Marie Souvestre

Marie Souvestre.

Marie Souvestre (April 28, 1830 - March 30, 1905) was a feminist educator who sought to develop independent minds in young women.

Biography

Souvestre was born on April 28, 1830, in Brest, France, the daughter of French novelist Émile Souvestre.

Career as an educator

Souvestre founded the girls' boarding schools Les Ruches ("the beehives") in Fontainebleau, France, where writer Natalie Clifford Barney and her sister Laura Clifford Barney were later educated, and Allenswood, outside London, where her most famous pupil was Eleanor Roosevelt, for whom she became a maternal figure.^[1]

Dorothy Bussy, the sister of writer Lytton Strachey, anonymously published a novel, Olivia (1949), about her experience as a student at Les Ruches, focusing on the protagonist's crush on the headmistress Mlle. Julie (i.e., Souvestre). Bussy later taught Shakespeare at Allenswood.^[2]

Notes

1. ^ Rodriguez, Suzanne (2002). Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 39–40. ISBN 0-06-093780-7. 
2. ^ Cook, Blanche Wiesen (Summer 1979). "'Women Alone Stir My Imagination': Lesbianism and the Cultural Tradition". Signs 4 (4): 718–739. doi:10.1086/493659. JSTOR 3173368. 

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Name	Souvestre, Marie
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Date of birth	April 28, 1830
Place of birth
Date of death	March 30, 1905
Place of death