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Article: Women & politics: Madame de Duras.
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- November 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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You were made to rule the world. --Chateaubriand to Mme de Duras
In 1786 the chevalier de Boufflers, then governor of Senegal, brought back for his aunt, the princesse de Beauvau, a black girl called Ourika, some two years old, who was going to be put on a slave ship. He made presents of other small black children, along with parakeets and monkeys, to various members of the French aristocracy. Mme de Beauvau later claimed to have loved her protegee as her own daughter, but the girl died when only about sixteen.
On a few facts like these, Mme de Duras (1777-1828)--one of the prominent influential political figures of the Bourbon Restoration--constructed ...