Role of women

The Encyclopédie, published by a group of philosophers over the years 1751–1777, summarized French
male beliefs of women. A woman was a “failed man,” the foetus not fully developed in the womb.
“Women’s testimony is in general light and subject to variation; this is why it is taken more seriously
than that of men” as opposed to men, upon whom “Nature seems to have conferred… the right to
govern.” In general, “men are more capable than women of ably governing particular matters”. Instead,
women were taught to be committed to their husbands and “all his interests… [to show] attention and
care… [and] sincere and discreet zeal for his salvation.” A woman’s education often consisted of learning
to be a good wife and mother; as a result women were not supposed to be involved in the political sphere,
as the limit of their influence was the raising of future citizens.

When the Revolution opened, some women struck forcefully, using the volatile political climate to assert
their active natures. In the time of the Revolution, women could not be kept out of the political sphere;
they swore oaths of loyalty, “solemn declarations of patriotic allegiance, [and] affirmations of the
political responsibilities of citizenship.” Throughout the Revolution, women such as Pauline Léon and
her Society for Revolutionary Republican Women fought for the right to bear arms, used armed force and
rioted.

Militant Feminism in the French Revolution

The March to 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 Declaration of the Rights of Man, activists such as Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt
agitated for full citizenship for women. Women were, nonetheless, “denied political rights of ‘active
citizenship’ (1791) and democratic citizenship (1793).”

Pauline Léon, on March 6, 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.
Léon requested permission be granted to women to arm themselves with pikes, pistols, sabres and rifles,
as well as the privilege of drilling under the French Guards. Her request was denied. 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 arms would transform women into
citizens.

On June 20 of 1792, a number of 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.” Militant
women also assumed a special role in the funeral of Marat, following his murder on July 13, 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. 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 May 10, 1793. The goal of the club 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. Of special interest to
the Society was “combating hoarding [of grain and other staples] and inflation.” Later, on May 20, 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.”

Most of these outwardly activist women were punished for their actions. 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 women of the Revolution were even publicly executed for
“conspiring against the unity and the indivisibility of the Republic”.

These are but a few examples of the militant feminism that was prevalent during the French Revolution.
While little progress was made toward gender equality during the Revolution, the activism of French
feminists was bold and particularly significant in Paris.
Women writers

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 “Declaration on the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen” she
insisted that women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and
recognition of illegitimate children. 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. In addition to these bold writings, her defence 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.

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 which allowed women to join. While limited by her gender, Madame
Roland took it upon herself to spread Revolutionary ideology and spread word of events, as well as to
assist in formulating the policies of her political allies. Though unable to directly write policies or carry
them through to the government, Mme Roland was able to influence her political allies and thus promote
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 the chance. 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 and
active role in politics.

Though women did not gain the right to vote as a result of the Revolution, they still greatly expanded
their political participation and involvement in governing. They set precedents for generations of
feminists to come. In fact, it would be fair to say that French women played a key role in shaping the
Revolution from 1789-1793. Political leaders such as Madame Roland and Madame de Stael took the
public stage, and women’s clubs such as the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women became more
common.

Legacy

Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the Revolution was a manifestation of a more prosperous middle class
becoming conscious of its social importance. Other thinkers, like the conservative Edmund Burke,
maintained that the Revolution was the product of a few conspiratorial individuals who brainwashed the
masses into subverting the old order—a claim rooted in the belief that the revolutionaries had no
legitimate complaints. Other historians, influenced by Marxist thinking, have emphasized the importance
of the peasants and the urban workers in presenting the Revolution as a gigantic class struggle. In
general, scholarship on the French Revolution initially studied the political ideas and developments of the
era, but it has gradually shifted towards social history that analyzes the impact of the Revolution on
individual lives.

Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, and the
end of the early modern period, which started around 1500, is traditionally attributed to the onset of the
French Revolution in 1789. The Revolution is, in fact, often seen as marking the "dawn of the modern
era". Within France itself, the Revolution permanently crippled the power of the aristocracy and drained
the wealth of the Church, although the two institutions survived despite the damage they sustained. After
the collapse of the First Empire in 1815, the French public lost the rights and privileges earned since the
Revolution, but they remembered the participatory politics that characterized the period, with one
historian commenting: "Thousands of men and even many women gained firsthand experience in the
political arena: they talked, read, and listened in new ways; they voted; they joined new organizations;
and they marched for their political goals. Revolution became a tradition, and republicanism an enduring
option." Some historians argue that the French people underwent a fundamental transformation in self-
identity, evidenced by the elimination of privileges and their replacement by rights as well as the growing
decline in social deference that highlighted the principle of equality throughout the Revolution. Outside
France, the Revolution captured the imagination of the world. It had a profound impact on the Russian
Revolution and its ideas were imbibed by Mao Zedong in his efforts at constructing a communist state in
China.

Revolutionary Women: Charlotte Corday and Marianne

In addition, two of the most dramatic events of the Revolution involved women. First, in 1789, Parisian
women of the lower classes convinced women of all classes to march to Versailles and seize the king and
queen. Second, four years later, Charlotte Corday became infamous for her assassination of the key
Jacobin leader Marat. The London Times of July 30, 1793 reported that Corday’s deportment during her
interrogation and execution was “calm, decent, and unaffected,” and that the crowds who witnessed the
execution were “less impressed with the recollection of her crime, than of her courage and beauty.”

The figure of Liberty was often portrayed as a woman in a toga, and ultimately, the most famous
rendering of Liberty as a representation of the French Republic came to be called “Marianne.” Such
images and events must have been thrilling spectacles for many women across Europe who were already
captivated by the Revolution and its potential.

Backlash against Revolutionary Women

However, these images did not play well in England, and even in France, for we see the elimination of all
women’s clubs as the Terror began in 1793, and women again were relegated to more private roles. In
fact, the London Times of January 25, 1793 reported that “all women were prohibited from appearing in
the streets” as Louis XVI was taken to his execution.

The same backlash followed across the English Channel, though in a more subtle manner. In England,
the prominent role of women in the Revolution was an affront to established views, and the writer of a
1793 ballad called “A Word to the Wise” effectively sums up many of his countrymen’s views:

"But our ladies are virtuous, our ladies are fair,

Which is more than they tell us your French-women are;
They know they are happy, they know they are free,
And know Liberty’s not to be found on a tree."

The Final Revolution: British Women Writers

With the end of Frenchwomen's involvement on the political stage, women writers in England, such as
Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Letitia Barbauld, took up the torch of revolution and wrote polemical
essays on politics and society.

The legacy of women and the French Revolution lives on today with the image of Marianne, which
commonly appears on contemporary French stamps. Thus, the words "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,"
the slogan of the Revolution, endure in this female icon.
Marianne

Women participated in virtually every aspect of the French Revolution, but their participation almost
always proved controversial. Women's status in the family, society, and politics had long been a subject
of polemics. In the eighteenth century, those who favoured improving the status of women insisted
primarily on women's right to an education (rather than on the right to vote, for instance, which few men
enjoyed). The writers of the Enlightenment most often took a traditional stance on "the women question";
they viewed women as biologically and therefore socially different from men, destined to play domestic
roles inside the family rather than public, political ones. Among the many writers of the Enlightenment,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau published the most influential works on the subject of women's role in society. In
his book Emile, he described his vision of an ideal education for women. Women should take an active
role in the family, Rousseau insisted, by breast-feeding and educating their children, but they should not
venture to take active positions outside the home. Rousseau's writings on education electrified his
audience, both male and female. He advocated greater independence and autonomy for male children and
emphasized the importance of mothers in bringing up children. But many women objected to his
insistence that women did not need serious intellectual preparation for life. Some women took their pleas
for education into the press.

Before 1789 such ideas fell on deaf ears; the issue of women's rights, unlike the rights of Protestants,
Jews, and blacks, did not lead to essay contests, official commissions, or Enlightenment-inspired clubs
under the monarchy. In part, this lack of interest followed from the fact that women were not considered
a persecuted group like Calvinists, Jews, or slaves.

