CANR
WORK TITLE: THE QUEEN’S EMBROIDERER
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): DeJean, Joan Elizabeth
BIRTHDATE: 10/4/1948
WEBSITE:
CITY: Philadelphia
STATE: PA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 277
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/roml/french/people/dejean.html http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-paris-became-paris-9781608195916/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 4, 1948, in LA.
EDUCATION:Newcomb College, B.A., 1969; attended Leningrad State University, 1970; Yale University, M.Phil., 1972, Ph.D., 1974.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Academic. Yale University, New Haven, CT, acting instructor, 1973-74; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, assistant professor, 1974-78; Yale University, assistant professor, 1978-81; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, associate professor, 1981-85, professor, 1985-88, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, 1987-88; University of Pennsylvania, Trustee Professor of French, 1988—.
AWARDS:Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1977-78, 1999; Guggenheim fellow, 1987; summer fellow, German-American Academic Council Foundation, 1998; Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, Modern Language Association of America, 2003, for The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France; Josephine Roberts Award for best translation or teaching edition, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, 2003, for Against Marriage: The Correspondence of the Grande Mademoiselle; Lindback Award, for distinguished teaching.
WRITINGS
DeJean’s writings have been widely translated.
SIDELIGHTS
“Historian Joan DeJean writes about all things French and fashionable,” according to Renee Montagne on NPR Online. DeJean is the Trustee Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania and the author or editor of numerous books on various aspects of French cultural history, from women’s writings to sexuality, fashion, interior design, and urban planning.
Tender Geographies and The Reinvention of Obscenity
DeJean’s Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France argues that women authors were actually the progenitors of the modern French novel. DeJean focuses on the work of Madeleine de Scudery and Comtesse de Lafayette in a work that “reconceives the woman-authored novels of seventeenth-century France not as essentially female but as fundamentally political,” according to College Literature contributor Lori Humphrey Newcomb. DeJean demonstrates that several generations of noble women turned to the novel with what might outwardly seem to be stories of marriage and romance. However, as Newcomb pointed out, this “examination of marriage and intrigue in seventeenth-century novels was intended and recognized as a fundamental threat to French patriarchy.” Newcomb termed Tender Geographies a “dense and authoritative book” that succeeds in “appropriating the French novel for a practice of literary history that leaves behind essentialized genre theories, resists the accretion of critical canons, and re-imagines the diverse cultural functions of an emergent form.”
In The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France, DeJean “traces the evolving meanings of the term obscene from its initial usage in antiquity through its reemergence in sixteenth-century France … to its definitive entrance into the seventeenth-century lexicon at around the time of Moliere’s L’Ecole des femmes,” according to Symposium writer Mary Jo Muratore, who termed the study a “fascinating account that reads at times with as much suspense as a murder mystery and offers all the details essential for a comprehensive understanding of this highly nuanced and ever-morphing concept.” The centerpiece of this work is the reaction to Moliere’s work and the ultimate transformation of a literary form into what became considered a threat to society. Renaissance Quarterly reviewer Kathleen Perry Long described the book as a “nuanced study of the rebirth of obscenity in seventeenth-century literature and culture … [which] raises important issues that can inspire similar inquiry about other aspects of early modern culture.”
The Essence of Style
DeJean employs her knowledge of seventeenth-century French culture to examine the development of what is considered good taste in The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour. Here she argues that France in the late seventeenth century became the “arbiter of chic,” as a Publishers Weekly reviewer observed, largely because of the spending and extreme vanity of Louis the XIV. The king’s self-indulgence in fine clothing, food, and drink, led to the creation of industries devoted to their production, as DeJean demonstrates. Champagne, street lighting, and paved streets were all initiated by this royal, who turned Paris into the “City of Light.”
The Publishers Weekly reviewer dubbed The Essence of Style a “fun read” with a “premise [that] is simple yet wonderfully effective.” A Kirkus Reviews critic similarly found the work to be an “intelligent, well-documented history of the luxury items taken for granted today that have also defined the culture of France.” The contributor added: “Readers low and high will find this a winning companion, with excellent sources.” Similarly, Booklist writer Barbara Jacobs called The Essence of Style an “unusual and delightfully educational perspective on snob appeal.”
