Women’s Voices
Ryan McGoron
“Thus the 18th century was without cease troubled by women elevated to the throne. Their views
and their interests were only revolutions. All of what is an exception to law or of rule, at the head
of a state, can it be anything other than a very striking event or a revolution? The ambition to be
the queen of France in Madame de Maintenon; the desire to crown her children in the queen of
Spain; the vengeance of Maria-Theresa against France and against Frederick; the desire to reign
in Catherine, and that of governing France in Marie Antoinette, have occasioned the European
revolutions and troubles of the 18th century.”
History is filled with numerous examples and words that are male dominated. Not only
are many historical accounts biased towards men and written by men, but the words within them
come from a gendered male dominance as well. For example, take the word “history” and think
of it as “his” “story.” By this formation of the word, history would be defined as a recollection
of events told by men. This essay will call upon the gendered classes to focus on “her” “story,”
mainly women during the French Revolution. Four historians by the names of Olwen Hufton,
Sara Melzer, Leslie Rabine, and Joan Landes all have very distinct arguments as to why women
were so important towards the French Revolution and why they should be studied today.
Women in the French Revolution came to define something bigger than themselves as they
challenged male-dominated psyches of the eighteenth century and sparked a feminist movement
that they are still fighting today. 1
In her book Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution, Olwen
Hufton focused on the distinct reality of the individual woman during the French Revolution and
1
Olwen Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1992); Sarah Melzer and Leslie Rabine, Rebel Daughters: Women
and the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Joan Landes, Women
and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1988).
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the benefits that came from it. This book came from a series of lectures that Hufton gave on
women and the French Revolution in October 1989 as a tribute to the bicentenary of the French
Revolution. During that very same year, many books were being written about women, but
Hufton wanted to be different from her fellow historians. She said, “Rather, I want to take an
opportunity to examine a number of issues more closely with a view not merely to proving that
women were there and hence had a revolution as well, but that their responses transformed and
modified the entire history of the period 1789-1815.” 2 There were many historians that were
writing books on women being there during the French Revolution, but Hufton wanted to take it
to the next level in examining women’s roles at this time as being transformative to the ideals
and events of the period. Hufton clearly noted throughout her book that there needed to be a
definitive line drawn between theory and what actually happened. So many works on women up
to this point were focused on theories of historians. Hufton wanted a book that recognized
theory as a part of interpretation of events, but only a part. The rest must be left to facts.
In her book, Hufton wanted to get rid of the single generic woman. Women of the
French Revolution should not be collected into one single group because each woman is different
and has her place in history. Past historians always categorized women of the French Revolution
with religion and bread, and most saw the involvement of women in the revolution as a disaster.
It is not shocking to note that most of these historians were men. Hufton confronted this notion
when she said, “The simple evolutionary view of a revolutionary woman—bread rioter, clubiste,
dévoté—is seductively persuasive. The records themselves show that when we look for women
they were indeed defenders of the bread basket; some were also members of political clubs and
many certainly worked for the restoration of Catholic worship in France. But were they the same
2
Hufton, Women and Citizenship, xvii.
2
women?”3 No they were not. Each woman played her own role and had her own voice. This is
the distinction and description of the individual woman that Hufton goes on to explain in her
book.
Evidence for working women during the French Revolution is hard to find mainly
because most women at that time were illiterate. 65% of women on the eve of the French
Revolution could not write their names. Historians like Hufton must look at administrative
sources such as police records, municipal registers, reports of national agents—a far from neutral
source—and scattered information in provincial archives. It is from these collections that Hufton
wrote her book. She went on to describe her theme when she said, “I have several aims but my
overriding concern is to examine the aspects of the total record and to explain why certain groups
of women behaved the way they did and the consequences of their actions for the history of the
Revolution and indeed for the history of France.” 4 Here is where Hufton notes the significance
of women and their role within history. In her book, she goes on to explain the history of the
crowd and popular sovereignty, the relationship between Enlightenment ideas and revolutionary
reform policy, and gender roles within the counter-revolution. During this period, women could
be found conducting guerilla warfare against revolutionary ideals and women could be found
idolizing the revolution and preserving it for future generations. Hufton acknowledged the
significance of women in the French Revolution as having the ability to change history, but also
noted their deeply held individuality in which they should not be grouped into a generalized
revolutionary woman.
The authors of the book Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution, take a very
different approach towards the study of women during the French Revolution. Sara Melzer and
3
4
Hufton, Women and Citizenship, xxi.
Hufton, Women and Citizenship, xxiii.
3
Leslie Rabine created this book through a collection of essays from many prominent French
historians on women and the French Revolution. Where as Hufton saw the significance of
women during this time period as changing the course of history, Melzer and Rabine saw women
as playing a huge role in the shift of human understanding. They said about their book, “These
chapters demonstrate that the critical study of women and gender does not exist in some remote
no-man’s-land, but impinges on all human understanding.” 5 The Declaration of the Rights of
Man was not intended to include women. This was the human understanding, at a time of great
fighting for liberty, that women wanted to change. Melzer and Rabine said, “So what changes
with the French revolution? It 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 ever since the first days of the
1789 upheavals. They have been, in the words of our main title, ‘Rebel Daughters’ of their
father, the Revolution.” 6 To seek inclusion within the community women had to rebel against
the community and its ideology. Many of the authors of the essays within this book could be
considered “rebel daughters” as well. Women and the French Revolution are not distinct entities
because one could not have happened without the other.
