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Role of Women in the French Revolution of 1789
By
Soumya Srijan Dasgupta
St. Stephen’s College
Traditional historiography focusing on the French Revolution of 1789 has been
largely inter-disciplinary in approach. Contemporary sources, as well as post-facto
scholarly research looks at the events of the Revolution from a variety of standpoints,
including the social basis, the political culture as well as the overall impact of the
Revolution which can be seen in the collapse of the Ancien Régime. That being said,
of late there has been increasing scholarship in the field of gender studies, relating in
particular to the changing status of women since the onset of the 20th century. This
has brought into focus another aspect of the Revolution, which has otherwise been
neglected, i.e. the role of women.
This paper seeks to understand the role played by women of varying social classes
and backgrounds within the narrative of the French Revolution of 1789. This has been
attempted by looking at a variety of sources and works that, within the framework of
revisionist historiography, can give a glimpse of what the ‘fairer sex’ dealt with
before, during and after the events of 1789 right into the Napoleonic period. The rise
of feminist viewpoints of key events in modern European history, seen in the works of
Joan Landes, Lynn Hunt, Joan Scott as well as Sara Melzer and Leslie Rabine, have
aided in bringing forth women as key players in the Revolution rather than a passing
reference in conventional narratives.
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The class division that existed in the Ancien Régime was, in the 18th century, further
dividing. The Estates General, a hark back to the truly feudal days of France, became
further stratified and no longer made sense from a purely economic standpoint. The
First Estate, consisting of the Nobility, had earlier been divided between the
traditional nobility (known as the noblesse d’epee), and the newer nobleman (the
noblesse de robe), the latter emerging out of the policy of purchase of office, a
practice which intensified in the 18th century. Alongside this, the traditional nobles or
nobility of the sword found themselves with status and no real financial means to
back it up. The Third Estate was on the move as well. The rise of the bourgeoisie
from the ranks of the Third Estate meant that these well-to-do landowners associated
themselves more with the nobility than the humbler members of their social class.
The change in nature of the Estate System was important to the ‘woman question’ as
well, considering that their function and responsibilities were defined by social status.
This would also govern their eventual demands by the time the revolt against the King
intensified. Women were seen to be the bastions of domesticity, signifying nothing
more than the familial portion of a man’s life. This translated into the rights, or lack
thereof, which women were entitled to in the period of the Ancien Régime. Indeed, 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
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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. Hunt points out that the writers of these
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pamphlets could not conceive of a separation of the queen’s private person from that
of her political role, whereas such a distinction was made in the case of Louis XVI.
The queen, argues Hunt, was the emblem (and sacrificial victim) of the feared
disintegration of gender boundaries that accompanied the revolution. Moreover, this
accompanying disintegration was perhaps confirmed by the rumours that the queen
engaged in an incestuous relationship with her son, the future king, thereby corrupting
both his physical and political bodies.
Apart from pornographic material, Joan W. Scott looked at a number of medical
pamphlets produced during the revolutionary period. These, according to Scott,
echoed the Rousseau-ean justification for women’s confinement to domestic life. The
explanation offered was that women were closely governed by their sexual desires
due to the location of their genitalia within their bodies, as opposed to men whose are
located outside and therefore allow them to detach themselves from sexuality and
emotion. Since the public sphere in the new order was to be governed by virtue, it has
also to be exclusively male.
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
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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
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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.
The new order, according to many, represented a rejuvenated French society except in
the case of women. Though all Parisian governments reflected a deliberate opposition
to allowing women into public life, the Jacobins most forcefully expressed this. To
this effect, the Jacobin government ordered all women’s political societies be shut
down, and even executed the Girondin feminist Olympe de Gouges. Moreover, it was
under the Jacobins that the French state came to be represented by Hercules, a
masculine replacement from the earlier image of Marianne, who had been the chosen
symbol of the National Constituent Assembly. Hunt argued that this was a conscious
definition of the state as strong, virile and male. At the Jacobin ‘Festival of Reason’, a
female opera singer dressed as ‘Liberty’ was made to bow down in front of the flame
of reason. This, says Hunt, not only represented the subordinate position of women to
men, but also associated the masculine state as the epitome of rationality, which
would decide when and to whom liberty would be granted.
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
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Lynn Hunt referred to as ‘the family romance’ of the French Revolution, wherein the
misguided 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’. Though executed as a Girondin, de Gouges served as a reminder
of the masculinity of politics. At the same time, Joan Landes felt de Gouges did not
represent the entire category of women as her protest was against issues that affected
only her class.
Melzer and Rabine give great importance to the institutionalization of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen. They opine that implicit in this doctrine is the
notion of ‘man’ as ungendered and universal, on the one hand, keeping in line with
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the tenets of the Enlightenment. On the other hand, this same doctrine is also
gendered and exclusive of women. The liberal discourse of the rights of man thus
institutionalized the implicit assumption of ‘woman’ as particular, excluded from the
universality that was praised by proponents of the Age of Reason. Enlightenment and
post revolutionary writings saw women as essentially tangential, excentric (sic),
supplementary and incidental to the Revolution, dissecting the historical and cultural
processes that constructed these connotations.
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.
References
1. Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley:
University of California, 1992
2. Hunt,
Lynn.
“Hercules
and
the
Radical
Image
in
the
French
Revolution”
Representations
No.
2
(Spring,
1983):
95-­‐117
3. Hunt, Lynn. Eroticism and the Body Politic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,
1991
4. Landes, Joan B. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French
Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988
5. Melzer, Sara E., and Leslie W. Rabine. Rebel Daughters: Women and the
French Revolution. New York: Oxford UP, 1992
6. Scott, Joan W. “French Feminists and the Rights of ‘Man’: Olympe De
Gouges’s Declarations.” History Workshop 28 (Autumn, 1989): 1-21