Man and Woman in Socialist Iconography Author(s): Eric Hobsbawm Source: History Workshop, No. 6 (Autumn, 1978), pp.

121-138 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4288195 Accessed: 01/02/2010 15:09
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Man and Woman in Socialist Iconography by Eric Hobsbawm

above: MilletLiberty on the Barricades below- DelacroixLiberty on the Barricades (detail)

Womenhave often pointedout that male historiansin the past, includingmarxists, havegrosslyneglectedthe femalehalf of the humanrace. The criticismis just; the presentwriteracceptsthat it appliesto his own work. Yet if this deficiencyis to be remedied,it cannot be simplyby developinga specialisedbranchof history which deals exclusivelywith women, for in humansociety the two sexes are inseparable. Whatwe needalso to studyis the changingforms of the relationsbetweenthe sexes, both in social realityand in the image which both sexes have of one another. The and socialist presentpaperis a preliminary attemptto do this for the revolutionary movementsof the 19thand early20th centuriesby meansof the ideology expressed in the imagesand emblemsassociatedwith these movements.Sincethese wereoverwhelmingly designedby men, it is of courseimpossibleto assumethat the sex-roles theyrepresent expressthe views of most women. However,it is possibleto compare these imagesof roles and relationships with the social realitiesof the period, and

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with the more specifically formulatedideologies of revolutionaryand socialist movements. whichunderlies this paper. is possible,is the assumption Thatsucha comparison It is not suggestedthat the images here analyseddirectlyreflect social realities, exceptwheretheywerespecifically to do so, as in picturesintendedto have designed documentaryvalue, and even then they clearly did not only reflect reality. My assumptionis merelythat in imagesdesignedto be seen by and to have an impact of realitysets limits to upon a wide public,e.g. of workers,the public'sexperience the degree to which they may diverge from that experience.If the capitalistin socialistcartoonsof the BelleEpoquewereto have been habitually not as presented a fat man smokinga cigarand in a top hat, but as a fat woman, these permissible limitswouldhavebeenexceeded,andthe caricatures wouldhave been less effective; for most bosseswerenot only conceivedas malesbut weremales. It does not follow that all capitalistswere fat with top hats and cigars, though these attributeswere readily understoodas indicatingwealth in a bourgeois society, and had to be understood as specifyingone particular formof wealthandprivilege as distinctfrom with realitywas evidentlyless others, e.g. the nobleman's.Such a correspondence in purelysymbolicand allegorical necessary images,and yet even herethey werenot as a woman,it wouldhave completely absent;if the deityof warhadbeenpresented been with the intention to shock. To interpreticonographyin this manner is not to makea seriousanalysisof imageand symbol. My purposeis more naturally modest. Let us begin with perhapsthe most famous of revolutionary paintings,though one not createdby a revolutionary: Delacroix'Libertyon the Barricades in 1830. The picturewill be familiarto many:a bare-breasted girl in Phrygianbonnetwith a banner,steppingoverthe fallen, followedby armedmen in characteristic costumes. The sourcesof the picturehave been much investigated. [2] Whateverthey are, its contemporary interpretation is not in doubt. Libertywas seen not as an allegorical figure, but as a real woman (inspiredno doubt by the heroic Marie Deschamps, whose feats suggested the picture). She was seen as a woman of the people, belongingto the people, at ease among the people: C'est une forte femmeaux puissantesmamelles, a la voix rauque,aux dursappas
qui.....

Agile et marchanta grandspas Se plait aux cris du peuple....

Barbier, La Cure'e

(A strongwoman, stout bosom'd,

With raucous voice and rough charm ...

She stridesforwardwith confidence, in theclamour Rejoicing of thepeople. TheBandwagon She was for Balzac,of peasantstock: 'dark-skinned and ardent,the very imageof the people'.[31She was proud, even insolent (Balzac'swords), and thus the very oppositeof the public image of women in bourgeoissociety. And, as the contemporariesstress,she was sexuallyemancipated. Barbier,whose La Cur6eis certainly

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one of Delacroix' sources, invents an entire history of sexual emancipationand initiativefor her: qui ne prendses amoursque dans la populace, qui ne preteson large flanc qu'a des gens forts comme elle (who takes her lovers only from among the masses, who gives her sturdybody only to men as strong as herself) after having, 'enfantde la Bastille'('child of the Bastille'),spreaduniversalsexual excitementaroundher, tired of her early lovers and followed Napoleon's banners and a 'capitainede vingt ans' ('20 year old captain'). Now she returned, toujoursbelle et nue (my emphasis,EJH) avec l'echarpeaux trois couleurs (still beautifuland naked with the tricoloursash) to win the 'Trois Glorieuses'(the July Revolution)for her people.[4] Heine, who comments on the picture itself, pushes the image even further of the independent and sexuallyemancipated towardsanotherambiguousstereotype woman, the courtesan: 'a strange mixture of Phryne, fishwife and goddess of returns freedom'. [51The themeis recognizable: Flaubertin EducationSentimentale to it in the context of 1848, with his image of Libertyas a common prostitute in the ransacked Tuileries (though operating the habitual bourgeois transitionfrom the equation liberty = good to that of license = bad): 'In the antechamber,bolt uprighton a pile of clothes, stood a woman of the streetsposingas a statueof liberty'. The same note is hintedat by FelicienRops, who had actually represented'the Commune personified by a nakedwoman, "a soldier'scap on her head and sword at her side"'[6], an image which came not only to his own mind. His powerful Peuple is a naked young woman, in the posture of a whore dressed only in stockings and a night cap, possibly hinting at the Phrygian bonnet, her legs openingon her sex.[7] Felicien Rops
People