The Age of Comfort
DeJean further explores French style in The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual—and the Modern Home Began. Focusing on the years between 1670 and 1765, DeJean examines the reinvention of domestic living in Paris with the introduction of plumbing—including running water and flush toilets—as well as sofas. Interior decoration was also highly influenced by royal lovers, including the mistresses of Louis XIV and Louis XV. Homes and apartments were subdivided into smaller rooms allowing for more privacy; bathrooms became more ornate as bathing turned from necessity to pleasure. The sofa became something of a metaphor for this more relaxed time, developed by the architect Meissonnie.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer praised The Age of Comfort, noting that it is “well researched and brimming with anecdotes and architectural and design details.” Wilson Quarterly contributor Winifred Gallagher felt that DeJean “makes a strong case that between 1670 and 1765 Paris was the world’s capital for designing the stuff of life, from furniture to clothing.” Gallagher further commented: “ The Age of Comfort is most engaging when DeJean connects changes in design with shifts in what we’ve come to call ‘lifestyle’.”
How Paris Became Paris
With How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City, DeJean runs counter to much of received knowledge about the transformation of Paris into an international metropolis of the first order. She looks to the seventeenth century and the architecture and urban planning of Bourbon kings such as Henri IV and Louis XIV instead of the nineteenth-century urban renewal projects of Baron Haussmann for the true birth of modern Paris and its change from medieval walled city to a planned city space with parks, laid-out streets and boulevards with lighting, bridges, and even public transport. She focuses on such famous Parisian sites as the Louvre and the Pont Neuf in this “engaging history of the growth of Paris into a modern city,” according to Booklist reviewer Vanessa Bush.
Other reviewers also had praise for How Paris Became Paris. A Publishers Weekly contributor observed: “With panache and examples from primary sources, guidebooks, maps, and paintings, [DeJean] illustrates how Paris changed people’s conception of a city’s potential.” Likewise, a Kirkus Reviews critic commented: “Dejean obviously knows and loves Paris, and she provides coherent history that effectively explains the evolution of a city built by a few prescient men.” BookPage Web site writer Deborah Hopkinson also had a high assessment of this work, noting: “What makes DeJean’s analysis so intriguing is her capacity to weave strands of history together.”
The Queen's Embroiderer
In 2018 DeJean published The Queen’s Embroiderer: A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis. The account centers on two seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French families. The Magoulets were master embroiderers who worked for Louis XIV. The Chevrots, meanwhile, purchased positions from the crown in order to get ahead in life based on societal status. DeJean traces the usually unfortunate lives of various members of these families.
In an interview in the Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb blog, DeJean talked about what Louise Magoulet’s story inferred about the status of women in France in her age. DeJean stated: “I think that Louise Magoulet is a heroine for our times. Just as so many of the women now coming forward must have believed that their status would protect them from abuse, Louise surely thought that her family name and position, not to mention the law, would have guaranteed that she would never find herself the victim that she became.”
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews said that the book will be “of interest for students of French history or the history of finance, if they can tie it all together.” The same reviewer called the narrative “intermittently interesting but difficult to follow.” Writing in the National Public Radio website, Genevieve Valentine stated: “Given the nature of the family, the story is often so dour that sometimes only the historical minutiae keep you going. (If you ever wanted to know more about the fascinating probate-inventory process of 18th-century France, you’re in luck.) But DeJean is so strapped for good news that in an attempt to scrape together a happy ending for anyone at all, she occasionally glosses over, say, the moral implications of why going to Haiti was good for business.” In a review in BookPage, Deborah Hopkinson noted that “if your plans for springtime in France haven’t materialized, don’t despair. Just open The Queen’s Embroiderer and you’ll find yourself transported.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2005, Barbara Jacobs, review of The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour, p. 1881; January 1, 2014, Vanessa Bush, review of How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City, p. 38.
