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The anonymous engraving above, �probably issued in the summer of 1792� , illustrates the then popular image of the militant woman citizen. A symbolic woman, armed and bedecked with the symbols of the Revolution: the tricolour waistband, Revolutionary cockade in her hat and �Liberty or Death� emblazoned on her pike. She proudly stands above the inscription: �French women [who] have become free�, which clearly portrays the Revolution as a force for women�s liberation. This was to prove to be a short lived situation. Within a year women were �explicitly excluded from citizenship� . Far from being liberated, all women were for the first time specifically excluded from political influence.
This essay will discuss this apparent �triumph of �masculine power�� and the seemingly contradictory pre-eminence of women�s activities in forwarding important Revolutionary events, most famously in the Women�s March on Versailles, October 1789. Firstly, some of the �research agendas� will be discussed; secondly; will be some investigation into whether a victory for �masculine power� can truly be seen; thirdly, the activities of women in the Revolution will be examined by investigating the role of individual actors and the part played by the �female crowd�; finally, some conclusions will be drawn as to the overall effect of the Revolution upon women of that period and upon the feminist cause.
Firstly then what can be described as the �research agendas� of the historians examining this subject. Three main historical models can be detected in the attempts made to interpret the women�s and feminist history of the French Revolution. These models for the purpose of this essay will be labelled as �social history feminist�, �ruling class history feminist� and sceptic or �men were secretly behind it all historical accounts�. That is not to say that individual historians can necessarily be identified as following slavishly one or other of these accounts, just that the evidence provided can be placed into one or other for purposes of analysis. That said, just as �bourgeois� and �revisionist� interpretations tend to be put forward predictably by historians with socialistic and conservative political opinions, so too are the various feminist and sceptic (that is to say masculinist) interpretations. To elaborate further it is necessary to define the three models:
The �social history feminist� places most emphasis on the activities and effects upon the majority of women, that is the urban poor and the peasants. The agenda here is to give centre stage to the women who made up the vast majority of actors at the time, and in so doing to emphasise the important role played by women in the Revolution. An example of this approach can be found in the following rousing account by Hufton:
At dawn, on Monday, 5 October, [1789], a group of between eight hundred and two thousand women converged - not par hazard - on the Hotel de Ville, forced the doors, and rushed inside. They then proceeded to throw out the men who had helped them to force the door and denied any of them entry. Then they ransacked the place for arms and found a number of pikes though no ammunition. They seized as many papers and files as they could lay their hands on and prepared to make a huge bonfire of them in the hall, claiming that they contained nothing which would help them to get a better supply of bread . . . Then the women set off [with two cannons to Versailles!]
The �ruling class history feminist� in comparison emphasises the effects upon and the actions of the privileged elite of women. That is to take away what had been an important an powerful social position. Although it does use examples of poor women�s experience this is mainly to portray them as victims of the worst effects of the Revolution. The agenda behind this model is not however to privilege the elite women�s role but is to �equate the triumph of �bourgeois revolution � with the triumph of �masculine power��. That is to portray the Revolution as a battle between masculine and feminine values with the Revolutionaries in the male corner and the Ancien Regime in the female corner. This view is illustrated by Landes in her examination of the �graphic politics� of the French Revolution.
illustration of king as woman reclining
The illustration above shows the body of the Ancien Regime as a weak and femininized sickly thing to be removed by the powerful masculine Revolutionary society. As Landes says: �. . . the Revolutionaries were intent on excising the excessively femininized and femininizing dimension of the body politic.�
Lastly the sceptic or �men behind it all historical accounts�, opposingly to the other two concentrates upon the possibility that women were backed or encouraged by men. The agenda here is to marginalize or explain away women�s involvement in important historical events. This can be done by simply ignoring the issue of gender and hence talking only about men. The alternative is to explain away the importance of women�s actions by conjuring up behind the scenes male puppeteers or female impersonators.
For example in 1789 pamphlets in favour of working class and women�s equal rights appeared in abundance. R. B. Rose contends that many of these had �satirical intent� and that it has:
. . . perhaps been too readily believed or assumed by feminist historians, in default of any certain evidence, that the more serious publications were written by women and not by men seeking to attract attention to their ideas by the shock value of the challenge of feminine boldness.
All this is said without any evidence (�certain� or otherwise) provided by Rose to back up his assumption that men have gone to the trouble to assume the identity of women, rather than the much more likely explanation that they were written by women in earnest.
More blatant attempts at this �men only� view of the events of the Revolution are highlighted in the Victorian historians� account of the Women�s March on Versailles. This amounts to what Hufton describes as a �transvestite triumph�. That is that the majority of participants were in fact men dressed up as women. This interpretation �accorded with their view of woman as an apolitical animal�. This masculinist model has little to commend it. To honour it with the title of sceptic as Jones does seems little more than insulting to feminist historians and more importantly to the women who lived, worked, fought and campaigned during the Revolution.
