The Destruction of Women

And the restoration of instructive literature

One of the primary reasons so many women are unhappy and are drugging themselves to the gills these days as they devote themselves to their superficial female friendships and mostly futile pursuits of high-status men in failed attempts to find fulfillment is that they have been steeped in a false and anti-realistic philosophy for their entire lives.

The average woman finds it nearly impossible to shake off the pernicious effects of the feminist instruction to which she is subjected from the age of three or so; even women who do manage to rise to the challenge and resist the retardery usually find that some vestiges of the destructive philosophy manage to cling to their psyches in a variety of ways.

One reason for the near-complete success of feminism in poisoning the female well is the elimination of the instructive novel. For nearly 200 years, the instructive novel was an effective way of encouraging young women to understand the negative effects of willfulness and selfishness as well as the need for self-discipline, self-control, and paying attention to the needs of others. These novels were extremely popular, often had a Christian element to them, and were, unsurprisingly, formulaic in much the same way that women’s fiction is today, although obviously the formulas were very different.

Not being a young woman, I didn’t understand how comprehensive the elimination of the instructive novel by the publishing industry has been until I started Castalia’s translation program earlier this year and began searching for high-quality literature in other languages that hadn’t been previously translated. It was a little surprising to discover that most of Eizi Yoshikawa’s work hadn’t been translated from the original Japanese, was shocking to learn that very little of Benito Perez Galdos’s Episodios Nacionales had been translated from the original Spanish, and downright suspicious to find that none of Zénaïde Fleuriot’s extremely popular young ladies’ novels had been translated from the original French.

Mlle Fleuriot wrote 83 novels, most of which involved a willful young woman learning how to behave in adult society. They are charming, well-written, and were incredibly popular in late 19th Century France. Until now, they have not been available in English. And once you read them, you can see why the 20th century academics and the 21st century publishing houses want to keep them out of the hands of English-speaking girls these days.

Consider this excerpt from Fleuriot’s La Petite Duchesse, now available on Kindle, KU, and audiobook as The Little Duchess courtesy of an original translation by Summer Charrettte.

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The End of a Whim

When Alberte woke the following morning, the scene of the night before presented itself at once to her mind. Contemplating the traces of her imprudence, she resolved to be very agreeable that day, and in this good frame of mind she waited for her sister’s usual morning visit. But her sister did not come; and when, tired of waiting, she went to knock timidly at her door, it was Mme Louis who answered. Madame la Marquise had gone out at ten o’clock to call on Mme de Fresnel. She did not return until the midday luncheon, and remarked upon neither the expression of repentance on Alberte’s face, nor her eagerness to render her a hundred small ordinary services.

She had room in her thoughts for nothing but Ginevra. Ginevra was enchanting; she would visit all of Paris with Ginevra; her carriages, her opera boxes were at Ginevra’s disposal; and she would not have a moment’s peace until she had persuaded M. de Fresnel to come and live in the Champs-Élysées. Her morning visit had been directed toward this end, and she flattered herself that she had gained a first victory. Her husband fell in with her, not without laughing a little at this new enthusiasm; but he was intimate with M. de Fresnel, and was not displeased by his wife’s friendly disposition.

After luncheon, Mme de Valroux put on the black dress shaded with white and grey that inaugurated her half-mourning, and gave the order to put the horses to.

“We are going out?” said Alberte, with joy.

“I am going out, certainly; to fetch Ginevra,” replied Mme de Valroux in her lightest tone.

And she added, doing up her last button:

“You are no longer well-behaved enough for me to take you about like that; and besides, you will need to supervise your moving.”

“I am moving?”

“Certainly — must not the dressing-room where you set fire to things be repaired?”

“But afterwards?”

“Afterwards you will stay on the second floor. I could not sleep with a neighbour of your sort. I had dreadful nightmares last night. I put myself out to give you that apartment; but you commit one piece of folly after another, and I am very sorry for it. We have no wish to see the house burn down, and Médéric thinks it best to put you entirely under Mme Louis’s care for the present, until something better can be arranged.”

On this, the young marquise gathered up her train and went downstairs to the courtyard. Alberte, her forehead pressed against the window pane, watched her get into the carriage and drive away without so much as turning to exchange a parting glance. At that moment Mme Louis entered to inform her that her moving had begun. Alberte, forcing back her tears of vexation, followed her to the second floor, where her new room was to be found; a narrow apartment that received its only light from a small opening in the gable wall, and which had been furnished hastily and entirely without taste.

Too proud to let her distress appear before the servants, the child busied herself with some tidying and pretended to approve of everything that had been done; but as soon as she found herself alone, her grief broke out, and throwing herself into an armchair she began to sob. Her sister’s indifference had struck her to the heart, and all her fine castles in Spain came tumbling down at once. All at once she lifted her head and said, “I shall go back to Sacré-Coeur.”

But at that name alone, the demon of wounded pride and the demon of wilfulness breathed into her a host of false reasons against this sensible plan.

She had shown such joy at leaving, all the other girls would mock her. Was it not to come down in the world to exchange the pretty dresses that Madeleine had invented for her for that hideous blue uniform? Boredom for boredom, was she not still less unhappy in this hotel, where nobody constrained her movements, than in that establishment where one had to submit to, and even embrace, an inflexible discipline, whose greatness her headstrong spirit had never understood? She passed the rest of the afternoon in these sterile tears and these interior battles.