Constance de Salm's life spanned the politically turbulent years connecting the 17th and 18th centuries. She was an active participant in intellectual debates in the years following the 1789 Revolution, as well as during the Empire and Restoration periods in France. She died in Paris on April 13th, 1845, during the reign of Louis Philippe. Constance de Salm is referred to, and published under, a variety of names including: Constance-Marie de Théis, Mme Pipelet de Leury, and Princess de Salm-Reifferscheid-Dyck. This variety of names was symbolic of the number of roles and identities that she embodied over her lifetime. She was a writer, a mother, a daughter, a wife, a patriot, and a female intellectual. The list of her works, available here External, is lengthy and similarly varied. She was born in 1767 in Nantes to an educated and well- to-do family. Her father, Alexandre de Théis supported her intellectual endeavors and they co-authored Essais when she was just 18, published in Almanach des grâce. She married a surgeon, Jean Baptiste Pipelet de Leury in 1789, but divorced a decade later, taking advantage of the period during which divorces were easily obtained (Napoleon would later make them more difficult to secure).

When she married Count de Salm-Reifferscheid-Dyck in 1803 she took on the title of Princesse de Salm, and began to split her time between Germany and Paris. She was interested in comparing the conditions of women in different classes in those two countries. In Paris she held a salon that entertained such writers as Stendhal (pen name to Marie-Henri Beyle), Lord Byron, and Alexandre Dumas, as well as the political figure and military general, Marquis de Lafayette. She was a poet at heart, but enjoyed a variety of writing and paid special attention to syntax and selecting the "bon mot". She engaged with the storied Querelle des femmes auteurs and wrote Épître aux femmes in 1797 in answer to the French lyrical poet Ponce Denis Écouchard-Le Brun External. She authored works of poetry, epistles (letters), political and philosophical tracts, eulogies, ballads, cantatas, and composed melodies. Her well-received lyric-verse tragedy, Sapho, tragédie melée de chants in 1794, paid tribute to the great woman poet of ancient Greece. Constance is not as widely known as many figures from the French Revolution, but deeper studies of her life reveal the extent of her influence and contacts. Her letters were not all published, but they number in the thousands and reveal the scope of her network. Her letters offer favors, ask for advice, give support for other women, and include the occasional bit of literary gossip. They reflect the many roles that Constance was able to fill. The recent book, Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women who Styled the French Revolution External, by art historian and professor Anne Higonnet has done much to bring her back into the spotlight. Higonnet sites Pipelet's bold Epistole to Women (1797): "But already thousands condemn our courage; They are shocked. they whisper, they are unnerved, they heckle. They want to take our pens and our paintbrushes away." (p.210)

Constance de Salm was a devoted defender of republican patriotism. Yet she grappled with the conflicts between traditional feminine roles and establishing rights for women — demonstrating a rare ability to see nuance, and appreciate aspects of both without degrading either. She spoke about the physical dependency of women on men, but contended that women were also moral beings with an essence that should be free. She thought and wrote about motherhood, women's education and citizenship. Known for her wit and her personable manner, she no doubt did much for the cause of women by merely representing herself as someone of talent, dignity and confidence. She had the desire to be feminine, even with her short cropped "revolutionary" hair and empire-waisted gown. Her creative works, though not always well-received, were revolutionary in their content and ambition. As the first woman to be admitted to the Lycée des arts in 1795, she led a life that proved women were capable of building their own destinies and responding to life's ups and downs with resilience and thoughtfulness. She suffered a personal tragedy in the sudden and horrific death of her daughter and only child, Clémence, in 1820 in a murder-suicide. Her daughter was a widow and mother to three children when she became entangled with the man who would lead to her death. The magnitude of Contance's grief is recorded in her letters to friends where her anger towards her daughter's lover is obvious. In a letter dated August 15th 1820, to Louis-Mathieu Langlès, she refers to the man, Althoff, as "ce monstre" (cited in McNiven Hine, p.21). In Constance de Salm: Her Influence, and her circle in the aftermath of the French Revolution, author McNiven Hine compares Constance de Salm to such figures as Germaine de Staël and Mary Wollstonecraft. But perhaps most poignant is McNiven Hine's observation that Constance de Salm insisted on being her own muse.

For an overview of French women in history and the evolution of the French feminist movement, please see the research guide Feminism & French Women in History.

For full text digitized copies of most of her work, search the Bibliothèque nationale de France's digital Library, Gallica under the name: Salm, Constance de (1767-1845) External. A sampling of these publications are listed below under External Websites.

You can identify additional material at the Library of Congress by searching the Library of Congress Online Catalog using the following headings:

Pipelet, citoyenne, 1767-1845 (Subject Heading; returns works about Constance de Salm, also known as Citoyenne Pipelet)