Hello there! I hope you're having a good day! 🌻
I've been reading your posts on Napoleon and I find it really interesting how you analyze his personality and behavior, especially regarding his relationship with his mother and other women in his life. He's always seemed very sexist and misogynistic and I always go "what the hell is wrong with him?" in how he treats women 💀
I think you mentioned in one of your posts that Napoleon, in one of his self insert novels, gave his character a daughter instead of a son and I find it intriguing, considering his weird misogynistic views on women, why would he even think of having a daughter instead of a son? Or maybe it wasn't that deep and this was just a younger Napoleon fantasizing about a fictional version of himself. I wonder what you think what would happen if Napoleon had a daughter instead of a son? Would he still love her the same way he loved his son (even if in the end he wasn't there for most of his son's life.) Maybe his attitude on women would be different or perhaps it would remain the same?
Again, I really enjoy reading your opinions on Napoleon's personality and behavior, in a way it makes me understand him as a person better!
First of all thank you so much, I'm so glad when people appreciate my takes! Exploring Napoleon's life, especially his youth, always helped me a lot on a personal level, hence why I also make a disclaimer everytime: these are opinions based on emotional intuition about psychological dynamics, not the professional work of a historian.
I read a lot about him of course, but these takes aren't really something you can actually extract from sources, even the great amount we got from a particularly prolific period such as the Napoleonic era.
About Napoleon, his mother and women, I just made a long post about it if you want to check! Basically I debunked their relationship (Letizia wasn't that ideal figure everyone preaches of and Napoleon himself might have actually disliked her character, wrongfully associating strong women with situations of neglect and poverty from personal experience only).
Yes, knowing his infamous mysoginy, I was surprised too when I discovered that he gave his self-insert character a daughter instead of a son. His writing pieces from his youth are actually full of interesting feminine characters - more here.
You see, I actually think that downright mysoginy came later, when he assumed a political role and had to take precise stances on all aspects of a society who had to be rebuilt again. When he first became Consul, many things had to be taken from the Revolution, but others had been deemed excesses so some conservative U-turns were made too. Sadly, in his idea of civil balance, women's rights and social conditions were seen as among those too.
Two prestigious movie directors - Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott - meant to show that the origin of Napoleon's mysoginy and love for war was his frustration with Josephine, thus depicting him as an incel, because it can be both tragic (if you cheer him) and satisfying (if you hate him) to think that such a glorious warlord was actually a loser in private. This idea must have come from somewhere, which is common takes emerging from old biographies still reeking of Victorian mentality and more than a pinch of Royalist/British propaganda.
This idea speaks for itself. It's bad even for a movie (as Ridley Scott pompously proved) and it's based upon a very wrong premise which would be a completely wrong and biased interpretation of Napoleon's relationship with women. More on this post.
But as a teen and in his twenties (which is the time he wrote Clisson et Eugénie) Napoleon didn't seem that mysoginistic yet. Certainly he was never a raging female rights supporter either, but had he really always been that level of mysoginistic, he would have never been able to value Josephine's social skills for example, much less rely on her so eagerly.
I rather believe that, in his mind as a young man, women were "The Other" for a long time. They didn't belong to his harsh world made of war and barracks, women were sublime strangers, representing the dream of a peaceful life far from the lies, performance and harsh logic of society. They were as far and idyllic as that dream in his perception.
For most of his teenage years he was raised upon men only, in a harsh environment where he had to grit his teeth, face a hostile military society and achieve his duty as parentified elder brother. He didn't come home in Corsica for EIGHT YEARS, from when he was 9 until he was 17; and when you're a child, years feel longer than anywhen else in your life as you have nothing to compare yet.
Then he has fought to build a life back in Corsica against all odds, failing misterably and all the while trying to survive across Revolutionary wars. Not a moment of true economic, nor social, nor sentimental stability for 26 years.
Nostalgia must have been crazy and I'd argue that his obsession for Corsica's independence was a way to express his own wish to take back his lost years at home.
That's why he could relate a lot with the division between nature, where everything's innocent and sincere, and society, where everything's corrupted, false and requires a cut-throat approach. That came from JJ Rousseau, the philosopher he was most obsessed throughout his adolescence and author of many novels Clisson et Eugénie clearly takes inspiration from. Society was dominated by men, so nature=retirement=idyllium was dominated by women.
to quote @thiswaycomessomethingwicked 's amazing post about it:
What Napoleon did that was different with the pastoral form, but makes complete sense for him, was marry society and soldiers together. The division of Society and Nature is the mainstay of this form of fiction - with society being full of lies and wickedness etc. and nature is pure where your love and your soul can thrive. Nature is also innocence, it’s primordial in a certain way. Society is worldliness, it’s deceitful, it’s harmful. Napoleon had his society that intrudes on Clisson’s self-imposed exile to nature be war rather than class and performing Civility (see Paul et Virginie). As Napoleon became an officer at 14, spent his youth in military school, and for the six years prior to this was navigating the French revolution and its resultant wars - this is obviously a natural division for him.
In the book, a woman is the key to his retreat to peace and happiness. Eugénie is often described with metaphors with natural elements, especially compared to other women like his more socialite-like sister Amélie:
"Amélie was like a piece of French music whom people like to listen to, because everyone can get its chords' sequence and everyone can appreciate its harmony.
Eugénie was like a nightingale's song or like a Paisiello piece, whom only sensible people appreciate, a melody which brightens up those few souls who are born to get it, but looks mediocre to most".
So I think that Napoleon gave his self-insert a daughter once he marries Eugénie and retreats from a life of war because a whole family made of women further emphasizes them as a symbol of peace and emotional stability for the main character.
Had he ever been a girl dad, would he be a good one?
As I said in the post about Napoleon's female OCs, the closest thing to a daughter he had was Hortense, even if she was already 11 when he first met her and not seeing her much. But it's known how partial he was to her and Eugène, even in times where he and Josephine fell apart. He was protective of her, even siding with her against his own brother and comforting her when she lost her child.
There's also Betsy Balcombe. She was no daughter of his, but she was another little girl he interacted with, and she also spoke about their great relationship at length.
This makes me think he would have been a great, cute girl dad the same way he was a boy dad, one who wasn't afraid to be emotionally close and involved with a child. Actually he was eager to be so, because he was denied a serene and stable childhood himself.
However, I don't really believe even a daughter would have actually challenged him to change his attitude towards women in general, as he tended to apply double standards between his family and the rest of the world.
And his love for a hypothetical daughter wouldn't have stopped him from pretending to decide whom she would have to marry as a young woman, as she would have to marry for his political reasons.
Thanks for enduring this long answer! Hope you enjoyed it🎀
