Constance de Salm (1767-1845) is an unknown French woman author who nevertheless enjoyed much success in her time. The French Revolution of 1789 and the disappointments that it brought in regards to woman's rights incited her to also use her writings to forward women's cause. / In this work, we will first introduce this "illustrious unknown writer" through a biography relating the important periods of her life while also drawing a parallel with the literature she wrote during her career. We will then go over those "feminist" writings in order to focus on the major themes.

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Cette thèse s’inscrit dans un mouvement de redécouverte et d’inscription dans l’histoire littéraire des femmes auteurs longtemps considérées comme mineures. Son objectif est d’étudier le statut d’une écrivaine au tournant du XVIIIe et du premier XIXe siècle français à travers la carrière littéraire de Constance de Salm (1767-1845) et l’analyse de celles de ses œuvres qui traitent directement de la condition de la femme écrivain. Nous avons étudié la position de l’écrivaine sur le statut de la femme auteur à travers son traitement d’un sujet antique (Sapho, 1794), sa prise de position face à un débat d’actualité (l’Épître aux femmes, 1797) et finalement à travers le regard qu’elle porte sur sa propre carrière littéraire dans son autoportrait en vers (Mes soixante ans, 1833). Notre but est de montrer les raisons de l’oubli puis de la redécouverte d’une écrivaine chez qui un féminisme précurseur contraste avec des pratiques littéraires qui sont en apparence désuètes, même de son temps. Cette étude nous a révélé l’originalité d’une femme auteur qui voyait et revendiquait les implications politiques de ses idées et de l’acte d’écrire. Par ailleurs, pour éclairer la place qu’occupaient la réflexion et les pratiques de Constance de Salm dans les milieux intellectuels nous avons tenue compte des différents états des textes et de leurs variantes ainsi que des articles et des comptes-rendus que lui a consacrés la presse contemporaine. L’ensemble de ces documents constitue les annexes réunis dans le deuxième volume de notre travail. / This dissertation is part of the rediscovery movement of women writers within literary history, who were long considered insignificant. Its aim is to study the status of a writer in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in France through the discovery and analysis of the life and career of Constance de Salm (1767-1845) whose works deal directly with the condition of the woman writers. The writer’s position is studied in relations to the status of the woman writers through her analysis of a subject from antiquity: Sappho (1797), the stance she took on a contemporary debate in the Epistle to the Women (1797), and finally the way in which she regards her own literary career in her autobiography in verse, My Sixty Years (1833). The goal is to show the reasons for which this writer was forgotten and then rediscovered, a writer whose avant-garde feminism contrasted with her literary practices that were considered antiquated even at the time. This study has revealed the originality of a woman writer who recognized and accepted the political implications embodied in her ideas and the act of writing. Furthermore, in order to clarify the position that Constance de Salm’s thoughts and actions occupied within intellectual circles of the day, we have reviewed texts in various states and their variants as well as articles and reports that the contemporary press dedicated to her. All these documents are attached as appendices in the second volume of this work.

The Electoral College and Jacksonian Democracy are two subjects that have been studied extensively. Taken together, however, little has been written on how the method of choosing presidential electors during the Age of Jackson changed. Although many historians have written on the development of political parties and the increase in voter participation during this time, none have focused on how politicians sought to use the method of selecting electors to further party development in the country. Between 1824 and 1832 twelve states changed their methods of choosing electors. In almost every case, the reason for changing methods was largely political but was promoted in terms of advancing democracy. A careful study of the movement toward selecting electors on a general ticket shows that political considerations in terms of party and/or state power were much more important than promoting democratic ideals. Despite the presence of a few true reformers who consistently pushed for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that all states used the same method, the conclusion must be that politics and party demanded a change. This study relies heavily on legislative records at both the state and national level and newspapers throughout t the country from the period. Beginning with a brief history of the office of the president and an overview of the presidential elections prior to 1824, the author then carefully analyzes the elections of 1824, 1828, and 1832, as well as the various efforts to amend the constitutional provisions dealing with the Electoral College. Particular emphasis is placed on political factions at the state level, the development of the Democratic and National Republican parties nationally, and how each party used and at time manipulated the electoral process to secure a favorable outcome for their candidates.

The essential problem of politics are ancient general, and persistent. A particular political system, such as that of the United States, can be interpreted as a way of coping with recurring problems. Some of the ways a political system deals with problems may be unique, some commonplace. Because it meets its problems in a particular time and place with a special body of past experiences to go on, each political system is unique; so too the American system is unique. But because some problems have recurred ever since civilized men have tried to live together, every political system has had to deal with enduring dilemmas. Its solutions may be unique, the basic questions are not. The focus of this paper is directed toward one particular problem -- the issue of conflict and consensus, political power and political order, in a changing democratic society with politics seen as the means whereby the community balances the tension between conflict and consensus. The American ancestors chose to live in a community, with its numerous and obvious advantages. But, when strong human beings seek the company of one another, conflict seems to be an inescapable aspect of community and hence of the human condition. While conflict has been the focus of attention by many -- philosophers, historians, social scientists, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke -- it is James Madison who perhaps more than any other single individual gave shape to American conflict in his modeling the American constitutional system. He held the conflict is built into the very nature of man, and thus a system must be devised through which it is channeled and controlled. Conflict and consensus, among other things, involve the interaction of power, order, liberty, and flexibility. It is to the Age of Jackson and the political philosophies promulgated by the founding fathers, that this research turns to gain an insight into how "factions" are channeled and controlled in the United States -- to gain insight into basic pluralistic political patterns of the United States.

Twentieth-century scholars have extensively studied how Rousseau's domestic discourse impacted the patriarchal ideology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and contributed to women's exclusion from the public sphere. Joan Landes, Lynn Hunt, and many others, argued that the French Revolution excluded women from the public sphere and confined them to the domestic realm. Joan Landes also argued that the patriarchal discourse was a mere reflection of social reality. In The Other Enlightenment, Carla Hesse argues for the women's presence in the public sphere. One of the goals of this dissertation is to contribute to the debate by analyzing the content of the counter-discourse of selected women authors during the revolutionary era and examine how they challenged and subverted the patriarchal discourse. In the second chapter, I reconstruct the patriarchal discourse. I first examine the official (or legal) discourse in crucial works which remain absent from major modern sources: Jean Domat's Loix civiles dans leur order naturel and Louis de Héricourt's Loix eccleésiastiques de France dans leur order naturel. Then I look at how scientists like Monroe, Roussel, Lignac, Venel, and Robert used discoveries regarding woman's physiology to create a medical discourse that justifies woman's inferiority so as to confine them into the domestic/private sphere. I examine how intellectuals such as Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu, Coyer and Laclos, reinforced women's domesticity. In chapter 3, I examine women's participation in the early stage of the Revolution and the overt attempt by some women to claim their place in the public sphere and to challenge and subvert the oppressive patriarchal discourse through their writings. Chapter 4 focuses on Olympe de Gouges's theater and a specific example of subversion of the patriarchal discourse: I compare the father figure in Diderot's La Religieuse and de Gouges's play Le Couvent, ou les Voeux forcés. Finally chapter 5 examines women's involvement in the French Revolution after 1794 and Constance de Salm's attack on patriarchy.