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of the nude The noveltyof Delacroix'Libertythereforelies in the identification female figurewith a real woman of the people, an emancipated woman, and one playingan active- indeeda leading- role in the movementof men. How far back this revolutionary image can be traced is a question which must be left to arthistoriansto answer. [8] Here we can only note two things. First, its concreteness removes it from the usual allegoricalrole of females, though she maintainsthe nakedness of such figures, and this nudity is indeed stressed by painter and observers.She does not inspireor represent:she acts. Second, she seems clearly distinctfrom the traditionaliconographic image of woman as an active freedomthe successfulstruggle fighter,notablyJudith,who, with David, so often represents of the weakagainstthe strong.Unlike David and Judith, Delacroix'Libertyis not alone, nor does she representweakness. On the contrary, she representsthe concentratedforce of the invincible people. Since 'the people' consists of a collectionof differentclassesand occupations,and is presented as such, a general symbolnot identifiedwithany one of themis desirable. Fortraditional iconographic reasonsthis was likelyto be female.But the womanchosenrepresents 'the people'. The Revolution of 1830seemsto represent the highpointof this imageof Liberty as an active, emancipatedgirl accepted as leader by men, though the theme continuesto be popularin 1848,doubtlessbecauseof Delacroix'influenceon other painters. She remains naked in her Phrygian cap in Millet's Liberty on the but her contextis now vague.She remainsa leader-figure in Daumier's Barricades, draftof The Uprising but, once again, her contextis shadowy.On the other hand, of the Communeand of Libertyin 1871, thoughtherearenot manyrepresentations they tended to be naked (as in the design of Rops mentionedabove) or barebreasted. [9]Perhapsthe notablyactivepartplayedby womenin the Communealso accountsfor the symbolisation of this revolutionby a non-allegorical (i.e. clothed) and obviouslymilitantwomanin at least one foreignillustration.[l0] The revolutionary conceptof republicor libertythus still tendedto be a naked, or morelikelybare-breasted, female.The Communard Dalou's celebrated statueof the Republicon the Place de la Nation still has at least one breast bared. Only research could show how far the revelationof the breastretainsthis rebelliousor at least polemicalassociation, as perhaps in the cartoon from the Dreyfus period (January1898) in which a young and virginalMarianne,one breast exposed, is protected againsta monsterby a matronlyand armedJusticeover the line: 'Justice: Haveno fearof the monster!I am here'.[11]On the otherhandthe institutionalised Republic,Marianne,in spite of her revolutionary origins,is now normallythough lightly,clothed.Thereignof decencyhas beenre-established. Perhapsalso the reign of lies, since it is characteristic of the allegoricalfemale figureof Truth- she still appearsfrequently,notably in the caricaturesof the Dreyfus period-that she shouldbe naked.[12]And indeed,evenin the iconography of the respectable British labourmovement of Victorian England,she remains naked,as on the emblemof the AmalgamatedSociety of Carpentersand Joiners, 1860,[13] until late Victorian moralityprevails. Generally,the role of the female figure, naked or clothed, diminishessharply with the transitionfrom the democratic-plebeian revolutions of the 19th centuryto the proletarian and socialistmovements of the 20th. In a sense, the mainproblemof this paperconsistsin this masculinisation of the imageryof the labourand socialist movement. For obviousreasonsthe workingwomanproletarian is not muchrepresented by

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artists, outside the few industrieswhich were predominantlyfemale. There was certainlyno prejudice.ConstantinMeunier,the Belgianwho pioneeredthe typical - women of the male worker,painted- and to a lesserextent sculpted idealisation as readilyas men; sometimes,as in his Le retourdes mines (Coming wage-workers back from the mines) (1905) workingtogether with men- as women still did in Belgianmines.[14]However, it is probablethat the image of woman as a wagetogetherwith males in politicalactivity[15],was worker,and an active participant largelydue to socialist influence. In Britainit does not become noticeablein the trade union iconography until this influence is felt.[16] In the emblems of by intellectuals,real women appear Britishtradeunions, uninfluenced pre-socialist mainly in those small images by which unions advertisedtheir fraternalhelp to membersin distress: sickness, accident and funeral benefit. They stand by the bedsideof the sick husbandas his matescome to visit him adornedwith the sash of by children,theyshakehandswith the union representative theiruniorn. Surrounded who handsthem money after the death of the breadwinner. Of coursewomen are still presentin the form of symbol and allegory, though towardsthe end of the centuryin Britainunionemblemsareto be found withoutany femalefigures,especiallyin such purelymasculineindustriesas coal-mining,steelsmeltingand the like.[17] Still, the allegoriesof liberal self-help continue to be largely female, because they had always been. Prudence, Industry(=diligence) overthe Stone Masons'Friendly Truthand Justicepresided Fortitude,Temperance, Society of Societyof 1868;Art, Industry,Truthand Justiceover the Amalgamated that only Justice and Joiners.Fromthe 1880son one has the impression Carpenters and Truth, possibly supplementedby Faith and Hope, survive among these figures. Howeveras socialismadvances,other female personsenterthe traditional iconographyof the left, though they are in no sense supposedto representreal women. They are goddessesor muses. Thus on a bannerof the (leftwing)Workers'Union, 1898-1929,a sweetyoung and sandalspoints to a risingsun labelled 'A betterlife' for lady in whitedrapery paintedworkersin working dress. She is the.benefit of a numberof realistically Faith, as the text below the picturemakes clear. A militantfigure, also in white and sandals,but with swordand bucklermarked'Justice& Equality',not draperies a hairout of place on her well-styledhead, standsbefore a muscularworkerin an open shirtwho has evidentlyjust defeateda beast labelled'Capitalism'which lies dead on the groundbefore him. The banneris labelled'The Triumphof Labour', and representsthe Southend-on-Sea branch of the National Union of General Workers,anothersocialistunion. The Tottenhambranchof the sameunion has the sameyoung lady, this time with flowing hair, her dressmarked'Light, Education, pointingout the Political Action and Real International', Industrial Organisation, to the usualgroupof workers. playground landin the shapeof a children's promised and the entire Thepromised Commonwealth', landis labelled'gainthe Cooperative bannerillustratesthe slogan 'Producersof the Nation's Wealth, Unite! And have your shareof the world.'[18] Theseimagesareall the moresignificant becausetheyareobviouslylinkedto the new socialistmovement,which developsits own iconography,and because(unlike the old allegoricalvocabulary)this new iconographyis in part inspiredby the imagery,from which Delacroix'Libertyis also traditionof Frenchrevolutionary arts-and-crafts in Britainat least, it belongsto the progressive derived.Stylistically, movementand its offshoot, art nouveau,which providedBritishsocialismwith its

