Women in the French Revolution

The Women's March on Versailles is but one example of feminist militant activism during the French Revolution. While largely left out of the thrust for increasing rights of citizens, as the question was left indeterminate in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,[11] activists such as Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt agitated for full citizenship for women.[12] Women were, nonetheless, "denied political rights of 'active citizenship' (1791) and democratic citizenship (1793)."[11]

Pauline Léon, on 6 March 1792, submitted a petition signed by 319 women to the National Assembly requesting permission to form a garde national in order to defend Paris in case of military invasion.[12] Léon requested permission be granted to women to arm themselves with pikes, pistols, sabers and rifles, as well as the privilege of drilling under the French Guards. Her request was denied.[13] Later in 1792, Théroigne de Méricourt made a call for the creation of "legions of amazons" in order to protect the revolution. As part of her call, she claimed that the right to bear arm would transform women into citizens.[14]

Assassination of Marat

On 20 June 1792, many armed women took part in a procession that "passed through the halls of the Legislative Assembly, into the Tuileries Gardens, and then through the King's residence."[15] Militant women also assumed a special role in the funeral of Marat, following his murder on 13 July 1793. As part of the funeral procession, they carried the bathtub in which Marat had been murdered as well as a shirt stained with Marat's blood.[16]

The most radical militant feminist activism was practiced by the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, which was founded by Léon and her colleague, Claire Lacombe on 10 May 1793.[17] The club's goal was "to deliberate on the means of frustrating the projects of the enemies of the Republic." Up to 180 women attended the meetings of the Society.[18] Of special interest to the Society was "combating hoarding [of grain and other staples] and inflation."[19] On 20 May 1793, women were at the fore of a crowd that demanded "bread and the Constitution of 1793." When their cries went unnoticed, the women went on a rampage, "sacking shops, seizing grain and kidnapping officials."[20]

The Society demanded a law in 1793 that would compel all women to wear the tricolore cockade insignia to demonstrate their loyalty to the Republic. They also repeated their demands for vigorous price controls to keep bread – the major food of the poor people – from becoming too expensive. After the Convention passed the cockade law in September 1793, the Revolutionary Republican Women demanded vigorous enforcement. Still, they were countered by market women, former servants, and religious women who adamantly opposed price controls (which would drive them out of business) and resented attacks on the aristocracy and religion. They said that "Only whores and female Jacobins wear cockades."[21] Fistfights broke out in the streets between the two factions of women.[22]

Meanwhile, the men who controlled the Jacobins rejected the Revolutionary Republican Women as dangerous rabble-rousers. At this point, the Jacobins controlled the government; they dissolved the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women and decreed that all women's clubs and associations were illegal. They sternly reminded women to stay home and tend to their families by leaving public affairs to the men. Organized women were permanently shut out of the French Revolution after October 30, 1793.[23] Women's breasts were seen as a natural sign that women were to be barred from citizenship and the wielding of political power; women were to be relegated to the domestic sphere and motherhood.[24]

Most of these outwardly activist women were punished for their militancy. The kind of punishment received during the Revolution included public denouncement, arrest, execution, or exile. Théroigne de Méricourt was arrested, publicly flogged and then spent the rest of her life sentenced to an insane asylum. Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe were arrested, later released, and continued to receive ridicule and abuse for their activism. Many of the Revolution women were even publicly executed for "conspiring against the unity and the indivisibility of the Republic".[25]

Olympe de Gouges wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791.

Madame de Staël, one of the most sophisticated activists and commentators on the Revolution[26]

While some women chose a militant and often violent path, others chose to influence events through writing, publications, and meetings. Olympe de Gouges wrote a number of plays, short stories, and novels. Her publications emphasized that women and men are different, but this shouldn't stop them from equality under the law. In her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen she insisted that women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and recognition of illegitimate children.[27]

De Gouges also expressed non-gender political views; even before the start of the terror, Olympe de Gouges addressed Robespierre using the pseudonym "Polyme" calling him the Revolution's "infamy and shame." She warned of the Revolution's building extremism, saying that leaders were "preparing new shackles if [the French people's liberty were to] waver." Stating that she was willing to sacrifice herself by jumping into the Seine if Robespierre were to join her, de Gouges desperately attempted to grab the attention of the French citizenry and alert them to the dangers that Robespierre embodied.[27] Olympe de Gouges was one of few public voices to protest the human slave trade and the only woman to openly criticize the government's suspending of the democratic constitution of 1793.[28] In addition to these bold writings, her defense of the king was one of the factors leading to her execution. An influential figure, one of her suggestions early in the Revolution, to have a voluntary, patriotic tax, was adopted by the National Convention in 1789.[29]

