Jimerson 1

On February Twenty-fifth, 1793− or what was known as Year Two of the French

Republic−commissaire de police Silvain Guillaume Boula and secretary-registrar for the Section

de L’Arsenal André Lirey, went to the baker’s doors of their Section to ensure bakery deliveries

were being made without issue. At two that same day the commissaire and the citizen-secretary

received word that a large crowd was heading to Citizen Rousseau’s shop on the Quai des

Armes. The commissaire and a small guard attempted to facilitate peace between the angry

crowd and the shop owner. The crowd was not appeased by Guillaume’s attempt to “recall the

oath to protect the safety of persons and properties” as the crowds anger was against the police,

Rousseau, and his shop boy, who in his anger pushed back a pregnant woman and threatened her.

Guillaume allowed an inspection by citizens and citoyennes on the shop and citizen Arnoults

place under “pretext that the aforementioned Rousseau had hidden his merchandise there.” After

the inspection, a woman of “fairly good appearance”, set the price of soap at twelve sous per

livre, and sugar at eighteen. Guilluame was forced to take the money or suffer a total loss. Later

that day once again at the Quai des Armes, the commissaire encountered a citoyenne, “well

dressed, who was influencing people and stirring up trouble.” After hearing her speak the

commissaire apprehended her and took her to the commissaire de police of the Section de la

Maison Commune, “so that whatever the laws dictate might be done.”1

Commissaire Boula’s report on the events of late February, 1793 demonstrates the true

degree to which women were involved in the protest that occurred in the Revolution. Not only

were women participating in the crowds and facilitating taxation populaire, but they also stirred

up trouble in the streets with their views. In a time of shunning of women from the political

sphere, the street level politics women displayed was a way to get around the wall of all male

1 Silvain Guillaume Boula, “Commissaire’s Report on events of February 24, 25, 26, 1793,” In Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, ed. Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 137-141.

Jimerson 2

politics. This source gives examples of political women, but it also shows that women of varying

stations engaged in active protest and change. But this raises the question, how did women use

the Revolution to be more openly political? How did they use the Revolutionary bandwagon to

fight for an increase in their own wellbeing as well as that of France? Women used the

Revolution to intellectually spread opinion, participate in open protest, and dress radically to

show political alliance.

Historiography

In researching women in the French Revolution many of the books and say the same

thing, that women resisted the exclusion from politics and the silencing of them daily by men.

However, the way they get to this point is always different. On one side, some historians use the

writings of women in books or articles and other intellectual pursuits, on the other side are

historians who look at the political activism in which women achieved their aims. And on a

smaller side are those who talk about cultural change influenced by women during the

Revolution. Historians like Hess have used the political, personal, and published writings of

women to support their argument that women were successful in the literary world in causing

change in their favor. Authors such as Joan Scott discuss the political activism and protest used

by women to create change. And authors like Lynn Hunt write about the social changes made by

the revolution in a familial sense.

Hess is part of the literary “camp”, her focus on the field of literature in the

Revolution brings her to the conclusion that women used writing to express their views and gain

a sense of agency in their lives and the lives of other women. Her work The Other Enlightenment

focuses on the writing styles and genres of women in a time where they had to constantly face

obstacles simply to publish. Her thesis is rather obscure but concise, “I have reconstructed how it

Jimerson 3

became possible for women as other to acquire the capacity for self-constitution and for

participation on public reasoning.”2 Her argument is supported using writings of women that

both made it to publication and diaries and manuscripts. For example, Hess uses the story of

Daniel Stern to demonstrate the way women got around the obstacles and laws limiting them.

Hess includes the accounting of Countess d’Agoult taking the name of Daniel Stern to exemplify

her argument, “I do not want to engage anyone to defend me. That is just! Cried M. de Girardin.

So then, take a pseudonym. What? Try a name…I picked up the pencil and mechanically wrote

the name Daniel …Daniel Stern! The name was found.”3 Hess provides an argument towards

her thesis in each chapter; In her first chapter titled the Perils of Eloquence, Hess argues that the

low literacy rates among women created a culture in which women were eloquent in speech and

how dangerous the ability to speak well as a woman was. She supports her argument by retelling

the story of the execution of Jeanne-Catherine Clere which she found in the Archives Nationales.