Although women's property rights and financial independence met with many restrictions under French
law and custom, most men and women agreed with Rousseau and other Enlightenment thinkers that
women belonged in the private sphere of the home and therefore had no role to play in public affairs.
Most of France's female population worked as peasants, shopkeepers, laundresses, and the like, yet
women were defined primarily by their sex (and relationship in marriage) and not by their own
occupations.

The question of women's rights thus trailed behind in the agitation for human rights in the eighteenth
century. But like all the other questions of rights, it would get an enormous boost during the Revolution.
When Louis XVI agreed to convoke a meeting of the Estates-General for May 1789 to discuss the
financial problems of the country, he unleashed a torrent of public discussion. The Estates-General had
not met since 1614, and its convocation heightened everyone's expectations for reform. The King invited
the three estates—the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate (made up of everyone who was not a
noble or a cleric)—to elect deputies through an elaborate, multilayered electoral process and to draw up
lists of their grievances. At every stage of the electoral process, participants (mainly men but with a few
females here and there at the parish level meetings) devoted considerable time and political negotiation to
the composition of these lists of grievances. Since the King had not invited women to meet as women to
draft their grievances or name delegates, a few took matters into their own hands and sent him petitions
outlining their concerns. The modesty of most of these complaints and demands demonstrates the depth
of the prejudice against women's separate political activity. Women could ask for better education and
protection of their property rights, but even the most politically vociferous among them did not yet
demand full civil and political rights.

After the fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, politics became the order of the day. The attack on the
Bastille showed how popular political intervention could change the course of events. When the people
of Paris rose up, armed themselves, and assaulted the royal fortress-prison in the centre of Paris, they
scuttled any royal or aristocratic plans to stop the Revolution in its tracks by arresting the deputies or
closing the new National Assembly. In October 1789 the Revolution seemed to hang in the balance once
again. In the midst of a continuing shortage of bread, rumours circulated that the royal guards at
Versailles, the palace where the King and his family resided, had trampled on the revolutionary colours
(red, white, and blue) and plotted counter-revolution. In response, a crowd of women in Paris gathered to
march to Versailles to demand an accounting from the King. They trudged the twelve miles from Paris in
the rain, arriving soaked and tired. At the end of the day and during the night, the women were joined by
thousands of men who had marched from Paris to join them. The next day the crowd grew more turbulent
and eventually broke into the royal apartments, killing two of the King's bodyguards. To prevent further
bloodshed, the King agreed to move his family back to Paris.

Women's participation was not confined to rioting and demonstrating. Women began to attend meetings
of political clubs, and both men and women soon agitated for the guarantee of women's rights. In July
1790 a leading intellectual and aristocrat, Marie-Jean Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, published a
newspaper article in support of full political rights for women. It caused a sensation. In it he argued that
France's millions of women should enjoy equal political rights with men. A small band of proponents of
women's rights soon took shape in the circles around Condorcet. They met in a group called the Cercle
Social (social circle), which launched a campaign for women's rights in 1790–91. One of their most
active members in the area of women's rights was the Dutch woman Etta Palm d'Aelders who denounced
the prejudices against women that denied them equal rights in marriage and in education. In their
newspapers and pamphlets, the Cercle Social, whose members later became ardent republicans, argued
for a liberal divorce law and reforms in inheritance laws as well. Their associated political club set up a
female section in March 1791 to work specifically on women's issues, including civil equality in the
areas of divorce and property.

The boldest statement for women's political rights came from the pen of Marie Gouze (1748–93), who
wrote under the pen name Olympe de Gouges. An aspiring playwright, Gouges bitterly attacked slavery
and in September 1791 published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, modelled on the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Following the structure and language of the latter declaration, she
showed how women had been excluded from its promises. Although her declaration did not garner
widespread support, it did make her notorious. Like many of the other leading female activists, she
eventually suffered persecution at the hands of the government; while Etta Palm d'Aelders and most of
the others only had to endure arrest, Gouges went to the guillotine in 1793. Public political activism came
at a high price.