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chiefartists an ilutaos

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rn' e Wle Day.rCae andlthe Eoright-Hou Eqadiuty,aLibert Fratefrnisty, womencingthioe socialist iconorphy? Thooey ismheroe of themnt whpuat Yiety 1895, smayohisTA.Ws' pubissheudefro the Labou Aaryngalc[20d ispire.y clthesebemo esuthon,etblowsTa flwig hin Prgan in hoes hal-vsible be bo18 h tirfle.t A ldy Leighand slees mand trupe Forsthe-enfitMofy boytwith sopnckeldeshirats handesomte erietual whichuheswst the sedof,o carryin baprskent afromal beyond thre elbvow,. rolledtiup background the toath socialisty pibropaganda;ry,sasadwvsfr presumably, fa they aepr apa in thisnesoilt iconography, women desin Insoar as thumaneofth identifie Insofa syboiAll is aulseahedfo85 or wtheaoutrchildren idealisedcoupemle,mit coulees Chrtane' isth winutria labour.ckIn beeit man whadomrepreent witha soumpeativirty,

a basketof corn, and with he has besidehim a pickand a shovel,whileshe, carrying natureor at most agriculture.Curiouslyenough, the a rakeby her side, represents same divisionoccursin Mukhina'sfamous sculptureof the (male) workerand the Exposition (female)kolkhozpeasanton the SovietPavilionat the ParisInternational of 1937:he the hammer,she the sickle.

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Mukhina on the SovietPavilion Sculpture

People Woman.of.the Meunier

Meunier Woman of the People

Of course actual women of the workingclassesalso occurin the new socialisticonography,and embodya symbolicmeaning,at least by implication. Yet they are quite different from the militant girls of the Paris Commune. They are figures of suffering and endurance. Meunier, that great pioneerof proletarianart and socialist realism- both as real- anticipates ism and as idealisation them, as usual. His Femme du Peuple (Woman of the People) (1893) is old, thin, her hair drawn back to tightly as to suggest little more than a naked skull, her witheredflat chest suggestedby the very(anduntypical) nakedness of her shoulders. [21]His evenbetter-known has the female Le Grisou(Firedamp) figure, swathed in shawls, grieving over the corpse of the dead miner. These are the suffering proletarian mothers best known from Gorki's novel or Kaethe Kollwitz' tragic And it is perhapsnot drawings.[22] thattheirbodiesbecome insignificant invisible under shawls and headcloths. The typical image of the proletarianwoman has been desexualizedand hides behind the clothes of poverty. She is spirit, not body. (In real life this image of the suffering wife and motherturned militant is perhapsexemplifiedby the blackclad eloquence of La Pasionaria in the days of the SpanishCivil War). Yet while the female body in socialist iconographyis increasingly dressed, if not concealed, a curious to the male body. thing is happening It is increasinglyrevealed for symbolic purposes. The image which increasinglysymbolizesthe working classis the exact counterpart to Delacroix' Liberty, namely a topless young man: the powerfulfigure of a masculine labourer, swinging hammer or pick and naked to the

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waist. This image is unrealistic in two ways. In the first place, it was by no means easy to find many nineteenth-century male workers in the countries with strong labour movements labouring with a naked torso. This, as Van Gogh recognized, was one of the difficulties of an era of artistic realism. He would have liked to paint the naked bodies of peasants, but in real life they did not go naked. [23] The numerous pictures representing industrial labour, even under conditiohs when it would today seem reasonable to take off one's shirt, as in the heat and glow of ironworks or gasworks, almost universally show them clothed, however lightly. This includes not merely what might be called broad evocations of the world of labour such as

Earlom, An Iron Forge

Madox Ford's Work, or Alfred Roll's Le Travail(1881)- a scene of open-air buildingwork-but realisticpaintingsor graphic reporting.[24]Naturally baretorsoed workerscould be seen-for instanceamong some, but by no means all, presentedas Britishcoal-faceworkers.In such cases workerscould be realistically or in de Raboteurs (Floor-polishers)[25], G. Caillebotte's Parquet as in semi-nudes, Union (1857).[26]In on the emblemof the Ironfounders' the figureof a coal-hewer real life, however, these were all special cases. In the second place, the image of becauseit almostcertainlyexcludedthe vast body of skilled is unrealistic nakedness and factoryworkers,who would not have dreamedof workingwithout their shirts at any time, and who, incidentally,in general formed the bulk of the organized labourmovement. workerfirst appearsin art is uncertain.Certainlywhat When the bare-torsoed on the Westmacott's slate-worker proletarians, mustbe one of the earliestsculptured Penrhynmonument,Bangor(1821)[27],is dressed,while the peasantgirl near him At all events from the 1880son he ratherdecollet&e. is, perhapssemi-allegorically, in the workof the Belgian,ConstantinMeunier,perhapsthe was familiarin sculpture first artist to devote himself wholeheartedlyto the presentationof the manual worker;possibly also of the CommunardDalou, whose unfinishedmonumentto labour contains similar motifs. Obviously he was much more prominent in sculpture,which had, by long tradition,a much strongertendencyto presentthe human figure nude than painting. In fact, Meunier'sdrawingsand paintingsare clothed,and, as has been shown for at least one of his muchmoreoften realistically themes, dockersunloadinga ship, were only undressedin the three-dimensional designfor a monumentof labour.[28] Perhapsthis is one reasonwhy the semi-nude when the socialist in the periodof the SecondInternational, figureis less prominent was not in a positionto commissionmanypublicmonumentsas yet, and movement

