to tempt them to depart from their neutrality” (1801,
vol. I: 50-51).

In Williams’ eyes, the French Revolution, by liberating the people from the oppression

of a monarchical government is unquestionably a positive change, even for women.

However, their liberation is not complete for women and that is why they enjoy the

benefits of the revolution ‘at second hand’. For Williams, the revolutionary movement

has failed to recognize that, regardless of the monarchy being overthrown, there are other

structures of oppression that hinder women from obtaining full freedom. Besides, over

the course of the Revolution, women were increasingly excluded from politics. One of

the first achievements of the Revolution was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and

Citizen. The fact that the Declaration only observes “Men are born and remain free and

equal in rights”, while women’s place in society remains invisible. For that reason, Joan

Wallach Scott considers that the Declaration “succeeded in rallying patriots to the

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Revolution [...] it also made possible the discontent of those (women, slaves, and free

men of colour among them) who were excluded from citizenship by the terms of the

constitution promulgated two years later” (1996: 19). While women remained invisible

in the declaration, they were explicitly excluded in the Constitution of 1791 that Wallach

Scott mentions. The constitution of 1791 differentiated between active and passive

citizens, the former enjoyed both political and civil rights, while the latter were denied

participation in political life. In order to be considered an active citizen, one had to be a

man of above 25 years old and pay more than three livres a year in taxes (Hammersley,

2015: 472). As a result of this, women and the lower classes became excluded from active

citizenship. The constitution of 1793 did not recognize the distinction between active and

passive citizens. This further excluded women, since citizenship was extended to all men

above 21 years of age, but women were no longer considered citizens. In November of

that same year, women’s political clubs were banned. Paradoxically, the more inclusive

the political sphere was for men, the more it ostracized women.

The exclusion of women from political life and later on from citizenship did not

go unquestioned. Williams acknowledges the work of well-known revolutionaries such

as Condorcet, who, as mentioned on 1.3.2., published in 1790 a pamphlet entitled “On

the Admission of Women to the Right of Citizenship”. Here, he argued that universal

rights could not be considered universal as long as they excluded women, that conformed

more than half of the population. Williams also comments on De la Condition des

Femmes dans la République, by Charles Theremin, a work which had just been published

in 1799. Theremin discussed the role of women in ancient republics, namely Greece and

Rome, and reached the conclusion that in antiquity women enjoyed more independence

than they did during the Revolution (1799:6). This independence, granted that they were

more attached to the political system they lived in. Even though Theremin believed in

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granting women more public responsibilities to secure their loyalty to the French

Republic, such as leading public festivals or being members of family courts, these new

spaces had to be attached to what were considered to be feminine spaces, such as family

and the spectacle. However, Theremin insists that women should not be granted the right

to vote, since the husband’s ballot already represented the wife’s voice, since a couple

must entertain common interests. Although Williams does not explicitly claim in favor of

women’s suffrage, she dismantles Theremin’s arguments, exposing the inconsistencies in

the arguments that hinder women from exerting political rights. Interestingly enough,

Williams detaches her voice from this counter-argumentation, and answers in a

hypothetical tone what she believes that a champion for women rights, that she calls

Thalestris –queen of the Amazons– would say. First of all, she explains that marriage,

even though it constitutes a civil unity, does not nullify each person’s will. She also adds

that “if civil liberty be the consequence of political liberty, it is not clear how from this

union women can remain civilly single, and politically married” (1801: 59), and thus finds

inconsistencies in Mr. Theremin’s own arguments. Williams also shows that Theremin

contradicts himself in the case of single women or widows, since they do not have a

husband to unite their interests with, she wonders who does defend unmarried women’s

interests. Williams carefully claims to only be raising doubts while she does not have a

resolved position on the matter: “These are points of casuistry I do not pretend to settle”

(1801: 60). In this manner, she detaches herself from the controversy and protects herself

from the potential attacks she would receive for defying gender boundaries.

Letter XXVI also deals with women’s access to education and professions. These

topics bring Williams’ work closer to the ideas of other contemporary champions of

female rights, such as Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft. These authors were

also on the radical side of the debate on the French Revolution, as discussed in 1.1. in

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Letters on Education (1790), Macaulay defended that women’s intellectual inferiority

was nothing more than a “prejudice” (1790: 49) and asserted that women should have

access to education, just like men do, in order to better fulfil their roles as daughters and

wives:

The social duties in the interesting character of daughter, wife, and mother, will be but ill
performed by ignorance and levity; and in the domestic converse of husband and wife,
the alternative of an enlightened, or an unenlightened companion, cannot be indifferent
to any man of taste and true knowledge. (1790: 49)

According to Macaulay the duties attributed to women, regardless of being performed in

the private sphere of the home, are better performed by educated ladies. Mary

Wollstonecraft defended the same argument in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

(1787) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Williams also defends this

argument in Sketches:

Although destined to be the companion of man through life, let her not aspire to the lofty
privilege of comprehending his studies or becoming the associate of his labours. –She to
whose forming care the first years of the Republican youth are confided, is expected to
instil principles which she has never imbibed, and teach lessons which she has never
learned. (1801:55)

Williams perceives as contradictory that women are expected to educate their children,

while they remain uneducated themselves. At the same time, she believes that the subjects

commonly taught to women, such as music and dancing (1801: 55), are unnecessary to

instruct their children in the love of liberty and republicanism, topics that need a more

philosophical sort of education to be understood, in Williams’ view.

However, the fact that women will be more perfectly fit for their maternal and

marital duties is not the only advantage that Williams finds in educating women. As she

sees it, women’s’ access to knowledge would also make their attachment to the Republic

stronger:

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 What claims has the Republic to the attachment of that part of the human race from whom
it withholds the first privilege of our nature, the first gift of Heaven - instruction and
knowledge? How should the heart of woman glow with the love of liberty, or her
understanding assert to the force of truth? - She receives no lesson in the schools of
wisdom and philosophy (1801: 55).

The fact that women are not educated explains why they were detached from political

matters, as Williams had claimed at the beginning of Letter XXVI, and previously

explained in this section. If women do not understand politics, it follows that they will

not participate in them. Concomitantly, those women who had received scholarly

instruction also detach themselves from politics after seeing that they have deliberately

excluded from it, as it makes them disillusioned with the Revolution:

While inscriptions on every portal where instruction is dispensed throughout the

Republic, invite men to enter, while, in every region of learning which he seeks to
explore, his path is carefully traced, his footsteps firmly guided, and the accumulated
wisdom of ages unfolded to his research, she, whose bosom glows with the sacred ray of
genius, or the proud desire to pre-eminence, finds the gates of learning rudely barred
against her entrance. (1801: 54)

The fact that a Republic based on ‘liberté’ and ‘egalité’ grants the rights to education to

some, while denying it to others, is a strong enough paradox for making women

reconsider any claims to liberty.

At the same time, between the years 1791-1795, despite all the political turmoil,

the revolutionary leaders showed concern for the improvement of the educational system

in France. In 1791, the Committee of Public Education, called Committee of Public

Instruction after 1793, was created by the Convention to broaden the access of citizens to

a formal education. However, women were deliberately excluded from public schools.

Since they were expected to manage the household affairs, it was believed that they would

gain nothing useful for their future learning outside the home. Mirabeau showcased this

argument in Travail sur l’Éducation Publique published in 1791: “I will suggest few

things about women’s education. Men are destined for employment, and they should be

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improved in public spaces. Women, by contrast, are destined to indoor life, and, perhaps.

they should not exit the father’s house apart from very rare occasions” (1791: 35). 24 Here,

Mirabeau reinforces gender roles and the separation of spheres to argument in favour of

making public education an exclusively male domain. Mirabeau, who had been praised

by Williams as noted in 2.4., provides a perfect example for understanding Williams’

disappointment with the treatment given to women by the revolutionary authorities.

Women like Williams expected that the Revolution would bring more freedom to all

members of society, however, she saw that the champions of liberty that she admired,

such as Mirabeau, overlooked women’s interests.

Williams considers that having access to education will improve the situation of

women in France. However, in order for women to fully embrace the Revolution and the

Republic they also need the means to provide for themselves: “when she is supplied with

the means of knowledge and of honorable independence, then will she kneel [...] and bless

the tutelary sway of the Republic” (1801: 56/57). Williams explains that women are

sometimes led to marriage in order to find a livelihood, which comes at the expense of

their own and their partner’s happiness. Marriage was increasingly regarded throughout

the century as a relationship based on companionship and affinity, and Williams

considered that women sometimes sacrificed this affinity in favour of economic security

(1801: 56). At the same time, Williams shows concern for widows, who lose their income

with their husbands’ death. Williams believes that the State should provide women with

the opportunity of taking “honorable and dignified employments” (1801: 56). The

emphasis on honour and dignity implies the possibility for women to access ways of

providing for themselves without having to resort to prostitution. In Vindication of the

24
My translation of “Je proposerai peu de choses sur l'éducation des femmes. Les hommes destinés aux
affaires, doivent être élevés en public. Les femmes au contraire, destinées à la vie intérieure, ne doivent
peut-être sortir de la maison paternelle que dans quelques cas rares”.

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Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft had also defended women’s employability outside

the home and suggested some professional paths for women, mainly related to the medical

domain. In An Appeal to the Men of Great Britain on Behalf of Women (1798), Mary

Hays goes one step further to consider women fit for professions related to the law. Even

though Williams does not explicitly recommend any particular profession for women, she

implicitly suggests that her scope for women’s possibilities is broader than the one

envisioned by Wollstonecraft and Hays. In her characteristic ironic tone, Williams writes

that, when asking for more opportunities, women

[…] do not aspire to the rank of Leaders of armies, or Rulers of States, or wish to exercise
the functions of Ministers of or Directors; though such has often been the administration
in the Republic, that the nation, while it was making experiments, would probably had
acted not unwisely, had it made the trial. (1801: 52)

Williams implies here that women could potentially be as fit as men to lead politics or

military campaigns, considered to be the most masculine of domains. Warfare and politics

were considered an improper subject for women to write about let alone actively

participate in them. This excerpt also highlights the misogynistic tendencies of the

revolutionary authorities, who are willing to experiment with politics and government,

but they never considered women could be part of the way society is constructed.

As Letter XXVI progresses, Williams further argues in favour of women’s

capacity for political service. As explained in the previous chapter, specifically on

sections 3.3. and 3.6., Williams had praised the strong commitment to the revolutionary

cause displayed by women such as Jeanne Marie Roland and Lucile Desmoulins during

the Terror. Written six years after Letters Containing a Sketch, Williams also praises in

Sketches the courage shown by women in Naples who “have exhibited the most sublime

examples of greatness, generosity and courage” (1801: 65). Williams develops in

Sketches the arguments that she had anticipated in 1795, as noted in 3.3., stating that

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women’s sensibility makes them more capable of courage instead of rendering them

weaker than men. This subverted the common argument of the time, that established that,

due to their weaker nervous system women were not capable of the fortitude required to

participate in politics. Williams writes that “it was women, who, in those days of horror,

proved that sensibility has its heroism” (1801: 63). In the specific case of the Terror,

Williams gives recognition to the women that had a share in the resistance against

Robespierre’s rule, such as the moral support that women gave to political prisoners or

the unrelenting activism in demanding the government that prisoners were fairly tried and

released. In this manner, Williams grants value to everyday actions that take place in the

private realm, when heroism is typically associated with public affairs, such as political

or military victories. At the same time, she brings attention to the fact these gestures,

despite going unnoticed in the chronicles, nevertheless contribute to the revolutionary

cause.

4.3. Conclusions for This Chapter

Chapter 4 has analysed A Tour in Switzerland and Sketches of the State of Manners and

Opinions in the French Republic, published at the turn of the eighteenth century and

coinciding with the beginning of the Napoleonic era. Williams gathered the materials for

A Tour for years before publishing the work, coinciding with her trip around the country.

She decided to publish her book in 1798, the year of the French invasion of Switzerland

and the creation of the Helvetic Republic, in order to argue in favour of the invasion. To

that end, Williams updates the notes she had taken in 1794 to inform her readership of the

latest events in Europe concerning the Revolution, while she discusses her observations

of the country. For that matter, A Tour in Switzerland becomes a heterogeneous work that

blends travel narrative and description of landscape, with socio-political observations and

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Williams’ opinions on the political atmosphere of 1798. For the purpose of my thesis, I

have mostly focused on the political slant of Williams’ Tour. Interestingly, Williams was

aware that, by writing about politics, Williams was putting her own safety at risk, and,

for that matter, her writing became a form of activism.

In order to defend the need for a Revolution in Switzerland, Williams had to

challenge the mythification of Switzerland in the collective imagination of the British

people. In his works, Rousseau had presented Switzerland as a more fair and virtuous

society than the neighbouring France. At the same time, he had praised Swiss political

organizations in popular assemblies. Since the works of Rousseau had a tremendous

impact in the second half of the eighteenth century, his ideas about Switzerland were well-

established in Europe, and for that matter, the French invasion of Switzerland was

surrounded by strong controversy. Williams explicitly opposes Rousseau’s views by

highlighting Swiss government as aristocratic and despotic. At the same time, Williams

shows the downside of the Landsgemeinde, that far from appearing peaceful and fair in

her account, she shows them as moved by interests and political pressures. Williams also

challenges William Coxe, influential in Britain for his Travels in Switzerland. While Coxe

praises the Swiss as virtuous, well-learned and deeply interested in literature and culture,

Williams renders them as mainly concerned with their economic improvement. Williams

also positioned herself in favour of Swiss political writer Cezar La Harpe who had

defended the independence of the Pays de Vaud from Berne and who requested the

participation of the French troops in settling the matter. Although Patrick Vincent and

Florence Widmer-Schyner consider that in A Tour in Switzerland, Williams detaches

herself from Sensibility (2011:13), this study has shown how Williams praises Lavater

from displaying emotions rather than pure reason, which is the main line of thought in the

trend of sensibility. Vincent and Widmer-Schyner consider that Williams’ writing in A

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Tour “is distinctly unsentimental; rather, it is ideological through and through” (2011:

42). This statement overlooks the fact that for Williams, as it has been demonstrated in

chapters 2, 3, and the present one, ideology is inseparable from feelings.

