Name: Alivia Banerjee

Roll:17/his/002
How did French revolution impact the women of
France? Discuss the role and participation of
women in the revolutionary process.

Introduction
Women’s experiences of the French Revolution were as varied as the women
themselves. Noble women from the privileged world of Versailles, educated
women of the middle classes, peasant women from the Vendée, silk weavers
from Lyon, market women from Paris: all had very different responses to the
Revolution. Many women were active participants in the Revolution:
marching and protesting on the streets, debating in societies, viewing the
proceedings of the assemblies and clubs from the public galleries, and writing
pamphlets. Liberty, equality and fraternity were the founding principles of the
Revolution.
Women achieved a number of social and civil rights during the Revolution,
including the right to equal inheritance and the right to divorce on equal terms
with men (though the later right was partially dismantled under Napoleon and
removed altogether when the monarchy was restored). They were given
‘passive’ rights as citizens, and the protection of the law. They did not,
however, gain political rights, and were never accorded the status of ‘active’
citizens. The extent to which the active involvement of women in politics was
acceptable continued to be a contested subject throughout the period of the
Revolution. The different experiences of women in the French Revolution
have implications for the very nature of the Revolution, and make us
reevaluate what the Revolution was about. Revolutionary ideology was
founded on the belief that active participants in the Revolution should be
motivated by their political virtue, that is, by their selfless dedication to the
public good. Traditionally political virtue was a quality associated with men,
but many women, both as observers and as activists, did not accept the idea
that they themselves were incapable of political virtue.

Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment differs little from the Renaissance in terms of
women’s rights,and Enlightenment thought propounded a great deal of
antagonism towards women who attempted to forego the domestic sphere.

The Enlightenment served as the ideological underpinning of the Revolution,

and through its belief in rationality and natural rights, sowed the seeds of
revolutionary fervor amongst Frenchmen. Thinkers of the Enlightenment were
the leading figures in the French public sphere who brought out the feelings of
discontent form within the populace. At the same time, it was these thinkers
who also defined the role of women, or lack thereof. The Encyclopedie entry
on women was a testament to the
Enlightenment’s view of females, stating that women are intellectually and
physically inferior creatures, which should be pitied. They are the sex whose
duty it is to take care of all domestic duties, and the only sex whose reputation
is almost solely based on chastity and the maintenance of the perception of
sexual virtue.

While many Enlightenment authors bemoaned the sad state of women in

society, very few spoke up for the most reasonable remedy – participation in
the political process. As Roy Porter puts it, beyond generally supporting the
notion that women ought to be treated as rational creatures, the philosophes
did not generally commit themselves to the general emancipation of women as
men’s equals. While they complained against prejudice and injustice, hardly
any women thought in terms of enfranchisement and political participation, or
the opening of professions to their sex. Indeed, advanced female thinkers like
Mary Wollstonecraft especially praised women’s role as mothers and
educators of children. It was for that reason that women deserved the best of
education and the highest social respect.
In the years prior to the Revolution, with political activity intensifying all over
France, there was an increase in propaganda material being disseminated,
often regarding the corrupting influence of women who tried to place
themselves in the political sphere. Lynn Hunt’s study of such material finds
that there was an increase in pornographic literature at the time, and more
often than not the subject of such pamphlets were the queen, Marie Antoinette.
The queen, argues Hunt, was the emblem (and sacrificial victim) of the feared
disintegration of gender boundaries that accompanied the revolution. As the
Revolution intensified, the role of women also became starker. It is here that
class divisions were clearly visible amongst women, judging by their differing
demands. In the upper classes, well-to-do women became increasingly
concerned with political rights, as well as what Joan Landes referred to as the
‘gendering of the public sphere’. According to Landes, women had
participated in the public sphere of the absolutist state during the Ancien
Régime, and that it was the revolutionaries, with the excepted of the Marquis
de Condorcet, who defined power as male and pushed women out of the
political realm. Until the Revolution, women of decent social standing had a
role in the public sphere as salonnières and courtiers. As courtiers and
mistresses to the king and powerful aristocrats, they controlled access to
important political posts, and as salonnière s they functioned as intellectual
arbiters and promoted their own candidates to elections to the Académie
Française. However, this view has been critiqued by scholars who feel that the
status of a salonnière was purely decorative, as they facilitated intellectual
discussion but rarely participated in them directly. In that sense, women of the
upper class retained a domestic function in providing a suitable environment.

Women from more humble backgrounds had a different set of issues. For
them, politics and political rights did not figure in their concerns. These were
women of both rural and urban areas whose husbands would go out and work
as the sole ‘breadwinner’. The woman’s role in this form of household was
domestic, relating to raising the children and ensuring the household ran
smoothly. For her, the most pressing concerns were the rising food prices,
inflating as a result of the fiscal crisis that was worsening in France. The most
visible representation of such a woman’s demands was the event known as
‘the October March’. The march began among women in the marketplaces of
Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were near rioting over the high
price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined
with the activities of revolutionaries who were seeking liberal political reforms
and a constitutional monarchy for France. The market women and their
various allies grew into a mob of thousands and, encouraged by revolutionary
agitators, they ransacked the city armory for weapons and marched to the royal
palace at Versailles. The crowd besieged the palace and in a dramatic and
violent confrontation they successfully pressed their demands upon King
Louis XVI. The next day, the crowd compelled the king, his family, and the
entire French Assembly to return with them to Paris. Ironically, the October
March was seen to be equal to the Fall of Bastille in terms of its effect on the
events of the French Revolution. Perhaps the gendering of the public sphere is
more clearly depicted in the painting, ‘The Oath of the Horati’ by Jacques-
Louis David, an artist with Jacobin sympathies.
The painting depicts the classical tale of a feud between two families that have
also intermarried. The brothers, in service to the state, take an oath of
solidarity, feeling no hesitation in placing patriotic duties above family
sentiment. The women in the painting, the wives of the brothers, are shown as
grief struck, unable to display the strength and resolve of their husbands’
behaviour. The painting also reflects what Lynn Hunt referred to as ‘the family
romance’ of the French Revolution, wherein themisguided father and the
wicked women are displaced, and the ‘band of brothers’ replace their father as
the heads of the family.

The gendering of the political sphere, amidst the inequalities and unfair
treatment faced by women, gave rise to the early days of what is now well
known as feminism. Indeed, the genesis of feminist thought can be located
with the conditions of the French Revolution. Olympe de Gouges was a drastic
example of this. She published her ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman and
Child’ in 1791 as a frustrated response to a passive and subordinate role given
to women in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. De Gouges
argues that the male tyranny over women within the home was the ‘wellspring
of all forms of inequality’. She therefore urged the National Constituent
Assembly to establish parity in the home by giving women equal rights over
marriage, divorce and property. The execution of Olympe de Gouges was
followed by much castigation of the feminist, and was used as an example for
other women who might seek to enter the political sphere. She was
posthumously castigated by a Jacobin leader who referred to her as a ‘man-
woman’ who has ‘forgotten the virtues of her sex’.

Conclusion
Inequality amongst the sexes has been a recurring theme throughout history,
with man being portrayed as the leader or center of a community while
women remained at the periphery. However, the French Revolution remains
distinct within this trend for the question of the participation of women
manifested itself differently. The French Revolution marks a new era that
holds out to women the promise of inclusion in its universal community of
equal human subjects, only to snatch that promise away when women rise up
to actively claim its fulfillment, as they have done every since the first days of
the 1789 upheaval.