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

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