SOURCE: “Monuments of the Maternal: Reflections on the Desbordes-Valmore Correspondence,” in L'espirit createur, Vol. 39, No. 2, Summer, 1999, pp. 41-51.

In the following essay, McCall describes the gender dynamics of female epistolary writing illustrated by Desbordes-Valmore's Correspondance intime.

Collective remembrance promotes unity through the recognition of a common memory that the public is invited to claim as its own. For this reason, cultural historians have paid significant attention to the creation of a secular national identity in France through commemorative events.¹ If it is true that France's heroes were and perhaps still are its writers,² it is also clear that much remains to be said of the ways in which Third Republic France generated literary heroes and the grounds upon which these figures were shaped to define a cultural pre-eminence. The erection of statues constituted an important element in this process, for it allowed the nation to bring its many...