College Literature, February 1, 1994, Lori Humphrey Newcomb, review of Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France, p. 172.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2005, review of The Essence of Style, p. 522; December 15, 2013, review of How Paris Became Paris; March 1, 2018, review of The Queen’s Embroiderer: A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis.
Modern Language Review, July 1, 1998, Shirley Jones-Day, review of Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle, p. 837; October 1, 2006, D.J. Culpin, review of The Story of the Marquise-Marquis De Banneville, p. 1118.
New York Times, August 27, 2009, Julie Scelfo, “The Couch Potato Was Born in Paris,” p. D3.
Publishers Weekly, April 25, 2005, review of The Essence of Style, p. 46; June 8, 2009, review of The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual—and the Modern Home Began, p. 34; December 2, 2013, review of How Paris Became Paris, p. 72.
Renaissance Quarterly, December 22, 2003, Kathleen Perry Long, review of The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France, p. 1266; September 22, 2004, Abby E. Zanger, review of Against Marriage: The Correspondence of the Grande Mademoiselle, p. 1025.
Romanic Review, March 1, 1994, Carol Howard, review of Displacements: Women, Tradition, Literatures in French, p. 336.
School Library Journal, November 1, 2005, Kathy Tewell, review of The Essence of Style, p. 183.
Society, November 1, 1999, Eleanor Kaufman, review of Ancients against Moderns, p. 111.
Symposium, December 22, 2007, Mary Jo Muratore, review of The Reinvention of Obscenity, p. 267.
Wilson Quarterly, September 22, 2009, Winifred Gallagher, review of The Age of Comfort, p. 105.
ONLINE
BookPage, http://bookpage.com/ (March 1, 2014), Deborah Hopkinson, review of How Paris Became Paris; (May 1, 2018), Deborah Hopkinson, review of The Queen’s Embroiderer.
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, http://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/ (May 2, 2018), Deborah Kalb, author interview.
Dept. of English, University of Pennsylvania website, https://www.english.upenn.edu/ (November 11, 2018), author profile.
Dept. of Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania website, http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ (March 12, 2014), “Joan DeJean.”
Morning Edition, http://www.npr.org/ (March 4, 2014), Renee Montagne, author interview.
National Public Radio website, https://www.npr.org/ (May 6, 2018), Genevieve Valentine, review of The Queen’s Embroiderer.
New York Times Book Review, http://www.nytimes.com/ (July 13, 2005), William Grimes, review of The Essence of Style.
Joan DeJean has been Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania since 1988. She previously taught at Yale and at Princeton. She is the author of eleven books on French literature, history, and material culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including most recently How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City (2014); The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual--and the Modern Home Began (2009); The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (2005). She lives in Philadelphia and, when in Paris, around the corner from the house where, in 1612, this story began.
Joan DeJean, author of seven previous books on French literature, history, and culture during the reign of Louis XIV, is Trustee Professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught for the past fifteen years. She has also held positions at both Princeton and Yale. Bicultural, she shuttles regularly between her homes in Philadelphia and Paris, with her finger on the pulse of both venues.
Joan DeJean is Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of ten books on French literature, history, and material culture, including most recently The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual and the Modern Home Began and The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour. She lives in Philadelphia and, when in Paris, on the street where the number 4 bus began service on July 5, 1662.
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Q&A with Joan DeJean
Joan DeJean is the author of the new book The Queen's Embroiderer: A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis. Her other books include How Paris Became Paris and The Age of Comfort. She is Trustee Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and she lives in Philadelphia.
Q: How did you learn about the story of the Magoulet and Chevrot families, and at what point did you decide you’d write a book about them?
A: I began one day—I was doing something that I thought would be a tiny project on the first luxury shops in Paris. I went to the archives—I imagined it would be an afternoon.
Instead, I found two documents. The first was [Jean Magoulet’s] appointment as Royal Embroiderer, and then the second was a woman’s name, with the same last name. The woman with the same last name was shipped to Louisiana in 1719. That meant she was declared undesirable.