Women never gained full political rights during the French Revolution; none of the national assemblies
ever considered legislation granting political rights to women (they could neither vote nor hold office).
Most deputies thought the very idea outlandish. This did not stop women from continuing to participate
in unfolding events. Their participation took various forms: some demonstrated or even rioted over the
price of food; some joined clubs organized by women; others took part in movements against the
Revolution, ranging from individual acts of assassination to joining in the massive rebellion in the west
of France against the revolutionary government. The most dramatic individual act of resistance to the
Revolution was the assassination of the deputy Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday on 13 July 1793.
Marat published a newspaper, L’Ami du Peuple, that violently denounced anyone who opposed the
direction of the Revolution; he called for the heads of aristocrats, hoarders, unsuccessful generals, and
even moderate republicans, such as Condorcet, who supported the Revolution but resisted its tendency
toward violence and intimidation. Corday gained entrance to Marat's dwelling and stabbed him in his
bath.

Most women acted in more collective, less individually striking fashion. First and foremost, they
endeavoured to guarantee food for their families. Concern over the price of food led to riots in February
1792 and again in February 1793. In these disturbances, which often began at the door of shops, women
usually played a prominent role, egging on their confederates to demand lower prices and to insist on
confiscating goods and selling them at a "just" price.

A small but vocal minority of women activists set up their own political clubs. The best known of these
was the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women established in Paris in May 1793. The members
hoped to gain political education for themselves and a platform for expressing their views to the political
authorities. The society did not endorse full political rights for women; it devoted its energies to
advocating more stringent measures against hoarders and counter-revolutionaries and to proposing ways
for women to participate in the war effort. Accounts of the meetings demonstrate the keen interest of
women in political affairs, even when those accounts come from frankly hostile critics of the women's
activities.

Male revolutionaries promptly rejected every call for equal rights for women. But their reactions in print
and in speech show that these demands troubled their conception of the proper role for women. Now they
had to explain themselves; rejection of women's rights was no longer automatic, in part because the
revolutionary governments established divorce, with equal rights for women in suing for divorce, and
granted girls equal rights to the inheritance of family property. In February 1791 one of the leading
newspapers responded explicitly to Condorcet's article demanding equal political rights for women. The
editor, Louis-Marie Prudhomme, restated the view, commonly attributed to Rousseau, that nature
determined different but complementary roles for men and women. During the discussion of a new
constitution in April 1793, the issue of women's rights came up once again. The spokesman for the
constitutional committee restated the arguments against equal rights for women, but he admitted that
deputies had begun to speak out in favour of women's rights. He cited in particular the pamphlet by
Deputy Pierre Guyomar insisting that women should have the right to vote and hold office.

As the political situation grew more turbulent and dangerous in the fall of 1793, the revolutionary
government became suspicious of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women. The society had
aligned itself with critics of the government who complained about the shortage of food. It also tried to
intervene in individual cases of arrest and imprisonment. But the club did not readily give in to its
opponents. One of its leaders, Claire Lacombe, published a pamphlet defending the club. Her pamphlet
opens a window onto club activities.

Despite attempts to respond to the charges of its critics, the club ultimately fell victim to the disapproval
and suspicion of the revolutionary government, which outlawed all women's clubs on 30 October 1793.
The immediate excuse was a series of altercations between women's club members and market women
over the proper revolutionary costume, but behind the decision lay much discomfort with the idea of
women's active political involvement. On 3 November 1793, Olympe de Gouges, author of the
Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was put to death as a counterrevolutionary, condemned for having
published a pamphlet suggesting that a popular referendum should decide the future government of the
country, not the National Convention. Two weeks later, a city official, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette,
denounced all political activity by women, warning them of the fate of Marie-Jeanne Roland and Gouges,
two of several prominent women who went to the guillotine at this time. The Queen was executed on 16
October 1793, after a short but dramatic trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Roland, one of the
leading political figures of 1792–93—she was the wife of a minister and hostess of one of Paris's most
influential salons—went to her death on 8 November 1793, even though she was a convinced republican.
Her crime was support for the Girondins, the faction of constitutionalist deputies that included
Condorcet.

