mond moves to her proposals for older girls, as here the schools clearly diverge by class, the poorer students being given only the option of what she calls écoles d’industrie, trade or vocational schools, which would furnish a pool of qualified workers from whom the upper classes could select their servants. To complete the plan and to carry it out, de Gamond proposes a fourth type of school, called (as in modern France) écoles normales, to train teachers, young women from poorer sectors of the upper classes. In the final letter she defends the notion of institutional education for girls, who were traditionally taught at home, and describes the contents of her proposed educational system in detail.
This book “already contains the ferment that was to be the basis of all Belgian feminism, that is the role of education in the improvement (épanouissement) of the condition of women” (Piette, p. 406). Only 26 at the time, de Gamond, the privileged daughter of a prominent and cultivated Brussels family, would go on to make many of her ideas a reality. Her political involvement had commenced with the 1830 revolutions. In 1832 she renounced Saint-Simonianism, after the scandals involving their “guru” Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin, who preached free love for all but especially for himself, but she maintained numerous links to progressive milieux, later becoming an admirer of the utopian socialist Charles Fourier, and she remained a tireless advocate for the poor and for women’s education. Ignoring the many attacks on her ideas, in 1835 she and her friend Eugénie Poulet founded two schools, one for poor working women, and an école normale. In the 1840s, after a costly attempt to establish a Fourieriste phalanstère in Citeaux, de Gamond and her family suffered financial hardships, but she was eventually granted the post of “Inspectrice générale” of Belgian state girls’ schools. She was the first woman to hold such a position. After her death at the age of 48, her daughter Isabelle Gatti de Gamond continued her efforts, becoming one of the most important Belgian feminists.
OCLC locates 2 copies of this edition, at Williams College and Lyon BM. Cf. Valérie Piette, “Zoé Gatti de Gamond ou les premières avancées féministes?” and Kaat Wils, “Science, an Ally of Feminism? Isabelle Gatti de Gamond on Women and Science”, both in Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire (1999), no. 77-2, pp. 402-415 and 416-439; for an excellent biographical notice, see the entry in Le Maitron: Dictionnaire biographique, Mouvement social, mouvement ouvrier: http://maitron-en-ligne.univ-paris1.fr/spip.php?article31462. Item #4001