On the subject of the real Marie de Gournay - I'm still ploughing through this really good, but dense and in French - book about her, and I'm so impressed - everything new I read about her reinforces that she was incredibly ahead of her time.
Although she remained a monarchist, she argued against absolutism and in favour of representation for all levels of society. She was clever enough to frame 'democratising' power as beneficial for the monarchy - she said that for every French subject that was lifted out of poverty and treated with respect, she could guarantee ten fewer malcontents and rebels.
She also said that merit knows no class, and even the highest roles in society should be open to everybody, even someone from the lowest classes, based solely on merit. In other places, she strongly implies that the highest roles should also be open to women.
She wrote passionately about the plight of the poor - 'everything is taken from them and nothing is ever given to them' 'listened to by no-one and hated by everyone' and says that poor women are treated worst of all.
She was very minor nobility herself, but her father died and they had a lot of financial difficulties; this may have facilitated her career as a single woman and self-supporting writer, because the family couldn't have afforded a dowry for her anyway, so she being a rebel and an oddball had the advantage for the family of being cheap!
For someone of her class to relate so sympathetically to poor people's emotional experience of deprivation and oppression is surprising.
All this a century and a half before 'Liberty, Fraternity and Equality'!
I've read that she wrote poems to her several beloved cats, but I haven't been able to find them. History is silent on her attitude to gerbils😁