Sketches of the State of Manners was published after the Coup of Brumaire,

which brought Napoleon to power. This new change in the power dynamics of the French

Republic, together with the fact that Williams had already witnessed a decade of

revolutionary events in France, provides Williams with the insight to value whether the

Revolution has been effective in improving the overall happiness of the French. Although

she acknowledged the precarious economic condition in which the Republic finds itself,

Williams is hopeful as she sees the crisis as temporary. Among all the measures

implemented by the revolutionary authorities, Williams praises the loss of hereditary

rights the most. She argues that the distribution of richness would eventually improve the

economy of the nation. Besides, Williams pays special attention to the peasantry that

conformed two thirds of the French population. Williams considers the rural workers a

priority for the Revolutionary agenda, as they are the most oppressed by the aristocratic

hierarchy. Taking this into consideration, Williams celebrates the abolition of seigneurial

rights for both economic and moral reasons. In her discussion of the rural economy,

Williams explicitly disagrees with British economist Arthur Young, who had professed

counter-revolutionary views and who argued in favour of maintaining the hierarchy in the

rural economy as means to maintain peace and social stability. Interestingly, in her

discussion of the agricultural workers, Williams acknowledges the particularities of

women in that context and argues that their situation is more complicated than that of

men, as they have to combine their labour in the fields with taking care of their families.

In her discussion of Williams’ defence of women’s liberation, Franklin overlooks

Williams’ comments on female rural workers. In this manner, the picture that Franklin

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provides of Williams’ feminism appears as more bourgeois-centred than this study has

shown.

The gender-based perspective displayed by Williams in her criticism of Young

is also evident throughout Sketches, particularly in her letter entitled “On the State of

Women in the French Republic”. Here, Williams criticizes the revolutionary movement

for overlooking the particularities in women’s situation, which she believes has distanced

women from political action. Williams claims that, if the Revolutions want to ensure that

women adhere to the cause, they have to improve their place in society. In order to achieve

that, Williams defends that women gain access to education and the professional world,

as means to be intellectually and economically independent from men. Williams does not

explicitly argue in favour of women’s suffrage; however, she refutes the arguments

against women’s right to vote given by authors such as Theremin or political leaders such

as Mirabeau. Vincent and Widmer-Schyner see Williams’ emphasis on influencing the

political thinking of her readership as an evidence of “the unabashedly masculine

ambition of her work” (2011: 47). In the previous chapters together with the present one,

especially on section 4.2.2., this study has evidenced that Williams does not perceive

politics as a male arena and she defends the participation of women not by assimilation

to men’s political attitudes, but rather, in women’s own terms.

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 Chapter 5

‘The Testimony of a Witness will be Heard’: End of the Napoleonic Era and the
Revolution in Retrospect

5.1. Narrative of the Events and Letters of the Events

Williams consistently wrote chronicles of the French Revolution between the years 1790

and 1801. In that decade, she produced ten volumes of Letters (including Letters

Containing a Sketch and Sketches of the State of Manners) and two volumes dedicated to

Switzerland. In 1815, fourteen years after Sketches, Williams returned to her narratives

of the French Revolution with Narrative of the Events Which Have Taken Place in France

from the Landing of Napoleon Bonaparte Till the Restoration of Louis XVII, which was

followed in 1819 by Letters on the Events which Have Passed in France since the

Restoration in 1815. 25 After a long hiatus, however, Williams emphasizes that her

commitment to the Revolutionary cause is as strong as it had been in the 1790s: “The

interest I once took in the French Revolution is not chilled, and the enthusiasm I once felt

for the cause of liberty still warms my bosom” (1819: 1). Williams presents the

Revolution here as a lifelong commitment, which shows a continuity between the early

Letters and the volumes published well into the nineteenth century. Interestingly, the

choice of words echoes Letters Written in France: “I acknowledge that my heart caught

with enthusiasm the general sympathy [...] and I shall never forget the sensations of that

day, “while memory holds her seat in my bosom”” (1790: 14). For thirty years, Williams

maintains her enthusiasm for the cause of liberty, despite all the different stages the

Revolution has gone through. Her adherence to the cause has remained intact because the

25
I will refer to Narrative of the Events Which Have Taken Place in France from the Landing of Napoleon
Bonaparte Till the Restoration of Louis XVII as Narrative, and to Letters on the Events which Have Passed
in France since the Restoration in 1815 as Letters on the Events to differentiate this volume from the first
volumes of letters published in the 1790s.

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origin of her feelings is natural and spontaneous, they spring for the heart. Williams here

follows once again the trend of sensibility to emphasize the truthfulness, transparency and

disinterestedness of her political inclinations, as she had done in 1790, see 2.1. This idea

is further emphasized when Williams claims that “Those who believed as firmly as myself

in the premises of the revolution, [...] no doubt continue, like me, to love liberty” (1819:

2). Williams is clarifying for her readership that, despite the different phases that have

shaped the history of France in recent years, her political enthusiasm is still alive. During

the Napoleonic era, Williams found herself disconnected with the publication of political

chronicles. As it will be explained in 5.1.2, she was under the radar of Napoleonic

censorship and in order to avoid imprisonment she did not publish chronicles under

Bonaparte’s rule. For that matter, emphasizing her interest in the Revolution, is

suggesting that she is still informed enough on political matters to continue to publish her

political commentaries.

The political circumstances had enormously changed since 1801. The period

between 1800 and 1815 was marked by the Napoleonic rule that started with the

Consulate (1799-1804) and continued with Napoleon’s self-proclamation as emperor in

1804, which ended with the fall of Napoleon after the Hundred Days War in 1815. The

Napoleonic era came to end by the Bourbon Restoration, which meant a return to the form

of government of the ancien régime. Apart from Gary Kelly (1993), who examined

Williams’ whole corpus and the nineteenth century chronicles in particular, Narrative and

Letters on the Events have comparatively received less critical attention than Letters and

Letters Containing a Sketch, despite the fact that they offer a significant insight on

Williams’ discussion of the fray of ideas during Napoleon’s rule and the Bourbon

Restoration. Since then, Amy Culley notes a decade after the publication of Kelly’s work

that “Williams’ Letters from France has been the focus of important scholarly work in

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recent years, although her nineteenth-century historical writing is less well known” (2014:

160). Taking into consideration the lack of scholarship today on the nineteenth-century

chronicles written by Williams, my aim for this chapter is to provide a close reading of

Letters on the Events and Narrative, paying attention to Williams’ method for conveying

her revolutionary stance and criticism of Napoleon’s rule in her writing.

5.1.1. The Boulevards and the Battlefield

Williams had extensively justified her authority on revolutionary matters based on her

position as an eyewitness of the events in France, as already noted throughout this study,

and more specifically in 2.2. However, she focuses her narrative on the public events that

she observes, rather than on her private experiences in France. Even though she uses the

epistolary form to convey her opinions, her own private life is pushed into the

background. In fact, when she mentions private affairs she tends to apologize in advance,

as if her personal incidents disrupted the reading: “Before I begin, however, let me say a

few words of myself; which I shall do with all possible brevity” (1815: 7). Even though

she explicitly mentions that when she deals with private matters she does so with “all

possible brevity”, the passage that follows this statement deals in fact with the reasons for

her former support to Bonaparte. Hence, she is not providing the reader with any personal

information but rather she is giving the context of her political opinion. Similarly, in

Letters on the Events, published four years later, she continues to excuse herself when a

personal incident is mentioned: “If I may speak an instant of myself” (1819:32).

Interestingly enough, this statement is followed by a paragraph in which Williams

narrates the execution of Girondin politicians M. de Sillery and M. de La Source,

explained in 3.2. Thus, the narration in this paragraph is centred on political figures and

not on Williams’ personal anecdotes. In Letters on the Events, nevertheless, Williams

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discusses an intimate subject, which is her mother’s burial, mentioned in a footnote. This

footnote is of a considerable length and it occupies the bottom of three pages in which

Williams describes the cemetery in Paris where both Catholics and Protestants are buried

together. The description of the place is exhaustive but the fact that her mother is buried

there is only mentioned momentarily: “that spot where my mother reposes is encircled

with Scotch firs” (1819: 24). This spot in Paris is used here as an example of peaceful

coexistence between different Christian faiths. Besides, religious toleration is a subject

that concerns Williams in Letters on the Events, and that will be examined as we shall see

in section 5.1.3. Williams’ personal life appears only in the background but it does not

sustain the narrative, in fact, it allows her to introduce reflections on public debates.

Hence, I agree with Culley when she argues that Williams “rejects autobiography as a

mode of isolated introspection and exploits its potential for sympathetic connection and

historical engagement” (2014: 59). Culley suggests here that Williams departs from the

confessional tradition within epistolary writing, described in 1.2.2.

Another characteristic of Williams’ works is the polyphonic aspect of it, with

frequent quotations from other authors, pieces of conversations and even letters written

by other hands, as explained in 2.5. In 1815, she continued to include a wide variety of

testimonies ranging from generals and politicians to foot soldiers. Her location and vivid

reporting, where she gave voice to the direct actors of the events she describes, puts

together a complete picture of the state of public opinion. Williams employs some of

these interviews to emphasize her connections with revolutionary figures or authorities,

as she had done in the 1790s in her meetings with Genlis (2.2.), Roland (3.3) or Lavater

(4.1.2.). Continuing with this practice, she tells in Narrative her meeting with Tadeusz

Kościuszko, renowned Polish military leader. Kościuszko fought in the American

Revolutionary Wars siding with the United States, and he later became a national hero in

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his homeland after leading the uprising against Russian rule in 1794, in which he defended

the autonomy of Poland. Williams had always shown sympathy for different nationalistic

endeavours, an example being her defence of the Pays de Vaud discussed in 4.1.1. As

J.R. Watson observes: “The example of Poland was one which helped strengthen feeling,

during the 1790s especially, against oppressors of all kinds” (2003: 67). That Williams

and Kościuszko shared the same political opinion comes as no surprise, but moreover,

they were close friends according to Williams’ narration:

I called on him one day to bid him farewell, having read in the official paper of the
morning his address to the Poles on the subject of recovering their freedom, being named
to the command of the Polish army by Bonaparte. Kosciousko heard me with a smile at
my credulity; but on my shewing him the address with the signature, he exclaimed, “This
is all a forgery” (1815: 151).

This passage fulfils two objectives. On the one hand, Williams reinforces the proximity

to a well-known figure and she clarifies that they knew each other prior to this meeting.

The tone in which she describes it implicitly denotes a familiarity between them. At the

same time, the fact that Kosciuszko himself finds mistakes in the official papers, by

considering them forgery, is in fact validating Williams’ own argument. She quotes a

prestigious figure criticizing how Napoleon manipulates information, a point that she also

makes in her text. Kościuszko allows Williams to glean first-hand political information

concerning the emperor from a source that sees him on a daily basis. In this manner, she

is able to obtain the most recent news about Napoleon.

As mentioned earlier and throughout my study, Williams’ position as an

eyewitness is always reinforced to legitimize her contribution to the fray of opinions

regarding the Revolution in France. In Narrative of the Events, nevertheless, she becomes

very specific when referring to the precise moment in which she witnessed the events.

When Williams discusses the Battle of Paris, that took place between the 29th and 31st

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of Paris, Williams records the exact chronology of the events, as it elicited the restoration

of the monarchy and forced Napoleon to his first exile. This idea becomes obvious in

Letter XI, when describing the coalition forces entering Paris on the 30th of March 1814:

The first attack made by the allied armies was to the north of Paris, and was confined to
skirmishes and distant cannonade. At three in the morning, on the 30th June, I was
awakened by the first roar of cannon. (1815: 230)
On the 30th March, 1814, I had been awakened also, at the first dawn of the day, by the
roar of cannon placed on the very same theatre, that of the hills, which overlook my
window. (1815: 232)

Williams is referring to the armies of the sixth coalition, formed by the monarchical forces

in Europe, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain and Sweden that grouped

together after Napoleon’s failed attempt to invade Russia. In such a crucial moment in

the history of France, Williams was living in the midst of the historical moment and so

close to the events that she could observe the cannonade from her window. The events

appear as having been noted and recorded in a diary, since she is able to provide the exact

moment in which they happened: “The musketry [...] ceased altogether at about three in

the afternoon” (1815: 233). As a result, she provides her readership with a very first-hand

chronicle. To this end, she additionally identifies herself as a Parisian citizen when she

uses the pronoun “we” to refer to the inhabitants of the city:

I then went on the boulevards [...] and what sinister presages might be read in every visage
of the crowd! On examining the hostile passions portrayed in every countenance, it
seemed as if the assembled multitudes waited only the signal for civil war. We appeared
to be treading on a mine ready to receive the spark of explosion (1815: 215).

Williams emphasizes here the feeling of despair among the Parisians citizens. Even

though Paris had witnessed numerous uprisings since 1789, it was the first time during

Williams’ stay in Paris that the French capital had become a battleground in an

international conflict. The failed Russian expedition made evident that the Napoleonic

Army had lost the momentum and winning streak that Williams discussed in A Tour in
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Switzerland, see 4.1.2. For that matter, the French were concerned about the uncertain

future of their government. Williams is able to convey this sense of uncertainty to her

readership, because she has experienced it herself. The common feeling of uncertainty

brings Williams together with the Parisian inhabitants as it had happened in her first visit

to France, when Williams bonded with the attendants to the Festival of the Federation,

discussed in 2.1., after experiencing the same enthusiasm for the common good. Here, the

atmosphere is neither happy nor celebratory, but rather, a shared sense of fear and concern

anticipates the disaster. Williams chronicles are not a mere description of historical

events, but rather, through her chronicles, the readership is able to discover not only what

happened but also the emotional impact of the events on the participants and witnesses.