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comesintOhis own after 1917in Soviet Russia, whereit was. Yet, though a direct comparisonbetweenpaintedand sculptedimage is thereforemisleading,the bare male torso may already be found here and there on two-dimensionalemblems, bannersand otherpicturesof the labourmovementevenin the 19thcentury.Still, in he triumphed after 1917in SovietRussia,undersuch titles as Worker,The sculpture Memorialof Bloody Sunday1905etc.[29]The themeis Weapons of theProletariat, of the Peoples' of the 1970sstill not yet exhausted,since a statuecalled 'Friendship presentsthe familiartopless Herculesswinginga hammer. [30] Paintingand graphicsstill found it harderto breakthe links with realism.It is not easy to find any bare-torsoedworkers in the heroic age of the Russian revolutionary poster.Eventhe symbolicpaintingTrud(Toil) presentsa designof an idealised young man in working clothes, surroundedby the tools of a skilled artisan[3 1] ratherthan the heavy muscledand basicallyunskilledtitan of the more familiar kind. The powerful hammer-swinger engaged in breaking the chains on the coversof its the Communist International bindingthe globe, who symbolized periodicalfrom 1920, wore clothes on his torso, though only sketchy ones. The symbolic decorationsof this review in its early numberswere non-human:five pointedstars, rays, hammers,sickles, ears of grain, beehives, cornucopias,roses, thorns,crossedtorchesand chains. While therewere more modernimagessuch as stylisations of smoking factory chimneys in the art-nouveau fashion[32] and of transmission-belts, there were no bare-chested workers. Propadriving-bands of suchmendo not becomecommon,if they occurat all, before gandaphotographs the first Five-Year Plan.[33] Nevertheless, though the progress of the twodimensional baretorso was slowerthan might be thought, the image was familiar. Thus it is the symbol decoratingthe cover of the French edition of the Compte RenduAnalytiqueof the 5th Congressof Comintern(Paris 1924). Why the bare body? The question can only be briefly discussed,but takes us backboth to the languageof idealisedand symbolicpresentation and to the needto developsucha languagefor the socialistrevolutionary movement.Thereis no doubt that eighteenth-century aesthetictheorylinked the nakedbody and the idealisation of the humanbeing;often quiteconsciouslyas in Winckelmann. An idealisedperson (as distinctfrom an allegoricalfigure)could not be clothed in the garmentsof real life, and- as in the nude statues of Napoleon- should if possible be presented without garments.Realismhad no place in such a presentation.When Stendhal criticisedthe painterDavid, becauseit would have been suicidalfor his warriorsof antiquityto go into battlenaked,armedonly with helmet,swordand shield, he was simplydrawingattention,in his usual role as provocator,to the incompatibility of symbolicand realisticstatementin art. But the socialist movement,in spite of its in principle profoundattachment to realismin art- an attachment whichgoes back to the Saint-Simonians -required a languageof symbolicstatement,in which to state its ideals. As we have seen, the emblemsand bannersof the British trade unions- rightlydescribed as 'the true folk-artof nineteenthcentury by Klingender - are a combinationof realism, allegory and symbol. They are proBritain'[34] bably the last flourishingform of the allegoricaland symbolic languageoutside public monumentalsculpture. An idealised presentationof the subject of the movement,the struggling workingclassitself, mustsooneror laterinvolvethe use of the nude-as on the bannerof the Export Branchof the Dockers' Union in the 1890s, where a naked muscularfigure, his loins lightly draped, kneels on a rock with a largegreen serpent,surrounded wrestling by suitablemottoes.[35] In short,

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though the tension between realism and symbolism remained, it was still . difficult to devise a complete vocabu..... .. .. . .. lary of symbol and ideal without the nude. On the other hand, it may be suggested that the total nude was no longer acceptable. It cannot have been easy to overlook the absurdity of the 1927 'Group: October'[36] which consists of three muscular men, naked except for the red-army cap worn by one of them, with hammers and other suitable paraphernalia. Let us conjecture that the bare-torsoed image expressed a compromise between symbolism and realism. There were after all real workers who could be so presented. We are left with a final, but crucial question. Why is the struggling working class symbolised exclusivelyby a male torso?Herewe can only speculate.Two lines of speculationmay be

suggested. The first concerns the changes in the actual sexual division of labour in the and political.It is a paradoxof nineteenth-century capitalistperiod,both productive industrialization thatit tendedto increaseand sharpenthe sexualdivisionof labour the producer between (unpaid)householdworkand(paid)workoutside,by depriving or proto-industrial of control over the means of production.In the pre-industrial economy(peasantfarming,artisanalproduction,smallshopkeeping,cottageindustry, putting-out etc.) householdand productionweregenerallya singleor combined - since unit, and thoughthis normallymeantthat womenweregrosslyoverworked they did most of the houseworkand sharedin the rest of the work- they were not confinedto one type of work. Indeed, in the great expansionof 'proto-industrialism' (cottage industry)which has recentlybeen investigatedthe actual productive processesattenuatedor even abolishedthe differencesin work between men and effects on the social and sexualroles and conventionsof women, with far-reaching the sexes.[37] On the other hand in the increasinglycommon situation of the worker who belongingto the employer,home and work labouredfor an employerin a workplace wereseparate.Typicallyit was the male who had to leave home every day to work for wagesand the womanwho did not. Typicallywomen workedoutside the home (wheretheydid so at all) only beforeor, if widowedor separated,after marriage,or wherethe husbandwas unableto earn sufficientto maintainwife and family, and very likely only so long as he was unable to do so. Conversely,an occupationin which an adult man was normally unable to earn a family wage was- very understandably -regarded as underpaid.Hence the labour movementquite logically developedthe tendencyto calculatethe desirableminimumwage in terms of and to regarda wagethe earningsof a single (i.e. in practicemale) breadwinner, working wife as a symptom of an undesirableeconomic situation. In fact the

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and the numberof married situationwas often undesirable, womenobligedto work for wages or their equivalentwas substantial,though a very large proportionof them did so at home-i.e. outside the effective range of labour movements. [38] in whichthe work of married womenwas traditionally Moreover,evenin industries - as in the Lancashire textileregion- its scope can be exaggerated. wellestablished In 1901 38%7o of marriedand widowed women in Blackburnwere employed for wages, but only 150o of those in Bolton.[39] women aimed to stop workingfor wages outside the In short, conventionally of wage-working house once they got married.Britain,where in 1911 only 11%o women had husbandsand only 10% of marriedwomen worked, was perhapsan of wage-working womenhad extremecase;but even in Germany (1907)where30%o was striking.For everywife at wage-workon the agehusbandsthe sex-difference groups from 25 to 40 years, there were four wage-workinghusbands. [40] The situation of the marriedwoman was not substantiallychanged as yet by the - rather marked after 1900- for women to enter industry in larger tendency numbers,and,by the growingvarietyof occupationsand leisureactivitiesopen to of married unmarried womenhavinga girls.[41]'Thetrendtowardsa largernumber at the turnof the century'. specifiedoccupationhad not been firmlyestablished [42] The point is worthstressing,since some feministhistorians,for reasonsdifficultto have attemptedto deny it. Nineteenth-century industrialisation understand, (unlike tended to make marriageand the family the twentieth-century industrialisation) majorcareerof the working-class womanwho was not obligedby sheerpovertyto take other work.[43]Insofar as she worked for wages before marriage,she saw wage-workas a temporary,though no doubt desirable,phase in her life. Once not as a worker,but as the wife, motherand married, she belongedto the proletariat housekeeper of workers. Politicallythe pre-industrial struggleof the poor not only producedampleroom for womento takepartbesidemen- neithersex had suchpoliticalrightsas the right to vote- but in some respectsa specificand leadingrole for them. The commonest form of strugglewas that to assertsocialjustice, i.e. the maintenance of what E.P. Thompsonhas called 'the moral economy of the crowd' throughdirect action to control prices. [44] In this form of action, which could be politicallydecisive -we recall the marchof the women on Versaillesin 1789- women not only took the lead, but wereconventionally expectedto. As LuisaAccatirightlystates:'in a large number of cases(I wouldalmostsay in practically all cases)womenhave the decisive role, whetherbecauseit is they who take the initiative,or becausethey form a very large part of the crowd'.[45] We need not here consider the well-known preindustrial in whichrebellious practice mentake action disguisedas women, as in the so-calledRebeccaRiots of Wales(1843). Furthermore, the characteristic urbanrevolution of the pre-industrial periodwas not proletarianbut plebeian. Within the menu peuple, a socially heterogeneous coalition of elements, united by common 'littleness'and poverty ratherthan by or class criteria,womencould play a politicalrole, providedonly they occupational could come out on the streets.They could and did help to build barricades.They could assist those who fought behind them. They could even fight or bear arms themselves.Even the image of the modern 'people's revolution'in a large nonindustrialmetropoliscontains them, as anyone who recalls the street scenes of Havanaafter the triumphof Fidel Castrowill testify. On the otherhandthe specificformof struggle of the proletariat, the tradeunion

