‘Lady Hester Stanhope, from (in)visibility to a new vision of femininity : proto-feminism in acts?’, colloque de la British Women Writers Association, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, mars 2020.
Résumé
Lady Hester Stanhope, a young aristocrat born in 18th-century Britain, struggled her whole life to break out of the social constraints and invisibility imposed on women in those days. The niece of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, she dreamt of having access to a political career. A beautiful woman, she however chose never to marry and had an affair with a younger man, which in those days, definitely kept her from any possibility of finding a respectable husband. An ambitious and daunting lady, she settled in the Middle-East where she established herself as a self-proclaimed political chieftain, with actually very little power or recognition.
However, through her acts and her numerous letters, Stanhope, without even being aware of it and without having any theoretical ambition, broke new ground and opened new possibilities for all women.