Marie Souvestre

Marie Souvestre
Born	28 May 1830 Brest, France
Died	30 March 1905 (aged 74)
Nationality	French
Occupation	educator

Marie Souvestre (28 April 1830 - 30 March 1905) was a feminist educator who sought to develop independent minds in young women.^[1]

She was born in Brest, France, the daughter of French novelist Émile Souvestre. She founded the girls' boarding schools Les Ruches ("the beehives") in Fontainebleau, France, where writer Natalie Clifford Barney and her sister Laura Clifford Barney were later educated, and Allenswood, in Wimbledon, outside London, where her most famous pupil was Eleanor Roosevelt, for whom she became a maternal figure.^[2] Eleanor was so greatly influenced by Souvestre and her feminist beliefs, that she went on to forge a political career.

Dorothy Bussy, the sister of writer Lytton Strachey, anonymously published a novel, Olivia (1949), about her experience as a pupil at Les Ruches, describing the protagonist's crush on the headmistress Mlle. Julie (i.e., Souvestre). Bussy later taught Shakespeare at Allenswood.^[3]

Notes

1. "Marie Souvestre (1830-1905)". George Washington University. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
2. Rodriguez, Suzanne (2002). Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney and the Decadence of Literary Paris. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 39–40. ISBN 0-06-093780-7.
3. Cook, Blanche Wiesen (Summer 1979). "'Women Alone Stir My Imagination': Lesbianism and the Cultural Tradition". Signs 4 (4): 718–739. doi:10.1086/493659. JSTOR 3173368.