though one suspects that the word 'marriage' became a form of
speech employed to describe her relations, not with her husband,
but with her lovers." The passage to which I refer is as follows:

In an unhappy marriage, there is a violence of distress surpassing
all other sufferings in the world. A woman's whole soul depends
upon the conjugal tie. To struggle against fate alone, to journey
to the grave without a friend to support you or to regret you, is
an isolation of which the deserts of Arabia give but a faint and
feeble idea. When all the treasure of your youth has been given in
vain, when you can no longer hope that the reflection of these
first rays will shine upon the end of your life, when there is
nothing in the dusk to remind you of the dawn, and when the
twilight is pale and colorless as a livid specter that precedes
the night, your heart revolts, and you feel that you have been
robbed of the gifts of God upon earth.

Equally striking is another prose passage of hers, which seems
less the careful thought of a philosopher than the screeching of a
termagant. It is odd that the first two sentences recall two
famous lines of Byron:

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
'Tis woman's whole existence.

The passage by Mme. de Stael is longer and less piquant:

Love is woman's whole existence. It is only an episode in the
lives of men. Reputation, honor, esteem, everything depends upon
how a woman conducts herself in this regard; whereas, according to