Trois femmes, Nouvelle de l’Abbé de la Tour, and: Three Women, A Novel by the Abbé de la Tour (review)

This attractively produced (and reasonably priced) edition of Trois Femmes, including a companion volume offering a straightforward translation, is a welcome addition to the useful MLA Texts and Translations series, the more so since early editions of the work (first published in the 1790s) and later reprints are extremely rare and not every library has a copy of Isabelle de Charrière’s Œuvres complètes (Amsterdam: Van Oorschot, 1778–84, 10 vols.), which includes an excellent scholarly critical edition of the novel by Dennis Wood. The present edition reproduces Wood’s text, but since it is addressed primarily to students and non-specialists, it very sensibly modernizes the spelling, reduces notes to a minimum and omits the variants and bibliographical details recorded in the erudite critical apparatus.

Emma Rooksby’s introduction (which is in English in both volumes) opens with a brief account of the history of the publication of the novel, stressing (quite correctly) that the difficulty in finding a publisher was not unrelated to prejudice against women authors. This publishing history is followed by an analysis of the plot, which is presented in terms of how the three women, having fled France, make new lives for themselves in Germany, forming “a postrevolutionary community in which women’s independence and autonomy are respected” (x). With regard to the narrative strategy, “the action is developed in such a way as to pit familiar virtues such as loyalty and affection against the dictates of moral theories, particularly duty” (x). While this is a useful description of the central theme of the novel, one wonders whether it might not have been clearer to indicate at this point (rather than later in the introduction) that it was inspired by Isabelle de Charrière’s reading of Kant, a philosopher whom she admired, but whose stern moral principle of following duty for duty’s sake, regardless of consequences, seemed difficult to apply to real-life situations. In fact, Trois Femmes is a variation on the theme of Candide, that is to say on the theme of whether in the ordinary business of living we should not “cultiver notre jardin” (in other words, deal in a commonsense way with empirical problems as they arise), rather than attempt to be guided by abstract principles. The plot is contrived so that the three women find themselves in situations where they have the choice between applying strict moral principles or bending the rules for the sake of the happiness and welfare of others. Constance, the eldest, has already, before she appears in the novel, become something of an expert in the kind of casuistry required for relaxing rules: she has inherited ill-gotten wealth but persuades herself that it is better to keep it and use it for the benefit of others rather than to attempt any restoration to the rightful owners. Before long she is indoctrinating Emilie, the youngest of the three women, whose idealism and narrow upbringing, she argues, has rendered her incapable of dealing with the kind of problems that arise in the real world. When Joséphine, Emilie’s good-natured maid, whose conduct is governed simply by instinct, finds herself pregnant, Constance and Emilie join forces in order to save her from the destitution that was, at that time, the normal fate of an unmarried woman with an illegitimate child. They succeed in making an honest women of Joséphine, but only by browbeating and bribing a certain Henri, one of her recent lovers, so that he feels he has no choice but to marry her. These and other decisions taken by...