Secondly then, onto competing claims for the gender based victories or defeats of the Revolution. As noted above there is as much dispute as to the effects upon gender, as on class power of the French Revolution. That is, whether it was a �triumph of masculine power� or whether the egalitarian and libertarian spirit of the Revolution also included not only rights of man but of woman also. �Women had been suppressed in the he past, but who could imagine that they would not now be free?� A lot of this depends upon the time at which the Revolution is looked at. There can be no doubt that the revolution in its earlier years, for example produced divorce and property inheritance laws which were of benefit to women. These laws were relatively short lived however and were completely overturned by the Napoleonic codes. Similarly to working women the period had mixed blessings. They were empowered and admired in the early days for their role on the streets but by 1795 this had come to nothing as Hufton says the:
. . . cumulative experience of the working woman from 1789 - 95 . . . a wrecked household; . . . children aborted or born dead; her own sterility; the disappearance of her few sticks of furniture; . . . what could her conclusion be except that the price paid for putative liberty had been far too high
This �social history feminist� view of women having had hopes of liberty dashed after the first victories of the Revolution are in sharp contrast to the view of Landes who sees the whole Revolutionary agenda as being directed against feminine values and the powerful women of the aristocracy. As she says; �[t]he women against whom men revolted were distinguished by their participation in and leadership of urban salons� . These powerful aristocratic women were those who not only wielded property power but also had huge influence upon the comportment and manners of the men who went to them to be schooled in these attributes. These �feminine� traits were prized by the aristocracy and the absolutist Monarchy �tolerated arenas of public speech and performance by women� . Whereas the Revolutionary society in the fullness of time specifically excluded women from any other than the domestic role of wife and mother.
The gains and losses of the privileged and the poor woman were not always mutually exclusive. The early gains in the divorce and inheritance laws it could be argued were forced upon the men by female direct action on the streets. As Hufton says:
The crowd the politicians feared was not lacking a gender dimension. The October Days were women�s days and those of germinal and prarial in the year III were to be the same. These days had distinct attributes though a great deal in common with each other.
Thirdly then the activities of women in the Revolution will be examined. As noted above the role of women was central in the events of October 5. In fact at the time:
The people were triumphant and the credit for the event was given entirely to the women. Michelet echoed contemporaries when he said that the men took the Bastille and the women took the King.
The role of women and the way it was interpreted by Revolutionary men at this time can be seen as overtly and sophisticatedly political far from the mere continuation of woman�s traditional and legitimate role in bread riots to feed her children. This role had always been legitimised by Ancien Regime law courts never prosecuting women for the collective stealing of bread. The image of women�s involvement in direct political action can �. . . however be fairly described as a rather limited interpretation, especially given the consequences of the October Days�. The numerous descriptions of women bearing arms and attempting to capture arms also stand against this interpretation of women�s involvement as safe and limited to the traditional position of immediate hunger assuager.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence of political sophistication in the pursuit of equality were to be found in the women�s clubs. Although many of these did not specifically take a feminist stance they were both symbolically and actually for and run by women. These clubs were used by both middle class and urban working class women (although usually at different clubs!). Perhaps the most famous set up and led by Pauline Leon and Claire Lacombe was the �Citoyennes Republicaines Revolutionaires� founded in spring 1793. This club focused on the economic claims associated with Sans-Culottes politics rather than explicitly feminist demands and allied itself first with the Jacobins and finally with the Enrages. This alignment had terminal consequences when the Jacobin Government put down the Enrages and used this as an excuse to close all the women�s clubs, not only those allied to the Enrages.
This was without doubt an excuse to disband women�s clubs as they were as likely to be allied to the political right as the extreme left. As has been alluded to above, not all women nor women�s leaders stuck to shared political/economic goals with men. Some can be seen to have what could be termed from today�s perspective a feminist stance as well. For example vocally prominent women such as Etta Palm called for a �second revolution in our customs to overthrow sexual tyranny�. Men could also be fairly accused of seeing women�s revolutionary behaviour in gender terms as shown by the case of Olympe de Gouges, upon whose execution, the semi-official Fenille du salut public, gloated: �It seems the law has punished this conspirator for having forgotten the virtues that suit her sex� .
The final chapter of women�s action in the �Revolutionary watershed� is written by the actions of counter revolutionary women. It was clearly women who led the fight for and won reinstatement of Catholicism, in the aftermath of the period.
Finally, in conclusion the overall effects upon women and the feminist cause were clearly mixed. As far as feminist gains went it can be seen as a false start at best. The rights won for equal divorce and inheritance rights were soon removed and for the first time women were explicitly excluded from political participation. This is perhaps an artificial late Twentieth Century interpretation of events as with the exception of a couple of individualist and privileged women, the majority of women seemed understandably more interested in the most important politics, that of survival. The role of women (as opposed to feminists) in the Revolution and the effects of it upon them are perhaps easier and more useful to look at. It is clear from the evidence that women took a central part in the organisation and composition of the Revolutionary crowd at the most important times. The King would not have been brought to Paris without the action of women. The effects of increasing bread scarcity brought on by the effects of the Revolution were most harshly felt by women due to their front-line domestic and carer role. So overall, although there were gains to be had at the beginning, and in the very long term women could be seen as benefiting from the practices engendered by the Revolution�s support for freedom and equality, the Revolution brought no real improvement to that generation of women�s lives. It seems evident, if depressing, that the women who fought bravely and effectively for the Revolution were betrayed and made worse off by the end of it.
J. Abray, �Feminism in the French Revolution�, in American Historical Review, 80, 1975
O. Hufton, �Women in Revolution 1789-1795�, in Past and Present, vol. 53, 1971
O. Hufton, Women and the limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1992
Ed. Peter Jones, The French Revolution in Social and Political Perspective, London, Arnold, 1996
Joan B. Landes, Women and the Public Sphere: In the age of the French Revolution, New York, Cornell University Press, 1988
Ed. Sara E. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine, Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992
Candice E. Proctor, Women, Equality, and the French Revolution, London, Greenwood Press, 1990
R. B. Rose, The Making of the sans-culottes: Democratic ideas and institutions in Paris, 1789-92, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983
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