When Narrative was published, Williams was not naturalized as a French citizen

yet, since she was about to obtain the citizenship in 1817.Williams’ Narrative was

translated into French by Jean Baptiste Joseph Breton de La Martinière (1777-1852),

French translator and illustrator, and thus reached a continental audience. Nevertheless,

she wrote in English and the British public was the first one she addressed with Letters

(1790). Williams was fully aware of her role as an interpreter of the recent history of

France for a British readership. Her role as a mediator prompts her to take an inconsistent

and ambiguous position within French society. On some occasions, she is one more

among the French citizens, implying her profound understanding of French society. In

other instances, she writes as a foreigner in order to connect with her audience. This

position also enables her to keep some distance from the events and reinforce the idea

that she is taking on a critical perspective on them. In her book chapter, entitled “Citizen

of the World, 1789-1792, Kennedy describes Williams’ position as “internationalist”

since “The essence of her experiment in France [...] is not one of foreignness, but one of

belonging, so that her political agreement with revolutionary ideals acts as a bond

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between her and the people around her” (2002: 56). I agree with Kennedy in that Williams

adopts an internationalist position and this certainly continues to be applicable in

Narrative of the events (1815) and Letters on the Events (1819). However, this

internationalist position took on new nuances in 1815 and 1819. Having experienced the

Revolution and the Empire, what bonds Williams with the inhabitants of Paris is not so

much her political creed but that they share common experiences resulting from the

political turmoil taking place in those decades, as mentioned earlier.

Despite the fact that Williams mingles with the Parisian crowd on the Boulevards,

her own situation in France remains problematic. At times, she presents herself as another

Parisian citizen while in other instances of the text she reminds the reader of her foreign

status:

Here I saw, what to others appeared an army of foreigners, my own countrymen, and
heard them talking familiarly my own language. I could not resist holding discourse with
these Waterloo heroes, and I hope my French friends will forgive me if I felt a little proud
of being an Englishwoman. (1815: 250)

The fact that she is proud that the foreign armies had victoriously entered Paris seems to

be a contradiction for someone who had always sided with the French in international

matters, as explained in 4.1. when discussing A Tour in Switzerland. However, in

Narrative she positions herself against Napoleon, and thus she celebrates that he has been

overthrown. At the same time, the English language allows her to converse with military

figures who have experienced the war at first hand. On the one hand, her British

nationality allows her to obtain information directly from the British soldiers. On the other

hand, her status as a Parisian resident allows her to witness the battle from the front. Her

ambiguous or even marginal position grants Williams access to spheres that would have

traditionally been denied to her, as it had happened in 1790 with her visits to the National

Assembly mentioned in 2.1. In 1815, she accessed the battlefield and the military camp,

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domains restricted to men: “I sometimes take a walk in this wood [The Bois de Boulogne],

and sometimes visit the English camp” (1815: 322). Her wanderings around the military

tents allow Williams to observe the most sentimental and intimate side of the soldiers

when she witnesses a funeral for a Scottish soldier:

I saw some of those brave fellows wipe their eyes. This was not the moment when the
soldier, in the fury of battle, rushes on death [...] this was the calm hour of milder emotion,
and the heart had leisure to feel - this was death, but not under the form in which the brave
are accustomed to despise it. They were going, in a foreign land, to render the last duties
to their comrade, who would see his home no more! (1815: 322)

Williams presents here a picture of war that frequently goes unnoticed. Williams subverts

the glorification of a soldier's death in the midst of the battle, frequently represented in

the epic tradition. Williams shows that far from the context of the battlefield, the soldier’s

death is mourned rather than lauded. Consistent with her previous chronicles, in this

excerpt Williams shows more concern for individual feelings than for the grand historical

events. In her view, history is created by individual stories and experiences. For her,

casualties are not regarded as a necessary part of the historical conflict, which takes place

only in the background of the narration. As shown in this fragment, Williams puts the

focus of her narration in individual loss and feelings of sorrow. For her, heroism resides

in the ability to display one’s feelings in the military camp instead of suppressing

emotions in the battlefield.

5.1.2. The Basilisk’s Eye: Napoleon as a Villain

As explained in chapters 2 and 3, Williams vilifies Robespierre as the main responsible

agent for the Terror. In fact, as discussed in 2.6., 3.5. and 3.7., Williams shows the worst

part of Robespierre as an evil force deprived of feelings of sympathy. In both Narrative

and Letters on the Events, written right after the end of the Napoleonic era, Bonaparte

fulfils the role of the greatest villain. The misgovernment of the Jacobins appears in

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explicit connection to Napoleon’s rule in Williams’ text: “There still existed the remains

of a party in France which had during a short time wielded the sceptre as despotically as

Bonaparte himself. This was the faction of the Jacobins” (1815: 38); Williams will take

this connection one step further when she describes Napoleon as the “revival” of

Jacobinism. She presents the Emperor and the Jacobins, the two evils that have emerged

from the Revolution, as joining forces in their quest for power: “The great mass of the

citizens of France admitted not the possibility of Bonaparte’s reformation, and saw

nothing but slavery in the revival of Jacobinism, and its junction with imperialism” (1815:

83). In these passages, Williams draws a comparison between Jacobinism and Bonaparte,

and presents them as equally despotic. Besides, the French people, having witnessed the

different stages of the revolutionary quest, do not trust the reformation of their political

leaders. For that matter, Napoleon appears in the last quotation as an emperor who lacks

the support of his people.

Williams had vilified Robespierre for his impassioned disposition that rendered

him wicked and cruel. As already explained, for Williams, influenced by the literature of

sensibility, empathic feelings were the driving force that moved humanity towards the

common cause, as noted in 1.3.2. and 2.6. However, Williams who saw Napoleon as

moved by his own interests rather than driven by the common good, considered

Napoleon’s display of feelings to be deceptive:

The tenderness professed by Bonaparte for the people, and his sympathy for their
sufferings under the reign of the Bourbons, raised a smile on the lips of the Parisians [...]
The almost universality of France [...] exulted in the hope that this [Napoleon’s] abundant
excess of tenderness was about to expose him to the punishment so long due to his crimes
(1815: 15-16).

When a powerful figure like Napoleon shows tenderness and sympathy in public, this

becomes suspicious of lack of sincerity in Williams’ eyes. For her, Napoleon provides

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another example of how feelings can be dangerous when they are insincere and used to

manipulate others. Thus, Napoleon’s fake sentiment leads Williams to further enhance

her portrayal of his scheming disposition. Rigged emotional responses cannot hold the

sense of community since this must come from a spontaneous collective and simultaneous

experience. At the same time, the politics of the old regime were associated with intrigue

and conspiracy, and thus, deception. For that matter, transparency and sincerity were

regarded as fundamental traits in the character of a virtuous ruler. Williams further

characterizes Bonaparte as the villain of her chronicles, by giving him the power of

annihilating any empathic feelings in others. When talking about the young men that join

the imperial army, she describes that “Those very youths, who had left their paternal

home, full of the tenderest emotions of domestic sorrow [...] No sooner reached the army

to which they had been dragged with reluctant steps, than they became new beings.

Napoleon fixed his basilisk’s eye upon them, and they were fascinated by his glance”

(1819: 128). Williams implies that not only is Bonaparte an embodiment of evil but he

uses his malignant qualities as part of his appeal to attract his followers. Napoleon appears

here as a corruptive force that annihilates the humanity and empathy of the young soldiers.

In the first pages of Narrative, Williams alludes to Madame de Staël when

referring to Napoleon: “I shall begin with the second volume of Napoleon’s history, or,

to use the words of Madame de Staël, of Bonaparte’s adventures” (1815: 5). The allusion

to her fellow woman writer Madame de Staël is especially compelling in this instance,

because Staël’s rivalry with Napoleon was well-known at the time. Williams’ words here

imply that she sided with Staël in her rejection of the emperor. Williams was interested

in Staël’s productions, which were highly regarded in Europe during the early nineteenth

century. In 1818, Considérations sur les Principaux Événements de la Révolution

Française, translated into English as Considerations on the Principal Events of the

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French Revolution, by Madame de Staël was published posthumously, as she had passed

away the preceding year. The main subject of her work, a memory of her experiences

during the Revolution, clearly resonated with Williams’ interests. For that matter, when

Sydney Owenson (1781-1859) visits Williams in Paris in 1816, it does not come as a

surprise that she finds her reading Staël’s Considerations: “we had scarcely warmed into

intimacy over the subject of Madame de Staël’s new work on the Revolution” (1829:

169). In Considerations, together with other works such as Dix Années d’Exil, translated

as Ten Years of Exile (1821) Staël shows her contempt for Napoleon.

Even though Williams and Staël wrote from different perspectives, since Staël

had received an aristocratic education, which Beatrice Guenther describes as “marked by

a complex blend of wealth, privilege and social status” (2012: 203). Besides, Staël

consistently defended a parliamentary monarchy, following the British model, while

Williams had espoused her support of a Republican model. Nevertheless, both authors

coincide in their contempt for Napoleon despite their support for the revolutionary cause.

Staël also alludes to supernatural similes to emphasize Napoleon’s inability to rule the

country: “When he [Napoleon] encounters honour anywhere, it may be said that his

artifices are disconcerted, as evil spirits are conjured by the sign of the cross” (1821: 27).

Napoleon is compared to a possessed malignant spirit in order to allude to his deceitful

manners and lack of honour. Even though Staël is exiled from France, she continues to

exert political influence through her writings. Even though she does not directly denounce

the Emperor, since this would have meant that her book was banished in France –and in

spite of this On Germany was banned–, she decides to prove her disapproval of him by

refusing to praise him:

Bonaparte wished me to praise him in my writings, not assuredly that any additional
praise would have been remarked in the fumes of the incense which surrounded him; but
he was vexed that I should be the only writer of reputation in France who had published

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 books during his reign without making any mention of his gigantic existence, and at last
with inconceivable rage he suppressed my work on Germany. (Considérations, 471)

Even though Staël considers herself the only author who decides to resist Napoleon’s

demands, Williams also experiences the consequences of neglecting Bonaparte’s name in

her writing as the following anecdote suggests:

Bonaparte considered the English newspapers as good as diplomatic dispatches, and

containing more accurate information of the state of Europe than the reports of his
emissaries at foreign courts. His translators made such strange blunders in the transcript
of names, that he often collated the translation with the original. In one of these surveys,
my name fell under his notice, prefixed to a few verses I had written on the peace at
Amiens. He inquired why they were not translated? The translator, to whom I was
acquainted, answered, that this had been omitted in conformity to his orders to translate
nothing of literature, or poetry, in which his name was not mentioned. But could this be
possible? –An Ode on the Peace, without any mention of the Great Pacificator! –Le Grand
Pacificateur! –words, which now resounded throughout all France; words that were
engraved on marble in palaces, and stuck up below his bust, placed at a signpost at the
door of every hedge-alehouse on the highway.

The ode was translated; and if the First Consul was angry at what was omitted, he was
far more irritated at what he found: this was the epithet of the subject waves, applied to
England [...] This was touching a jarring string indeed this was declaring myself of the
faction of sea-despots. It was almost treason: but I had friends at court, and therefore
escaped with a slight punishment, inflicted a few months after the prefect of police, who
arrested me, and my whole family, on the pretext of examining my papers; from which
ordeal I came triumphant, having been detained a prisoner only twenty-four hours. (1815:
286-288)

Williams was arrested after this incident, and, as in the preceding passage, her writing

places her in the midst of political affairs. Williams’ writings become a tool for resistance

against the prevailing power in this instance, as it had been the case during the times of

the Terror, when her flagrant denunciation of the Jacobin leaders puts her on the radar of

the Committee of Public Safety:

The English newspapers came regularly to the committee of public safety, in which
passages from my letters were frequently transcribed, and the work mentioned as mine;
and those papers were translated into French for the members of the committee [...]. Thus
I passed the winter at Paris with the knife of the guillotine suspended over me by a frail
thread. (vol.I: 1795: 173-4).

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Here, the publication of her writings in Britain makes her a threat for the authorities. As

explained chapter 2.6., Williams had been very explicit in her criticism of the Jacobins.

However, in times of Napoleon, an author does not need to directly attack the emperor to

be accused of treason. This passage is particularly interesting because this time it is not

a fragment from her Letters that is censored but a poem. In noting this, she highlights that

her writings, regardless of their genre, are always immersed in political argumentation.

Besides, the fact that her texts receive political consideration allows Williams to present

herself as an influential writer. Interestingly enough, in this case, Williams shows her

disagreement with Napoleon’s political manoeuvrings not by openly criticizing his

governance but by deliberately avoiding any direct allusion to him, which becomes an act

of resistance. Despite the control exercised by the government on writers, as Williams

explains, she nevertheless avoids punishment thanks to one of her connections. As she

had done in telling the anecdote of her liberation, explained in 3.4., when she conceals

Debry’s involvement in her release, Williams omits the identity of the friend that pleaded

her cause before Napoleon. Throughout her productions, Williams emphasizes that she is

well-connected among Parisian circles. Nevertheless, having revolutionary friends and

acquaintances, her connections tend to put her at risk rather than acting in her favour, as

explained in the previous passage.

The aforementioned anecdote draws together several of Bonaparte’s attitudes that

portray him in a negative light. In the passage, Napoleon appears as an egotistical figure,

obsessed with finding his name on the literary works. In fact, Napoleon’s name needs to

be explicitly mentioned for a work to be considered worthy of translating it into French.

Besides, his name is engraved ‘throughout all France’, to further reinforce his image as

one of a self-absorbed individual. However, the epithet chosen to refer to Napoleon, ‘The

Great Pacificator’ is ironic in Williams’ view. Even though Williams had celebrated him

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for bringing the cause of liberty all over Europe, see 4.1.2., her perspective about his

actions had dramatically changed in the past decades. In Narrative, before this anecdote

is introduced, she had already presented him as a manipulative figure, whose emotions

are only feigned to attract the sympathy of the public. For that matter, Williams implies

that his role as pacificateur is nothing more than a façade. Napoleon’s constant

surveillance of the press also makes him an authoritative figure, someone who restricts

the freedom of speech and expression. In fact, Napoleon had established a strong system

of censorship that he himself supervised (Goldstein, 1989: 137). The freedom of the press

had been a controversial issue during the years of the French Revolution. In 1791

censorship from Louis XVI’s administration was abolished so as to build a freer country.

However, in 1794, coinciding with the Terror, censorship was appointed again and it

continued during Napoleon’s rule. In fact, the number of newspapers that circulated in

Paris was limited to only four, which explains why Napoleon turns to the British

newspapers in order to find accurate information in Williams’ anecdote.

