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.