I found a police file on the young women’s address and deportation, so the outline of the story was there. It was incredible that the daughter of such a high-ranking person would end up like this. I knew [the story] would be wonderful, but it seemed so hard. I walked away.
The next time I showed up at the front desk [of the archives, a woman who worked there] said, What are you doing? I said, I’m leaving it. She said, You can’t!
I knew how hard it would be. But I couldn’t fight the young woman and the story. In the end, I had luck at key moments. I always thought there would be more [material], but there was so much about every key moment and player.
When I say I’m making a conjecture, I make it clear, but I try to stick to the record. I started to have a sense of [the people involved}…
Q: So what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: The key moment was that I learned the man shipping his daughter off was recreating his childhood. He was shipped to St. Croix when he was a boy.
I realized again and again that what we realize about violently abusive men can be backed up historically. He was almost programmed. It was saddening…
What I learned about behavior when the stock market is surging [as was the case during the time of the Magoulets] might be repeated today—the desire to make a quick dollar, and let nothing stand in the way. This took place almost exactly three centuries ago. It makes me nervous.
Q: What does Louise Magoulet’s story say about the role of women in France during this time period?
A: I think that Louise Magoulet is a heroine for our times. Just as so many of the women now coming forward must have believed that their status would protect them from abuse, Louise surely thought that her family name and position, not to mention the law, would have guaranteed that she would never find herself the victim that she became.
There were good and bad aspects [to the French law of the time]. It hurt her in the end, but French law did protect women. People in England were amazed I could learn so much about women’s property [in France]. But their rights could be abused by their fathers.
Women kept their own names, so I could tell in the records who it was. Women were investors in the stock market, women were running high-end shops. This was not the case in other countries. There was a positive [aspect] to women’s roles in French society.
But the bad [involved] what happened to this family during the first stock market bubble. I wondered if this could have happened to anyone in this situation. It was such a spectacular bubble. Everyone was [following it].
Q: What did the job of the Queen’s Embroiderer entail, and what place did he hold in society?
A: The job was very complex but very specific. He would create designs for anything the Queen wanted embroidered—from clothing to objects. Embroidery for the very wealthy was everywhere in their homes. It was a real status marker.
The Embroiderer had much more status than the person who makes the clothing. He would be a brilliant designer, and probably rarely embroidered himself. He ran a workshop. Originality in design was everything.
They made fortunes. The work was so costly. Their income determined social status. We think we know who the artists were—the Embroiderer was in the highest rank because his work was so visible. He was paid more than almost any artist. He dressed almost indistinguishably from a nobleman.
The title was very useful in getting what he wanted in society. It was a fairly modest family socially, but their resourcefulness made them rise in society…
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I could never forget the women who were shipped off to Louisiana. There were 209 women declared unfit. I’m working on the other 208. None had a life like [Louise’s], but they are complex stories. I’m finding out who they were, what they were accused of, and what became of them in the New World.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: This is a complicated book. For me, the long-term view of family is important. Despite the horrible destiny of the two fathers, almost all their children and grandchildren were survivors. The whole arc of the family is remarkable. Families’ destinies are complex things.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Joan DeJean.
Joan DeJean
jdejean@sas.upenn.edu
Joan DeJean is Trustee Professor of French. She specializes in 17th- and 18th-century French literature. She has published on the history of women's writing in France (Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France, 1991); the history of sexuality (Fictions of Sappho, 1546-1937, 1989); the development of the novel (Literary Fortifications, 1984); and the cultural history of late 17th- and early 18th-century France (Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle, 1996; The Essence of Style, 2005).
She received a Lindback award for Distinguished Teaching and was the winner of the 2003 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies for her book The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France (U of Chicago P, 2002).