The authors go on to explain the importance of the roles of women within this time
period just like Hufton did, but instead of coming to the same conclusion about describing
women through individuality they came to a different one. Melzer and Rabine said, “Women’s
active participation from 1789 to 1793 was necessary to the revolution’s success. Women
demonstrated and fought to establish the new order, demanded bread for their families, and
pressured the government to defend the new republic and regulate the economy. But like women
5
6
Melzer and Rabine, Rebel Daughters, 3.
Melzer and Rabine, Rebel Daughters, 3.
4
in social movements since that time, they found themselves fighting on two contradictory fronts:
with the men to bring about a new society based on ‘liberty, equality, fraternity,’ and against the
men to claim those very rights for themselves.” 7 Melzer and Rabine noted the historical
descriptions of women as being involved with bread and religion, but realized like Hufton that it
came to represent something more. So where is the difference between the historians? Melzer
and Rabine both think it is best to study women during the French Revolution as an allegorical
group and not individuals. They said, “Woman as an allegorical figure came more and more
pervasively to stand for Liberty, Equality, republican virtues, and the Republic itself in the men’s
representations of their new political order. Several of the chapters within this volume discuss
the nature and significance of replacing active women with Woman as allegory.” 8 This
argument that the authors support largely came from another French historian by the name of
Lynn Hunt. Hunt described the execution of Louis XVI as a “crisis of representation.”
According to Hunt, the king was the “sacred center” of the representational system that relates
self to world and now that center was replaced by the Woman. This was not a quick change, but
rather a long historical trend that resulted in the change of the masculine psyche through the help
of literature and art. Gender politics are seen as being very important for the outcomes of the
revolution and changes in human understanding.
So far all three historians agree that studying women during the French revolution is very
important. Hufton focuses on the impact women had with regards to changing the course of
history as she concentrates on their singularity as individual women with different actions and
beliefs. Melzer and Rabine fixated on the impact women had with regards to changing human
understanding as they focused on women as a symbolic allegory that represented the “sacred
7
8
Melzer and Rabine, Rebel Daughters, 5.
Melzer and Rabine, Rebel Daughters, 5.
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center” of society and came to define liberty itself. Joan Landes, in her book Women and the
Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution, set out to explain the importance of those
same roles of women within the French Revolution, but not as a change of history or human
understanding. Landes focused on the present and how feminism today saw its roots within the
French Revolution. The same discrimination that the other historians described Landes
described as well when she said, “I remain impressed by the fact that in the century between
1750-1850 women were confronted with a new, and hitherto relatively inconsequential, source of
discrimination, the constitutional denial of women’s rights under bourgeois law.” 9 It is from this
discrimination that Landes saw the roots of feminism. She says, “I relate the genesis of
feminism to the fall of the politically influential women of the absolutist court and salon of Old
Regime France.” 10 Landes argued throughout her book that the shift in the organization of
public life is linked to a radical transformation of the system of cultural representation. The
collapse of the old patriarchy resulted in a new gendering of the public sphere. Women were
very active and they participated in and influenced political events and public language. When
this willingness for women to act within their republic was crushed, the seeds of feminism were
beginning to take root. Landes argues, “the exclusion of women from the bourgeois public was
not incidental but central to its incarnation, and that, however marginal, feminist theory and
practice supply important historical and theoretical vantage points from which to re-view the
modern public’s emergence.” 11 In Part I of her book, Landes addresses the dynamics of political
and cultural representation in the Old regime society. In Part II, she considers the fate of women
and feminism in the bourgeois public sphere. Like the other historians, Landes sees women
9
Landes, Women and Public Sphere, 1.
Landes, Women and Public Sphere, 1.
11
Landes, Women and Public Sphere, 7.
10
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during the French Revolution as important, but to the extent of the roots of feminism and not as a
shift in history or human understanding. One could argue that Landes portrays and studies
women from this time period as a group as opposed to the individualistic concept of Hufton. So
what is the best way to look at women during the French Revolution? By looking at them as
individuals we can better understand their place in history through their feelings, stories, and
actions. This individuality is lost when women are generically placed into a historic group.
History is filled with heroes. Some are known and some are unknown still waiting to be
discovered by enthusiastic and interested historians. It is important to remember that in the
eighteenth century around the French Revolution there were women who would be considered
heroes today. A single woman with three children, participating in politics and fighting for a
future or a place in history, is a very real possibility to us today. This should not go overlooked.
Olwen Hufton, Sara Melzer, Leslie Rabine, and Joan Landes all saw women as those interesting
heroes forcefully pounding to crack the glass ceiling. The actions of women within the French
Revolution, whether studied as groups or individuals, changed history, altered human
understanding, and began the roots of feminism to this very day. Their actions have severely
damaged the glass ceiling for many more women heroes to come.
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