After the suppression of women's clubs, ordinary women still had to make their way in a difficult
political and economic climate. The Terror did not spare them, even though it was supposed to be
directed against the enemies of the Revolution. A letter from a mother to her son illustrates the problems
of provisioning and the haunting fear of arrest; the son of this woman was, as she feared, arrested as a
"counterrevolutionary" (an increasingly vague term) and guillotined not long afterward. Many ordinary
women went to prison as suspects for complaining about food shortages while waiting in line at shops,
for making disrespectful remarks about the authorities, or for challenging local officials.

After the fall of Robespierre in July 1794, the National Convention eliminated price controls, and
inflation and speculation soon resulted in long bread lines once again. The police gathered information
every day about the state of discontent, and they worried in particular about the increasing shortages of
February and March 1795. Women egged men on to attack the local and national authorities. These
disturbances came to a head in the last major popular insurrections of the Revolution when bread rations
dropped from one and a half pounds per person in March to one-eighth of a pound in April–May and
rioting broke out. The first uprising took place 1–2 April 1795 (12–13 Germinal, Year III). A more
extensive one broke out 20–23 May (1–4 Prairial). In both, women precipitated the action by urging men
to join demonstrations to demand bread and changes in the national government. On 20 May a large
crowd of women and men, armed with guns, pikes, and swords, rushed into the meeting place of the
National Convention and chased the deputies from their benches. They killed one and cut off his head. As
soon as the government gained control of the situation, it arrested many rioters, prohibited women from
entering the galleries of its meeting place and from attending any kind of political assembly or even
gathering in groups of more than five in the street.

Even as the fortunes of women's political activism were rising and falling, women began playing another
kind of role, as symbols of revolutionary values. Most of the major revolutionary values—liberty,
equality, fraternity, reason, the Republic, regeneration—were represented by female figures, usually in
Roman dress (togas). The use of female figures from antiquity followed from standard iconographic
practice: artists had long used symbols or icons derived from Classical Roman or Greek sources as a kind
of textbook of artistic representation. French, like Latin, divides nouns by gender. Most qualities such as
liberty, equality, and reason were taken to be feminine (La Liberté, L'Egalité, La Raison), so they seemed
to require a feminine representation to make them concrete. This led to one of the great paradoxes of the
French Revolution: though the male revolutionaries refused to grant women equal political rights, they
put pictures of women on everything, from coins and bills and letterheads to even swords and playing
cards. Women might appear in real-life stories of heroism, but they were much more likely to appear as
symbols of something else.

Although women had not gained the right to vote or hold office (and indeed would not do so in France
until 1944!), they had certainly made their presence known during the Revolution. At the end of the
decade of revolution, a well-known writer, Constance Pipelet, offered her views on its impact on women.
Although she stopped short of repeating Condorcet's or Olympe de Gouges’ demands for absolutely
equal rights for women, she did insist that the Revolution had forced women to become more aware of
their status in society. She also argued that the Republic should justify itself by offering women more
education and more opportunities. Her writing shows that women's demands had been heard and that
even if they had gone underground, they had not been forgotten.

Women as Symbols during the French Revolution

Women participated in the French Revolution in many ways: they demonstrated at crucial political
moments, stood in interminable bread lines, made bandages for the war effort, visited their relatives in
jail, supported their government-approved clergyman (or hid one of those who refused to take the loyalty
oath), and wrote all manner of letters and petitions about government policies. As symbols, however,
they did not appear in their normal guise in ordinary life at the end of the eighteenth century. To take but
one example, an early allegorical painting by the artist Colinart of a woman dressed like a Roman
goddess is a far cry from the actual mother of 1790 wearing ordinary clothes and depicted with her
children in another painting.

Although no one has completed a statistical study of female figures in revolutionary art, even a cursory
review shows many more depictions of women as allegorical figures than of women in their actual roles
of the time. The most popular figure was Liberty, who became, in effect, the preferred symbol of the
French Revolution. Called Marianne by her detractors to signal that she was nothing but a common
woman (perhaps even a prostitute), Liberty nonetheless became indelibly associated with the French
Revolution, so much so that she still appears prominently on French money and in patriotic paintings and
statuary. Liberty usually appeared in Roman dress, often in a toga, holding a pike, the people's instrument
for taking back their liberty, with a red liberty cap perched on its tip (the liberty cap too came from
Roman times—it was supposedly worn by recently freed slaves).

