Reclaiming history
Women of the French Revolution
By Beth Semmer
When asked to name women participants in the French
Revolution, most people in the United States would probably
give one of two answers. Many would not even name a woman who
helped to make the revolution but instead might recall Marie
Antoinette, the queen of France, wife of Louis XVI and famous
for her alleged "let them eat cake" statement.
Others, however, might recall a woman who wasn't even real.
Madame Defarge was a character created by Charles Dickens in
his novel "A Tale of Two Cities." This novel is a
popularization of revisionist history of the French
Revolution.
The novel develops sympathy for the Ancien Regime by telling
a story of unfair treatment of some "kind" members of the
French aristocracy at the hands of the "rabble" during the
French Revolution, much as Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the
Wind" tries to create sympathy for the slaveocracy.
Madame Defarge is the bloodthirsty female image of
revolutionary Paris that Dickens created. She knits while heads
roll and cackles for more executions.
In reality, more than 200 years ago, the women of
revolutionary Paris were demanding legal equality in marriage;
educational opportunities for girls, including vocational
training; public instruction, licensing, and support for
midwives; guarantees for women's rights to employment; an end
to the exclusion of women from certain professions; and even
the right to bear arms.
They were in the forefront of the very important struggles
over the price and distribution of bread that pushed the French
Revolution in directions that no capitalist revolution had gone
before.
Women were active participants in the storming of the
Bastille. Women led the March to Versaille that resulted in
Louis' return to Paris. Poor women participated in the August
10, 1792, defeat of the Swiss Guard at the Tuileries Palace
that resulted in the formation of the Commune and the
imprisonment and later execution of Louis XVI.
Different classes, different demands
Different types of women participated in the French
Revolution. Some were educated and made social, economic, and
political demands that were radical even at a time of unlimited
enthusiasm for reform.
One of these women literally took the title of her treatise
on women's rights from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizen issued by the National Assembly after the nobility and
the upper clergy had surrendered their feudal privileges.
They had been forced to relinquish their privileges after
the conquest of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, by Parisian
artisans and working people, as well as by peasant uprisings in
the countryside during August that demanded freedom from feudal
obligations.
Olympe de Gouge said that the Declaration of Rights of Man
and Citizen did not apply to women and drafted her own
Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizen.
Manon Roland was the wife of a civil servant and an active
participant in the debates of the French Revolution. She and
her husband Jean represented the propertied interests of the
bourgeoisie and were leaders of the Girondins. The Girondins
were the more conservative faction and the Montagnards
(mountain) were the more left faction of the revolutionary
Jacobin forces. Robespierre and Danton led the Montagnards. The
Girondins wanted bourgeois power but feared and despised the
masses.
Theroigne de Mericourt was also a member of the Girondins
but is perhaps best remembered for her participation in the
Women's March on Versaille in October 1789. She had been at the
forefront of the 12-mile march in the rain to confront Louis
XVI. She was a colorful figure and the image of her riding a
horse, wearing men's clothing with pistols shoved into the
waistband of her trousers and waving a sword became popularized
on cards sold in Parisian markets.
Etta Palm D'Aelders was a Dutch feminist who proposed a
network of women's clubs to administer welfare programs in
Paris and throughout France. This was one of several attempts
to form women's clubs that were unsuccessful among bourgeois
women.
Charlotte Corday came from a noble family but was also a
supporter of the Girondins. She hated Jean-Paul Marat, whose
"Ami du Peuple" ("Friend of the People") was the most popular
newspaper with the poor of Paris. Marat, one of the most
radical Jacobins, had demanded the execution of Louis XVI and
incited the Parisian masses to hate the Girondins for their
equivocation to Royalist forces.
Marat spent much of his days writing and soaking in a bath
of medicinal herbs because of a skin disease he had caught
while hiding from his enemies in the sewers of Paris. On July
13, 1793, Charlotte Corday stabbed Jean-Paul Marat to death in
his bathtub.
Femme sans-culottes
Poor women-workers, market women and the wives of the
sans-culottes--also played an important role in the
revolution.
Sans-culottes was originally a term of contempt to describe
the pants of the peasants and the Parisian poor who could not
afford the fancy knee breeches worn by the aristocracy. The
most radical sectors of the revolution later embraced the term
to describe themselves.
The demands of these women--the femme sans-culottes--were
less about bourgeois equality and more about supplying the
Parisian populace with subsistence. Women were the ones who
stood in bread lines and congregated in the streets and
markets, and their behavior was volatile in times of shortages
or increases in the price of bread.
These women used different tactics than the men to exert
their influence. They shouted and stamped their feet in the
spectator gallery of the national legislature. They took
merchandise from shopkeepers and grocers and distributed them
at a "just price" and returned the proceeds to the
merchants.
They also circulated seditious petitions, made insulting
remarks to local and national magistrates and participated in
food riots and popular insurrections.
In 1793 the femme sans-culottes formed the Society of
Revolutionary Republican Women, the first political interest
group for common women in Western history. Claire Lacombe, an
actor, and Pauline Leon, a chocolate maker, founded the
organization.
Led by Lacombe and Leon, these women broke with the
Montagnards in July 1793 and moved closer to the Enrages--the
most extreme representatives on the left for the interest of
the sans-culottes. Even though the authorities tolerated the
Society for barely half a year, it was an historically
important institution representing the organized political
influence of the most downtrodden women.
Lasting influence
The revolutionary government came to an abrupt end in July
1794. The incoming Thermidorians disbanded or transformed the
institutional bases of women's political power and limited
their influence as citizens. The drive for reform of the legal
and social condition of women had ended.
Even though the revolutionary influence of the women of
Paris was not to last, it was not forgotten. To later
generations of Parisian revolutionary women, the women of the
18th century revolution were important for more than their
symbolic inspiration.
The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women became the
prototype of political clubs for women that flourished in the
revolution of 1848. The two presidents, Lacombe and Leon, were
extolled for their attacks on the bourgeoisie and for
championing the interests of working women.
Louise Michel, a leader of the Paris Commune of 1871, the
first working-class government in history, drew inspiration
from the women of the Commune of 1792.
The women of 1789 Paris inspired the women fighting for
liberation from France in Algeria and Vietnam in the 1950s and
1960s. Revolutionary women of Cuba formed the Federation of
Cuban Women, just as the femme sans-culottes formed the Society
of Revolutionary Republican Women.
Even today the women of Argentina and Venezuela use the same
boisterous tactics when they bang their pots and pans to fight
against a coup from the right or demand an end to austerity
measures by the International Monetary Fund.
Reprinted from the July 18, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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