The Queen's Embroiderer
Joan DeJean
New Statesman. 147.5432 (Aug. 17, 2018): p42.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 New Statesman, Ltd.
http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text:
A French history specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, Joan DeJean tells the strange story of the Magoulet and Chevrot families, who rose to prominence as financiers and embroiderers to the French court and were determined to increase their wealth by arranging their children's marriages. In 1720, however, in a Shakespearean twist, Louise Magoulet and Louis Chevrot fell in love. Parental disapproval forced the pair to take on not just their families, but the police and indeed an army regiment. Joan Dejean's story runs from 1600 to the eve of the revolution and shows how love and money made uncomfortable bed-mates.
Bloomsbury, 375pp. 30 [pounds sterling]
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
DeJean, Joan. "The Queen's Embroiderer." New Statesman, 17 Aug. 2018, p. 42. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A552252776/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bff830b6. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A552252776
DeJean, Joan: THE QUEEN'S EMBROIDERER
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
DeJean, Joan THE QUEEN'S EMBROIDERER Bloomsbury (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 5, 1 ISBN: 978-1-63286-474-1
The tale of two 17th- and 18th-century French families, a story that begins as a fairy tale and ends as a nightmare.
The families Magoulet and Chevrot tied their stars to the court of Louis XIV. The Magoulets were master embroiderers who also made leather cases to transport fragile treasures. The king's wars, winter, famine, and poor economics eventually curtailed their work and livelihood, but Jacques Magoulet caught the eye of Louis' finance minister and became the tax collector for the nation. One of DeJean's (Romance Languages/Univ. of Pennsylvania; How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City, 2014, etc.) main narrative elements involves men who knew no rules. They wanted to be rich and noble, and lying and cheating become their primary methods. The Chevrots, however, took another approach. They chose to make money from money, eschewing conspicuous consumption and devoting all their energy to purchasing positions from the crown to advance their standing. The fastest way to amass money was to marry into it, and the Chevrots played the game well--except for the Romeo and Juliet of their families, who fell in love and vowed to marry. Louis appointed John Law, an Englishman, to control the largest economy in Europe, and he introduced paper money, dividends, the first ever investment fever, and, finally, the bursting bubble. Unfortunately, most of the book concerns economics, which is not the author's forte, and the title is misleading. Money controlled the drive of these two families, and many of them were liars, forgers, imposters, and abusers. The narrative is intermittently interesting but difficult to follow as the stories jump around in time and between families. Times were difficult, but these two families drove themselves to ruin by pure, unadulterated greed.
Of interest for students of French history or the history of finance, if they can tie it all together.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"DeJean, Joan: THE QUEEN'S EMBROIDERER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959686/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bbd161d0. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959686
'The Queen's Embroiderer' Stitches Up A Twisted Family Saga
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May 6, 20187:00 AM ET
Genevieve Valentine
The Queen's Embroiderer
A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis
by Joan Dejean
Hardcover, 400 pages
purchase
Sometimes it can be such a comfort to forget current events for a little while and lose oneself in a nice cozy slice of history, a moment when a family of greedy, abusive, litigious frauds scrabbled for power using obsequious ingratiation, shameless lies, mounting debt, and outright cruelty — against a national backdrop of rapid economic shifts built on precarious foundations and exploited by corrupt government officials, so the rich got richer and everyone else was ruined. Plus, there's some embroidery!
The Queen's Embroiderer is the latest by Joan DeJean, who's authored half a dozen books about French history (How Paris Became Paris) and design (The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour). The brief introductory note to this book suggests she ran into a needle-scratch moment in the middle of more conventional research: Jean Magoulet's appointment as the Queen's Embroiderer, alongside a 1719 royal decree that his daughter Marie Louise be arrested and shipped to Louisiana. That was undoubtedly a surprising fate for the daughter of a royal appointee.
Then she found out Jean Magoulet had made the request himself.
DeJean describes the impetus behind this book as her desire to unravel the love story between Marie Louise Magoulet and her husband (briefly), Louis Chevrot. But inevitably, the young lovers take a backseat to the generations of in-laws before them, who eventually reach such a cartoonish level of underhanded dealings that by the time DeJean is suggesting Jean Magoulet impersonated his own dead brother for years to facilitate a double life, she includes several original documents, as if she knows things are beginning to beggar belief.