Liberty was often joined by another revolutionary virtue such as truth, as in the painting Allegory of
Truth by Nicolas de Courteille. After the Republic was proclaimed in September 1792, depictions of the
Republic as a female allegorical figure sometimes took over from Liberty. Liberty, Reason,
Regeneration—as in this engraving of the Festival of Reunion of 10 August 1793 —Wisdom, and of
course Equality and Fraternity, were all represented as women. These allegorical figures sprouted on
every surface. Festivals featured them prominently, but so did the new republican calendar and the new
revolutionary playing cards, which used Roman figures, both male and female, to replace the kings,
queens, and jacks of old.

Why did women appear so frequently in these allegories and symbolic depictions? Why, for instance,
does a giant female statue overshadow the scene in a painting by Lethière (Gillaume Guillon) showing a
typical scene of registering for the draft? Although the picture is filled with ordinary people of the time,
including many women, it emphasizes symbolically "the country in danger" through a gigantic female
figure with her breasts exposed. The figure stands for "the country," which in French is a female noun (la
patrie). As noted, it was iconographic tradition to depict virtues as female, but not as contemporary
women. An artist signalled their symbolic status by dressing them in Roman or Greek garb or even by
showing them half naked. No Frenchwoman would have dressed in this fashion, so no one would think
that these women were real women. In Watch Yourself or You'll Be a Product for Sale, the depiction of
contemporary women, albeit women dressing to please men, women are dressed in contemporary
fashion; they are not shown as Roman or Greek goddesses.

Any educated person would therefore immediately recognize when a woman was an abstract quality or
idea and when she was simply a woman of her times or a particular noted woman. Women made good
symbols because they could not hold office or participate officially in politics. That is to say, it was
impossible to confuse a depiction of "liberty" with any particular political leader or official, who was by
definition male. The French were extremely worried that one man might take power and establish a
dictatorship. They preferred symbols that could not be identified with any specific male political leader.
Instead, Liberty became the dominant political figure. As a result, no individual ever enjoyed the
symbolic status accorded George Washington, say, in the new United States.

Contrary to common belief, women were important contributors to the popular movement during the
French Revolution. They staged demonstrations and food riots, presented petitions to the National
Assembly, and brought the royal family back to the governmental capital. They agitated ceaselessly for
the political and civil rights that they deserved, and backed up their demands with well-thought-out
logical arguments. The women of 18th century France pioneered through uncharted ideological, political,
and social grounds, but their work was fruitless in establishing women’s rights in the constitution ratified
after the French Revolution. The majority of men believed that women’s participation in government was
both unnecessary and redundant. Women were assumed to have the same interest and opinions as the
men who represented them, and they were repeatedly assured that their husbands, sons, and fathers would
always have their best interest at heart. Women were encouraged to support the Revolution by assuming
the duties associated with being a good Frenchwomen, not by forming legions or social clubs that argued
for equal rights. An aristocratic women’s duty was to live simply and modestly, abjuring luxury, and
wearing only French…

