The year is 1794. A thirty-year-old Sophie de Grouchy awaits word of her husband, Nicolas, Marquis de Condorcet, who has fled his hiding spot in Paris. Condorcet had been involved with the Girondins faction of the revolution, and was a public advocate for women’s rights. As Maximilien Robespierre’s Reign of Terror swept France, the Girondins became a target rather than an ally of the ruling faction, and in 1793, Condorcet was forced into hiding. (Berges and Schiesser 7) Little does Grouchy know, on this March day of 1794, Condorcet is dead, in prison. It will be months before she learns of her husband’s fate.
By the time she married Condorcet eight years earlier, Grouchy was well educated, intellectually sophisticated, and beginning to take radically progressive stances on socio-political matters. Born to a family of aristocrats, she both benefited from her brothers’ tutors, and at times aided in their education. She became proficient in several languages, and attended a finishing school at age 18. Despite the fact that the school was a Christian institution, Grouchy lost her faith during her time there, and broadened her reading to include the popular intellectuals du jour. (Berges and Schliesser 4)
Grouchy and Condorcet were close intellectual collaborators. The two of them, working together with Thomas Paine, Emilie Du Châtelet, and other Girondins, started a journal, Le Républicain, advocating for the republican revolutionary cause. (Berges and Schliesser 6) The journal would last but four issues before its discontinuation in 1791. There is some ambiguity over the actual authorship of pieces included in Le Républicain. None are explicitly signed by Grouchy, but she translated pieces by Thomas Paine from English for the journal, and it has been suggested that Condorcet and Grouchy may have jointly authored another. (Berges)
Female scholars and philosophers during the revolution were often reduced in status to hostesses for their male peers, the home being a venue in which they were more accepted as contributors to discussions on socio-political matters. Grouchy was highly regarded by many of her contemporaries, including Etienne Dumont and Pierre Cabanis, but her comparative dearth of published original thought suggests that as a woman, she was not able to fully participate in the public discourse. (Berges) This is further supported by the fact that her only major original philosophical work, Les Lettres sur la Sympathie (Letters on Sympathy) was published not as a stand-alone volume, but as an addendum to her translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, which she published following the conclusion of the Reign of Terror.
Whilst in hiding, Condorcet had begun work on A Sketch of Human Progress, which he often discussed with Grouchy in their correspondence. (Berges) After Condorcet’s death, Grouchy turned her attention to the publication of the still unfinished manuscript. At times, Grouchy’s editing included insertions of passages and full paragraphs that went beyond the ideas present in Condorcet’s manuscript. Grouchy’s editing would go on to be dismissed by scholars as untrue to Condorcet’s writing. However, Grouchy and Condorcet discussed A Sketch of Human Progress often in their written correspondence, and Grouchy’s work may reflect not a deviation from Condorcet’s intent but a continuation of work on a collaborative intellectual endeavor. (Berges)
Though Grouchy remained involved in the intellectual community of the day up until her 1822 death, she did not publish any more major works of her own. Up until now, Grouchy’s most impactful legacy has been not her own work, but her translation of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, of which another French translation was not published until 1999. (Berges and Schliesser) Grouchy, though, did much more than merely facilitate the work of her male contemporaries; her Letters on Sympathy are a rich philosophical text deserving of their own moment in the spotlight.