The Condition of Women During the French Revolution :: Essays Papers

The Condition of Women During the French Revolution In Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution, Olwen H. Hufton expresses her intention to show that women's responses to their various situations during the revolution "transformed and modified the entire history of the period 1789-1815."(1) In order to demonstrate her point, Hufton evaluates the Paris "engendered crowd" and their interest in popular sovereignty, the gender complexities of the revolutionary reform policies, and the "guerilla warfare" of women in the provinces.(2) The complexity of women's roles in the French Revolution, she notes, did involve bread rioters, members of political clubs, and defenders of religious traditions, but she resists the "simple evolutionary view of a revolutionary woman," such as the politically incompatible woman whose involvement became a "serial disaster" (3) or the fanatical woman of political clubs and religion.(4) In 1789, bread rioters marched to Versailles, dried their rain-soaked clothing in the assembly hall, disrupt ed the proceedings with rowdy behavior, invaded the queen's bedroom, and pressured the king into a humiliating journey to Paris, where the "chief baker" could be coerced into providing bread.(5) A crowd of women in 1789 removed the king from the Versailles court where he could be influenced by his wife's foreign family and established Paris as the center of French politics. However, Hufton concludes that "the most persistent ghost of the French Revolution," the "spectre" that would "haunt" future politicians and deprive women of the right to participate in elections, was the subversive woman of 1795-96. (6) I will show how Hufton develops her theme of women in specific situations that impact the condition of women during the French Revolution, especially the 1795-96 counter-revolutionary woman that other historians of the French Revolution, such as Suzanne Desan, recognize to be significant in the changing trends in the condition of women during the French Revolution. Joan Wallach Scott and Susan Dalton contribute insights into the roles of Olympe de Gouges and Madame Roland, Darline Gay Levy and Harriet B. Applewhite develop the subtheme of militant women in Paris, and Joan B. Landes discusses women in the "public sphere," while Suzanne Desan explains how women created a public sphere through religious activism. Despite the legal prohibition of participation of women in the public sphere after 1793, some women succeeded in influencing French policies regarding religion through clever, courageous activist efforts. Women did not succeed in acquiring the right to participate in elections until 1945, but they took advantage of other informal, or even illegal means, to influence French society.