As the first exclusively female club, Les Amies also cleared the way for the establishment of Les
Citoyennes Republicaines Revolutionaires (The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women), the most
radical women's club of the French Revolution. The ideologies, writings, and actions Etta Palm d'Aelders
embodied the ambition of women during the French Revolution and her ideas served as the paradigm for
achieving their social objectives. The Citoyennes would patrol the streets and markets attired in a
uniform of red pantaloons and liberty caps searching out individuals suspected of counterrevolutionary
activity that they would bring before the revolutionary tribunals for trial. The women were scolded for
forsaking their families and reminded that their place was in the home. Condorcet maintained that those
who voted against the rights of others, no matter their religion, colour, or sex, should forfeit their own
rights. She was also a veteran of the Champs de Mars demonstrations, and was well known for her
activity in her local Section. Several hundred women invaded the National Assembly and left the
deputies with a strong impression on how they felt about being the victims of a 'famine plot' and
subsistence. She wanted women to form societies in each department; to tackle social problems, such as
wet nursing, the education of women, that would essentially spread Revolutionary ideals throughout all
the provinces. Etta seized the Revolution and established herself as a public speaker in the revolutionary
club movements which strongly advocated women's rights. The Assembly felt that women had proven
themselves "lacking in the necessary moral and physical strength required to debate, to draw up
resolutions, and to deliberate," as Andre Amar, Chairman of the Committee of General Security declared
after the complaint of the market women was filed. At no stage were women included within the
definitions of citizenship. Their decree was reinforced by the arrival of the Parisian National Guard, led
by Lafayette, who was intent on bringing the king back to Paris. Condorcet stood with only a handful of
men on supporting women's rights, but there were numerous women who were ready and willing to
speak up and demand what they deserved, most notably Olympe de Gouges. From the outset of the
Revolution, women's aspirations for the refinement of grievances merged with the wider goal of
establishing a new political and social order. The demands of the two classes of women overlapped in
education and prostitution.

MUSIC OF MARRIAGE

Women in the Army

When war broke out, many patriotic women were eager to take up arms to fight for their country. The
"Amazons", a Parisian militia, begged the National Assembly that they could "fight with weapons other
than a needle and spindle." The Rameau sisters joined the war effort in men's clothing, distinguishing
themselves in battle for their bravery and competence. But in late 1792, women were officially banned.

Women's Clubs in Revolutionary Paris

WOMEN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Somewhat later, Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration
of the Rights of Woman and Citizen as a "wake-up" call to
women. Declaring that "woman is born free and lives equal to
man in her rights," her document is an early statement that
women ought to share the same political rights that men
possessed. Though men were reluctant to share their political
rights with women, many women activists and anonymous
women shaped the course of the revolution during its earliest
years. Among the most dramatic events of the revolution
occurred on October 5 and 6, 1789, when women of the
Parisian lower classes forced many women from all social
classes to march with them to Versailles to seize the King.
They succeeded in bringing the King and his family back to
Paris, where he agreed to accept his position as an executive in
a constitutional monarchy. Immediately, women as revolutionaries became a potent symbol of the power
of the Revolution. Eventually, the new French Republic was personified as a woman, "Marianne," the
name of an old secret society. As Maurice Agulhon has shown, once the image was invented, it could be
reconfigured as it proliferated, but eventually it coalesced into an ideal type. Marianne was a powerful
woman in 1789, was stylized in the 1880s, and was commercialized in the late Twentieth Century, when
she became identified with the actress Brigitte Bardot. Still, as considerable historiography has shown,
one should not assume that because a woman could becomes a powerful symbol of revolution that
women obtained any significant political, social, or economic advantages during the French Revolution.
As Joan Landes has argued, "Marianne" was nothing more than a picture; the new Republic was a
discursive republic based on laws and texts, which emptied the symbol of any real political significance.