In the end, as it had happened with the Jacobin government, Bonaparte’s Empire

was overthrown. She writes that since the foreign armies have left Paris, “The French

were no longer prisoners in their own land, the cup of humiliation, which was full, had

not been suffered to overflow; and they hailed their emancipation with transport […] All

was in strong and delightful contrast with the gloomy horror of the preceding year” (1819:

154). 26 She had already followed a similar approach when narrating the overturn of

Robespierre (section 3.7.), whereby she establishes a contrast between the past situation

and the new one, emphasizing the positive qualities of the latter: “Paris once more

reassumes a gay aspect” (1795, vol. III: 6). As with Napoleon’s defeat, Robespierre’s fall

26
Williams, Letters on the Events,154.

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gives the impression of going back to a more peaceful and prosperous time, even if it

comes hand in hand with the monarchy.

5.1.3. Religious Toleration

Williams had always been concerned throughout her career with religious toleration, but

it does not appear disconnected from the French Revolution. Evan Radcliffe writes that

“to dissenters in the early 1790s, the Revolution raised hopes of change in Britain, change

that could include an improvement in their own position” (1997: 67). “As a formidable

commentator within the dissenting community”, Duckling believes that Williams found

hope in the Revolution for the betterment of the dissenter’s position (2010: 75-76).

However, she finds that in France, despite the ideals spread in the first months of the

Revolution, religious persecution is still an issue. As a result, religious toleration

constitutes a pressing concern for her. After the Reformation and the European Wars on

Religion, organised religion was called into question and the debate extended into the

eighteenth century. Although religious toleration has traditionally been regarded as the

focal point of the European Enlightenment, Juan Pablo Díaz observes that theological

debates were of a heterogeneous nature (2017). Arguments on toleration were given by

Christians, atheists and deists alike during the time in which Williams wrote her

chronicles. She regarded toleration as an extension of the cause of liberty throughout her

career, but it is in Letters on the Events where she discusses it in depth. Williams receives

to her horror the news about the violence against Protestants in the South of France during

the White Terror (1815). Four of the letters within Letters on the Events, entitled

“Persecution of the Protestants”, were even published separately in 1816 as On the Late

Persecution of the Protestants in the South of France. This proves Williams’ efforts to

include her voice in the debate on religious toleration. In Kennedy’s view, “because of

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the importance of her work on the French Revolution, critics have minimized if not

altogether ignored her contribution to the writing of Protestant history” (2002: 190).

However, this topic never appears isolated from her previous interests, since she connects

it to the French Revolution in her narrative.

In the “supplementary letter”, added as the last letter of Letters on the Events,

the following words can be read: “While the Protestants were persecuted, the French were

enslaved, and despotism and intolerance are always found in the same page of French

history” (1819: 198). In this closing chapter, she establishes the connection between the

French Revolution and religious freedom. For Williams, the cause of liberty means the

end of oppression. When the people in France are tyrannized by the government,

intolerance and discrimination are inevitable and vice versa. The Protestants appear as

firm supporters of the revolutionary cause, and Williams calls them “true friends of

liberty”. “The hour of emancipation arrived; the revolution took place, no doubt hailed

by the protestants like the day-star from on high” (1819: 28). As a conclusion of her book,

Williams continues to argue in the next that: “She [France] knows that national and

Protestant liberty, which have one common origin, are the natural guardians of each other

and are destined to perish or live together” (1819: 199).

Before delving into the analysis of the recent violent events that she is concerned

about, she provides the historical and political context that has fostered the present

situation. She goes back to one of the most traumatic times in French Protestant history,

the French Wars of Religion during the 16th century. In Williams’ words: “The

protestants again opened the page of French history, and read the long series of their

persecutions and wrongs. Let us follow them a moment in the retrospect –they saw the

dreadful day of St. Bartholomew” (1819: 17). The St. Bartholomew Day massacre took

place in 1572, during the French Wars of Religion, and consisted of a series of attacks by

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the Catholic majority on the Huguenots, resulting in thousands of deaths. Williams offers

the reader the necessary context for understanding the recent events which is further

compounded by the fact that she explicitly mentions some of the documents that she has

consulted in order to research about this historical period, such as the letters of Madame

de Maintenon. Madame de Maintenon’s morganatic marriage with Louis XIV put her in

a position of power. During the rule of Louis XIV, anti-Huguenot measures were

promoted. The Sun King established the dragonnades and several edicts, being the Edict

of Fontainebleau (1685), the one that expelled Huguenots from France. Williams writes

that “Madame de Maintenon sometimes treats the persecution of the protestants as an

affair of finance” (1819: 21). By going back to Maintenon’s text, she shows her interest

in learning history directly from the participants. She also points towards Maintenon’s

disregard of French subjects as individuals, since they are only an “affair” for her. As

explained throughout this study, Williams had claimed during her writing career that the

common good can never be achieved at the expense of anyone’s personal well-being.

Once she has explained the events that took place in the second half of the 1600s,

she continues to draw a parallelism between the situation in 1815 and the early years of

the Revolution: “the massacres of 1815 could be traced as proceeding in a direct line of

connection from the massacres of 1790. The same fanatics grasped the dagger, and the

same order of victims felt the stroke” (1819: 16). Williams offers here a timeline of the

events that have led to the massacres she is now denouncing. She displays her

understanding of history as a continuous development of events that lead one to another.

To use a more Godwinian term, historical events appear here as a “chain”. Godwin wrote

in his Political Justice that every event in the universe is the result of a “great chain of

causes” (1793: 281). As William St Clair has shown, Godwin and Williams knew each

other personally (1989: 45) and Williams’ “volumes of published letters [...] found their

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way into Godwin’s New Annual Register” (1989: 158). The New Annual Register was

founded in 1780 by Williams’ mentor Andrew Kippis, who was also Godwin’s tutor at

Hoxton (St Clair, 1989: 9). Godwin was in charge of the annual’s historical part from

1784 to 1791 (Marken, 1953: 478). In 1791, the New Annual Register wrote that Williams

was a “favourite of the public, and consecrated to humanity and liberty” (1791: 270).

Both Williams’ Letters and Godwin’s Political Justice, were published in 1793 by the

same house, G.G. and J. Robinson. Besides, Godwin’s Political Justice became easily

accessible due to its popularity, so Williams was most likely aware of his philosophical

theory even though she does not explicitly elaborate on its theoretical aspects. However,

there is a crucial difference between their respective lines of thought. Godwin considered

that:

He therefore who regards all things past, present and to come as links of an indissoluble
chain, will, as often as he recollects this comprehensive view, be superior to the tumult
of passion; and will reflect upon the moral concerns of mankind with the same clearness
of perception, the unalterable firmness of judgement, and the same tranquillity as we are
accustomed to do upon the truths of geometry. (1793: 316-7)

Williams differentiates her thinking from Godwin’s in the relevance that she gives to

passion. Williams does not consider that emotions diminish the soundness of an

argument. On the contrary, after having experienced the events, she constantly shows in

her narrative how the individual lives of the people cannot be disentangled from historical

events: “Who had not wept for a brother, an affianced lover, a husband, or a son?” (1815:

65-66). Williams regrets here that war and political turmoil make an indelible mark in the

familiar, sentimental and personal lives of its participants.

In order to argue in favour of political toleration, Williams makes reference to

Voltaire: “Voltaire had also brought persecution to disgrace; the multitude had adopted

the opinions of the Encyclopedists [...] toleration was the general fashion; and the great

revolution approached” (1819: 27). Here Williams connects once again the ideals of the

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French Revolution with religious toleration. For Williams, the objective of the Revolution

goes beyond abolishing the monarchy, she also wants the Revolution to get rid of other

forms of oppression, such as religious intolerance. In this quotation, Williams presents

the intellectual spirit in France in the decades right before the French Revolution started,

coinciding with the time Voltaire was being active with his writings. In those times, as

explained by Renwick, “elites were, as the century progressed, looking with increasing

disapproval upon the negative treatment of Protestants as being unworthy of a polite and

cultured society” (2009: 183). Correlatively, by using Voltaire’s argument, she situates

her argument within the French context regarding religious toleration. The philosophe

had played a relevant role in the debate on toleration, especially after Jean Calas’s

sentence and subsequent torturous execution in 1762. Calas, a Protestant merchant, was

accused of having murdered his son because he had converted to Catholicism when his

son had in fact committed suicide. Voltaire’s interest in the case led him to publish

Treatise on Tolerance (1763). In this work, Voltaire attacks religious fanaticism, which

made him a spokesperson for toleration in France. Among different religions, and

especially among different Christian faiths, Voltaire denounces Catholicism for its

bigotry: “There still some fanatics among the Calvinist population, but it is evident that

there are far more among some Catholics” (2000 [1763]: 25). Besides, Voltaire cherished

other countries’ policies on tolerance, including England, China, Turkey, India and

Persia. Since Voltaire was directly rendering France as an intolerant country, the work

was banned.

In his Letters on England (1778), Voltaire shows interest in experiencing what

he considered a more tolerant society. For that matter, he describes his visits to dissenting

circles in London –among them Presbyterians, the church to which Williams belonged–

proving that a peaceful coexistence of different religions is part of a prosperous nation. It

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is not coincidental then, that Williams sided with Voltaire. However, Williams does not

limit her defence of toleration to just describing the ideas of a philosopher like Voltaire.

Williams puts the ideas of Voltaire in a contemporary context, and instead of focusing on

Calas, she describes the situation of 1815. After the return of the monarchy, in an outburst

of violence, counterrevolutionaries retaliated against their ideological opponents. Even

though the conflict has been mostly interpreted by historians as a reaction towards the

Revolution rather than a religious issue (McCoy, 2015: 131), McCoy argues that

“religious policies of the Revolution and Napoleon’s Concordat were at once the sources

of the violence of 1815 and the reason why the White Terror was the last major outburst

of Catholic-Protestant conflict in France” (2015: 132). However, this issue needs to be

invisible in the historical documents that record this event, since they were written from

the ultra-royalist perspective (McCoy, 2015: 131). Williams provides a counterpoint to

official accounts of the white terror, since she denounces the event as an attack on the

Protestant Religion. Besides, her account is written from both a revolutionary and

protestant point of view. When mentioning Voltaire, Williams is not interested in

discussing toleration in general as a philosophical issue, but rather, she wants to call

attention to a particular incident that she denounces. Williams recognizes that with the

Affair Calas, Voltaire had triggered a reaction of conscience “his magical pen defended

the protestant victim, and dragged his persecutors to light” (1819: 18). In the same

manner, she wants to expose the counterrevolutionaries in the South of France as

responsible for the massacres, she even ventures to single out specific individuals, such

as the sub-prefect of Languedoc: “many persons were massacred in broad day before the

house of the sub-perfect. That frigid spectator of crimes was punished by no court of

justice, because there is no penal statute against a hard heart” (1819: 52). Again, Williams

brings attention to lack of emotions as an essential trait in a villain. Even though the

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judiciary system does not condemn lack of empathy, Williams counteracts his impunity

by making his crimes public through her writing. If Voltaire had been able to stimulate a

widespread discussion on the situation endured by the Protestants in pre-revolutionary

France, Williams attempts at doing her part in the early years of the nineteenth century.

5.2. Writing for Posterity

Letters on the Events is the last chronicle by Williams that deals with contemporary

French politics. After 1819, Williams’ next production in prose is Souvenirs de la

Révolution Française (1827), published in the same year of Williams’ passing, which

also marks Williams’ last work on the French Revolution. Between Letters on the Events

and Souvenirs, Williams produced Poems on Various Subjects with Introductory Remarks

on the Present State of Science and Literature in France (1823). The volume published

in 1823 is Williams’ second book of poems. The first one, Poems (1786), appeared before

she embarked on her first trip to Paris and even before the Bastille was demolished. For

the purpose of my study, I am focusing on Williams’ productions in prose; however, a

look into the preface and introductory remarks to Poems on Various Subjects shows

Williams’ emphasis in asserting control over her reputation at the dawn of her career. In

a study focused on poetry, Andrew Bennet explains that in the eighteenth century, writers

became increasingly concerned with the afterlife of their works (1999: 1). As I shall

elaborate on later on, Williams appeal to posterity moves beyond the boundaries of poetry

and it is also noticeable in her last work in prose, Souvenirs, which translates into English

as “memories”, offers an account in retrospect of the events she had already described in

the chronicles I have discussed throughout my dissertation. Before, Williams had judged

the Revolution in the midst of it, while in Souvenirs, she applies all the knowledge of the

events she had acquired in the last four decades. What is more, she also provides a revision

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of her own work, since she makes amends in the points she has changed her opinion about

while she defends herself in other instances. Interestingly, in Poems on Various Subjects,

she also revisits poems that had been already published while she adds some unpublished

pieces. In both Poems on Various Subjects and Souvenirs, Williams shows an interest in

asserting control over the reputation of her works, both in verse and prose.

In the preface to Poems on Various Subjects, Williams makes some remarks on

her narratives: “My narratives make a part of that marvellous story which the eighteenth

century has to record to future times, and the testimony of a witness will be heard” (1823:

x). Here, Williams shows awareness in the fact that she has experienced a unique moment

in history and that her works are inseparable from their context. At the same time,

Williams finds herself now at a time in history in which the events of the Revolution are

no longer the breaking news, but rather, since the time has gone by, her texts are now

approached by the new generations as means to learn about past history. For that matter,

she appeals to the younger generation of readers that she assumes would be unaware of

her work: “My literary patrons belonged to ‘the days of other years’, when a ray of favour

sometimes fell on my early essays in verse. I can now only expect that, it being the nature

of the English public to be just, I shall meet with no more severity than I deserve” (1823:

xiv). In this passage, Williams is directly talking to her English readership, and thus, her

intention is to exert control over her reputation in her home country. Williams’ poetry

was very well received at the beginning of her career, an example being Godwin’s

affirmation in Memories of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, where

Williams is described as “an author of a collection of poems of remarkable merit” (1798:

102) while he forgets to mention her political works in prose. As shown in 4.1.2., after

she started to devote her writing to political issues, she increasingly faced more opposition

in Britain. She nonetheless confronted that criticism in Sketches as noted in 4.2. She was

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perfectly aware of the fact that her works were increasingly perceived in a negative light.

