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Ruth Graham, “Loaves and
Liberty: Women and The
French Revolution” in
Becoming Visible: Women In
European History,
It would be wrong to assume that because women had come into the
Revolution in 1789 asking for bread and liberty and had come out in 1795
with starvation and restriction of their movements, they had gained nothing.
They won laws protecting their rights in marriage, property, and education.
True, women were denied political rights in the French Revolution (as were the
majority of men when the Convention scrapped the democratic constitution of
1793) but nowhere else at the time did women share political rights with men.
Although women were a cohesive group during the Revolution, they responded
mainly to the needs of their class and were never an autonomous force. The
ideology of the revolutionary authorities who distrusted women's political
movements derived seemingly from Rousseau, but actually from the facts of
their lives: France's small-scale, home-based economy needed middle- and
working-class women to contribute their special skills and labor to their
families. Women were not yet a large, independent group in the working
class.
In the early days of the French Revolution, women from the middle classes (as
can be seen from cahiers written by them) welcomed the restoration of their
natural rights as wives and mothers to participate in society as men's
"natural companions."
Women of the urban poor—wage earners, artisans of women's crafts,
owners of small enterprises, such as the market women—agitated for bread
rather than for women's rights. There is, however, evidence that
"respectable" middle-class women joined them. Although these movements
Ruth Graham, “Loaves and Liberty: Women and The French Revolution” in Becoming Visible: Women In European History, 1
Ruth Graham, “Loaves and
Liberty: Women and The
French Revolution” in
Becoming Visible: Women In
European History,
It would be wrong to assume that because women had come into the
Revolution in 1789 asking for bread and liberty and had come out in 1795
with starvation and restriction of their movements, they had gained nothing.
They won laws protecting their rights in marriage, property, and education.
True, women were denied political rights in the French Revolution (as were the
majority of men when the Convention scrapped the democratic constitution of
1793) but nowhere else at the time did women share political rights with men.
Although women were a cohesive group during the Revolution, they responded
mainly to the needs of their class and were never an autonomous force. The
ideology of the revolutionary authorities who distrusted women's political
movements derived seemingly from Rousseau, but actually from the facts of
their lives: France's small-scale, home-based economy needed middle- and
working-class women to contribute their special skills and labor to their
families. Women were not yet a large, independent group in the working
class.
In the early days of the French Revolution, women from the middle classes (as
can be seen from cahiers written by them) welcomed the restoration of their
natural rights as wives and mothers to participate in society as men's
"natural companions."
Women of the urban poor—wage earners, artisans of women's crafts,
owners of small enterprises, such as the market women—agitated for bread
rather than for women's rights. There is, however, evidence that
"respectable" middle-class women joined them. Although these movements
Ruth Graham, “Loaves and Liberty: Women and The French Revolution” in Becoming Visible: Women In European History, 1
