The book is written in epistolary form (as a series of letters) and examines the limits of women's freedom in an aristocratic society.

In this tragic novel, influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise, she reflects on the discussions on divorce in the National Assembly before the Concordat of 1801, when the laws were changed; the consequences after the Battle of Verdun (1792) leading to arrests and the September Massacres, the fate of the émigrés.

The main characters have traits of Benjamin Constant and Talleyrand, and the liberalist view of the Italian politician Melzi d'Eril.

[1] In a literary and political essay called De la littérature dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales published in 1800, Germaine de Staël wrote about the history of literature and its links with political contexts, and also advocated the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, which did not please Napoleon.

Delphine's publication in 1802 made things even worse: de Staël was exiled from Paris, and forbidden to get closer than 40 lieues from the city.