Madame de Genils: Creating a Model of Virtue

Authors

  • Bonnie Robb University of Delaware

Abstract

In her novel Adèle et Théodore (1782), considered by her contemporaries to be, paradoxically, both too utopian and too worldly, writer/educator Genlis presents her system for raising young people to live virtuously in society. While the novel's main character, the mother/teacher Madame d'Almane, has been criticized as "overpoweringly prescriptive" in her upbringing of her daughter Adèle, there are important elements in her pedagogical system which foster the development of creativity. She makes Adèle a model of virtue by casting her in the strong role of teacher, accomplishing this by means of apprenticeships to techniques of representation: staging, reading, and writing. Each enables Adèle, like her mother, to "represent" virtue for her pupil -and for herself, to discover in the process that teaching is the model for living.

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Published

1993-10-01

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 1 (1993)

Section

Original Research

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