At the same time, in the nineteenth century she had not been as active in producing

chronicles of the Revolution as she had been during the 1790s. Williams even ventures

to claim that she is now “considered a stranger in England” (1823: xiii-xiv). Due to the

lack of popularity that she experiences in England, she collects her best poetic works,

with the necessary amends, in Poems on Various Subjects. Four years later, she resolves

to do the same with her chronicles of the Revolution, as she recaps in Souvenirs the events

already discussed in her Letters, Sketches and Narratives, as it will be explained in section

5.3.

The changes she makes to the poems she decides to recover for publication in

1823 already indicate that Williams understands her writing in a different light when

compared to her early writings. The poem that offers more alterations from the original

publication is Peru, published in 1784 and included in Poems on Various Subjects as

“Peruvian Tales”. This study cannot possibly go into the two versions that Paula R.

Feldman has already provided in her preface to Peru and Peruvian Tales (2015). What is

compelling for the present discussion, though, is that in 1823 Williams detaches her poem

from history writing: ““I have now adopted what appears to me a more appropriate

denomination, that of Peruvian Tales in Verse; I have not ventured to dignify them with

the appellation of historical” (1823: xi). As Feldman explains, the genre of tales had

become “the most popular genre in Britain” (2015: 20) and Williams’ decision responds

to the literary tastes of her time (2015: 20). As noted in 4.1.2, in her approach to history

writing, Williams had rejected the epic tradition. At the same time, the label ‘tales’ seems

appropriate since Peru tells the history of fictional characters, unlike most of Williams’

chronicles, which are riddled with anecdotes that come from her experience rather than

imagination. Andrew Bennet (1999) finds in the Romantic appeal to posterity an interest

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in achieving an everlasting literary celebrity, however, Williams’ case is original here

since she is concerned with aligning her early work and her later facet as a chronicler of

the French Revolution. Since she delves into history writing in her prose, she separates

her previous work on Peru from the historical tradition, showing in this way that her

approach to history is based on experience and observation rather than on epic

conventions.

The preface to Poems on Various Subjects also offers a defence of French

literature, as the second part of the title indicates. According to Williams, newspapers in

Britain have claimed that poetry in France has suffered a process of degeneration in the

last years: “Before I close these pages I cannot resist seizing the occasion of protesting

against the opinions which have of late gone forth in England [...] I consider it the more

a duty to offer some remarks on this subject” (1823: xiv). Even in a book of poems,

Williams devotes a few pages to analyse the present situation of France, since she

conceives it as her duty. In this manner, writing becomes for Williams a form of public

service. Besides, what bothers Williams the most is that the degeneration of literature is

attributed to the influence of the Revolution in the cultural environment of France.

Williams contradicts this assertion and writes that “French eloquence, shackled in a

thousand ways before the Revolution, burst at once into splendour, when the delegates of

the people were permitted to proclaim their rights, and discuss their interests” (1823: xvi).

Before the Revolution, the French were expected not to displease the court, and this puts

a constraint when expressing themselves. Being able to discuss topics that actually have

an impact on others, that is to say, talking or writing for a cause, enhances eloquence.

Williams claims that the “purest source of eloquence is found in the love of liberty” (823:

xvi), and her love of freedom inspired her to produce the greatest part of her work, so

politics is not for her at odds with literature, but just the opposite, as she had defended

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throughout her career. In this manner, Williams upholds that the Revolution has had a

positive impact on poetry while she reaffirms her support of the cause.

5.3. Souvenirs de la Révolution Française

As explained in the previous section 5.2., Souvenirs is the last work produced by Williams

in which she provides a recap of the events she had described in her chronicles of the

French Revolution. Williams died in 1827, and the publication of Souvenirs in the same

year testifies that she was concerned with the revolutionary cause until the last moments

of her life. The fact that the Revolution had been a lifelong commitment for her is a

constant topic in this narrative from the first pages:

This small work will allow to see, if I don’t deceive myself, that in the always constant
and solid progress of the revolutionary ideas after twenty-five years, nothing has been
more constant than the opinions of my own heart, its unwavering loyalty to the cause of
liberty, or, in other words, to the cause of the human race. Driven since my youth by the
midst of the great events of the French revolution, its sacred principles became my cult
and my idol. (1827:2) 27

Here, Williams asserts that despite the changes in revolutionary governments, her faith in

the principles of the Revolution has persisted. At the same time, she asserts that the events

witnessed in the 1790s have left an indelible mark in her thinking. According to Williams,

the content of Souvenirs will reveal that her commitment to the French Revolution was

always strong.

Another point that differentiates Souvenirs from Williams’ previous productions

is that it was not published in English. The book was translated into French by Williams’

nephew Charles Coquerel, and it was sent for publication in Paris. Even though an English

27
My translation of “Ce petit ouvrage laissera voir, si je ne m’abuse, que dans le progrès toujours constant
et ferme des idées de la révolution française depuis vingt-cinq ans, rien n’a été plus constant que les opinions
de mon propre coeur, sa fidélité inébranlable à la cause de la liberté, ou, en d’autres termes, à la cause de
l'espèce humaine. Entraînée dès ma jeunesse au milieu des grands événements de la révolution française,
ses principes sacrés devinrent mon culte et mon idole”.

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version is mentioned in Coquerel’s preface: “This translation has been done faithfully

after the English manuscript, that hasn’t been published in London yet” (1827: viii), 28

neither the London edition nor the manuscript have ever been found (Kennedy, 2002:

210). Being only available in French, Souvenirs is the least well-known work by Williams

and the one that has received less critical attention. The preface by the translator also

consolidates Williams’ intentions and vindicates Williams’ role in the French Revolution:

Having thrown herself early in the midst of the storm of our revolution, due to her
willingness and enthusiasm, having embraced its principles with all the patriotic fervour
of a woman, she has been a spectator of what has happened; she had been acquainted with
the main actors of those great days. Her salon always remained open, and it is known that
the public events, and especially the passions, that carries them, reflect themselves
accurately enough in social interactions. (1827: viii) 29

The description that Coquerel provides of her aunt coincides with the way she had

portrayed herself throughout her literary career. First of all, he highlights her eagerness

to participate in a political cause in which, even though it does not take place in her

country, she involves herself with patriotism. This statement brings further attention to

Williams’ hybrid position between two nations, Britain and France. At the same time,

Coquerel reinforces Williams’ position as a spectator of the events, something that she

had defended throughout her career in order to give validity to her account. Nevertheless,

Williams does not appear here as a mere spectator, since she mingles with the

revolutionary figures and participates in political discussion with them through her salon.

The mention of Williams’ salon is compelling since Williams tends to minimize the

relevance of her salon in her previous publications, probably to protect herself from

28
My translation of “Cette traduction a été faite fidèlement sur le manuscrit anglaises, qui n’a pas encore
paru à Londres”.
29
My translation of “S'étant jetée de bonne heure, par volonté et par enthousiasme, au milieu des orages
de notre révolution, en ayant ambrassée les principes avec toute la ferveur du patriotisme d’une femme, elle
a été spectatrice de ce qui s’est passé; elle est liée avec les auteurs principaux de ces grands jours. Son salon
est toujours resté ouvert, et l’on sait que les événements publics, et surtout les passions, qui les amènent, se
réfléchissent assez fidèlement dans les rapports de la société”.

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political persecution. However, in Souvenirs, Williams vindicates her salon as a way in

which she participated in the public sphere of the time, as it will be discussed further in

this chapter. Coquerel also vindicates that emotions played a great part in the political

atmosphere of the time, an idea that Williams had claimed through her chronicles and

discussed in 2.1., 2.4., 3.2. and 4.2.1.

Despite the sexist remark in the passage quoted before, Coquerel affirms that

despite of her gender, Williams’ participation in the French Revolution gives her the

necessary knowledge and authority to write about politics:

It is instructive for us to listen to what she tells us about what she saw. It constitutes
another testimony in the inquiry of posterity. Her book is just an account, in which things
and men are judged with the frank and naïve sensibility of a woman who, wiser than a lot
of men, she has closely seen the abuses of freedom and the transformations of the French,
without reaching the conclusion that freedom is a bad thing, and that we are not worthy
of it. (1827: vi) 30

For Coquerel, Williams’ account of the Revolution is valuable because each testimony

has the potential to provide information for the future generations. As Coquerel sees it, it

is necessary to listen to witnesses in order to complete the puzzle of the events and provide

an informed judgment of the Revolution. Coquerel recognizes that the experiences of a

foreign woman are valuable for the French in their aims to reassemble the pieces of their

history. The fact that he presents Williams’ account as simple and naive, could be

interpreted as diminishing Williams’ book. Coquerel’s statement perpetuates Williams’

image as a naive author whose political discussions are not sophisticated enough, a

reputation that lasts to these days, Anne K. Mellor explicitly uses the term “naive” (1992:

261) while Karen Green perpetuate this image of Williams when she writes that “rather

30
My translation of “Il est instructif pour nous de l’entendre nous raconter ce qu’elle a vu. C’est un témoin
de plus dans l’enquête de la postérité. Son livre est un simple récit, où les choses et les hommes sont jugués
avec la sensibilité franche et naïve d’une femme, qui, plus sage que beaucoup d’hommes, a vu prés les abus
de la liberté et les mutations des Français, sans conclure que la liberté est une mauvaise chose, et que nos
en sommes indignes”.

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than giving a political analysis of the frightful events that she relates, Williams falls back

on poetic justice” (2014: 202). Nevertheless, taking into account Williams’ emphasis on

truthfulness and spontaneity 31, which follows the literature of sensibility, Coquerel’s

statement can be read as defending the truthfulness of Williams’ interpretation of the

events.

5.3.1. “J’ai pu me tromper, mais j’ai toujours été sincère” 32

The reception of Williams’ work in Britain was increasingly negative, as explained in

4.1.2. The purpose of my study is not to offer an analysis of how the attacks in the British

press affected Williams’ reputation, but this section will examine how Williams defended

herself from criticism in Souvenirs. Deborah Kennedy (2002) and Louise Duckling

(2010) have already demonstrated how the reception of Williams’ work in Britain had a

profound effect in the loss of her popularity and good reputation as a writer. In the 1780s

Williams had “established a respectable reputation for herself within an intellectual

circle” (Duckling, 2010: 74), while at the end of her career “Williams came to embody

the archetypal image of a wanton and wild Revolutionary woman” (Duckling, 2010: 75).

As noted in 4.2.2., Williams was accused by the British press of siding with the Jacobins.

Williams, who had devoted the greatest part of her Letters to denounce the violence of

Jacobinism, was outraged by these allegations and stated that defending herself in this

instance would have been degrading. However, in Souvenirs, written almost three decades

later, Williams decides to fight against defamation. Written at the very end of her career,

Williams’ newfound emphasis in clarifying for the public the real intentions of her

writings, despite the misinterpretation spread in Britain, shows a clear intention of

31
See 2.1. and 3.5.
32
“I might have erred, but I have always been truthful” (my translation).

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defending her future reputation. In fact, Williams herself explicitly asserts that defending

herself is the main purpose of Souvenirs:

Most importantly, I believe I have the duty [...] I must reject an accusation against me by
some English writers, who find that I have changed my opinion in the latest years, and
who, to put it directly, have declared me duly convinced of political apostasy. My duty,
like my wish, is to discredit them, not by appearing to be complaining about this reckless
judgement, because complaining is not answering, but by offering to the public the
abbreviated sketch of my views, my judgements and even my actions, in the midst of the
magnificent scenes of the drama that I witnessed. (1827: 1-2) 33

Williams understands the need to defend herself is more than a wish but a duty and almost

an obligation. She does not devise a future in which she is perceived as a counter-

revolutionary writer, after having defended the revolution throughout her life. Besides,

even though she had considered a degradation to defend herself against the accusations

of Jacobinism, she feels compelled to reject royalism. Even though Williams had harshly

criticized the Jacobin party, as explained in 2.6. and throughout chapter 3, devoted to

Williams’ writings on the Terror, she feels more slandered by the charges of royalism. In

Britain, as explained in 1.1., supporting the French Revolution came to be equated with

Jacobinism. However, being accused of royalism would mean for Williams to be accused

of renouncing her life-long beliefs, as she had always supported the cause in France. At

the same time, in the first page of Souvenirs, Williams explains how she aims to defend

herself. By giving a sketch of her views and judgements, she aims at providing an

articulated defence. In fact, Williams had been accused of royalism since she had

celebrated the downfall of Napoleon with the arrival of the Restoration. However, in

Souvenirs, she devotes a major part of her work to feature Napoleon and his imperialism

33
My translation of “Je crois le devoir surtout [...] je dois repousser une accusation dirigée contre moi par
quelques écrivains de l'Angleterre, qui trouvent que j’ai changé d’opinion pendant les dernières années, et
qui, pour tout dire, m’ont déclarée dûment convaincue d’une apostasie en politique. Mon devoir, comme
mon désir, est de les réfuter, non en paraissant me plaindre de ce jugement téméraire, car se plaindre n’est
pas répondre, mais en offrant au public l’esquisse abrégée de mes vues, de mes jugements et même de mes
actions, au milieu des scènes majestueuses du drame dont je fus témoin”.

215
as a sort of despotic power, which could be equated to the oppressive monarchy that the

Revolution initially battled against. Following this line of argument, Napoleon does not

represent the Revolution for her but the monarchy, and for that reason, she remains

revolutionary until the very end.