By using Jeanne-Catherine as an example, Hess strengthened her argument for the dangers of

free or in Clere’s case, drunken speech.

Her second chapter Women into Print analyzes the amount of women who produced

works before, during, and after the revolution. Hess includes her study and Robert Darton’s

study which point towards a steady increase of women printing publications and an explosion

(nearly triple) after 1789.4 She uses this evidence as a strong point in her argument that women

during the revolution used the opportunity of the revolution to publish an increased amount of

works. In her later chapters Hess argues that laws like the Napoleonic Code created a necessity

by female writers to use loopholes like the Daniel Stern case above to get around the law.

2 Carla Hess, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton,NJ:Princeton University Press, 2001), xii3 Hess, 754 Hess, 75

Jimerson 4

“The Salon: Restoring Conversation” by James Como is another example of women of

intellect. The article focuses on the importance of conversation as an intellectual example. He

emphasizes the French Salons and the qualities required for admittance, “politesse, esprit,

galanterie, complaisance…”5 His article does concentrate on the female aspect of controlling the

Salon, but he writes the Salon as a more relaxed meeting atmosphere than a truly political one.

He argues that conversation, true conversation with wit and joking, was cultivated in the Salon.

This source supports the intellectual camp by detailing the uses and importance of conversation

to spread ideas, primarily guided by women.

The strength of the literary argument is the abundance of proof. Printed works survive

much better than things like social change. The number of printed works can be easily counted

and measured and the content can be read to ascertain its meaning whether it was political or not.

A weakness of this argument is that it doesn’t look at the lasting affects the loosening of press

controls have. Another weakness is the content created that the intellectual camp uses. The camp

uses only uses a few examples that were usually political or popular but neglects to mention

smaller scale work.

In Only Paradoxes to Offer Joan Scott argues for the political activism of women

during the Revolution. Her work focuses on select women who used different abilities to further

the cause for equality. Her thesis surrounds the political stance of feminists during the

Revolution and the obstacles they faced. Scott’s thesis is that the paradoxes feminists faced gave

them more political force instead of discouraging them.6 Her work is supported by writings of

the women she mentions, like Olympe de Gouge’s pamphlet where she writes, “it is dreadful that

women don’t have the same advantages as men for the advancement of their children.”7 In her 5 James Como, “The Salon: Restoring Conversation,” Arion 22, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2014): 42, Accessed March 27, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/arion.22.1.0033.6 Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1996), x7 Scott, 39

Jimerson 5

first chapter Rereading the History of Feminism, Scott discusses the ways men used biological

difference as their basis of why women couldn’t be equals and used women to exemplify

individuality. Her first chapter presents the background of her argument in a descriptive sense by

giving the philosophical and social reasons behind inequality between women, men, and people

of color. Men (usually white) exemplified morals and were better representatives of the human

than women.8 Scott spends the chapter discussing the sense of individuality through sameness

men employed in a dizzying argument against women who go against the grain, “the political

individual was then taken to be both universal and male; the female was not an individual, both

because she was nonidentical with the human prototype and because she was the other who

confirmed the (male) individual’s individuality.”9

The rest of Scott’s book is spent telling the stories of prominent female activists

of the time such as the previously mentioned Olympe de Gouges, Jeanne Deroin, Hubertine

Auclert, and Madeleine Pelletier. She uses these women as examples of the different ways

politics were changed by women. Olympe exemplified the double standard created against

women when she was killed by Jacobins for having the imagination men supposedly have,

angering feminists with the paradox. Jeanne Deroin mobilized women and ran for a seat in the

Legislative Assembly while running a politically feminist newspaper, La politique des femmes.10

Hubertine Auclert was a suffragist who demonstrated in speeches, newspapers, petitions, and

electoral campaigns demanding the vote. Madeleine Pelletier also wrote in newspapers but like

the earlier Olympe she wrote plays and novels and ran for office believing in the individual’s

rights instead of those of just women. Scott uses the lives of all these women to support her

argument that political activism produced change in response to obstacles.

