Marie Therese Rodet Geoffrin

Background

Born in 1699 in Paris, France, Madame Geoffrin was the first child of a bourgeois named Pierre Rodet, a valet de chambre for the Duchess of Burgundy, and Angelique Thérèse Chemineau, the daughter of a Parisian Banker.

Education

As the notion of female education was quite contentious in eighteenth century France, Geoffrin was unable to receive a formalized education. It has been suggested, most notably by Dena Goodman, that the salon itself acted as a schoolhouse, where Geoffrin and other salonnières could train. Goodman writes, "For Madame Geoffrin, the salon was a socially acceptable substitute for a formal education denied her not just by her grandmother, but more generally by a society that agreed with Madame Chemineau's (her grandmother's) position. "

Career

She had learned much from Mme de Tencin, and about 1748 began to gather round her a literary and artistic circle. She had every week two dinners, on Monday for artists, and on Wednesday for her friends the Encyclopaedists and other men of letters. She received many foreigners of distinction, Hume and Horace Walpole among others. Walpole spent much time in her society before he was finally attached to Mme du Deffand, and speaks of her in his letters as a model of common sense.

A devoted Parisian, Mme Geoffrin rarely left the city, so that her journey to Poland in 1766 to visit the king, Stanislas Poniatowski, whom she had known in his early days in Paris, was a great event in her life. Her experiences induced a sensible gratitude that she had been born "Franqaise" and "particuliere. " In her last illness her daughter, Therese, marquise de la Ferte Imbault, excluded her mother's old friends so that she might die as a good Christian, a proceeding wittily described by the old lady: "My daughter is like Godfrey de Bouillon, she wished to defend my tomb from the infidels. " Mme Geoffrin died in Paris on the 6th of October 1777.

Achievements

• Madame Geoffrin's popularity in the mid-eighteenth century came during a time where the center of social life was beginning to move away from the French court and toward the salons of Paris. Instead of the earlier, seventeenth-century salons of the high nobility, Madame Geoffrin's salon catered generally to a more philosophical crowd of the Enlightenment period.

Personality

She was indeed somewhat of a small tyrant in her circle. She had adopted the pose of an old woman earlier than necessary, and her coquetry, if such it can be called, took the form of being mother and mentor to her guests, many of whom were indebted to her generosity for substantial help. Although her aim appears, to have been to have the Encyclopedic in conversation and action around her, she was extremely displeased with any of her friends who were so rash as to incur open disgrace.

Connections

She married, on the 19th of July 1713, Pierre Frangois Geoffrin, a rich manufacturer and lieutenant-colonel of the National Guard. Nearly two years after the wedding, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter, and the future Marquise de la Ferté Imbault. Her second child, a son, (who was to die later in childhood) was born two years later.

Father:

Pierre Rodet

Mother:

Angelique Thérèse Chemineau

Daughter:

Marquise de la Ferté Imbault

husband:

Pierre Frangois Geoffrin

References

• Une soire?e chez Madame Geoffrin (Le cabinet des lettre?s) (French Edition)