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Marie de Coulanges. Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (5 February 1626 – 17 April 1696), also widely known as Madame de Sévigné or Mme de Sévigné, was a French aristocrat, remembered for her letter-writing. Most of her letters, celebrated for their wit and vividness, were addressed to her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite de ...
- Early Life and Education
- An Unhappy Marriage and Early Widowhood
- Madame de Sévigné’S Iconic Correspondence Begins
- Observations on Madame de Sévigné’S Correspondence
- Preservation and Destruction of Madame’s Letters
Born Marie de Rabutin Chantal in Paris at the Place des Vosges, her father was from an aristocratic Burgundian family, and her mother from the noble Coulanges. While still young, her father was killed in a battle against the English on the Ile de Rhe and her mother died a few years later. After the death of her grandparents, at the age of ten, the ...
In 1644, at the age of eighteen, Marie was married off to Henri, Marquis de Sévigné, scion of a respected Breton family, as his third wife. Now, as Madame de Sévigné, she settled down to marital bliss and the raising of children. However, the bliss was short-lived — the Marquis was a gambler, spendthrift, and adulterer. Seven years into the marriag...
The correspondence for which she became famous started when her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite, moved to Provence with her husband Comte de Grignan, where he could serve as viceroy. The separation from her daughter was shattering. Seeking solace, Madame de Sévigné often wrote to Françoise-Marguerite three times a week, twenty to thirty pages a day....
Madame de Sévigné’s correspondence has been described as important and influential as that of Voltaire. Authors such as Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolfconsidered her a model for future women writers. It has been a joy to read these epistles, especially those in the Penguin Classics collection, Madame de Sevigne, Selected Letters...
How did so many of her letters survive? Madame de Sevigne’s cousin Rabutin published many of them in a memoir he wrote just following her death. Over time, others published her correspondence, sometimes edited. The biggest blow to historical preservation was when Madame de Simiane (daughter of Françoise-Marguerite, and granddaughter of de Sévigné) ...
Oct 1, 2024 · She produced letters a few times a week that averaged up to 30 pages most of them starting in 1671 when her daughter married and relocated to Provence. Suffering in the absence of her daughter, she began her now legendary correspondences.
When the Grignans moved to Provence in 1671 so that the Count of Grignan could fulfill a military commission, Madame de Sévigné faced an emotional crisis. Openly admitting her idolatrous love for her daughter, Sévigné could not accept the daughter’s absence.
Nov 11, 2020 · After her beloved daughter’s marriage to the Comte de Grignan in 1669 and their subsequent move to Provence in the South of France, Sévigné would often make the long journey from Paris through Burgundy and down to Provence to stay with her daughter, who in turn regularly traveled north to Paris to see her mother.
Involved in another illegal duel, he had left Paris to fight against the English; accounts of his gallant death report that he had three horses killed under him before he fell in battle. The little girl was orphaned in 1633, at the age of seven, when her mother suddenly died.
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The separation from her daughter provoked acute loneliness in Mme de Sévigné, and out of this grew her most important literary achievement, her letters to Mme de Grignan, which were written without literary intention or ambition.
