Quote by Germaine de Staël: “Love is the whole history of a woman's life; it is but an episode in a man's.”

Society conditions women to make love the center of their entire existence, while men treat it as one chapter among many. De Staël wasn't celebrating this — she was exposing the unfairness of a world where women's value was tied entirely to romantic and domestic life.

De Staël wrote Corinne in 1807 while in exile from France, where Napoleon had banned her from Paris. The novel explored the tragedy of a brilliant woman whose gifts were unrecognized by a society that reduced women's purpose to love and marriage.

French-Swiss writer and political thinker who was one of the most influential intellectuals in Napoleonic Europe. Her novels Delphine and Corinne, and her critical work On Literature, helped define Romanticism and championed women's intellectual and creative life.