Caroline Massin (2 July 1802 – 27 January 1877) was a French seamstress known for her tempestuous marriage with the philosopher Auguste Comte during the most creative period of his life. Comte was mentally unstable and had jealous fantasies about his wife's infidelities. Early in the marriage he broke down and was confined to an asylum for several months. The marriage continued to be strained, with constant money worries. Although Caroline supported her husband and believed in his genius, Comte could never accept her independence. They separated after 17 years. In his last years Comte wrote an appendix to his will in which he accused Caroline of having been a prostitute. The slur was later repeated by his followers. After his death Caroline encouraged a sympathetic biographer of Comte and helped launch a magazine devoted to his philosophy of positivism.
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Early years
Caroline Massin was born in Châtillon-sur-Seine on 2 July 1802.
Her parents were Louis Hilare Massin and Marie Anne Baudelot, provincial actors.
They were not married and separated soon after she was born.
She was raised in a warm and upright environment in Paris by her maternal grandmother, the wife of a tailor.
In 1813 her grandfather died.
Her grandmother could no longer support her and returned her to her mother.
Her life in the next few years is obscure.
She seems to have been given some education since her surviving letters show she wrote well.
She may have worked as a laundress, seamstress or actress.
She was running a bookshop or reading room in 1822 when Auguste Comte met her through a mutual friend, a young and liberal lawyer named Antoine Cerclet.
Comte and Caroline Massin began meeting occasionally in public.
In the autumn of 1823 Comte began giving Caroline mathematics lessons at her apartment, and they became intimate.
Early in 1824 Caroline sold the reading room, planning to live for a time off the proceeds.
In February 1824 she and Comte moved into an apartment just off the rue Saint-Honoré for which she supplied the furniture.
They settled into a regular and happy routine, eating at home and retiring early.
In letters written in 1824 Comte described Caroline as "very spiritual, very kind, and pretty."
He loved "her good heart, her graces, her rare spirit, her kindness, her happy character and her good habits."
His best friend Pierre Valat wrote that she had great charm and high intelligence, and was passionately loved by Comte.
They decided to marry, and Comte wrote to ask his parents for their approval.
The marriage took place on 19 February 1825.
Caroline's mother attended and gave her consent. Both she and Caroline gave their occupations as washerwomen.
There were four witnesses, including Antoine Cerclet.
Married life
The marriage was unhappy, often violent, stressed by lack of money and with several separations, but it was during the marriage that Comte wrote his masterwork, the six volume Cours de Philosophie Positive (Course in Positive Philosophy).
The couple had little money and Comte could not find work he liked, but at the end of July they managed to make a visit to Comte's parents in Montpellier.
Caroline and Comte's parents did not get on.
Comte suspected that Caroline was being unfaithful, possibly with Cerclet and others.
They separated in March 1826, and soon after Comte had a mental breakdown.
Comte took refuge in a hotel in Saint Denis, from where he wrote to Caroline, then disappeared.
She guessed that he had gone to Montmorency, one of his favorite places, and found him there trying to set fire to his room.
With the help of a local doctor she calmed him down.
She returned to Paris to get help from Cerclet, and he was able to find a place at the asylum run by the psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol.
Cerclet, Caroline and Comte's friend the celebrated biologist Henri Blainville managed to move Comte there through a ruse.
Louis Massin, Caroline's father, had appeared just before Comte's breakdown to ask her for money.
She refused, and in revenge he slandered her to Comte's very respectable parents, telling them her infidelities had driven their son mad.
Final separation
At yet another crisis in the relationship, Caroline found an apartment for herself in the 9th arrondissement and moved there on 5 August 1842.
This time the separation proved final.
She left Comte just after the completion of his Cours de philosophie positive.
Caroline recognized that the problems with the marriage were due to her insistence on equality. She wrote,
I have always been devoted to you, but I was not at all submissive. If there had been less real devotion and more submission, things would have been better between us. Many times you were basically right, but you asked me to yield in the name of your authority, and I stood up to you when I should have submitted. Really, I did not know how to be submissive, but even so, I did love you. You know that very well.... My great crime was to see in you a husband, not a master. I know very well that you are superior to me in many respects, and besides, this comparison has always seemed to me . . . most absurd. We did not do the same things.
Comte wrote to John Stuart Mill on 24 August 1842 to pour out his troubles,
Our personal friendship (...) causes me not to wait any longer to give you an important piece of personal news. A fundamental change, more favorable than unfavorable, has occurred in my household since my last letter. Madame Comte has left me voluntarily and probably irrevocably. For seventeen years I have been married, as a result of an unfortunate love to a woman of rare moral and intellectual qualities, but brought up under blameworthy principles and with a false notion of the essential function that her sex must play in the human economy. Her total lack of affection for me has never made it possible for me to overlook either her resistance to my authority or her despotic character. There have been none of the compensations of a loving disposition, the only special quality in which women are irreplaceable, and the power of which modern anarchy prevents them from appreciating as they should.
Later life
Caroline Massin was intelligent and had some education.
She was offered a job as a governess immediately after she finally separated from Comte.
After Comte was dismissed from the École Polytechnique in 1844, his English collaborator John Stuart Mill gave him some immediate funds and arranged for three of his wealthy friends to provide him with a pension.
Later his supporter Émile Littré arranged for a group of 73 of his French supporters to provide a stipend on which he could live comfortably.
Some sources say that Caroline began an affair with Émile Littré.
Certainly Comte broke with Littré due in part to jealousy of Littre's friendship with Caroline.
After the break Comte began in visit his benefactors in person rather than have the funds delivered by Littré.
He continued to give half his money to Caroline.
Caroline continued to correspond with Comte, and continued to help him.
When the government refused to authorize him to continue teaching his course on the history of humanity in 1850, Caroline obtained an interview with Jean-Martial Bineau, the Minister of Public Works, and wrote follow-up letters that eventually resulted in renewal of the authorization.
Due to the breakdown of their marriage, and because he had fallen in love with another woman, Clotilde de Vaux, Comte later tried to destroy her reputation.
He wrote a "secret addition" to his will in which he insinuated that she was a prostitute.