Zoé Charlotte de Gamond was a Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 educator and feminist who wrote under the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Marie de G***.

Zoé de Gamond was born in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 into a wealthy liberal family. Her father had been governor of the province of Antwerp

Antwerp (province)

Antwerp is the northernmost province both of the Flemish Region, also called Flanders, and of Belgium. It borders on the Netherlands and the Belgian provinces of Limburg, Flemish Brabant and East Flanders. Its capital is Antwerp which comprises the Port of Antwerp...

 in the time of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands

United Kingdom of the Netherlands

United Kingdom of the Netherlands is the unofficial name used to refer to Kingdom of the Netherlands during the period after it was first created from part of the First French Empire and before the new kingdom of Belgium split out in 1830...

, and was a lawyer and professor after 1830 in the independent Kingdom of Belgium. Her mother was of noble origin and held regular salon

Salon (gathering)

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

s through which Zoé became active in politics.

Originally a partisan of Saint-Simon

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...

, she abandoned his ideas for those of the utopian socialist Charles Fourier

Charles Fourier

François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...

. In the early 1830s she was active in supporting Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 political exiles. It was at this time that she met Polish nationalist Jan Czyński

Jan Czynski

Jan Kazimierz Czyński was a Polish independence activist, lawyer by education, writer and publicist, a life-time fighter for the emancipation of the Jews, trade supporter, utopian socialist, radical democrat....

, with whom she wrote Le Roi des Paysans. She also produced writings on feminism

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 in the middle of the 1830s, at which time she married Italian artist Jean-Baptiste Gatti.

In the late 1830s the Gattis left Brussels for Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where Zoé wrote a successful work, reprinted five times and translated into English, on Fourier's philosophy. With the support of a wealthy English Fourierist, the Gattis established a phalanstère

Phalanstère

A phalanstère was a type of building designed for an utopian community and developed in the early 19th century by Charles Fourier. Based on the idea of a phalanx, this self-contained community ideally consisted of 1500-1600 people working together for mutual benefit...

 at Cîteaux in 1842. This venture proved to be a financial disaster for them, and they returned to Brussels and a life of relative poverty.

With the assistance of Charles Rogier

Charles Rogier

Charles Latour Rogier was a Belgian liberal statesman and a leader in the Belgian Revolution of 1830. He became Prime Minister of Belgium on two separate occasions: from 1847 to 1852, and again from 1857 to 1868....

, Zoé was appointed as inspector of nurseries, girls' schools, and schools for female teachers. She published several educational manuals, along with a guide to running an insane asylum.

She died in 1854, aged only 48, leaving three young daughters, including Isabelle

Isabelle Gatti de Gamond

Isabelle Laure Gatti de Gamond was an Italo-Belgian educationalist, feminist, and politician.Isabelle Gatti was the second of four daughters born to Giovanni Gatti, an Italian artist, and feminist writer Zoé de Gamond, of Brussels...

, who would later be an educationalist and feminist.

Select bibliography

• De la condition sociale des femmes aux dix-neuvième siècle, 1834
• Esquisses sur les femmes, 1836
• (with Jan Czyński) Le Roi des Paysans, 1838
• Fourier et son système, 1838
• Réalisation d'une commune sociétaire d'après la théorie de Charles Fourrier, 1840