A Passion Between Women: The Case of Germaine de Staël and Juliette Récamier

Abstract

In this article, I explore the passionate relationship between woman of letters Germaine de Staël and socialite Juliette Récamier in post-revolutionary France. To recontextualize this relationship from a minor friendship, as it has most often been viewed, to a major love relationship in both women's lives, I examine what Staël and Récamier themselves had to say about each other throughout their twenty-year friendship, and explore the significance of this passionate alliance. By examining scholars' attitudes and assumptions surrounding this friendship, I raise important issues on how we read women's relationships today.