ABSTRACT
Born in Holland in 1740 to a wealthy noble family, Belle de Zuylen became a novelist, playwright, letter writer, and essayist who was well known throughO out Europe during her lifetime. She loved learning, spoke three languages, wrote her works in French, and took her time in choosing a husband, Charles Emmanuel de Charriere, from among the several pretenders to her hand and fortune. Her first story, Le Noble (1763), satirized aristocratic pretensions, and her family hurriedly bought up all the copies it could find to take them out of circulation. In the Lettres de Mistriss Henley (1784), she portrays misO matched spouses. It is a slender text that constructs its heroine’s inner world: Adapting to her new husband and to his young daughter, she feels neither seen nor heard and paints a portrait of melancholic despair. In the Lettres de Neuchatel (1784) and the Lettres ecrites de Lausanne (1785-1787), the auO thor’s narrators examine conflicts that arise from differences in wealth and in social class as they affect courtship rituals.
