Caroline Massin

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Anne Caroline Massin (1802–1877)

Anne Caroline Massin (born July 2, 1802 in Châtillon-sur-Seine , † January 27, 1877 in Paris ) lived as a seamstress , owner of a reading room and governess in Paris. From 1824 to 1842 she was married to the mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte .

Life

Born on July 2, 1802, the illegitimate daughter of the French actors Louis Hilaire Massin and Marie Anne Justine Baudelot, Caroline Massin grew up with her maternal grandmother in Paris. When her grandfather, Estienne Baudelot, a tailor, died in 1813 and her grandmother, Louise Marguerite nee. Lefebvre was no longer able to support her, Massin returned to her mother. According to Auguste Comte's notes, Anne Badelot “sold” her daughter a few years later to the Paris lawyer Antoine Cerclet. When Cerclet left Massin, she began earning a living as a prostitute .

Caroline Massin and Auguste Comte met in 1821 and lived together for a few months until Antoine Cerclet returned and the relationship ended. Two years later, the two met again in a reading room ("cabinet de lecture") that Cerclet had bought for Massin.

In July 1824, Massin was recognized by a police officer in a restaurant where she was having lunch with Comte and taken away. She had failed to report to the hygiene control required for prostitutes. Comte married Massin on February 19, 1825 in order, as he later wrote himself, to save her from punishment and to remove her name from the police list of prostitutes.

The marriage, later described by Comte as unhappy, lasted until 1842, when Massin and Comte finally separated. Comte's character was difficult to describe. In 1826 he fell ill and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital , which he left without having been cured. In April 1827, he failed a suicide attempt . Through his marriage to Caroline Massin, Comte found the support and stabilization that supported his journalistic activities and research.

Caroline Massin then found a job as governess. She died in Paris in 1877.

Criticism of Auguste Comte's notes

The portrayal of Caroline Massin in literature as a prostitute and unfaithful wife is primarily based on a five-page addition that Auguste Comte wrote to his will. However, there is some evidence that this representation is bogus.

Auguste Comte found his relationship with Massin very bitter later in life. Chances are he portrayed Massin in a bad light to prevent her from inheriting part of his estate. In a detailed analysis of the correspondence between Massin and Comte, for example, Mary Pickering comes to the conclusion that Caroline Massin probably never worked as a prostitute and already earned her living as a young woman with tailoring.

literature

  • PR Baehr: Founders, Classics, Canons. Modern Disputes Over the Origins and Appraisal of Sociology's Heritage . Transaction Publishers, 2002.
  • M. Gane: Harmless Lovers? Gender, Theory and Personal Relationships . Routledge, 1993.
  • Mary Pickering: Auguste Comte. An Intellectual Biography . Cambridge University Press, 1993.
  • R. Repplinger: Auguste Comte and the emergence of sociology from the spirit of the crisis . Campus textbook, 2001.
  • JM Style: Auguste Comte - Thinker and Lover . Read Books, 1928.
  • P. Gentil and B. Gentil: Auguste Comte / Caroline Massin. Correspondance inédite (1831-1851). L'histoire de Caroline Massin, épouse d'Auguste Comte à travers leur correspondance . Commentaires philosophiques, 2006.
  • Mary Pickering: Auguste Comte. His Life and Works (1798-1842) . Ph. D. diss., Harvard University, 1988.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Genealogy of the Massin family, gw.geneanet.org [1]
  2. ↑ Genealogy of the Baudelot family, gw.geneanet.org [2]
  3. ^ Mary Pickering: Auguste Comte: Volume 1: An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-5210-2574-5 , p. 316
  4. ^ "Secret appendix" to the will of Auguste Comtes, Comte 1896, 36a - 36g
  5. ↑ Pickering 1993, 316ff and 373ff; Style 1928, 33ff; Repplinger 2001, 55ff; Gane 1993, 121f
  6. ^ For example, Jane Styles: Auguste Comte. Thinker and Lover . 1928
  7. ↑ Baehr 2002, p. 56; Pickering 1993, p. 373ff
personal data
SURNAME Massin, Caroline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Massin, Anne Caroline (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French seamstress, owner of a reading room, governess and wife of Auguste Comte
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Châtillon-sur-Seine
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1877
Place of death Paris