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MADAME GUIZOT AND MONSIEUR GUIZOT: DOMESTIC PEDAGOGY AND THE POST-REVOLUTIONARY ORDER IN FRANCE, 1807–1830*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

ROBIN BATES
ROBIN BATES*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Chicago E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

When the husband-and-wife team of François and Pauline Guizot looked at early nineteenth-century France, they saw an institutional wasteland where the Revolution had annihilated settled habits, mentalities, and structures. Beginning with collaborative work on pedagogy, they envisioned a new order adequate to the post-Revolutionary era. In their imaginative universe, moral suasion ultimately trumps direct physical coercion. Resistance and manipulation subvert the imperious imposition of an iron will, while an abiding spiritual form of power comes from renouncing forceful commands in favor of sentimental ascendancy. They advanced this as an all-embracing social truth applicable to many different domains from domesticity to government. Their wide-ranging theory of human relations blossomed into the gouvernement des esprits (“government of minds”) which intellectually underwrote François's Doctrinaire liberalism when he entered politics. Meanwhile, Pauline pursued her reflections on post-Revolutionary society in deceptively simple children's stories which instantiate their philosophy in concrete human relationships.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 31 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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4 This phrase—perhaps coined by Victor Cousin but certainly adopted by François Guizot as his own—mobilizes the full semantic resources of the words gouvernement and esprit. Government connotes a state apparatus in French and English. In French, though, governance can carry subtler connotations of wisely directing something—as with the steering of a boat (gouverner le bateau) or the controlling of one's emotions (gouverner le coeur). Thus the gouvernement des esprits can apply to domains beyond government as such. By the same token, esprit would translate as “mind,” but the English version has more restricted application to the intellectual faculties alone. To be spirituel does not mean that one excels at ratiocination and cogitation so much as that one is understanding and insightful. Esprit also carries meanings proper to its English cognate “spirit,” as in a vital principle or animating character. Esprit de corps means the morale of a group and to have beaucoup d'esprit means that one is lively. The gouvernement des esprits, then, can signify an appeal not only to reason but also to moral principles like duty and affective states like love. Given the polyvalence of gouvernement and esprit, we begin to see how reflections on domesticity could apply so readily to high politics.

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