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the women, or greatlyreducedtheir visible role as and the strike, largelyexqluded active participants,except in the few industries in which they were heavily concentrated.Thus in 1896 the total numberof women in British trade unions like 8%;but 60'1o of these werein the was 142,000or something (excluding teachers) cottonindustry.By 1910it was above 10%7o, but though extremely stronglyorganized therehadbeensomegrowthin tradeunionismamongwhite-collar and shopworkers, their the greatbulk of the expansionin industrywas still in textiles. [46] Elsewhere role was indeed crucial, but distinct, even in small industrialand mining centres whereplaceand work and communitywere inseparable. Yet if in such placestheir not that of strikers rolein strikeswas public,visibleandessential,it was nevertheless themselves. Moreover,where men's work and women's work were not so separateand distinctthat no question of intermixture could arise, the normalattitudeof male tradeunioniststowards womenseekingto entertheiroccupation was, in the wordsof S. and B. Webb, 'resentment and abhorrence'. [47] The reason was simple: since theirwageswereso muchlower,theyrepresented a threatto the ratesand conditions of men. They were-to quote the Webbsagain-'as a class, the most dangerous enemiesof the artisan'sStandard of Life', thoughthe men's attitudewas also- in spite of the growing influence on the left -strongly influenced by what would today be called 'sexism': [48] 'the respectable artisanhas an instinctivedistastefor the promiscuous mixingof men and womenin dailyintercourse, whetherthis be in the workshopor in a social club'.[49]Consequently the policy of all unionscapable of doing so was to excludewomen from their work, and the policy even of those unionsincapableof doing so (e.g. the cotton weavers) was to segregate the sexes or at least to avoid women and girls working'in conjunctionwith men, especiallyif (theyare)removedfrom constantassociationwith otherfemaleworkers'. [50] Thus both the fear of the economiccompetitionof womenworkersand the maintenance of 'morality'combinedto keep women outside or on the marginsof the labour - exceptin the conventional movement role of family members. The paradoxof the labourmovement was thus that it encouraged an ideologyof sexual equalityand emancipation,while in practicediscouragingthe actual joint participationof men and women in the process of labour as workers. For the minorityof emancipated women of all classes, includingworkers,it providedthe bestopportunities to developas humanbeings,indeedas leadersand publicfigures. in the 19thcentury Probablyit providedthe only environment whichgave them such opportunities.Nor should we underestimate the effect on the ordinary,even the married,workingclass women of a movementpassionatelycommittedto female Unlikethe petty-bourgeois emancipation. 'progressive' movementwhich,as among the FrenchRadicalSocialists, virtuallyflauntedits,male chauvinism,the socialist labour movement tried to overcome the tendencieswithin the proletariatand elsewhereto maintainsexual inequality,even if it failed to achieveas much as it wouldhavewished.[51]It is not insignificant thatthe majorworkby the charismatic leaderof the German socialists,AugustBebel- and perhaps the most popularwork of socialistpropaganda in Germanyat that period- was his Womanand Socialism.[52] Yet at the same time the labour movementunconsciouslytightenedthe bonds which kept the majority of (non-wage-earning) married women of the workingclass in their assignedand subordinatesocial role. The more powerfulit becameas a massmovement,the moreeffectivethese brakeson its own emancipatory theory and practice became; at least until the economic transformations

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thenineteenth-century destroyed industrial phaseof thesexualdivisionof labour.In a sensetheiconography of themovement reflectsthisunconscious of the reinforcement sexual division of labour. In spite of and against the movement's conscious intentions,its imageexpressed the essential'maleness'of the proletarian strugglein its elementary form before 1914, the tradeunion struggle. It shouldnow be clearwhy, paradoxically, the historicalchangefrom an era of plebeianand democratic to one of proletarian-socialist movementsshouldhaveled, to a decline in the role of the female. However, there may be iconographically, anotherfactorwhichreinforced this masculinisation of the movement: the declineof classicalpre-industrial millennialism. Thisis an even morespeculative question,and I touch on it with.cautionand hesitation. As has alreadybeen suggested,in the iconography of the left, the female figure maintained herselfbest as an imageof utopia: the goddessof freedom,the symbol of victory, the figurewho pointed towardsthe perfect society of the future. And indeedthe imageryof the socialistutopia was essentiallyone of nature,of fertility and growth, of blossoming,for which the female metaphorcame naturally: Les generationsecloses Verrontfleurirleursbebes roses Commeeglantiersen Floreal Ce sera la saison des roses ... Voila l'avenirsocial E. Pottier [53] (The buddinggenerations Will see their rosy babies flower Like briarsin the spring. It will be the season of roses ... That's the people's future.) EugenePottier,the Fourierist authorof the Internationale, is full of such imagesof femaleness,even in its literalsense of the maternalbreast: pour tes enfants longtempssevres reprends le rOledu mamelle (L'Age d'Or) Ah, chassons-la.Dans l'or des bles Mere apparais,les seins gonflees a nos phalangescollectives (La fille du Thermidor) Du sein de la nourrice,il coule ce beau jour Une inondationd'existenceet d'amour. Tout est fecondite,tout pulluleet foisonne (Abondance) Nature- toi qui gonfles ton sein pour ta famille entiere (La Cremaillere)