8 Scott, 79 Scott, 810 Scott, 57

Jimerson 6

In “Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris”, Darline Gay Levy and

Harriet B. Applewhite focus on the efforts of Revolutionary women to bear arms, defensively or

against enemies of the Nation, they also focus on threats of force by women and actual use of

force in demonstrations of “sovereign will and power.”11 The article uses three events as the base

for the argument, the march to Versailles, the marches demanding the right to bear arms in the

spring and summer of 1792, and the organized insurgency of women in the Society of

Revolutionary Republican Women between the spring and fall of 1793.The focus of the work is

on the relationship for Revolutionary women between the right to bear arms and full citizenship

in the political sphere.

In The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, Jennifer

Heuer delves into the world of politics for necessity done by women in the French Revolution.

She argues that the state of the nation controlled the way women practiced politics and the way

citizenship was categorized.. Part one examines the relationship between the family dynamic of

the country and the fight for citizenship in the beginning of the Revolution. She uses the example

of women voting and proclaiming political rights not based on gender but by head of household

status, “a list of inhabitants of the commune of Baron from September 10, 1793, was divided into

three columns, labeled ‘men, women, and children.’ But under these three headings ‘Men’

referred to heads of households, including widows; ‘Women’ to wives and daughters but also

servants, including several who appear to have been men.”12 She uses this phenomenon to delve

into the citizenship and political rights some women employed. Part two explains how women

were encouraged to participate in the political sphere but still faced a distinction between a

citizen and a citoyenne and how that impacted their political tactics and citizenship. Part three 11 Darline Gay Levy and Harriet B Applewhite, “Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris,” in Rebel Daughters, ed. Sara E. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 81.12 Jennifer Heuer, The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, 1789-1830 (London: Cornell University Press, 2005) 50

Jimerson 7

encompasses Napoleons reign and how the code Napoleon aimed to remove women from

politics and instead focus them on the home and the family.

The strength of the political activism argument is the sources used, many of the events

detailed in the camps are highly detailed sources. Scott provides plenty of evidence to

substantiate her argument and keep her thesis credible. A weakness in the camp is the broad

nature of activism. The amount of activism and the different types encompass all camps unless

specified. Historians in this camp also tend to focus on one major figure, like Scot focuses on

Olympe de Gouges.

In The Family Romance of the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt examines the familial and

social reasons behind the revolution and the affect family romance had on the people during the

revolution. Hunt uses political cartoons, and primary documents like the writings of the marquis

de Sade and political writings of clubs. Her thesis focuses on disproving the belief of Sigmund

Freud that revolutionary family romance were neurotic reactions to disappointment.13 Hunts

argument is based on the belief that while the French saw their monarch as a father, instead of

reacting to disappointment by replacing the father with another father, the French envisioned a

world without parents governed by brothers. She argues that the anger the people felt against

their “father and mother” caused them to seek a different family.

Her first chapter delves into the familial way politics were structured during the

revolution including the king. Hunt describes it as a system of deference in which the people had

someone to answer to, “The king had been the head of the social order held together by bonds of

deference; peasants deferred to their landlords, journeymen to their masters, great magnates to

their king, wives to their husbands, and children to their parents.”14 Hunt goes on to describe the

13 Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Los Angeles: California University Press, 1992) xiv14 Hunt, 3

Jimerson 8

way the political system and society was based on the family especially that of the father. Hunts

later chapters discuss the way the family structure evolved during the revolution and the way an

unconscious disappointment caused the executions of Louis for being a bad father and Marie

Antoinette for being a bad mother of the nation. Hunt later in the book discusses the way women

were seen to have “changed sex” when they became queen or held a position of power.15 Hunt

focuses on the maternal role women fit in politics which restricted them to salons and quiet

resistance.

The strength of Hunt’s argument is the evidence she provides for her claim and the

organization of the book. By organizing it from the way the political system was familial through

its break down and reformation Hunt proves her claim that the people were seeking a different

form of familial government. A strength of the social argument comes from the time in which

most scholarship focuses, the Jacobin occupation and Napoleon. By focusing on this period

historians can show women less able to be openly political and instead be more family oriented

in the Revolution. A weakness to this argument is the source base proving women were active

during both periods, Like the Revolutionary Republican Women and Madam de Staël.

