Reading Comprehension

PT4 · S2 · P3 · Q18 Women Revolutionaries

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Women’s participation in the revolutionary events in France between 1789 and 1795 has only recently been given nuanced treatment.

Topic

Recent scholarship reassessing women's participation in the French Revolution (1789–1795).

Framework

Highlight Noteworthy. The author surveys recent studies (Landes, Badinter, Godineau, Roudinesco) and praises them for finally taking seriously a previously marginalized topic, and especially for explaining why the women's movement collapsed.

Main Point

Recent scholarship has finally given nuanced treatment to women's participation in the French Revolution, identifying three phases of activity, and — admirably — confronting why the movement collapsed: women had to speak in borrowed political vocabularies, and that ultimately undermined them.

P1: A neglected topic, now reassessed

Earlier general histories barely covered women's participation. Landes, Badinter, Godineau, and Roudinesco's recent studies signal a much-needed reassessment.

P2: Three phases of women's participation

(1) Up to mid-1792: women writing political tracts (e.g., Marie Gouze's Declaration of the Rights of Women — theoretically oriented but, per Godineau, without practical effect). (2) Middle-class women's political clubs, originally philanthropic, advocating military participation by late 1792. (3) The 1795 famine produced a mass women's movement, suppressed militarily that May. Women's post-1789 political participation was unprecedented in scale.

P3: Why the movement collapsed

The recent studies are most compelling because they explain the collapse. For Landes and Badinter, women had to use the established vocabularies of intellectual and political traditions (Rousseau, who tied male/female to public/private spheres), which limited their resistance. Allying with radical Jacobin men, women adopted an extremist vocabulary that further damaged their political interests.

18.

The passage suggests that Landes and Badinter would be likely to agree with which one of the following statements about the women’s movement in France in the 1790s?

Correct
The movement might have been
Why this is right
This is what we refer to as a classic Flip the Causal Difference-Maker answer. The passage identifies a Cause/Effect relationship, and the correct answer basically takes the form of, "If the Cause weren't present, the Effect wouldn't be present". The second sentence of the 3rd paragraph uses the causal verb "diminished": the necessity of women's having to speak in the established vocabularies diminished the ability of the women's movement to resist suppression. So, flipping that, these scholars would say the women's movement would have been better off (not-diminished) if the women hadn't spoken in established vocabularies (if they had developed their own political vocabularies).
Skill tested: Non-Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
86% picked this
The downfall of the movement
Opposite
We'd predict that our scholars would think that the alliance with Jacobin men WAS related to the downfall of the movement, since it's described at the end of the 3rd paragraph as "unfortunately even more damaging to their political interests".
2% picked this
The movement had a great
Opposite
We're told in the second sentence of P3 of women's "necessity of having to speak in established vocabularies", so this answer is contradicted. If something is of necessity, then you don't have a great deal of choice in the matter.
3% picked this
The movement would have triumphed
Out of Support Window: military means
There's nothing in our Support Window (P3) that talks about suppression by military means. And given that these scholars think that the necessity of speaking in established vocabularies diminished the ability to resist suppression, it's possible that they'd think that the movement would have been suppressed even without military intervention.
2% picked this
The movement viewed a Rousseauist
Opposite (if anything)
P3 makes it clear that some women aligned with Rousseau, others with Jacobin, and both were detrimental to the movement's interests. But, if anything, it's implied that more people were aligned with Rousseau, and that alliances with Jacobin men were more the exception. So that would go against what this answer is suggesting.
8% picked this

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