Later on in the narrative, Williams explicitly names “those writers” who

disapproved of her writing, by tracing the attacks to the counter-revolutionary journal the

Anti-Jacobin. This journal had been lambasting Williams’ work since the beginning of its

publication, as explained in 4.1.1. Williams explains the reasons why she did not defend

herself earlier:

Since the earliest times of the revolution, we had often heard a repeated saying, a bit
worn, according to which the friends of liberty were seen as brothers and friends of the
jacobins. A newspaper that created a big impact then, the Anti-Jacobin, that was
published in England, reproached me for a thousand offences. The journalists were
expecting to cause me a very violent affliction; they believed that they were causing me
all the pain that they wished for [...] But, unfortunately, the Anti-Jacobin, a necessary
reading in the tea circles in London, was completely unknown in Paris [...] When a friend
of mine brought me later on the complete collection of the Anti-Jacobin, we had just
recently left the regime of terror; and the epigrams by the English journalist seemed to be
light pinpricks to me, after the agitations of this storm. My spirit was then well filled with
other ideas, and my soul had risen to a very serious tone to allow the jokes to reach it.
(1827: 44-45) 34

First of all, Williams did not feel the need to defend herself in the late 1790s because she

was well-respected in the French circles. This claim is also made at the very beginning of

Souvenirs, in which Williams clarifies that her self-defence is only directed towards the

British newspapers: “The reproaches [...] that came from the British newspapers that held

34
My translation of “Dès les premiers temps de la révolution, nous avons souvent entendu répéter un adage
un peu usé, par lequel les amis de la liberté sont regardés comme frères et amis des jacobins. Un journal
qui fit une forte sensation alors, l’Anti-Jacobin, qui paraissait en Angleterre, m’accabla, moi, de mille
invectives. Les rédacteurs espéraient me causer un très-violent chagrin; ils croyaient me faire tout le mal
qu’ils me souhaitaient. [...] Mais, par malheur, l’Anti-Jacobin, lecture obligée des cercles à thé de Londres,
était alors totalement inconnu à Paris [...] Et quand un ami de Londres m’apporta plus tard la collection
complète de l’Anti-Jacobin, nous sortions tout récemment du régime de la terreur; et les épigrammes du
journalist anglais me paraissaient des piqûres d’épingles bien légères, après les agitations de cette tempête.
Mon esprit était alors rempli de bien d’autres idées, et mon âme était montée à un ton trop sérieux pour que
des plaisanteries pussent l'atteindre”.

216
hostile opinion of France, that is to say, of the French people, had little affected me”

(1827: 3). 35 Besides, Williams finds that the resentment that this journal showed towards

the French Revolution had more to do more with a British rivalry with the French nation,

rather than with the actual revolutionary process. In the 1790s, Williams had just

experienced the Terror, and her mind was more set in the events she witnessed in France

than in the opinions and debates circulated in Britain. She was experiencing the events

while others were just talking about it, without being personally affected by the terror, an

idea that is reinforced by the contrast between the tea circles and turmoil that took place

during the terror in France, that she refers to as a storm. Thus, Williams believes that,

while the British newspaper enjoys the privilege of joking about the Revolution, in

France, they experience it with the seriousness worthy of a political event such as the

French Revolution.

Williams also criticizes the oversimplification of the party politics of the French

Revolution, since they equate the support of the Revolution with being a Jacobin, while

in France they were several revolutionary factions confronted against each other,

something that she had meticulously demonstrated in her Letters. Also, she observes that

the press that has attacked her, made use of rigid labels to attack her work without

understanding the nuances that differentiate various ideological positions. In fact, she

writes that “I have talked about me the least that I have been able to, in order to entirely

clear me away from the accusation of Jacobinism, that nevertheless they used against me

with as much ingenuity as those who later on honoured me by calling me a ultra-royalist”

(1827: 122-123). 36 In this passage, she shows the mischaracterization of the revolutionary

35
My translation of “Des reproches [...], partis des journaux de l’opinion anglaise hostile à la France, c'est-
à-dire, à la nation française, m’auraient peu touchée”.
36
My translation of “J’ai parlé de moi le moins que j’ai pu, pour me laver entièrement du reproche de
jacobinisme, qui cependant m’a été adressé avec autant de candeur que lorsque plus tard on me fit l’honneur
de me traiter d’ultra-royaliste”.

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parties by her slanderers, since she has consistently proven her rejection of the Jacobins

and her denounce of absolutism. Williams shows here her belief in the fact that the

Revolution needs to be understood by the parameters of the people who made it and

experienced it. This idea appeared explicitly in Sketches, when Williams writes that “we

must not, I believe, measure the French Revolution by the sober calculations of a Dutch

Republican, nor with the reflecting and constitutional analysis of an English patriot”

(1801, vol. I: 45-46). Williams claims here that the French Revolution should be judged

within the context of France, since the point of view of other countries, that enjoyed more

political liberties than France did before 1789, becomes too severe towards the French.

For that matter, Williams mingles with the French, and provides the opinions of the actors

in the events, instead of a dispassionate opinion written from afar.

The accusations of ultra-royalism appeared towards the end of Williams’ career

when she rejoices that Napoleon has been overthrown. Since Bonaparte’s fall meant the

beginning of the Bourbon Restoration, that lasted until 1830, Williams’ position here was

interpreted as welcoming the return of the royal family. The accusations of royalism,

however, had been frequent in the course of the Revolution and it was not uncommon

that revolutionary factions called each other ‘royalist’. In fact, Madame Roland was

accused, tried and executed on account of royalism, as explained in 3.3. However, the

political atmosphere had completely changed since Roland’s execution, and, amidst the

Bourbon Restoration, the accusations of royalism do not put Williams at risk of political

persecution. What concerns Williams the most here is that she wants to be remembered

in posterity as someone who had always defended the revolution and who was not afraid

of the consequences of fighting for a political cause. Williams tries to prevent a narrative

that represents her in posterity as someone who had rejected the Revolutionary cause. In

218
Souvenirs, as she approaches her discussion of the Hundred Days, Williams clarifies the

reasons behind her political position after Bonaparte’s surrender:

I reach now, in the course of these quick thoughts, to the historical point where I have
been accused of royalism, ultracism, and of having betrayed the cause of my first
principles. Here, I must simply repeat, and always with the same honesty, that my joy at
Napoleon’s downfall was extreme; but I wasn’t expecting that, I admit it, that the
satisfaction that this triumph of liberty inspired me would be misinterpreted, and that it
would be seen as the desertion of a cause that I will never desert. It is possible that, in the
future, the military glories of the eagles of Austerlitz will make people forget the abuses
and the despotism of the victorious; but us, his contemporaries, his subjects, and, it has
to be said, his slaves, we could not be as forgetful. (1827: 175) 37

Here, Williams once again reinforces the historical value of people’s experiences. At the

same time, she criticizes the historical accounts of Napoleon rule that prioritize the

military success of Bonaparte to his management of France first as a consul and later as

an emperor. According to her, this understanding of history will in the future turn invisible

the voices and experiences of those who suffered Napoleon’s rule, such as herself. She

explicitly mentions in Souvenirs the writings of French historian Philippe de Ségur (1780-

1873), who had just published his Histoire de Napoléon in 1824. When discussing

Ségur’s publication, Williams states that “what should give the readers a sense of

something great and even sublime, is not Napoleon’s conduct but that of the army” (1827:

168-169). 38 Again, Williams prioritizes collective history to a militaristic narrative.

Furthermore, she inscribes herself as one of the voices that have suffered from Napoleon’s

rule, and this gives her a unique perspective of the events. In fact, she presents her

37
My translation of “J’arrive maintenant, dans le cours de ces réflexions rapides, à l’endroit historique où
j’ai été accusée de royalisme, d’ultracisme, et de trahison envers la cause de mes premiers principes. Je dois
ici simplement répéter, et toujours avec la même sincérité, que ma joie à la chute de Napoléon fut extrême;
mais je ne m’attendais pas, je l’avoue, que la satisfaction que ce triomphe de la liberté m’inspira serait
interprétée en mal, et qu’on y verrait l’abandon d’une cause que je n'abandonnerai jamais. Il est possible
que, dans l’avenir, la gloire militaire des aigles d'Austerlitz fasse oublier les abus et le despotisme du
vainqueur; mais nous, ses contemporains, ses sujets, et, il faut bien le dire, ses esclaves, nous ne saurions
être aussi oublieux”.
38
My translation of “Ce qui doit donner aux lecteurs l’idée de quelque chose de grand, et de sublime même,
ce n’est pas la conduite de Napoléon, mais celle de l’armée”.

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criticism of Napoleon not as a personal choice, but as a result of public opinion in which

she partook. Simon Bainbridge explains that in British perspective, “Napoleon became

an ‘imaginary’ figure [...] a ‘fabrication’ created to embody their political and personal

hopes and fears” (1995: 1). Williams appears in her nineteenth-century production as

completely disconnected from the British tradition, since she advocates for the

demystification of Napoleon. She rejects an individualistic interpretation of Bonaparte in

order to observe him from the perspective of French public opinion.

In order to defend her decision to celebrate Napoleon’s downfall, Williams

consistently presents him as a dupe of monarchical power. For that matter, in Williams’

eyes, if Bonaparte was acting like a despotic king, to rejoice at the arrival of the restoration

was in fact the result of her revolutionary inclinations. For that matter, she presents his

policies as “modern feudalism” (1827: 158). 39 At the same time, Williams does not only

defend herself from the accusations in the newspapers, but she wants to ensure that her

future readers can have a complete understanding of her political position throughout her

literary career, and that she has always been consistent with her defence of the French

Revolution. Williams looks back to the times when she wrote A Tour in Switzerland and

Sketches, where she had provided a favourable image of Napoleon, to justify that her

former opinions were in line with her revolutionary faith:

I was experiencing the most painful mix of feelings, and I renounced my admiration with
great difficulty. I had to clear myself of all these beautiful dreams of my imagination, and
finally regard him as he was. After this time, I did not praise him anymore, neither in
prose nor in verse. (1827: 137) 40

Williams, as time goes by, discovers that Napoleon was not behaving as the revolutionary

hero she envisioned in A Tour in Switzerland, see 4.1.2. However, she acts accordingly

39
My translation of “Féodalité modern”.
40
My translation of “J’éprovai alors le plus pénible mélange de sentiments, et je ne renonçai que bien
difficilement à mon admiration. Il me fallut dissiper moi-même tous ces beaux rêves de mon imagination,
et le contempler enfin tel qu’il était. Depuis cette époque, je ne l’ai plus loué, ni en prose ni en vers”.

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to her political beliefs, and subsequently decides to position herself against him. For that

matter, she makes amends to compensate for her former belief in Bonaparte. She does not

only provide a negative view of him in her works published during the Restoration, but

she also challenged him directly through her writing, making her opinion clear not only

to the public but to Bonaparte himself, as explained in 5.1.2.

Williams’ chronicles of the French Revolution are different from the works of

Burke, Wollstonecraft and Macaulay, as noted in 1.1., since Williams emphasizes her

position as a participant of the events. Coinciding with the time of the publication of

Souvenirs, British authors continued to produce works commenting on the events of the

French Revolution, as Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1828-1830) and Walter

Scott’s Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1827) demonstrate. Hazlitt knew Williams’ work as

he reprinted in the appendix of his Life of Napoleon a fragment from Williams’ account

of her time in prison with Sillery and Lasource (Kennedy, 2002: 111). In her portrayal of

Napoleon in Narrative, Letters on the Events and Souvenirs, Williams’ adopts a different

stance from that of Scott and Hazlitt. Influenced by Burke’s early attacks on the French

Revolution, Scott’s Life is written from an anti-revolutionary point of view, and he reads

the restoration of the Bourbons as a triumph of “divine justice” (Friedman, 1988: 101)

and a necessary return to the old order. Hazlitt directly opposes Scott as he adopts a

revolutionary position and celebrates Napoleon as a hero. This celebratory approach

shows itself in his celebration of Napoleon’s return from his exile in Elba on the 20th of

March 1815: “It was the greatest instance ever known of the power exerted by one man

over opinion” (1852 (1828): 119). Besides, “he sees Napoleon as maintaining the

principles of the Revolution” (Bainbridge, 1995: 189), and does not find a connection

between his imperial attitudes and monarchic despotism. For her part, as already

explained in this section, Williams is critical of Napoleon’s return, but she maintains at

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the same time a revolutionary stance. Besides, Hazlitt's account of Napoleon participates

in this glorification of Bonaparte’s figure that, according to Williams, renders the

experiences of those who suffered under his oppression invisible. Unfortunately, since

Williams’ Souvenirs did not appear in English, Williams was excluded from the debate

in Britain surrounding Napoleon, as she is left out in Bainbridge study of representations

of Napoleon in British Romanticism (1995).

5.3.2. Attached to France: Williams’ Revolutionary Identity

As mentioned in section 5.3.1. Williams maintains that, even though her work has been

harshly criticized in Britain, her reputation has been favourable in France, her country of

residence since 1792. In 1824, she moved to Amsterdam with her oldest nephew Athanase

Coquerel, where she wrote Souvenirs (Kennedy, 2002: 210). However, her time in the

Netherlands was merely temporary as she returned to France in 1827. In the last page of

Souvenirs, Williams clearly states that she wishes to spend the last days of her life in

France and to be buried there: “that country [France] [...], where I will spend the few

years left of my life, and where I will finally ask for the hospitality of a tomb”

(1827:201). 41 She was in fact buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, following her

will. In the end, Williams had spent around three decades in France, almost the same

amount of time she lived in Britain. Besides, her time in France coincides with the peak

of her literary production and her move from poetry towards political writing. In the

eighteenth century, a time which was crucial for the definition of both the British and

French national identity, Williams finds herself at a crossroads. She is aware of her

ambiguous position, and in the last page of Souvenirs, apart from declaring her wish to

41
My translation of “Ce pays [...] où je passerai le peu d’années de la vie qui me reste, et auquel je
demanderai enfin l’hospitalité d’un tombeau”.

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spend the last moments of her life in France, she writes that England is for her “this native

island that will always be so dear to me, and to which I am proud of belonging to” (1827:

201). 42 However, she describes herself as “a person attached [...] to this France, by all the

memories of a long residence, by the memory of public calamities in which I have had

my part” (1827: 201). 43 The fact that she refers to ‘this’ France, means that she became

attached to the country that France became after 1789 with the outbreak of the French

Revolution. Besides, apart from the prolonged residence in France, she is attached to the

French identity for having participated in the French Revolution. For these reasons, I

suggest that Williams constructs her identity not so much as a response to a national

category, but to her adherence and participation in the French Revolution, which explains

why Williams was so concerned in proving that she had always been loyal to her

revolutionary ideals as explained in the previous section, 5.3.1.

