"Je suis la première femme que Bonaparte exila" : G. de Staël et la pensée du féminin sous l’Empire

Presentation at the conference "Being a Woman in Napoleon's Time" (November 2025), by Stéphanie Genand, during the third session: "Female Figures and the Napoleonic System" (Session Chair: Laetitia de Witt, PhD in History and Vice-President of the Institut Napoléon). The Fondation Napoléon, and its partners "Le Figaro Histoire," the Catholic Institute of Vendée, the Institut Napoléon, and Éditions Perrin, organized (on Tuesday, November 18 and Wednesday, November 19, 2025) a major conference dedicated to the place and role of women under the First Empire. #WomenNapoleon2025 Germaine de Staël was not only a woman who lived under the Empire, but also a famous opponent punished by the Napoleonic regime. From this situation arose in her an implacable analysis of the political machinery of the Empire, an authoritarian regime that she judged and proclaimed to be detrimental to women. Staël thus dissected her singular case, but also considered the convergences and solidarities that allow us to believe that while Napoleon "persecuted" women, he also instilled in her a specific gender consciousness, going hand in hand with political awareness and the fight for freedom. Stéphanie Genand is Professor of 18th-century French Literature at the University of Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC-LIS). From 2015 to 2024, she was President of the Société des études staëliennes (Staëlian Studies Society). Her work focuses on the anthropological dimension of literature: on the relationships between Enlightenment and passions, politics and morality, fiction and knowledge, identity and otherness. She has focused her research on the work of Germaine de Staël ("La Chambre noire. G. de Staël et la pensée du négative," Droz, 2017), as well as on the work of Sade, whose biography she published with Gallimard. Her latest essay, "Sympathie de la nuit," was published in 2022 by Flammarion. She has also published "L’Abécédaire de Germaine de Staël" (2023) with Éditions de l’Observatoire and a biography of Germaine de Staël (Perrin, 2026). Learn more about the conference: https://fondationnapoleon.org/2025/07... Find the playlist here:    • Colloque "Être femme au temps de Napoléon"   Key moments in the video: 00:00 - Start 00:04 - Marker 1 00:18 - Marker 2 00:33 - Marker 3 00:58 - Marker 4 01:36 - Marker 5 02:00 - Marker 6 02:55 - Marker 7 03:39 - Marker 8 04:17 - Marker 9 05:13 - Marker 10 05:37 - Marker 11 06:22 - Marker 12 07:14 - Marker 13 08:15 - Marker 14 08:42 - Marker 15 09:36 - Marker 16 09:58 - Marker 17 10:31 – Marker 18 10:53 - Marker 19 11:43 – Marker 20 13:34 - Marker 21 14:15 - Marker 22 14:51 - Marker 25 15:35 - Marker 24 15:58 - Marker 23 16:24 - Marker 26 17:02 - Marker 27 17:22 - Marker 28 17:41 - Marker 29 18:16 - Marker 30 18:38 - Marker 31 18:59 – Marker 32 19:12 - Marker 33 19:21 - Marker 34 19:39 - Marker 35 20:03 - Marker 36