I am afraid that with Éléonore my risk is to make her too erudite I think the best way to counter that is by researching the kind of education Éléonore is likely to have had. From what I know so far, it seems to have been somewhere between that of Lucile Desmoulins and that of Manon Roland, and they (and others) can serve as points of comparison (the latter's memoirs are especially interesting as a reminder that for the kind of person who will read whatever books s/he can, the education taken from that reading can be at least as important as any formal instruction). We know that she and her sisters were educated in the Couvent de la Conception, which adjoined the house in the rue Saint-Honoré (which, however, they did not move into until 1779, which makes me wonder whether they were already attending the convent school before that point). The content of that education, however, is not something I've yet been able to discover. I have a feeling Martine Sonnet's L'Éducation des filles au temps des Lumières or other similar books may prove instructive, once I get a hold of them.... In any case, there are some probable limits: e.g., it's unlikely that Éléonore knew Latin or Greek (however, that probably did not stop her from reading certain works in translation).
I can't picture a setting such as `Robespierre's circle' as a net of relationships without intellectual involvement of some kind, as I do believe that strong tides always involve some kind of intellectual exchange. I agree. I think certain authors have a tendency of supposing Élisabeth Le Bas's level of interest in politics and intellectual pursuits as typical of her sisters as well, probably at least in part because she's the only one who wrote a memoir, but I think her own testimony rather suggests otherwise, since she was, as she says, considered especially "étourdie" by her family.
Good luck with your applications and best wishes for the new year Thank you! A happy new year to you too! (Or a happy 12 nivôse...)
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I think the best way to counter that is by researching the kind of education Éléonore is likely to have had. From what I know so far, it seems to have been somewhere between that of Lucile Desmoulins and that of Manon Roland, and they (and others) can serve as points of comparison (the latter's memoirs are especially interesting as a reminder that for the kind of person who will read whatever books s/he can, the education taken from that reading can be at least as important as any formal instruction). We know that she and her sisters were educated in the Couvent de la Conception, which adjoined the house in the rue Saint-Honoré (which, however, they did not move into until 1779, which makes me wonder whether they were already attending the convent school before that point). The content of that education, however, is not something I've yet been able to discover. I have a feeling Martine Sonnet's L'Éducation des filles au temps des Lumières or other similar books may prove instructive, once I get a hold of them.... In any case, there are some probable limits: e.g., it's unlikely that Éléonore knew Latin or Greek (however, that probably did not stop her from reading certain works in translation).
I can't picture a setting such as `Robespierre's circle' as a net of relationships without intellectual involvement of some kind, as I do believe that strong tides always involve some kind of intellectual exchange.
I agree. I think certain authors have a tendency of supposing Élisabeth Le Bas's level of interest in politics and intellectual pursuits as typical of her sisters as well, probably at least in part because she's the only one who wrote a memoir, but I think her own testimony rather suggests otherwise, since she was, as she says, considered especially "étourdie" by her family.
Good luck with your applications and best wishes for the new year
Thank you! A happy new year to you too! (Or a happy 12 nivôse...)