Sophie de Renneville


Sophie de Renneville or Madame de Renneville, was the pen name of Sophie de Senneterre, who was born in Senneterre, Caen, France in 1772 and died in Paris in 1822 at 50. She was a writer, editor and journalist.

Biography

Sophie was born the Marquise de Senneterre into French nobility in Normandy, and she took up writing to support her family, which had been financially ruined during the French Revolution. Using a pen name to assure anonymity, she published many books intended for young people, some of which have been translated, such as Charles and Eugenia in English, or Savinianito, o Historia de un joven huérfano in Spanish, and the Dot, which was translated into Russian. The primary themes of her books included the proper role of young girls in good society, moral stories and history.
In addition to her writings for children, she also published politically engaging works for adults such as Life of Saint Clotilde, Queen of France, wife of the Great Clovis, followed by a précis mixed with anecdotes, concerning the mores and customs of the first centuries of the French monarchy.

Feminist

In addition to her books, Renneville was also editor of the feminist periodical Athénée des dames which confronted the masculine-centered ideas of the French society of her time and provided female readers with a forum to voice alternative perspectives.
Her writings provided a common ground that allowed her audiences, even those who read her work in the years following Renneville's death, to campaign for better and more fair treatment by society at large. According to Karen Offen, she had a profound effect on another feminist, Henriette Wild.
"The author's focus on the sage femme, which renders in English both as 'midwife' and as 'wise woman,' is significant; a key issue in Parisian women's protest in the 1840s was the admission of women to the study of medicine and, more generally, to higher learning, to savoir or learned knowledge. The book referred to by the much published Mme de Renneville is doubtless her Biographie des femmes Ulustres de Rome, de la Grèce et du Bas-Empire."
In that book by Renneville, her female protagonist named Agnodice from Athens, decided to dressed as a man so she could attend "the famous school of Herophilus to study medicine and especially the art of midwifery." After opening her own practice, she proved to be a popular physician but, when she was unmasked, was condemned by her male colleagues by "invoking the law that denied her the right to practice medicine." But the outcry from Agnodice's patients, and the greater female community, caused the law to be overturned. In 19th century France, readers popularized the book and bemoaned the fact that Renneville's heroine was only fiction.

Selected publications

According to WorldCat, Renneville has 288 works in 700 publications in 5 languages and 1,296 library holdings worldwide, as of 2020.