From Behind the Folding Screen to the Collège de France: Victorine de Chastenay’s Privacy Dynamics for Knowledge in the Making

Abstract

This chapter is an examination of Victorine de Chastenay’s manuscripts through the lens of private practices of knowledge production. Victorine de Chastenay, mostly known for her Mémoires and a few translations, was raised in ancient French aristocracy and received an exceptional education for a nineteenth-century woman. Throughout her life, she explored various fields of knowledge, such as literature, poetry, languages, history, politics, botany, mathematics, and astronomy. Her manuscripts and parts of her Mémoires offer an insight into her private practices of knowledge in the making. This contribution focuses on the learning and writing techniques she used as a child and, later on, in her domestic space. As a noblewoman, the social norms of her time forced her to study in dedicated spaces at dedicated times, sometimes hidden behind a folding screen. Chastenay’s manuscripts reveal her economy of knowledge in the making, highlighting the necessity of a room of her own. This study combines material, spatial, social, and emotional approaches to analyse her private knowledge production.