In her influential study of the creation of the British national identity, Colley

(1995) identifies that the ‘Briton’ identity was developed throughout the eighteenth

century. The period was marked by an intermittent military conflict between France and

Britain, as these two powers chose different sides in international struggles including the

Wars of succession in both Spain (1701-1714) and Austria (1740-1748), the Seven Years

War (1756-1763), the American Revolutionary War (1755-1783) and, after 1792, in the

context of the French Revolution, both the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. After all

these struggles, the British viewed France as their utmost rivals, thus, “eighteenth-century

Britons [...] regularly defined themselves in opposition to what they saw as being French

characteristics and manners” (Colley, 1995: 250). However, as already explained in 2.3.,

Williams does not reject French manners but praises their decorum. Leanne Maunu, in

42
My translation of “Cette île natale qui me sera toujours si chère, et à laquelle je suis fière d’appartenir”.
43
My translation of “Une personne attachée comme moi à cette France, par tous les souvenirs d’une longue
habitation, par la mémoire des calamités publiques dont j’ai eu ma part”.

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her discussion of the interplay between national and gender identity in the work of British

women writers (2007), argues that women authors wrote as part of a community, which

conferred authority to their texts as they were writing for a common cause rather than a

strictly personal position, which could potentially be dismissed as women’s capacity for

rational thinking was put into question. Maunu introduces her study with an analysis of

Anna Laetitia Hawkins’ response to Williams’ Letters, in which Hawkins envisions a

female community based on gender identity rather than on political affiliation. For this

reason, Maunu writes that “Many women writers wanted to make it seem as if they were

writing as members of a fairly stable community, even if such a community was

composed of many different women with many different beliefs” (2007: 17) and this

perspective “united both conservative and radical authors alike” (2007: 17). However,

Laetitia Matilda Hawkins writes from a counter-revolutionary position, and articulates

her Letters on the Female Mind against the ideals of the French Revolution and women’s

participation in political writing. For that matter, the ideal feminine qualities proposed by

Hawkins directly exclude Williams. In turn, Williams’ sense community is not informed

so much by gender identities but by political beliefs.

The political faction that Williams displayed more attachment to was definitely

the Gironde, as explained in sections 2.6., 3.2. and 3.3. In Souvenirs, three decades after

the end of Terror, Williams maintains her commitment to the Girondins, even though her

cause appears in her writing as having been forgotten by the French. Williams, keeping

the martyr narrative that she displayed in Letters, and explained in sections 3.2., 3.3. and

3.5., remembers the Girondins as follows:

The French nation, chasing their rapid destiny [...] did not pay these renowned martyrs a
big enough attention. Dying for the homeland is not a service that should be forgotten
that quickly [...] Me, however, a foreigner in France, I still cry for them, if France forgets
them. Having enjoyed their friendship is glorious for me, and having been able to, not

224
 without danger, to give them some kind of attachment during the last of their glorious
days. (1827: 62) 44

In this passage, Williams represents the Girondins as fighting for a national cause, as

proven by use of the expression ‘dying for the homeland’. This approach to the memory

of the Girondin party is different from the one displayed by Williams in Letters, where

they appear as ‘friends of liberty’ in a way that transcends national borders, since

Williams understood the French Revolution as a cause for the whole of humanity. Even

though Williams presents herself as a foreigner here, this does not prevent her from

acknowledging the deeds that the Girondins did for their homeland. In her analysis of

Williams’ Letters, Amy Culley observes that Williams identifies herself with the

Girondins as she “writes herself into a community of revolutionary martyrs, prisoners,

and mythologized Girondins” (2007: 185). Culley’s observation is still applicable to

Souvenirs, as Williams, apart from keeping their memories alive, inscribes herself in her

community as she has shared not only their friendship, but put herself in danger as part

of the persecuted community.

Williams shows in Souvenirs that, living among the French, she participates of a

community that has both supported the revolution and suffered amidst the political

turmoil of the last decades. Writing in retrospect of the 9 of Thermidor, already discussed

in 3.7., Williams observes that what unified the revolutionaries as a community was the

grief experienced during the Terror:

The voice of a country rose from all sides, and the general indignation, if suppressed for
a long time, bursted energetically. All around France, a community of pain and anger
assembled all parties [...] This general scream [...] adopted the form of a true reaction.

44
My translation of “La nation française, poursuivant ses destinées rapides, et entraînée dans le tourbillon
des événements, n’a point faite une assez grande attention à ces martyrs célèbres. Mourir pour la patrie
n’est pas un service qui se doive si vite oublier [...] Moi, cependant, étrangère en France, je les pleure
encore, si la France les oublie. Je regarde comme une gloire pour moi d’avoir joui de leur amitié, et d’avoir
pu, non sans péril, leur donner quelques marques d’attachement dans les derniers de leurs glorieux jours”.

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 But I can attest, as I had personally seen what happened [...] that this backwards reaction
had nothing of royalism. (1827:88) 45

In this passage, Williams clarifies that the reaction against the Jacobins did not mean

support for the royal cause, as dismissing Napoleon did not mean royalism for her, as

explained in the previous section 5.3.1. Although Williams’ commitment with the

Girondin is evident in Letters, as Culley notes (2014), I also mark that in Souvenirs,

Williams goes beyond the circle of the Girondins to identify herself with all of those who

have fought for the common cause. The Gironde ceased to exist as a party with the Terror,

and, when recalling the 9th of Thermidor Williams moved beyond the Girondin/Jacobin

categories. Williams’ account of the Terror clearly denies the Jacobins the category of

‘true revolutionaries’, as noted in 2.6. and chapter 3. Overall, in this passage she sees the

reaction of the terror as coming from disparaging political parties. In fact, as she explained

in Letters Containing a Sketch, the Terror confronted different views within the Jacobins.

For that matter, in the passage mentioned before, Williams does not completely exclude

the Jacobins from this “general indignation”.

As previously explained, Colley has shown that the British national identity was

largely forged by the opposition to the French. After almost a century of intermittent

armed conflict between the two neighbouring countries, on the 18th of June of 1815, the

battle of Waterloo, which became decisive in resolving the conflict. In Waterloo, the

coalition forces led by the British Duke of Wellington claimed victory over the French

troops. In France, this defeat rushed Napoleon's abdication and marked the beginning of

the monarchic restoration. The Battle of Waterloo also consolidated Britain as the greatest

global power, which initiated a 50-year period of imperial expansion for Britain known

45
My translation of “La voix du pays s’éleva de toutes parts, et l’indignation générale, si long-temps
comprimée, éclata énergiquement. Dans toute la France, une communauté de douleur et de colère réunissait
tous les partis [...] Ce cri général [...] prit la forme d’une véritable réaction. Mais je puis affirmer, en
personne qui vit ce qui se passait, qui prenait la plus vive part aux événements du jour [...] que cette réaction,
ce mouvement rétrograde n’était point du royalisme”.

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as Pax Britannica. In Britain, right after the victory “in the state-sanctioned press, victory

over the detested French other was presented as an incomparable event in national

history” (Shaw, 2002: 10). Nevertheless, Colley (1995: 321), Shaw (2002: x) and Cox

(2014: 23) explain that after the initial celebratory tone, the response to the victory on the

British side tended to be assumed in a pessimistic tone. Wordsworth in his Thanksgiving

Ode (1816) presents Napoleon as an evil power and celebrates his defeats, but mostly

denounces the wickedness of war. In Souvenirs. Williams thinks in retrospective of a such

a decisive event as Waterloo, also displaying a melancholic mood:

I admit that I experienced a feeling of national vanity, when I learnt about the noble
achievements of the English in the camps of Waterloo [...] Nevertheless I lamented the
misfortunes of the brave French army, abandoned again by their leader. I was in Holland
when the last commemoration of the battle of Waterloo took place [...] But I didn’t attend
any of these ceremonies. I was thinking of myself, in the midst of the joy of the multitude,
that this was not for me, who I had for such a long time shared the destiny of the French,
and who I had, in a manner of speaking, for a long time eaten the same bread and drank
from the same cup, to rejoice in that fifty thousand children of this motherland had fallen
on the bloody dust of the plains. (1827: 183) 46

In this passage, Williams acknowledges a British national pride, which is quickly

overcome by her attachment to the French. For that matter, she believes that she has no

place in the commemorations of the British victory at Waterloo, even though Britain is

her country of residence. Interestingly, consistent with the tone of Souvenirs, Williams

maintains in this passage her aversion towards Napoleon and presents him as a military

leader who neglects the soldiers. In this manner, Williams reinforces her portrayal of

Napoleon as an egotistical leader more concerned in obtaining individual glories than in

the cause of liberty. In the British context, Williams’ position is peculiar since she

46
My translation of “J’avoue que j’éprouvai un sentiment de vanité nationale, quand j’appris les nobles
exploits des Anglais dans les champs de Waterloo [...] cependant je déplorai les malheurs de la brave armée
de France, délaissée encore par son chef. J'étais en Hollande quand eut lieu la dernière commémoration
anniversaire de la bataille de Waterloo [...] Mais je n’assistai à aucune des cérémonies. Je songeais en moi-
même, au milieu de l’allégresse de la foule, que ce n’était pas à moi, qui avais si long-temps partagé les
destins des Français, et qui avais pour ainsi dire si long-temps mangé du même pains et bu dans la même
coupe, à me réjouir de ce que cinquante mille des enfants de cette patrie étaient tombés sur la poussiè
sanglante de la plaine”.

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emphasizes her revolutionary beliefs but is critical of Napoleon at the same time. The

British responses to the Napoleonic era tended either to completely reject the revolution

and present Napoleon as a monster, as is the case of Wordsworth’s Thanksgiving Ode or

Scott’s Life of Napoleon, or to embrace Napoleon as a revolutionary hero, as portrayed in

Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1828) or Byron’s Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

(1814). However, the revolution was not understood in such Manichean terms across the

channel. Madame de Staël, forcefully opposed Napoleon as explained in section 5.1.2.,

but she aligned herself with the Revolution as she saw it as “the third era in the process

of social order –the establishment of representative government– a point towards which

the human mind is directing itself from all parts” (1818:14). For Staël, as for Williams,

the Revolution was a necessary step in the progress of humanity, but this did not prevent

them from being critical of Bonaparte.

As already mentioned in 5.1.1., Kennedy used the expression ‘citizen of the

world’ (2002: 52) to refer to Williams’ internationalist inclinations. In the same vein,

Tone Brekke writes that “For women writers such as Williams, Smith and Wollstonecraft,

cosmopolitanism became part of a politics that experimented with the possibility of

sympathetic identification across differences and nationhood” (2013: introduction). On

the same topic, Leanne Maunu considers that “Williams essentially adopts a cosmopolitan

mindset, writing as a citizen of the world, rather than as a nationalist” (2007: 31). Even

though Williams clearly adopts a universalist position when she celebrates the revolution

as ‘triumph of mankind’, as discussed in 2.1., and in the second page of Souvenirs, where

she refers to the Revolution as ‘the cause of human race’, see 5.3. Interestingly, the

passage from Souvenirs quoted before departs from this cosmopolitan vision. Thinking

about Waterloo, she regrets the enormous loss of French lives, but she keeps silent about

the British casualties. Williams departs here from a cosmopolitan mourning of all victims

228
of Waterloo, as displayed by Lord Byron in the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

(1816). “How that red rain hath made the harvest grow! /And is this all the world has

gained by thee, /Thou first and last of fields! king-making Victory?” (1816: 11). Here,

revisiting the battlefield brings back the echoes of the past violence, without explicitly

alluding to any of the sides of the conflict. According to Conin, in his rendering of

Waterloo, Byron “constructed a voice that could seem to accommodate all the discordant

voices of a fractured nation” (2000: 91). Even though Williams experiences national

pride, her refusal to participate in the celebration in order to honour the memory of the

French, is at odds with the political atmosphere of her native country.

5.4. Conclusions for This Chapter

This chapter has explored Williams’ political works published after the Napoleonic era,

Narrative of the Events, Letters on the Events, and her posthumous work Souvenirs de la

Révolution Française. In Narrative, Williams presents Napoleon as the main villain of

her account, occupying the same position as Robespierre did in her chronicles of the

Terror. In Letters on the Events, Williams delves into the defence of religious toleration

and denounces the violent attacks towards the protestant community in France. In

Souvenirs, Williams offers a retrospective re-evaluation of her participation in the cause

of the French Revolution. After analysing the aforementioned works, I conclude the

following:

● Williams’ national identity is inconsistent throughout her career, ranging from

outsider to part of the revolutionary community. As a foreigner, she accessed the

military camps to obtain information directly from the English. However, after

cohabitating with the Parisian citizens, she provides an analysis of the Revolution

through a French lens. Thus, I conclude that Williams’ position in the margins

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 allows her to maintain a fluid national identity. Williams makes use of either

national perspective to articulate her arguments in favour of the French

Revolution. As a foreigner she appears as a more impartial observer of the events

and access spaces otherwise denied to her, such as the British military camps.

Nevertheless, she makes use of a French position to highlight the fact that she has

shared common experiences with the French community, which gives her a deeper

understanding of the events she is telling when compared with either the British

commentators on the Revolution, or the younger historians who did not witness

the revolution themselves.

● Williams’ political position differs from the predominant understanding of the

Revolution in Britain in the nineteenth century, which were either revolutionary

and supported Napoleon, or royalist and critical of the Emperor. For her part,

Williams denounces Bonaparte’s rule but maintains that she is still committed to

the cause of the French Revolution. The writings by Hazlitt and Scott on Napoleon

are considered fundamental works in the British discussion of the Napoleonic era,

while Williams’ contribution to the debate is overlooked. Williams grounds her

criticism of Napoleon in her experiences in France to convey authority to her

narrative. More than two decades after Letters, the participants in the

revolutionary debate have changed, but nevertheless, Williams still puts forward

the idea that her physical presence in France conveys veracity to her chronicle.

