About the author

Chantal Thomas

Currently a Director of Research at the French National Center for Scientific Research, Chantal Thomas taught literature in New York and in Tucson, AZ, and she returns to the US regularly. Many of her books have been published in English, including The Wicked Queen: Marie Antoinette.

Coping with Freedom

Reflections on Ephemeral Happiness

Price range: $9.95 through $21.95

An approachable essay on personal freedom, this lively book is inspired by the author’s own 20 th century life experience as well as 18th century philosophers, and literary and historical references.

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Single, and loving it! In this approachable essay on personal freedom without guilt, Chantal Thomas alternates between self-examination and investigations into love, travel and living arrangements. Drawing on immediate experience and literary and historical references. she shares the lyrical pleasure that can come from sitting alone in a café, living in a room of one’s own, or simply not having children. She evokes Sade and Casanova, Thoreau and Sartre, existentialism and feminism, crafting a personal philosophy that goes beyond the most essential “self-help” theories. Her precious volume gives homage to independence - to its insolence, its power of detachment, its quality of otherness.

About the Book

An approachable essay on personal freedom, this lively book is inspired by the author's own 20 th century life experience as well as 18th century philosophers, and literary and historical references.How can we catch those ephemeral moments when the bold breeze of independence fills our hearts? This book offers insights and courage to help us revel in the game of life, the urge to laugh, the delight of reading, the art of the journey, and the right to say "no" to chains of obligations and family ties. It's a subtle handbook on how to cherish these sensations, so fragile and yet so essential to our personal liberty.40 Million American women of marriageable age are single. This book addresses many of their concerns, in a profound and delightful way.Echoing the anxieties of existentialism as much as the most essential "self-help" theories, this precious volume gives homage to a life of independence.

About the Book

What does it actually feel like to be free — and why is it so hard to enjoy? That's the central question French author Chantal Thomas explores in this elegant, personal essay translated from the original French by Andrea L. Secara. Thomas doesn't approach freedom as an abstract political concept but as something lived in small, specific moments: sitting alone in a Lyon hotel by the Saône River, staying out late with nowhere to be, choosing not to have children, taking off without explanation.

The book draws on an impressive range of literary and historical figures to think through what independence really costs and rewards. Thomas invokes Sade, Casanova, Sartre, and Thoreau alongside less expected voices like the explorer Isabelle Eberhardt, Flaubert traveling through the Orient, and Rimbaud's restless escapes. She also examines how writers like Michelet portrayed the solitary woman — as someone to be pitied — and pushes back hard against that tradition.

Organized around themes of solitude, travel, and personal style, the book moves between memoir and cultural criticism with an ease that never feels forced. Thomas celebrates the right to contradict yourself, the right to leave, and the particular freedom of passing through a place without belonging to it. For anyone navigating life outside conventional structures — single by choice, childless, or simply resistant to the usual obligations — this is a thoughtful and quietly liberating read. Originally published in France in 1998, it remains a rare defense of ephemeral happiness as something worth protecting.

Additional information

Weight N/A
Book Type Ebook, Hard cover, Soft cover
Pages

168

Release Year

LC Classification

BJ1884 .T4613

Dewey code

123'.5—dc21

BISAC I

SOC028000

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