A Review of Ida M. Tarbell's book: "Madame Roland"
|
|
Date Published: May 15, 2025
|
A Review of Madame Roland by Ida M. Tarbell
- Reviews of the Day: 1896
- Selected Insights from Madame Roland by Ida M. Tarbell
- This Author’s Thoughts on Madame Roland by Tarbell
Reviews of the Day: 1896
|
On August 29, 1896, The Daily Inter-Ocean evaluated Miss Tarbell’s Madame Roland in its “Current Literature” article and wrote: “The average reader knows little about Mme. Roland beyond the fact that she was put to death during the French revolution, and that she exclaimed while on her way to the guillotine: ‘Oh, liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!’ …
“This final, concluding scene, under the shadow of the awful guillotine, is drawn with pathos and force [by Miss Tarbell]. The book is well illustrated with portraits of Mme. Roland and views of places connected with her story. This work bringing the true character of this remarkable woman to the knowledge of many otherwise ignorant of her fills an important place in biographical literature. “The conscientious study made by Miss Tarbell for the preparation of this book deserves high commendation in itself and has resulted in a most delightful and instructive biography.” On July 27, 1896, The Hartford Daily Courant wrote in its “Art and Letter’s” review of Madame Roland that the book “is the most thorough review of the life of this famous woman yet attempted in English. … Miss Tarbell does not blink at the inconsistencies in the life of Mme. Roland and the portrait she draws is sympathetic and generous. …” |
The front cover of Madame Roland by Ida M. Tarbell
|
Overview of Madame Roland from The Independent in 1896.
|
On July 2, 1896, Pall Mall Gazette published an almost half-page review of Ida M. Tarbell’s Madame Roland. This is an excerpt from this review’s conclusion:
”Miss Tarbell has done justice not only to Mme. Roland, but to Mme. Roland’s dull, irritable, conscientious husband, who learned from his wives own lips [Mme. Roland] that she had ceased to care for him, and had given the love that had once been his to his friend and colleague. … “Hers is a sad life: her noble aspirations were blended with self-complacency, her saintly exaltation blinded her to the practical aspect of affairs, and she lived to know the smart of disillusionment, the pain of failure, and the ignominy of death. “Yet, we firmly believe that the supreme moment before the guillotine fell was the most exalted of her whole life.” |
Selected Insights from Ida M. Tarbell's Madame Roland
- Insights into Mme. Roland through Her One True Friend: Sophie Cannet
This excerpt from Madame Roland documents why having access to these letters between two heart-linked, young, female friends provided so much insight for Ida Tarbell into the character, thoughts, and driving forces of a young Mme. Roland.
Ida M. Tarbell wrote of Mme. Roland's relationship as expressed through these letters to her friend Sophie:
Ida M. Tarbell wrote of Mme. Roland's relationship as expressed through these letters to her friend Sophie:
|
“To Sophie she could tell everything.
“Sophie, too, was sensitive, devout, and understood joy and sorrow. The two girls shared the most secret experiences of their souls. There grew up between them a form of platonic love which is not uncommon between idealistic and sensitive young girls, a relation in which all that is most intimate, most profound, most sincere in the intellectual and spiritual lives of the two is exchanged; under its influence the most obscure and indefinite impressions take form, the most subtle emotions materialize, and vague and indefinite thoughts shape themselves. … ”Never were more ardent love letters written than those of Manon [young Mme. Roland] to Sophie. … She read and re-read the letters which always filled her pockets, and she rose from her bed at midnight to fill pages with declarations of her fondness. This correspondence became one of the great joys of her life. All that she thought, felt, and saw, she put into her letters. “The effort to express all of herself clearly compelled her to a greater degree of reflection and crystallized her notions wonderfully. Besides making her think, it awakened in her a passion for the pen which never left her. Indeed, it became an imperative need for her to express in writing whatever she thought or felt. Her emotions and ideas seemed to her incomplete if they had not been written out. |
Painting of Mme. Roland by Jules Goupil
|
“In her early letters there is a full account of all the influences which were acting on her life, and of the transformation and evolution they produced.”
- Mme. Roland on “Patience:” A Patience She Lost After the First Revolution
“I have had the opportunity of seeing, since my sojourn here [Paris], that it is much more difficult to do good than even reflecting men imagine. It is not possible to do good in politics, save by uniting efforts; and there is nothing so difficult as to unite different minds to work persistently for the same end.
“Everybody believes only in the efficacy of his own system, and his own way. He is irritated and bored by that of another, and because he does not know how to bend to an idea a little different from his own, he ends by going alone, without doing anything useful.
“For more than a century, philosophy has been preaching tolerance; it has begun to root itself in some minds but I see little of it in our customs. Our fine minds laugh at patience as a negative virtue. I confess that in my eyes it is the true sign of the force of the soul, the fruit of profound reflection, the necessary means for conciliating men and spreading instruction, in short, the virtue of a free people.
“We have everything to learn on this subject.”
“Everybody believes only in the efficacy of his own system, and his own way. He is irritated and bored by that of another, and because he does not know how to bend to an idea a little different from his own, he ends by going alone, without doing anything useful.
“For more than a century, philosophy has been preaching tolerance; it has begun to root itself in some minds but I see little of it in our customs. Our fine minds laugh at patience as a negative virtue. I confess that in my eyes it is the true sign of the force of the soul, the fruit of profound reflection, the necessary means for conciliating men and spreading instruction, in short, the virtue of a free people.
“We have everything to learn on this subject.”
