18mo (155 x 100 mm). , 161,  pp. Half-title preserved. Wove paper. Some soiling, a few creases. Contemporary dark violet leather-backed marbled boards, title gilt-lettered on spine (extremities worn). Marginal reader’s marks in first chapter (Première Lettre).***
First edition in book form of a foundational text of Belgian feminism. This young woman’s analysis of the social handicapping of women and her call for a radical improvement in women’s education embody the idealism of the time but are unusually precise and well developed. She sets out her arguments in four letters, which had previously appeared serially under the disguised name Marie de G*** in the French Revue Encyclopédique, starting in December 1832. Both the journal issue and this edition, which appears under her full name (Mlle de Gamond; her marriage to Jean-Baptiste Gatti, an Italian refugee painter, took place in 1835), are rare.
De Gamond’s premises, enunciated in the first letter, at first appear neither revolutionary nor fully feminist in the modern sense: far be it from her to dispute conventional wisdom, which ascribed to women the domestic sphere, judging them unfit for the professions reserved for men. De Gamond deplores the constrictions of women’s lives and perspectives, but not because of their assigned role of wives, mothers, and mistresses of households. Rather she sees women as prevented from filling these roles with distinction and from becoming fully morally alive beings because of the poor quality of female education. Her ideal woman is a person of intelligence, resilience, and strong moral fiber, all traits exemplified, in her eyes, by the Girondist martyr Madame Roland, who, though politically gifted, was hardly an advocate of women’s rights. Roland was, however, an autodidact who read widely and never stopped studying. The heart of de Gamond’s thesis is that women require better education, in two ways: first through what she calls “spontaneous education,” what some now call “self-work,” which she describes in the second letter. She blames women themselves for failing to overcome the egotism and indifference of society, which that could do by treating each other as sisters and transcending social classes in a grand “social pact ... with all of humanity, with women of all conditions and all classes” (p. 51). Arguing that it is lack of education which leaves women powerless over their own lives and hence is the cause of their unhappiness, she insists on the reciprocal effect of education on “les moeurs” (social customs and beliefs), thus leaving open the possibility of radical social change (implicitly including the acceptance of single women as respected members of society). De Gamond emphasizes that even girls from wealthy families should master either a form of intellectual work or a specialized skill, for moral and psychological reasons, and as a practical means of supporting themselves should they end up without the usual familial resources.
These reflections are developed in the last two chapters, which treat women’s education. Herself an aristocrat, de Gamond was deeply concerned with the education of women of the classes populaires, and by extension, with their children. She proposes a remarkably well-thought-out system of child care and education for poor families: for the youngest children her proposal sounds like a combination between the modern French crèche and the école maternelle or grammar school. For slightly older girls there would be a “public school” option for the destitute, and for the more well-off, schools with a fee structure; but, other than a slightly different quality of uniforms and food, the education in these elementary schools would be the same. She stresses that her proposed educational system would benefit not only the poor but also women of the upper classes, whom, she claims, she pities more than anyone else for the precarity of their positions (controlled by the men in their lives) and their complete unpreparedness for work. The reader marvelling at how progressive this sounds is stopped short as de Ga