Benjamin Constant’s relations with women have been a topic of endless fascination and attention. Almost every scholar of Constant’s novel Adolphe has given in to the temptation to identify the real-life woman who was the model for the novel’s main female protagonist Ellénore. (The principal candidates are Charlotte von Hardenberg, Germaine de Staël, and Anna Lindsay.) And many have insisted that the fictional Adolphe is a more or less transparent representation of Constant himself. Although such identifications are informative, they are less illuminating than analyzing how the important women in Constant’s life influenced his reflections on interpersonal relationships, human sentiments, and the importance of both for understanding society and politics.

Constant had casual and serious relationships with many women, and married twice. In 1789, as a young conseiller de Légation at the court of Brunswick, he married Wilhemine Luise Johanne “Minna” von Cramm, a lady-in-waiting. Due to Constant’s absences, Minna’s infidelities, and general incompatibility, by 1791 the marriage was in serious trouble; their separation in 1793 was legally codified in 1795. In 1808, he married another German woman, Charlotte von Hardenberg, with whom he remained until his death in 1830. All the evidence suggests that this was the most emotionally stable relationship of his life.