ROBESPIERRE AND THE TERROR

On June 20, 1791, after revolutionaries had turned parish priests into civil servants who had to swear
allegiance to a secular, national, state, Louis Capet, King of France, fled Paris with his family, hoping to
meet up with Austrian forces, which would help him restore the traditional monarchy. He was recognized
and captured at Varennes, brought back to Paris, then executed after a trial on January 21, 1793. In the
midst of war abroad and severe economic crises at home, the French Revolution moved into a second
phase after the King's death, which emphasized social equality and fraternity whereas the earliest years of
the revolution accentuated liberty. Men and women from the working class, believing that they had
received few benefits from the revolution, began to demand universal suffrage and participatory
democracy. Eventually, Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer from Arras, emerged as the head of the
Jacobin Club when it gained control of the National Convention. When the National Convention
conveyed power to the twelve member Committee of Public Safety, of which Robespierre was a member,
he gradually assumed dictatorial control of the country. Often thought to have been a disciple of the
philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau because of his early defence of the principles of direct democracy,
Robespierre later defended some forms of representation and then rhetorically identified the interests of
the people with those of the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. As head of the Committee
of Public Safety, Robespierre attempted to rule "in the name of the people" by regulating the economy
through the use of price controls and by allowing revolutionary tribunals to execute many individuals
identified as traitors. His year of rule has consequently been called "the Reign of Terror," although
Robespierre, himself, was personally opposed to the death penalty.
Altogether, around 50,000 were killed, many of whom lost their heads to the
guillotine, a powerful symbol of the violence of the revolution. Among the
revolution's victims was Olympe de Gouges. Other women activists were also
arrested, and the Jacobins outlawed their clubs, believing that women belonged in
the private sphere of the home, not in the public sphere of men.
In this phase of the revolution, women became identified with
extreme violence, either furiously knitting while heads fell
or--as in this image--as terrible mothers, who would
recklessly fire their guns near their own children.
After a year of executions, many of Robespierre's former political allies decided
that they needed to turn Robespierre into a traitor to end the bloodshed and spare
their own lives. Thus, Robespierre eventually lost his head to the guillotine after
the Thermidorian Revolution of 1794. After his execution, no one officially
proclaimed the end of the Terror, but the killing gradually subsided.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE AND THE SLAVE REVOLT

IN SAINT DOMINGUE
While many politicians and historians are now troubled about celebrating the French
Revolution because of the violence of 1793 and 1794, Robespierre's Constitution of
the Year III attempted to guarantee men and women the right to work, the right to
eat and the right to public assistance if they could not work or eat. Robespierre's
government reaffirmed the right of Protestants and Jews to citizenship in France and
abolished slavery in 1794.
Though obviously in response to a slave
revolt in Saint Domingue, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture
(1743-1803), the decision to abolish slavery was not
uncontroversial. Many colonial interests opposed ending
slavery, and Napoleon's armies lost many lives trying to re-
establish it in the 1800s. Napoleon finally re-established
slavery in the French colonies in 1802, but Toussaint
L'Ouverture and his slaves successfully achieved
independence and formed the second republic in the Western
Hemisphere in 1804 when they created modern-day Haiti and
freed all slaves on the island. Several images portrayed
revolutionaries extending the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen to freed slaves as one of the greatest promises of
the revolution.

THE VENDÉE
There is also no question that much of the violence associated with the Reign of Terror resulted from the
government's attempt to stop counter-revolutionary threats, especially in the city of Lyon and in the West
of France, in a region called the Vendée. In these places and in other places throughout France, men and
women armed themselves to overthrow the republic and restore the monarchy. Some counter-
revolutionaries were peasants, others sharecroppers, still others, textile workers. Counter-revolutionaries
in the Vendée seemed particularly upset that Robespierre had launched a movement of dechristianization
and had seemingly gone on a witch hunt against priests. Consequently, many historians have portrayed
them as religious fanatics. Other historians have attributed the counter-revolution to various socio-
economic factors, but in all cases, historians have recognized that many were killed in what amounted to
a civil war in France in 1793 over whether or not the future of France lay in a monarchy or in a republic.

NAPOLEON
The Revolution limped along after Robespierre's execution and was revived with the rise of Napoleon
Bonaparte (1769-1821), France's great military leader, who launched a coup d'état in 1799, became an
Emperor in 1802, and ruled over much of the European continent until he was defeated at the Battle of
Waterloo on June 15, 1815. From the perspective of Latin America, one of Napoleon's most significant
military accomplishments was the invasion of Spain and Portugal in 1808. With the help of the British,
the Portuguese Monarchy moved the seat of the Portuguese Empire to Brazil, setting the stage for Brazil's
political independence from Portugal and its long-term economic dependence on Great Britain.
At the end of the French Revolution in 1815, the Bourbon dynasty was restored under Louis XVIII.
Although Louis XVIII attempted to bring back the France that had existed in 1789, the revolution had
created a powerful political culture which held that "the people" were the source of sovereignty. It took
almost another century before men forged a working democracy based on universal manhood suffrage.
Women in France only received the right to vote in France in 1945 and remain significantly
underrepresented in political institutions.