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History Workshop (To your children,thoughweanedlong ago, Give once again your breast. The GoldenAge In the golden meadowscome to us Mother, Your breastsfull for the collectivehosts. Daughterof Thermidor This beautifulday flows from the nurse'sbreast, A flood of life and love. All is fruitfulness,everything swarmsand abounds. Abundance Nature-you whose breasthas swell'd To feed your entirefamily... Celebration)

etc. So, in a less explicitlyphysicalway, is WalterCranewho, as we have seen, was for the themesof socialistimageryin Britainfrom the 1880s on. largelyresponsible It was an imageryof spring and flowers, of harvest(as in the well-known'The Triumph of girlsin light of Labour'designedfor the 1891MayDay demonstration), flowing dressesand Phrygianbonnets. [54] Ceres was the goddess of communiism.[55] It is not surprising that the periodof socialistideologymost deeplyimbuedwith feminism,and most inclinedto assigna crucial,indeedsometimesa dominant,role to women, was the romantic-utopian era before 1848. Of courseat this period we can hardlyspeak of a socialist 'movement'at all, but only of small and a-typical groups. Moreover, the actual number and prominenceof women in leading positionsin suchgroupswas far smallerthanin the yearsof the non-utopian Second International. Thereis nothingto comparein the Britainof Owenismand Chartism with the role of women as writers,public speakersand leadersin the 1880s and 1890s,not only in the middleclass ambianceof the FabianSociety,but in the much more working-class atmosphere of the Independent LabourParty, not to mention such figuresas EleanorMarxin the tradeunion movement.Moreover,the women who thenbecameprominent, like Beatrice Webbor Rosa Luxemburg, did not make their reputationbecause they were women, but because they were outstanding of sex. Nevertheless,the role of women's emancipationin socialist irrespective ideology has neverbeen more obvious and centralthan in the period of 'utopian socialism'. This was partly due to the crucial role assigned to the destructionof the traditional familyin the socialismof thatperiod; [56]a rolewhichis still veryclearin TheCommunist not only of the Manifesto.The familywas seen as the prison-house women,who werenot on the whole veryactivein politics, or indeedas a mass very enthusiastic about the abolitionof marriage,but also of young people, who were muchmoreattracted to revolutionary ideologies.Moreover,as J.F.C. Harrisonhas rightly pointed out, even on empiricalgroundsthe new proletariansmight well concludethat 'theirrudelittlehomeswerea restrictive and circumscribing influence, and that in communitythey would have a meansof breakingout of this: "we can affordto live in palacesas well as the rich... werewe only to adoptthe principleof the patriarchal of largefamilies,suchas that of Abraham"'. combination, principle - paradoxically - with the [57] It has been the consumer-society,combined replacementof mutual aid by state welfare, which has weakenedthis argument againstthe privatisednuclearfamily-household.

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Yet utopiansocialismalso assignedanotherrole to women,which was basically similar to the female role in the chiliastic religious movementswith which the utopianshad much in common. Here women were not only-perhaps not even - equal, but superior. Their specific role was that of prophets, like primarily Joanna Southcott, founder of an influentialmillennialmovementin early nineteenth centuryEngland,or the 'femme-mere-messie' of (woman-mother-messiah) the SaintSimonianreligion. for a [58]This role incidentally providedopportunities worldfor a smallnumber of women.The foundresses publiccareerin a masculine of ChristianScience and Theosophycome to mind. However, the tendency of the socialist and labour movementsto move away from chiliasmtowards rationalist theoryand organization ('scientificsocialism')made this social role for women in the movementincreasingly marginal.Able women, whose talents lay in filling it, werepushedout of the centreof the movementinto fringereligionswhichprovided morescope for them. ThusAnnie Besant,secularist and socialist, found fulfilment and her major political role after 1890 as high priestess of Theosophy and throughTheosophy -an inspirerof the Indiannationalliberationmovement. All that remained of the utopian/messianic role of womenin socialismwas the imageof the femaleas inspiration and symbolof the betterworld. But paradoxically this imageby itself was hardlydistinguishable from Goethe's 'das ewig weibliche ziehtuns hinan'('the eternalfeminineraisesus to the heavens').In actualityit could be no differentfrom the bourgeois-masculine idealisationof the femalein theory, whichwas only too readilycompatible with her inferiorityin practice.At most the femaleimageof theinspirer becametheimageof a Joanof Arc, easilyrecognizable in Walter Crane's designs.Joanof Arcwasindeedan iconof women'smilitancy, butshe didnotrepresent eitherpoliticalor personalemancipation, or indeedactivism,in any sensethatcouldbecomea modelfor realwomen.Evenif we forgetthat she excluded - i.e. womenas sexualbeingsthe majorityof womenwho wereno longervirgins therewas,by historicdefinition,roomfor onlya veryfewJoansof Arc in the worldat any given moment. And, incidentally,as the increasingly enthusiasticadoption of Joan of Arc by the Frenchrightwingdemonstrates, her imagewas ideologically and undetermined. She mightor mightnot represent politically Liberty.She mightbe on the barricades, but she did not - unlike Delacroix'girl- necessarily belong there. it is at presentimpossible to continuethe iconographic Unfortunately analysisof the socialistmovement beyonda pointof historywhichis alreadyfairlyremote.The traditionallanguageof symbol and allegoryis no longer much spoken or understood, and with its declinewomenas goddessesand muses, as personifications of virtue and ideals, even as Joans of Arc, have lost their specific place in political imagery.Eventhe famousinternational symbolof peacein the 1950swas no longer a woman,as it wouldalmostcertainlyhavebeen in the 19th century,but Picasso's dove. The sameis probablytrueof masculine images,thoughthe hammer-wielding Promethean man survivedlongeras the personification of movementand struggle. Theiconography of the movementsince, say, WorldWar II, is non-traditional. We do not at presenthave the analyticaltools to interpretit, e.g. to make symbolic of the mainmoderniconographic readings medium,whichis ostensiblynaturalistic, the photographor film. Iconography can thereforenot throwsignificantlight at presenton the relations betweenmenand womenin the mid-twentieth-century socialistmovement,as it can for the 19th century.Still, it can make one final suggestionabout the masculine image. This, as has alreadybeen suggested,is in some senses paradoxical,since it

