Reflections of the Trial of a Queen, by a Woman

Lori J. Marso (Essay Date Spring 2002)

SOURCE: Marso, Lori J. "Defending the Queen: Wollstonecraft and Staël on the Politics of Sensibility and Feminine Difference." The Eighteenth Century 43, no. 1 (spring 2002): 43-60.

In the following excerpt, Marso analyzes de Staël's Reflections on the Trial of a Queen, by a Woman discussing how she negotiates the politics of sense and sensibility and uses a masculine model to offer a notion of the female self.

I shall therefore only speak of that verdict, analyzing the political, in telling what I have seen, what I know of the queen, and in depicting the hideous circumstances which have led to her condemnation.¹ GERMAINE DE STAËL, Reflections on the Trial of the Queen, by a Woman. August 1793

Staël's...