● In her discussion of religious toleration, Williams focuses on the injustices

endured by the protestant community in France. Besides, when Williams

discusses freedom of worship, she partakes of the French intellectual context, as

in comments on Voltaire’s Treatise on Toleration. Even though the question of

religious toleration could also be applied to the situation in Britain, since

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 dissenters enjoyed less opportunities than members of the dominant Anglican

church, Williams moved beyond this debate on to the French situation, focusing

on the Catholic violence towards Protestants. Gravill observes that the target

public of On the Late Persecution of Protestants was Williams’ British audience

(2009: 63). However, she did not discuss the atmosphere of toleration in Britain

and thus, she does not aim at contributing to the debate in her home country. By

contrast, her emphasis on reporting the events in France shows that Williams

adopted the role of a journalist and correspondent of French matters for a British

public.

● She defends her posthumous reputation against the attacks from the British

conservative press. Her concern with the future reception of her work is not so

much informed by the Romantic emphasis on appealing to posthumous celebrity

and achieving immortality through her writing. Denying any royalist inclinations,

she inscribes her memories within the revolutionary cause to ensure that in the

future, her chronicles become a historical document that tells the history of the

Revolution from a revolutionary perspective. For that matter, I conclude that

Williams vindicated her contribution to the debate on the French Revolution as

the main contribution of her literary career.

● Williams’ outlook on the Revolution has been understood as “cosmopolitan”

(Coleman, 2015: 130). However, I observe that, in her nineteenth-century

productions, Williams inconsistently moves from a universalist to a French

patriotic stance. This is also evident in her discussion of the Battle of Waterloo,

where she laments the French casualties, disregarding the victims of the rival

armies. Although Williams “embraces a sentimental politics of the heart within a

231
 universal community” (Culley, 2007: 33) for most of her career, in this episode of

Souvenirs empathic feelings connect her with the French nation.

Narrative of the Events and Letters on the Events constitute Williams’ last chronicles of

the French Revolution. Finally, Williams recapitulates in Souvenirs de la Révolution

Française her experiences in France after more than three decades witnessing and

participating in the Revolution. Having analysed in Chapter 2, 3, 4 and 5 Williams’

political works, I will present the conclusions of my study in the following chapter.

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 Conclusions and Further Research

6. 1. Conclusions

This study has explored Williams’ corpus of chronicles of the French Revolution to offer

an analysis of her participation in the intellectual debates surrounding political and social

reform in the revolutionary era. Williams offers a unique perspective on the debate as she

was a British author living in France. As a result, this study seeks to examine how

Williams’ physical presence in France was negotiated by the author in order to contribute

to the political discussions in Britain. At a time in which women’s participation in the

political discussion was regarded as improper, I have paid attention to how Williams

validates herself as a writer and asserts authorial control. On account of both her gender

and nationality, this dissertation has looked into the ways Williams felt as a participant or

outsider in the intellectual debates of her time. Due both to her British nationality and

residence in France, I have inquired into whether or not Williams found herself excluded

from the political discussion in both the British and French context.

In the 1780s, Helen Maria Williams enjoyed in Britain a good reputation as a poet

of sensibility. She used poetry to engage in debates of social and political nature, namely

the American Revolution and the Anti-Slavery Campaigns. After 1789, Williams

immediately sided with the revolutionaries in France and as a result, she travelled to Paris

in 1790 to celebrate the first anniversary of the Revolution. From that moment onwards,

although some of Williams’ poetry is politically charged, she casted aside her poetical

productions to produce her chronicles of the French Revolution, Letters from France

(1790-195). Chapter 2 has explored Williams’ chronicles produced in the early years of

the Revolution (1790-2). In Letters, Williams wields authority by emphasizing her

position as an observer of the events, as opposed to Burke, Macaulay or Wollstonecraft,

233
who were writing about the French Revolution from their residences in Britain. Williams,

influenced by the literature of sensibility, reinforced the emotional connections that

consolidated her support for the revolutionary cause, not only in the domestic realm, as

in the case of the Du Fossés, but more compellingly, in the public domain with her

participation in revolutionary celebrations. At a time when the literature of sensibility was

regarded as increasingly individualistic, Williams explored its potential for collective

engagement in a political cause which went beyond the support of the French Revolution

as an event that changed history and brought with it a series of rights and liberties which

she further explores in her work. Besides, in Chapter 2, I observed how Williams

describes her meeting with madame de Genlis, a renowned intellectual. Throughout

Williams’ chronicles, her conversations with philosophical figures continue to be narrated

and includes personalities such as Madame Roland and Caspar Lavater, described in

chapters 3 and 4 respectively. The telling of these conversations serves for Williams the

purpose of participating in the intellectual queries of her time as she includes her

discussion of social and political issues in the narration of these meetings.

Chapter 3 focuses on Williams’ Letters published after 1795. The political

situation in France changed dramatically from 1792 to 1794, as the Revolution took a

violent turn labelled by historians as ‘the Terror’. The brutality in France was observed

unfavourably in Britain which increased the opposition towards the Revolution in France.

The political party that dominated the French political scene between 1793 and 1794 were

the Jacobins, and all supporters of the Revolution in France came to be equated with

Jacobinism. Nevertheless, Williams rejects this oversimplification, and emphasizes her

own involvement with the Girondin party, more moderate in nature. In Chapter 2, I looked

into how Williams went beyond the individualistic claims of sensibility in order to use

emotions as a tool for communal bonding in order to achieve social change. In Chapter

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3, I look at how Williams’ understanding of the power of sensibility was a driving force

behind political action. Apart from using sensibility in order to gain her reader’s support

for the cause of the Revolution, she observes that empathic feelings have the capacity to

urge individuals to involve themselves directly in the political scene. In fact, Williams’

sensibility moves her to transcend her status as an eyewitness and observer of the

Revolution to assume the position of a political activist. In her rejection of Jacobin rule,

she became both part of the community of the Girondin and a political actor by lending

her service to leading Girondin figures, Roland, Sillery and Lasource in particular.

Besides, after being imprisoned due to the law of suspects, Williams takes part in the

Girondin resistance as she shares imprisonment with political prisoners. For that matter,

despite her nationality, Williams becomes directly involved in the events and moves from

the position of an outsider to an insider in the resistance against the Jacobins.

Chapter 4 of this thesis has explored Williams’ production at the turn of the

century, coinciding with the beginning of the Napoleonic era. A Tour in Switzerland

moves beyond the scope of France, but Williams still focuses her work on the defence of

the French Revolution. In her travelogue, Williams participates in the intellectual debates

of her time to position herself against the mythification of Swiss virtue by directly

opposing the ideas of Rousseau and Coxe. For that reason, I conclude that in A Tour,

Williams partakes in a confident manner in intellectual reason. However, I reject that this

confidence should be interpreted as “masculine” (Vincent and Widmer-Schyner, 2011:

47). Williams bases her criticism of Rousseau and Coxe in her own experience and

observations in Switzerland, again reinforcing her role as eyewitness to ground her

arguments. In Sketches, Williams challenged the work of Arthur Young and argued in

favour of the rights of rural workers, detaching her views from the emerging rise of

capitalism. Therefore, I do not observe that “Williams celebrates the crude popular culture

235
of an emerging capitalist consumerism” (Leblanc, 1997: 31). Chapter 4 also looked into

Williams’ claims on women’s rights. In a chapter entitled “On the State of Women in the

French Republic”, Williams rejects the paternalistic arguments offered by French authors

such as Théremin and Mirabeau and argues that the Revolution should look at women’s

situation from their own perspective. Williams displays her disappointment for the

Revolution since it has neglected women’s needs and denied them a voice in politics. For

that matter, I conclude that Williams understands the French Revolution as a cause that

goes beyond the eradication of aristocratic and ecclesiastic privileges. For her, the

Revolution should encompass liberation from all forms of oppression, including the one

experienced by women. Following this idea, in Chapter 5, Williams also appeals to the

potential of the French Revolution in order to achieve religious freedom in France.

Chapter 5 has explored Williams’ chronicles written after the Napoleonic era.

Although written during the monarchic restoration, Williams continually reinforces that

her commitment to the cause of liberty is still strong in Narrative of the Events, Letters

on the Events and Souvenirs. After experiencing the progress of the Revolution for more

than two decades, Williams acquires a unique perspective that differentiates her from the

predominant accounts of the Napoleonic era in Britain. After Letters, Williams maintains

throughout her career that her position in the midst of the events grants the truthfulness

of her narrative. In Souvenirs Williams moves one step further, to emphasize that the last

three decades of experiences in France provide her with the necessary material to offer a

reconsideration of the French Revolution. Compared to the younger generation of

authors, Williams draws the material to construct her narrative from her memory rather

than books or historical documents. For that matter, Williams vindicates the value of

memory and experience for history writing. She believes that a complete historiographical

reconstruction of any event should not overlook the voices of those who lived through the

236
political turmoil. For that reason, she detaches herself from a more contemporary

understanding of history, that aims at analysing the events from a dispassionate point of

view. This dispassionate approach was considered to be more accurate, against memories

who were dismissed as historically valuable documents for their strong appeal to memory

and emotion. Williams vindicates the interplay between memory and history and offers

her memoirs a document of historical value.

As a response to the research questions posed at the beginning of this study, I

conclude that Williams grounds the authority of her work in experience. Williams’

appeals to memory, experience or sensibility go beyond the intentions to appear more

feminine and thus be acceptable, which is the interpretation that Fay (1998: 78),

Blakemore (1997: 164) or Duckling (2010: 79) have given to Williams’ appeal to

emotions. Her use of sensibility is opposed to the individualist turn that this literary trend

was taking in the last decades of the eighteenth century, as in the influential Confessions

by Rousseau. Williams’ approach to sensibility is also radically opposed to the more

conservative understandings of Sensibility that predominated in Britain at the turn of the

Century. For instance, while Hannah More also employs sensibility to vindicate the value

of philanthropy, Williams believes that change does not come as a result of individual

and sporadic actions but of mass mobilization to achieve radical changes in the political

system. Williams advocates for a distribution of richness regulated by the revolutionary

government instead of scattered actions of charity. In her account, compassion is at the

centre of political action, as it moves people despite of their gender, to take part in the

events with a collective change in mind and not only to alleviate suffering at an individual

level. Williams sees politics as a collective effort and does not envision the future of

nations as being only at the hands of political leaders. She explores the potential of acting

in politics from the context of small and every-day actions.

237
 The results of this study serve to conclude that Williams’ aim was to take a stand

within the trend of enlightened ideas and, also, to spread her views to a general public.

Williams wrote with a British readership in mind. However, she was particularly

interested in providing her readers with information that was only available in France and

which marked the difference between her writing and that of other British authors. Her

work clearly aims at being informative and critical. She aimed at reaching an audience at

large that wanted to be informed and she was not restricted to only gaining the favour of

women readers. She is not merely describing the events, but she also has an ideological

purpose in mind. Although she involves herself in political action beyond the scope of her

writing, she is also aware of the power of writing to influence the political atmosphere. At

a time when women were denied access to the public sphere on account of their gender,

Williams makes use of everyday actions together with writing to take part in the public

arena. Besides, Williams does not see the divisions between the public and private as rigid

and fixed, as she brings constant attention to how political decisions affect people on an

everyday scale. Although this approach has been understood as domestic by Mellor (1992:

264) or Duckling (2010: 79), this dissertation has shown that Williams is not confined to

the sphere of the home. In her discussion of individual affairs, Williams pays attention to

public spaces such as prisons, salons, the streets and the battlefield.

Williams did not feel an outsider in the French debate regarding her nationality as

she saw the cause of liberty from a universalist point of view. I agree with Kelly in that

“she distances herself from Britain” (1993: 218). Her position in France, nevertheless,

reveals that she feels more of an outsider within the British context. Even though Williams

uses her position as a foreigner to enter different spaces that would have otherwise been

denied to her on account of her gender, such as the military camps, she aligns her

sympathies with that of the French in the case of military victories, such as the case of

238
Waterloo discussed in Chapter 5. Leanne Maunu finds that, in the late eighteenth century

and early nineteenth, women appealed to a nationalistic discourse in order to make claims

in favour of women’s emancipation. Nevertheless, Williams resorts to a revolutionary

identity to make such claims. For her, women’s rights and dignity are inseparable from an

advancement of society at all levels, which would be granted by a revolution that

overthrows the old social order. Williams believes that women’s detachment from politics

has to do with the fact that their peculiarities are overlooked by political leaders. Besides,

at a time when women writers were essentially and in various ways advocating for

women’s education so as to adjust or accommodate to their role in the domestic realm as

wives and mothers, Williams contends that education would also improve their capacity

to act in the political arena. In her view, education would also allow them to gain

intellectual independence and a better grasp of their commitment to a political cause.

6.2. Further Research

As already noticed in the introduction, the contribution by women writers to the debate

on the French Revolution in Britain has been well documented by feminist scholarship.

Especially in the bicentennial of the French Revolution, coinciding with the years of the

1980s and the early 1990s, a myriad of works on the participation in the debate by

Macaulay and Wollstonecraft redefined their positions as intellectuals in late-eighteenth

century Britain. For further research, I believe that the works of other British women

writers who were involved in the French Revolution also deserve to be taken into

consideration. The participation in the debate on the French Revolution in Britain by

Wollstonecraft and Macaulay, who argued in favour of the Revolution, is well

documented. Nevertheless, they observed the Revolution from across the channel –despite

Wollstonecraft’s trip to France in 1792. I find that the texts by women who were

239
physically present in France in the Revolution are especially compelling as they offer a

unique perspective of the events, as my study on Williams has shown. For that matter, I

am interested in the work of Charlotte West, A Ten Years Residence in France During the

Severest Part of the Revolution (1821) and Grace Dalrymple Elliott, Journal of my Life

During the French Revolution (1859). I believe that their positions as foreigners in France

allowed them more freedom to display their political ideas in a confident manner as they

appealed to experience to wield intellectual authority. It would be compelling to explore

if these women, despite their political inclinations, also appeal to sensibility and empathic

feelings to inscribe themselves in a political cause. Both West and Elliott were royalists.

It would therefore be interesting to explore if due to their anti-revolutionary position they

felt more connected to the British intellectual debate. How do women writers’ political

stance inform the way they exert authority over political matters in their work?

240
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