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typifiesnot so muchthe workeras sheermuscular effort; not intelligence,skill and but brutestrength.Even, as in Meunier'sfamousIron-puddler, experience, physical effort whichvirtuallyexcludesand exhauststhe mind. One can see artisticreasons for this. As Brandtpoints out, in Meunier'the proletariatis transformedinto a Greekathlete',[59]and for this form of idealisation the expression of intelligence is Onecan also see historical irrelevant. reasonsfor it. Theperiod1870-1914 was above all the period in which industryrelied on a massive influx of inexperienced but physicallystrong labour to performthe very large proportionof labour-intensive and relativelyunskilledtasks; and when the dramaticenvironmentof darkness, flame and smoke typified the revolutionin man's capacityto produce by steampoweredindustry. As yet, as we know, the bulk of the militantsof organizedlabourin this period consisted, if we leave aside the admittedly important contingent of miners, essentially of skilledmen. How is it that an imagewhichomits all the characteristics of their kind of labour, establisheditself as the expressionof the workingclass? Threeexplanationsmay be suggested.The first, and perhapspsychologically the most convincing,is that for most workers,whatevertheir skill, the criterionof belongingto their class was preciselythe performance of manual,physicallabour. The instinctsof genuinelabour movementswere 'ouvrieriste': a distrustof those who did not get theirhandsdirty.Thisthe imagerepresented. The secondis that the movement wished to stress precisely its inclusive character. It comprised all proletarians, not merelyprinters,skilledmechanics and theirlike. The third, which probablyprevailed in the periodof the ThirdInternational, was that in some sense the relativelyunskilled,purelymanuallabourer,the miner or docker, was consideredmorerevolutionary, since he did not belongto the labouraristocracy with its penchant for reformismand social-democracy.He represented'the masses' to whom revolutionaries appealedover the heads of the social-democrats. The image was reality,insofaras it represented the fundamentaldistinctionbetweenmanual and non-manual work;aspirationinsofaras it implieda programme or a strategy. How realistic it was in the secondrespectis a questionwhichdoes not belongto the presentpaper. But it is nevertheless not insignificant that, as an image, it omitted muchthatwas mostcharacteristic aboutthe workingclassand its labourmovement.

1 Thispapergrewout of a conversation with PeterHAnak of the Hungarian Academyof Sciences,Instituteof History,abouta paperby Efim Etkind(formerlyof Leningrad, now of Nanterre) on " 1830in European Poetry". On the art-historical side I havesince had essential help from Georg Eisler, Francisand LarissaHaskell, and Nick Penny. In a sense this is thereforea co-operative work, thoughthe interpretations and errorsare all my own. 1 H. Adhemar'La Libertesurles Barricades de Delacroix,etudieapresdes documents', Gazette de Beaux Arts 43 February1954; G. Hamilton, 'The IconographicOrigins of Delacroix'"Libertyleadingthe People"' Studiesin Art and Literaturefor Belle da Costa Greene,edited by Dorothy Miner, Princeton1954;H. Lidecke, EugeneDelacroixund die PariserJulirevolution, Berlin,1965;Efim Etkind,'1830in dereuropaischen Dichtung', Wien undEuropazwischen denRevolutionen 1789-1848,Wiener Europagesprach 1977,Vienna1978.

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3 T.J. Clark, TheAbsoluteBourgeois,London 1973,p.19. 4 Etkind, 1830. 5 HeinrichHeine, GesammelteWerke,Vol. IV Berlin1956-7,p.19. 6 E. Ramiro,FelicienRops, Paris 1905, pp.80-81. Peuple Munchen1906,p.484. Fuchsdescribed 7 Eduard Fuchs,DieFrauin derKarikatur, Volk'or 'ThePeopleas Virago';Ramiro,Rops,p.188.A lessexplicit as 'Megare notimplausibly versionof the same figure, becauseomittingthe lower half of the woman'sbody, is on an plate of FranzBlei, FelicienRops, Berlin1921. unpaginated 8 M. Agulhon, 'Esquissepour une archeologiede la Republique:L'allegoriecivique heroineis almost simultaneously feminine',Annales28, 1973, pp.5-34. A non-revolutionary in the oppositemannerto Delacroixin DavidWilkie'sDefence of Saragossa,1828, presented RoyalAcademy1958).TherealSpanishheroineis shownfully dressedbut (WilkieExhibition, in allegorical pose, while a male partisancrouchesbesideher, nude to the waist. (I owe this referenceto Dr. N. Penny). Byron, who discussesthe role of the Spanishfemale freedom(ChildeHarold 1, 54 ff.) stresses at length,and admiringly fightersandthe Maidof Saragossa unfeminine heroism:'Her lover sinks-she sheds no ill-timedtear;/Herchief the apparently is slain- she fills his fatal post;/ Her fellows flee- she checks their base career;/ The foe that she remains withinthe rangeof - she headsthe sallyinghost.' But he also stresses retires what male superiorityregardsas desirablein women: 'Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,/ But formedfor all the witchingarts of love.' In fact, theirs-unlike Liberty's is 'the fiercenessof the dove'. Paris Deux siecles d'histoirede Francepar la caricature, 9 See Jean Duche, 1760-1960 1961,pp.142, 143, 145. de 1871 Paris 1971, p.190- an 10 J. Bruhat,Jean Dautry,EmileTersen,La Commune Englishpicture. 11 Jean Grand-Carteret, L 'AffaireDreyfuset l'Image,Paris 1898p.150. L'AffaireDreyfus, pls. 61, 67, 106, 251. 12 Grand-Cartaret, accountof tradeunionemblems,London 13 R.A. Leeson,UnitedWeStand:an illustrated 1971,p.26. Meunier,ps. 6, 7, 8, 9, 21, Antwerpen1947. 14 LucienChristophe,Constantin 15 FransMasereel,Die Stadt, Munchen1925. historyof the banners of the BritishTrade 16 JohnGorman,Banner Bright:an illustrated Unionmovement,London 1973p.126. 17 Leeson, United,pp.60-70. 18 Gorman,BannerBright,pp.122-123. Socialist Workers 19 W. Crane,Cartoons for the Cause:A Souvenirof the International and TradeUnion Congress1886-96,London 1896. 20 JosephEdwards(ed.), LabourAnnual 1895, Manchester. 21 Christophe, Meunier,pl.12. 22 See E. and M. Dixmier,L'Assietteau Beurre,pl. ix, Paris 1974. 23 'To draw a peasant'sfigure in action, I repeat, that's what an essentiallymodern nor the old figureis, theverycoreof modernart, whichneitherthe Greeksnorthe Renaissance - we must respectthem for they are among the Dutch have done ... People like Daumier pioneers.The simplenudebut modernfigure,as Henn-rand Lefevrehave renewedit, ranks to imagine are not nude, after all, and it is not necessary high. . . But peasantsand labourers andpeasants'figures,the better themin the nude.The morepainters beginto paintworkmens' I shall like it...' Vincentvan Gogh, The CompleteLettersof Vincentvan Gogh Vol. 11 London 1958,pp.400, 402. (I owe the reference to FrancisHaskell). 24 F.D. Klingender, RevolutionLondon, 1947,pls. 10, 47, 57, 90, Art and the Industrial Vol. 11, Leipzig1927-8,pp.240ff. undbildendeKunst, 92,103;PaulBrandt, SchaffendeArbeit 25 Brandt,SchaffendeArbeit, p.243, pl. 314. 26 Leeson, United,p.23. 27 Nicholas Penny, ChurchMonumentsin RomanticEngland New Haven & London 1977,pl. 138. 28 Brandt,SchaffendeArbeit, p.270. 29 I.E. Grabar,V.N. Lazarev,F.S. Kamenov,IstoriyaRusskogoIsskusstva,Vol. XI, Moscow, 1957, pp.33, 83, 359, 381, 431. 30 Tsigal, Burganov,Svetlov, Chernov(eds), SovietskayaSkulptura74, Moscow 1976, p.52. 31 Grabaret al., Istoriya,p.150.