Madame Roland (aka Manon or Marie Roland) was another important female activist. Her political focus was not specifically on women or their liberation. She focused on other aspects of the government but was a feminist by virtue of the fact that she was a woman working to influence the world. Her personal letters to leaders of the Revolution influenced policy; in addition, she often hosted political gatherings of the Brissotins, a political group that allowed women to join.[30]

While limited by her gender, Madame Roland took it upon herself to spread Revolutionary ideology and spread the word of events, as well as to assist in formulating the policies of her political allies. Unable to directly write policies or carry them through to the government, Roland influenced her political allies and promoted her political agenda. Roland attributed women's lack of education to the public view that women were too weak or vain to be involved in the serious business of politics. She believed that it was this inferior education that turned them into foolish people, but women "could easily be concentrated and solidified upon objects of great significance" if given a chance.[30]

As she was led to the scaffold, Madame Roland shouted, "O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!" Witnesses of her life and death, editors, and readers helped to finish her writings, and several editions were published posthumously. While she did not focus on gender politics in her writings, by taking an active role in the tumultuous time of the Revolution, Roland took a stand for women of the time and proved they could take an intelligent, active role in politics.[31]

Though women did not gain the right to vote due to the Revolution, they still greatly expanded their political participation and involvement in government. They set precedents for generations of feminists to come. A leading example of lasting feminine influence from that time was Madame de Staël (1766-1817) who both witnessed the tumultuous events, participated in, and commented on them.[32]

A major aspect of the French Revolution was the dechristianisation movement, which many common people disagreed with. Especially for women living in rural areas of France, the demise of the Catholic Church meant a loss of normalcy. For instance, the ringing of Church bells resonating through the town called people to confession and symbolised unity for the community.[33] With the onset of the dechristianisation campaign, the Republic silenced these bells and sought simultaneously to silence the religious fervor of the majority Catholic population.[33]

When these revolutionary changes to the Church were implemented, it spawned a counter-revolutionary movement, particularly amongst women. Although some of these women embraced the political and social amendments of the Revolution, they opposed the dissolution of the Catholic Church and the formation of revolutionary cults like the Cult of the Supreme Being advocated by Robespierre.[34] As Olwen Hufton argues, these women began to see themselves as the "defenders of the faith".[35] They took it upon themselves to protect the Church from what they saw as a heretical change to their faith, enforced by revolutionaries.

Counter-revolutionary women resisted what they saw as the intrusion of the state into their lives.[36] Economically, many peasant women refused to sell their goods for assignats because this form of currency was unstable and was backed by the sale of confiscated Church property.[37] By far the most important issue to counter-revolutionary women was the passage and the enforcement of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790. In response to this measure, women in many areas began circulating anti-oath pamphlets and refused to attend masses held by priests who had sworn oaths of loyalty to the Republic. This diminished the social and political influence of the juring priests because they presided over smaller congregations, and counter-revolutionary women did not seek them for baptisms, marriages or confession. Instead, they secretly hid nonjuring priests and attended clandestine traditional masses.[38] These women continued to adhere to traditional practices such as Christian burials and naming their children after saints in spite of revolutionary decrees to the contrary.[39]

It was this determined resistance to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the dechristianisation campaigns that played a major role in the re-emergence of the Catholic Church as a prominent social institution. Olwen Hufton notes about the Counter-Revolutionary women: "for it is her commitment to her religion which determines in the post-Thermidorean period the re-emergence of the Catholic Church...".[40] Although they struggled, these women were eventually vindicated in their bid to re-establish the Church and thereby also to reestablish traditional family life and social stability. This was seen in the Concordat of 1801, which formally reinstated the Catholic Church in France.[41] This act came after years of attempts at dechristianisation or state-controlled religion, which were thwarted in part due to the resistance of religiously devout counter-revolutionary women.

• Levy, Darline Gay, ed. Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795 (1981) 244pp excerpt and text search
• Marquise de Maintenon "Instruction to the Nuns of St. Louis," in Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women. ed. Anne R. Larsen and Colette H Winn. (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 2000), 321.
• Mousset, Sophie (2007). Women's Rights and the French Revolution. Joy Poirel. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7658-0345-0.
• Walker, Leslie H. "Sweet and Consoling Virtue: The Memoirs of Madame Roland" Eighteenth-Century Studies, French Revolutionary Culture (2001): 403–419.
• "Women." The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert. The University of Michigan Library, n.d. Web. 29 October 2009. < http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/> .