Letters of Mistress Henley Published by Her Friend

by Isabelle de Charrière and Belle van Zuylen

Considered by many scholars to be among the most brilliant novels written in French during the eighteenth century, Lettres de Mistriss Henley publi?es par son amie was composed as a response to Samuel de Constant's misogynist novel, The Sentimental Husband (1783). Charri?re presents six letters penned by a Mistriss Henley, who has chosen a decent and affectionate man as her life's companion only to discover that she cannot bear sharing...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0873527763
• ISBN13: 9780873527767
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Modern Language Association of America
• Length: 42 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.8" x 8.4"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

The lot of women

This book is both an interesting read by itself, but is also a "response" to another story of the same era. The original story being from the man's point of view about his unsatisfactory wife; this being the same story from her point of view, of a husband who is picky and impossible to please, of every point of conflict resting on her as her fault. It that sense it is very frustrating to modern readers,and also an excellent window into the mindset of the time period, where marriage was the one "work" goal of women, and then so often it was not a gilded cage, but a gilded torture rack, and which it was depended entirely on the whim of the husband and his essential nature. This small book is an easy read, by today's standards would be a short story, but it was shocking in it's day both because people liked to gossip that it was about Charriere's marriage (probably not), and because it definitely DID shed light on women's dissatisfactions in marriage (and that was considered to be speaking "out of school" to air this thought process). [If you read the large tome of Charriere's letters to D'Hermenches, it is most likely that this little book serves as a defense of women like his wife... a defense which she eventually rose to in her friendship with him; "how can you blame your wife for being distant and unfriendly when you are so perpetually unfaithful to her and ignore her unless no one else is around".]