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32 In Russiathis motif occursas earlyas 1905-7. 33 In a workcelebrating the 15thanniversary of theOctoberRevolution,the firstphoto of this kind('Socialistman and his enthusiasm are the motorof construction') only occursin the year 1932.FunfzehnEiserneSchritte,Ein Buch der Tatsachen aus der Sowietunion,Berlin, 1932. 34 Klingender, Art, pl. XV. 35 'An injuryto one is an injuryto all', 'We will fight and may die, but we will never surrender','This is a holy war/and we will not cease/until all destitution/prostitution and exploitation/issweptaway.' Gorman,BannerBright,p. 130. 36 Grabaret al., Istoriya.pl. XI p.431. 37 Peler Kriedte,Hans Medick, JurgenSchlumbohm, vor der IndusIndustrialisierung trialiserung Gottingen,1977,chapters2-3. 38 Thus in France56'7o of all women employedin industryin 1906 workedin clothing, whichalso employed5007 of thosein Belgianindustry of those in German (1890),25%o (1907), and 3607o of those in Britishindustry(1891). Peter N. Stearns,Lives of Labour: Workin a Maturing Industrial SocietyLondon, 1975, AppendixIII p.365. 39 D.C. Marsh,TheChanging SocialStructure of Englandand Wales1871-1961, Revised edition, London, 1965, p.129. 40 W. Woytinsky,Die Weltin Zahlen, Vol. II, Berlin, 1926, p.76; Gertraud Wolf, Der in den Hauptkulturstaaten, Frauenerwerb Munchen1916, p.251. 41 PeterN. Stearns in Martha J. Vicinus(ed.), SufferandBe Still: Women in the Victorian Age, Bloomington & London 1973, p.118. 42 Marsh,ChangingSocial Structure, p.129. 43 The problemherehintedat has been admirably presented in LouiseA. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Workand Family New York 1978, esp cap. 8 and pp. 228-229. This excellent discussion confirmsthe present analysisespecially insofaras it situatesthe riseof that phaseof the economywhen 'the new organization of manufacturing requiredan adult male laborforceprimarily' andwhen'during mostof hermarried life a womanservedas a specialist in childrearing and consumer activitiesfor her family'preciselyin the periodwhen the mass labourmovementemergedin the industrially advancedcountries. 44 E.P. Thompson, 'The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century',Past & Present,50, 1971. 45 L. Levi Accati, 'Vive le roi sans taille et sans gabelle:una discussionesulle rivolte contadine', QuaderniStorici, September-December 1972, p.1078; Heine's comment on Delacroixreflectsthe role of the marketwomen('fishwife'). 46 H.A. Clegg, Alan Fox and A.F. Thompson,A Historyof BritishTradeUnionssince 1889, Vol. 1, Oxford 1964, pp.469-70. 47 S. and B. Webb, Industrial Democracy,London 1897,p.496. 48 Webbs.p.497. 49 Webbs.pp.496-7. 50 Webbs.p.497. 51 See Jean Touchard,La Gaucheen Francedepuis1900, Paris, 1977,p.113. 52 Bebel'sfeminism maynot be unconnected withhis enthusiasm for Fourier,aboutwhom he also wrote a book. FrederickEngels' influentialOrigin of the Family should also be mentioned. 53 EugenePottier, OeuvresCompletes,Rassemblees,presenteeset annoteespar Pierre Brochon,Paris, 1966. 54 Gorman,BannerBright,p. 126. 55 The image of utopia increasingly shifted from one based on naturalfertilityto one based on technologicaland scientific productivity.Both were clearly present in utopian - see Pottier'spoemL 'Aged'Or,quotedabove:'Oh nations,olus de torDeur./Mille socialism reseaux vousont nouees./ L'electricite, la vapeur/sont vos servants devoues'etc. (Oh nations awake! You are linked to a thousand networks.Electricityand steam are your faithful Howevericonographically servants.) nature/fertility prevailed over technology,certainly until 1917. 56 J.F.C. Harrison,RobertOwenand the Owenites in BritainandAmerica:the questfor the new moral world,London 1969, pp.58-62. 57 Harrison,Owen,pp.60-61. 58 Harrison,Owen,pp.98, 102, 121 for frequencyof femalemessiahsin this period. 59 Brandt,SchaffendeArbeit, p.269.