Marie-Pierre Le Hir  (University of Arizona)
Marie-Adélaide Barthélémy-Hadot's Révolte de Boston: Gender, Race, and the New American Revolution

Virginia Woolfe once characterized the birth of the middle-class woman writer at the end of the eighteenth century as an event "of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses." Marie-Adélaide Barthélémy-Hadot (1763-1821) was one of those first middle-class women writers: twenty six years old and married to a Jacobin in 1789, she remained forever faithful to the principles of the French revolution; widowed and forced to make a living, she chose to write and became the successful author of twelve plays, all published and produced in Paris between 1804 and 1816, and of nearly thirty novels.

My presentation focuses on Hadot's treatment of gender and race in La Révolte de Boston, ou la Jeune Hospitali're, the first novel on the American Revolution to appear in France. Published in 1820, five years after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the novel deals with the daring topics of democratic revolution and slavery. It also testifies to Barthelemy-Hadot's commitment to democracy, and to equality as part and parcel of her democratic vision.