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And that, somehow, is not even the wildest data point in this story, which features guild-hopping, inheritance fraud, domestic abuse, eloping to England, sending toddlers to their deaths, locking the gates against the poor, and the occasional escape from a chain gang. There's an impressive depth of research — this is, as much as anything else, a mystery about the manipulation of record-keeping and identity — and it reveals an equally impressive depth of both determination and depravity in some of the family figures, but by the time she introduces John Law and the 1720 stock market crisis to provide a wider historical context, it's almost a footnote to the family disaster. That's quite a trick given the scope of that particular economic panic, but with nearly 30 major players, sheer generational entropy dwarfs everything else. (There is a detailed family tree at the front of the book; you will need it.)
... by the time DeJean is suggesting Jean Magoulet impersonated his own dead brother for years to facilitate a double life, she includes several original documents, as if she knows things are beginning to beggar belief.
Still, some aspects of the wider upheaval are striking, as DeJean builds a credible picture of the mania of a nation becoming an empire: Monarchy as economy, war as opportunity, slavery as profit margin. The legal system was so brutally patriarchal that it's a surprise — to us and to the author alike — when a woman gets any justice at all. Credit was trumpeted as a tool of social uplift by a financial bureacracy more concerned with the royal coffers than long-term stability; in the wake of the crash, a specialized police force was sent out to gather impoverished and unprotected people for deportation to Louisiana — where they would, presumably, be a boon to the royal coffers again. (Angry Paris mobs attacked so many of those deportation forces that the idea was soon abandoned.)
Given the nature of the family, the story is often so dour that sometimes only the historical minutiae keep you going. (If you ever wanted to know more about the fascinating probate-inventory process of 18th-century France, you're in luck.) But DeJean is so strapped for good news that in an attempt to scrape together a happy ending for anyone at all, she occasionally glosses over, say, the moral implications of why going to Haiti was good for business. A few survivors of the Chevrot and Magoulet debacles do manage to get out from their forefathers' shadows — and that there are so few loose ends in this two-century saga is a testament to DeJean's research (and a compelling argument for preserving historical records on a local scale, for that matter). But The Queen's Embroiderer lives largely in the place where petty men desperate to make themselves palatable to those in power poison their own family relationships, leverage a broken legal and government system, and leave a trail of trauma and destruction in their wake; a long shadow indeed.
Genevieve Valentine's latest novel is Icon.
The Queen's Embroiderer
Joan DeJean
BookPage review by Deborah Hopkinson
Web Exclusive – May 01, 2018
In her previous book, How Paris Became Paris, Joan DeJean charted the transformation of Paris into a modern, alluring city. Here, DeJean, trustee professor of French at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a number of books on French literature and history, turns her attention to a tale of intrigue and finance in 18th-century France. And what a story it is!
In the preface to The Queen’s Embroiderer, DeJean recalls her discovery of a document in France’s National Archives that catapulted her into tracing the remarkable love story of the hapless Marie Louise Magoulet, daughter of the Queen’s Embroiderer, and Louis Chevrot, son of an ambitious father not about to let his son marry a girl without a dowry like Marie Louise. His father’s solution? Arrest the pregnant Marie Louise as a prostitute and ship her off to New Orleans!
A consummate researcher, DeJean teases out this fascinating history by delving into boxed archival records, contained in “sturdy dark cardboard and tied with dingy beige ribbons.” Yet, as in How Paris Became Paris, DeJean turns her astute eye not just to the story of two individual families but to the broader historical context of the time. In this way, reading The Queen’s Embroiderer is a bit like listening to a fascinating, erudite lecture or examining an elaborate piece of needlework.
Following the stitches of the tale leads readers to an exploration of the worlds of finance and fashion, an analysis of the first stock market boom (and bust), the founding of New Orleans, and the complexity of social relations, including marriage contracts. If your plans for springtime in France haven’t materialized, don’t despair. Just open The Queen’s Embroiderer and you’ll find yourself transported.