Later in the biography, we find that Mme. Roland can’t seem to exhibit this patience. Everything is moving too slow, too painfully slow for her and this leads to her and her husband’s downfall—her execution at the guillotine and his suicide.
Mme. Roland, it seems, also had everything to learn on this philosophy of tolerance—patience.
Mme. Roland, it seems, also had everything to learn on this philosophy of tolerance—patience.
- Mme. Roland Goes to the Guillotine
|
“The hideous, howling crowd followed [her in the carriage] and cursed her.
"But nothing earthly could reach the heights whither she [Mme. Roland] had risen. … "Then her turn came. “As they fastened her to the fatal plank, her eyes fell on a colossal statue of liberty erected to celebrate the first anniversary of the 10th of August. ‘0 liberte,’ she cried, ‘comme on t’a jouee.’ [O liberty, how they have cheated thee! … O liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!] “Then the axe dropped, and … the beautiful head fell. “Mme. Roland was dead.” |
The Abbaye: The prison where Mme. Roland was held as a prisoner for a time.
|
This Author’s Thoughts on Ida M. Tarbell's Madame Roland
|
I enjoyed this work greatly because it provided new insights into Miss Tarbell and her work ethic as much as into Mme. Roland. I have greatly enjoyed reading Miss Tarbell’s other writings and it has been a few years since I received this book—just now prioritizing it for reading and review.
Providing insights into Madame Roland has to begin with Ida M. Tarbell’s autobiography, “All in the Day’s Work.” When Tarbell was researching, studying and writing Madame Roland, she was in her mid-thirties. She had gone to Paris with little money in her pocket, no true backing by any publisher of the day, and just a vision of becoming an author. A brave move for anyone of any sex, but given the times of almost a century and a half ago … a distinguishing feature of an individual who pursued her dream! In 1896, Madame Roland was the second book published by Ida Tarbell but it was the first book she researched and wrote for publication. Her articles and book on Napoleon published by McClures in 1895 were written after but published before this work. Her writings on Napoleon gave her the credibility and name recognition within the United States so that Scribners then published her work on this famous woman of the French Revolution. When Miss Tarbell looked back on her life in her autobiography she was in her early eighties, recognized as one of three original greatest Three Muckrakers—The Three Musketeers comes to mind, and had more than forty-years’ experience researching, writing, and publishing articles, magazines and books. Here is how she looked back, forty years later, on these times in Paris studying Mme. Roland, Paris and the French Revolution:
|
|
“You could not bound Mme. Roland’s Revolution as I had supposed. What I had called the French Revolution was only an unusually violent episode in the lifelong struggle of Paris to preserve herself as a free individual, the slave of no man or group of men. … Revolution had always been her last resort in making herself what she was, in forcing kings to do her bidding, tolerating them when they fed her well, beautified her, protected her, but throwing them over when they asked too much money for the job they did. …
“A popular disturbance never remains long in the full control of those who start it. Advocates of all sorts of systems and causes join it, seize it, if one of them can produce a real leader. A students’ revolt can easily become an anarchist raid, with looting and arson on the side by professional lawbreakers, who always come out of their hiding places when anarchy breaks out. …
“Mme. Roland lost her head because she was not content with a first Revolution which had given the country a Constitution. She wanted to get the King and Queen and the highborn of all varieties out of the way. She wanted a Republic. She lost her head to those who were not satisfied with getting King and Queen out of the way, who wanted her and her followers out of the way as soon as they began to cry for order. …
“But was this corrupt and vulgar Republic I was hearing about any better than the corrupt and scandalous court she hated and helped overthrow? … Here was I with a heroine on my hands whose formula and methods and motives I was beginning to question as I was questioning the formula, the methods and motives of France of the moment.”
“A popular disturbance never remains long in the full control of those who start it. Advocates of all sorts of systems and causes join it, seize it, if one of them can produce a real leader. A students’ revolt can easily become an anarchist raid, with looting and arson on the side by professional lawbreakers, who always come out of their hiding places when anarchy breaks out. …
“Mme. Roland lost her head because she was not content with a first Revolution which had given the country a Constitution. She wanted to get the King and Queen and the highborn of all varieties out of the way. She wanted a Republic. She lost her head to those who were not satisfied with getting King and Queen out of the way, who wanted her and her followers out of the way as soon as they began to cry for order. …
“But was this corrupt and vulgar Republic I was hearing about any better than the corrupt and scandalous court she hated and helped overthrow? … Here was I with a heroine on my hands whose formula and methods and motives I was beginning to question as I was questioning the formula, the methods and motives of France of the moment.”
|
Tarbell wrote that she found “balance” within an inner circle of friends when she went to the countryside to gain further understanding of Madame Roland.
“The visit to Le Clos with its quantity of impressions, the conviction that I had seen Mme. Roland herself, in her happiest as well as her most useful days, completed the study of source material for her life on which I had been working as I found time through the twenty months I had been in Paris.
“It rounded out the woman she was, softened the asperity—severity, which I was beginning to feel for her; also it strengthened my suspicion that while a woman frequently was a success as the Providence of a countryside she did no better than a man when she attempted to fill that function for a nation.” |
Le Clos de La Platière was the family home of the Rolands where Mme. Roland spent her happiest, "most natural” years..
|
This work was the start of a lifetime of studying women for Ida M. Tarbell. She studied the women of France, the American Revolution, the suffragettes and more. Her’s was a life of questioning research, brilliant observations, and wonderful writings about her chosen subject of the day.
Mme. Roland is a wonderful book.
Highly recommended.
Cheers,
- Peter E.
Mme. Roland is a wonderful book.
Highly recommended.
Cheers,
- Peter E.