Marguerite Coppin

Marguerite Coppin
Born Marguerite Aimee Rosine Coppin
(1867-02-02)2 February 1867
Brussels, Belgium
Died 1931 (aged 63–64)
England
Nationality Belgium
Occupation feminist, poet

Marguerite Aimee Rosine Coppin (2 February 1867 – 1931) born in Brussels, was a Belgian novelist and poet.

Biography

She followed the lessons at the school of Isabelle Gatti de Gamond. Like her teacher she became a feminist and pioneer in female emancipation and equal rights for women.[1] She was compared with women's rights activists Amelia Bloomer and Emmeline Pankhurst.[2]

Marguerite Coppin was a daughter of Charles-Henri Coppin, merchant in lace, born in Wijtschate (West-Flanders) and of Marie Lehaut, born near Lille.

She became a teacher and in 1891 she offered her services to a rich family in Austria. Afterwards she came to live in Bruges with her mother where they lived until the outbreak of the war in 1914. She acted there as teacher of French for the benefit of the English residents.

Her first novels were published without an autors name. The first, Initiation, was published as feuilleton in La Revue de Belgique, a liberal paper, influenced by freemasonry and freethinking.

Her novel Hors sexe occasioned scandal. The work was seized by the public prosecutor and Coppin was accused of gross indecency. No further effect was given, but Coppin was more cautious in her expressions.

She was actively involved with the French cultural life in Bruges and Brussels. She wrote in local papers such as Journal de Bruges en Le Carillon in Ostend. She also gave lectures for cultural associations such as Cercle Littéraire Excelsior as Chat Noir. She was also secretary of the Press Syndicate in Bruges, especially designated to entertain British visitors, like in 1902 when a group English journalists visited the exhibition of Flemish Primitives in Bruges.

Some citizens in Bruges were scandalised when Coppin rode a bicycle down the streets of the city with her skirts clipped up to each ankle to function like trousers. The bicycle was recognized by 19th-century feminists and suffragists as a "freedom machine" for women contributing to Female emancipation. "A woman on a bicycle? Brazen!" said some shocked people in Bruges according to an Australian news article published as late as in 1937. Like Amelia Bloomer, Coppin devised a convenient and comfortable trouser like garment for women to use for bicycle riding.[2]

In 1914 with the outbreak of war Coppin fled to England where she worked as a French teacher[3] until her death in 1931.[2]

Coppin was an adept of antroposophy and theosophy. This is visible in her novels. She received the award of the Orient Star, an order founded in 1914 by Rudolf Steiner and Helena Blavatsky.

After having disappeared in oblivion during almost a century, Marguerite Coppin benefitted of a renewed inerest and of reedition of some of her works.

Publications

  • Ressort cassé, 1889, feministist novel, Brussels, Kistemaekers, 1889, reedited by Mirande Lucien, Brussels, 2011.
  • Le Troisième Sexe followed by Hors Sexe, Brussels, Kistemaekers, 1890, reedition of Hors Sexe by Mirande Lucien, Brussels, 2012.
  • Solesme sceul aymé, 1891, novel.
  • Le charme de Bruges, 1892, novel.
  • Initiation, 1895, Brussels, Weissenbruch.
  • Poèmes de femme, 1896, Bruges.
  • Maman et autres poèmes, 1898, Ostend, Bouchery.
  • Initiation nouvelle, 1898, novel.
  • Le triomphal amour, 1899, novel, Ostend, Bouchery.
  • Contes sur l'histoire de Belgique, 1905, Ostend, Bouchery.
  • Monsieur Benoiton, docteur, 1909, novel, Liège, Société belge d'édition.
  • Nouveaux poèmes, 1911, Ostend, Bouchery.
  • Némésis, novel.
  • Le livre du bonheur.

Litterature

  • Gustave DE L'YSER, 800 Croquis et silhouettes, 1899.
  • Under the shadow of the Germans. An interview with Belgian's leading poetess, in: The Queenslander (Australië), 6 februari 1915.
  • Walter RAVEZ, Femmes de lettres belges, 1939.
  • Bicycle Ride that Shocked People of Bruges, in: The Herald, Melbourne, 4 December 1937.
  • Bibliographie des écrivains français de Belgique, T. I. Brussel, 1958.
  • Fernand BONNEURE, Marguerite Coppin, in: Brugge Beschreven. Hoe een stad in teksten verschijnt, Brussel Elsevier, 1984.
  • Jan SCHEPENS, Marguerite COPPIN, in: Lexicon van West-Vlaamse schrijvers, T. II, Torhout, 1985.
  • Éliane GUBIN & Marie-Sylvie DUPONT-BOUCHAT, Dictionnaire des femmes belges, Tielt, Lannoo, 2006, ISBN 2-87386-434-6, ISBN 978-2-87386-434-7.
  • Mirande LUCIEN, Marguerite Coppin ou l’amour hors les sens, in: Textyles, 2012.
  • Corinne BLANCHAUD, Dictionnaire des écrivains francophones classiques, Belgique, Canada, Québec, Luxembourg, Suisse romande, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2013.
  • Mirande LUCIEN, La femme-écrivain de province et la femme-inspiratrice dans 'Initiation' de Marguerite Coppin, in: Textyles, 2015.
  • Sharon LARSON , A New Model of Femininity: Marguerite Coppin, Decadent Fiction and Belgian Girls’ Education, 2016.
  • Nathalie Clifford BARNEY, Women lovers or the Third Woman (1926), Edited and Translated by Chelsea Ray, University of Wisconsin Press, 2016.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Éliane Gubin, Marie-Sylvie Dupont-Bouchat, Dictionnaire des femmes belges Bruges, Lannoo Uitgeverij, 2006 ISBN 2-87386-434-6, ISBN 978-2-87386-434-7 Preview available
  2. 1 2 3 "Bicycle Ride that Shocked People of Bruges (World's News)". The Herald. Melbourne. 4 December 1937. p. 16.
  3. ↑ Marguerite Coppin : Fin de siècle – Ressort cassé (1889). QuestionDeGenre/GKC, Montpellier (France) 2011.


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