La Comtesse de Ségur, a Witness of Her Time

Born Sophie Rostopchine in her native Russia, the Comtesse de Ségur did not start writing until she was fifty-eight years old, but the twenty novels she produced between 1857 and 1869 for her grandchildren secured her place in the foundation of French children's literature. The mother of eight children and grandmother of nineteen, Ségur's primary interest was childhood. She rediscovered the formula that had been the leading motto of most seventeenth-century French literature: "to educate and entertain at the same time." She was writing for children with precisely this same double intention: education and entertainment. Thus before submitting her manuscripts to her editor, she would try them out on her grandchildren. Not until the stories met with their approval would she send them to Hachette, her publisher.¹ Hachette published specifically for children thick little red (not pink) books with gilded edges in a collection called La Bibliothèque rose illustrée. The collection is still in existence today, even if the format has been adapted to the tastes of the young readers of the late twentieth century.²

In the last few years, Ségur has found an audience beyond her usual circle of children and has become the focus of new critical attention. The object of a wide series of misunderstandings, she was once accused of writing watered-down little stories with a banal moral message, then condemned for sadism and barbarous cruelty (see Soriano, Caradec, passim). But several recent critical studies illustrate a more positive interest in Ségur, focusing in particular on her principles regarding children's education.³ The most difficult task when it comes to reading Ségur's novels is to overlook their evocation of an old-fashioned world with outdated concepts of morality and to go beyond the preachy Ségurian mode of expression. Doing so is worth the effort, though, because underneath is revealed a writer who prepared all children—not only her own grandchildren—to adapt to a new society in the difficult times at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. In view of the unfailing success of Ségur's works with today's young readers, it is clear that children still find in her books a useful message that has outlived the nineteenth-century context. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine even today a young reader in France—and yet nowhere else—who, at one time or another, has not had in hand Les Malheurs de Sophie or Un Bon petit diable.⁴ In a special issue of La Revue des livres pour enfants dedicated to Ségur, Claude Hubert-Ganiayre alludes to a survey conducted among seven-to fifteen-year-old readers at the Bibliothèque de l'Heure Joyeuse, a children's library in Paris. Ségur was in first place on a list of their twelve favorite authors, followed by Henriette Bichonnier, Roald Dahl, Alexandre Dumas, Astrid Lindgren, Angela Sommer-Bodenburg, Bertrand Solet, Betsy Byars, Alfred Hitchcock, Christine Nöstlinger, Joyce L. Brisley, and Tove Jansson. Even today, Ségur is immensely successful among young readers. New editions, new illustrations, and reprints of the most popular titles are signs of her remarkably constant popularity.

Recently, remembering my own passion for the little red books, I rediscovered them; immediately, I recognized the familiar odor of old things, just slightly spiced with a moldy scent. I tried to find out what attracted me—and so many generations of children—so deeply to the stories of Charles Mac'Lance, Sophie de Réan-Fichini, or Marguerite de Rosbourg. Part of the reason for the everlasting appeal of Ségur's novels is that they still have a powerful impact on children's imaginations, while, at the same time, strongly appealing to their senses: scrumptious meals, lavish receptions, glamorous dresses. Ségurian discourse is rich with vivid descriptions that cannot but engage the child in the world she depicts, a world both familiar and "exotic," both historically dated and, in some way, timeless.

For the critical adult reader of Ségur's fiction, the attraction resides in...