do u have any info on Thèrése Gellé and SJ's relationship?
I have all the info there is! Which... is not much. What we know is that something likely did exist in terms of a romantic relationship in their teens (and maybe later, but that one is not proven). Some things could be extrapolated from little that we know, but we have only a few facts. What we know is the following:
Thérèse Gellé was born in 1766 in Blérancourt, as an illegitimate child of a local merchantess and a powerful royal notary Gellé. She was legitimized at 12, when her parents married each other.
SJ moved to Blérancourt at the age of 9. Thérèse was 10. We don't know when they met but since this was a super small community, I assume they knew each other (or at least, knew of each other) as kids.
At some point during their teen years, they seemed to have started a romantic relationship. There are no concrete sources for it except that it’s generally accepted that it happened. What we know is that in December 1785, they were godparents to a child in the village. Some historians see this as a sign that they were seen as a future married couple and chosen together because of this. I am not sure how sound this theory is, but I do think it’s interesting that they were chosen together.
Interestingly, most of the proof/sources for the relationship come from SJ’s early writing (namely, Organt and Arlequin-Diogène). While Thérèse is not mentioned by name, the context and certain (auto)biographical details that appear in these works strongly point out that the main female characters were based on her. (If anyone wants me to talk about what SJ’s writing (potentially) says of Thérèse and/or their relationship, I’d love to do that - I just have to do it in a different post because this one is getting super long).
According to some, SJ asked Gellé for a permission to marry Thérèse and was refused. Not sure if this is true, but since SJ was 18 at the time and still in school, AND not particularly rich, it’s not surprising that Gellé wanted a more “prosperous” option for his daughter.
Which brings us to 25 July 1786. While SJ was away at the boarding school, Thérèse married Emmanuel Thorin, a young notary from a rich family. Historians agree that this marriage (done seemingly in a hurry) was specifically to prevent SJ from marrying her.
SJ graduated and returned from school a few weeks later, and he lost it. Reportedly, he had a huge fight with his mother (for not telling him that Thérèse was getting married? For not presenting him as a good option to Gellé?) Soon after, in early September 1786, he took that infamous silver and ran away to Paris. (I assume this episode is familiar. It resulted with his mother putting him in the correctional house where he stayed for six months, until early 1787).
We don’t know what - if anything - happened between SJ and Thérèse after these events. What we do know is that the Revolution started and Gellé was a royalist who tried to stop revolutionary efforts in the village (he was the one who outed SJ as being too young to be elected for the Legislative Assembly in 1791). So yes, there was a lot of animosity between SJ and Gellé on the political grounds, but we don’t know anything about Thérèse during these years or how she might have reacted to all of this.
But there is a significant event in summer 1793. On the 7th anniversary of her marriage, Thérèse left Thorin and went to Paris. She stayed in a hotel very close to SJ’s place. We know this because SJ’s friend, Victor Thuillier, wrote a much-quoted letter about it. In the letter, he informs SJ that the village believes that SJ had kidnapped Thérèse (not against her will?) and also gives SJ Thérèse’s address in Paris. To which SJ replied basically: “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Tell everyone (in the village) that it’s not true. I am very busy, bye”. (Not direct quotes - you can read more in the link above, though not sure if it’s the best way to translate these letters).
Historians are divided over what happened. Those who are sympathetic towards SJ want to defend him against accusations of having an affair with a married woman, so they trust his word on it. Those unsympathetic towards SJ generally think that he lied and that he was totally behind Thérèse’s escape to Paris.
But what I am more concerned about is how things worked form Thérèse’s POV. She left her husband, AND the village thought that it was because of SJ. This ruined her reputation beyond repair. Even if she did not cheat on Thorin, she was the one who was seen as leaving.
As for SJ, nobody really talks about a possibility that he did help her, but not necessarily as a lover but as a friend - he wrote so much about protecting women from abuse and unwanted marriages that it wouldn’t be so impossible that he helped a childhood friend (tbh, it would be more shitty if he refused after writing so much about helping women). As for the affair... We don’t have any proof either way (except his reply to Thuillier). I disagree with historians who claim that “SJ would never”, because most of his writings actually point out that he was fine with women performing marital infidelity and the like. But this is not a proof either. So we just don’t know.
Thérèse and Thorin had a divorce hearing in September 1793. Historians point out that the reason for the divorce they listed was not adultery, but Thorin didn’t seem to ask for a no-fault, mutual decision divorce either. He seemed to ask or a divorce based on the fact that she left him. In the hearing, Thérèse said that the divorce was mutually desired and she seemed to have asked for her dowry back. Their divorce was decided then, but they had to wait for about 11 months for it to become legal. They were legally divorced in July 1794 (18 days before Thermidor).
That is basically it. We have no idea if SJ and Thérèse had any contact or what she did between this divorce hearing and Thermidor. We do know that she was kind of shunned in the village, while Thorin remarried and had children. Thérèse died in 1806, at the age of 39.
There is one thing, written by SJ near Thermidor, that some people argue could be related to Thérèse, but there is absolutely no proof of it: that strange “story” about a lovers’ misunderstanding. It was the last item written in the notebook found on SJ during Thermidor, and it is super unusual because he left no other writing of this kind, but it’s impossible to say whether it has anything to do with Thérèse or not.
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