Marie Souvestre was a feminist educator who sought to develop independent minds in young women.

Biography

Souvestre was born on April 28, 1830, in Brest, France

Brest, France

Brest is a city in the Finistère department in Brittany in northwestern France. Located in a sheltered position not far from the western tip of the Breton peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French military port after Toulon...

, the daughter of French novelist Émile Souvestre

Émile Souvestre

Émile Souvestre was a French novelist who was a native of Morlaix, Finistère.He was the son of a civil engineer and was educated at the college of Pontivy, with the intention of following his father's career by entering the Polytechnic School...

.

Career as an educator

Souvestre founded the girls' boarding schools Les Ruches ("the beehives") in Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, where writer Natalie Clifford Barney

Natalie Clifford Barney

Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris....

 and her sister Laura Clifford Barney

Laura Clifford Barney

Laura Clifford Barney , married name Laura Dreyfus-Barney became a leading American Bahá'í teacher and philanthropist. The daughter of Albert and Alice Pike Barney. Albert Clifford Barney was the son of a manufacturer of railway cars and was of English descent...

 were later educated, and Allenswood, outside London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where her most famous pupil was Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...

, for whom she became a maternal figure.

Dorothy Bussy

Dorothy Bussy

Dorothy Bussy was an English novelist and translator.-Family background and childhood:Dorothy Bussy was a member of the Strachey family, one of ten children of Jane Strachey and the great British Empire soldier and administrator Lt-Gen Sir Richard Strachey...

, the sister of writer Lytton Strachey

Lytton Strachey

Giles Lytton Strachey was a British writer and critic. He is best known for establishing a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit...

, anonymously published a novel, Olivia (1949), about her experience as a student at Les Ruches, focusing on the protagonist's crush on the headmistress Mlle. Julie (i.e., Souvestre). Bussy later taught Shakespeare at Allenswood.