Marie de Rabutin-Chantal,
marquise de Sévigné
born Feb. 5, 1626, Paris, France
died April 17, 1696, Grignan
French writer whose correspondence is of
both historical and literary
significance.
Of old Burgundian nobility, she was
orphaned at the age of six and was
brought up by her uncle Philippe II de
Coulanges. She had a happy childhood and
was well educated by such famous tutors
as Jean Chapelain and Gilles Ménage. She
was introduced into court society and
the précieux world of the Hôtel de
Rambouillet in Paris after her marriage
in 1644 to Henri de Sévigné, a Breton
gentleman of old nobility who squandered
most of her money before being killed in
a duel in 1651. He left his widow with
two children, Françoise Marguerite (b.
1646) and Charles (b. 1648). For some
years Mme de Sévigné continued in the
fashionable social circles of Paris
while also devoting herself to her
children.
In 1669 her beautiful daughter,
Françoise Marguerite, married the Count
de Grignan and then moved with him to
Provence, where he had been appointed
lieutenant general of that province. The
separation from her daughter provoked
acute loneliness in Mme de Sévigné, and
out of this grew her most important
literary achievement, her letters to Mme
de Grignan, which were written without
literary intention or ambition. Most of
the 1,700 letters that she wrote to her
daughter were composed in the first
seven years after their separation in
1671. The letters recount current news
and events in fashionable society,
describe prominent persons, comment on
contemporary topics, and provide details
of her life from day to day—her
household, her acquaintances, her
visits, and her taste in reading. The
letters provide little that historians
cannot find information about elsewhere,
but Sévigné’s manner of telling her
stories makes her version of current
events and gossip unforgettable. Once
her imagination had been caught by an
incident, her sensibility and her powers
as a literary artist were released in
witty and absorbing narratives.
Sévigné took no literary model for
her artistry. Before her, critics had
held that epistolary literature should
conform to certain rules of composition
and should observe a unity of tone
(e.g., “serious” or “playful”). By
contrast, Sévigné’s letters demonstrate
a spontaneity and a natural disorder
that have a highly interesting
conversational tone.