Politics, Culture, and Class also by Lynn Hunt focuses on the interactions among people

of different political strata in the revolution. Her argument is that the Revolution caused the

people to reinvent a new “national community”, and that they “created new social and political

relations and new kinds of social and political divisions.”16 She emphasizes the Revolution’s

impact on language, symbolism, and ritual gesture. The book in its chapters aims to stick to the

social area of the Revolution but unlike her other book, it looks at the effects of the Revolution

on the social sphere rather than established culture on the Revolution.

15 Hunt, 13016 Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984),10

Jimerson 9

After reading these secondary sources the most compelling evidence comes from the

political activism “camp”. The activism on a small or large level influenced the way women

were viewed as they fought their own paradoxes. This argument fits in the political activism

camp as I strive to answer the question: How did women use the revolution to achieve a closer

equality? Political action on both the higher levels of the government and the street level of

speech and protest. My argument fits as an agreement that women were Revolutionary actors but

disagrees with the consensus that women were mostly social changers.

The Intellectual Female

To begin, Women published more frequently after the beginning of the French

Revolution. Women produced triple the amount of works after 1789, going from seventy-eight

works from 1777-1788 to 329 works from 1789-1800.17 This rapid increase in publishing appears

to be a direct response to the freedom granted by the new Revolution. While many women

published a wide range of genres, politics was by far the most popular, with two-hundred fifty-

one political works produced from 1789-1800 by women, most of which came in the form of the

pamphlet.18 Political pamphlets were the most common way for revolutionary women to express

their opinion.

Political pamphlets covered a broad range of topics, some pamphlets directly challenged

the established order, and some were more subtle with their message. Etta Palm D’Aelder, a

revolutionary women’s activist, produced a pamphlet suggesting women’s clubs to be tasked

with providing welfare programs throughout France. Her pamphlet asks for groups of women to

be allowed to meet and help the poor, set up wet nurses, establish schools, seek out

17 Hess, 37. Explanation: Hess found this information first hand in La France révolutionnaire et impériale: annales de bibiliographie and in the Catalogue de l’Histoire de France and the Catalogue des pamphlets et journaux de la période révolutionnaire à la Bibliothèque Nationale to amass and organize the data used in my argument.18 Hess, 53. Hess also used the same sources here to access this data.

Jimerson 10

counterrevolutionaries, and help poor mothers.19 The pamphlet was addressed to, “une amie de la

vérité” but was aimed directly at the National Assembly for their reading. Another pamphlet

written by Claire Lacombe, a leader in the Revolutionary Republican Women, tells her side of

the story of the events of September sixteenth rather than the established version.20 Lacombe

retells the debate between herself and Monsieur Chabot, and a variety of other government men

on several issues, including her denunciation while attempting to gain the floor in a public

gallery.21 Lacombe uses the pamphlet to detail her ordeal and denounce those who call

themselves revolutionary but, “[for] someone who professes himself a patriot, is really so unlike

one in his actions.” Topics that women wrote about depended on their political beliefs and filled

a spectrum, “ranging from sans-culotte pamphleteers to royalist apologists, feminists calling for

equal rights and antifeminists calling women back to the home…” creating a mix of opinions

from women that had never been seen before.22

Petitions were used to bring attention to maters women found important. Etta Palm

D’Aelders petitioned the National Assembly for equality by law and an end in discrimination

between male and female citizens. D’Aelders plays on the honor of the National Assembly while

maintaining an air of politeness as she condemns inequality, “You have restored to the man the

dignity of his being in recognizing his rights; you will no longer allow woman to groan beneath

an arbitrary authority; that would be to overturn the fundamental principles on which rests the

stately edifice you are raising by your untiring labors for which the happiness of Frenchmen.”23

19 Etta Palm D’Aelders, “Etta Palm D’Aelders Proposes a Network of Women’s Clubs to Administer Welfare Programs in Paris and Throughout France,” In Women in Revolutionary Paris 1789-1795, ed. Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 69-70.20 Claire Lacombe, “Citoyenne Lacombe’s Report to the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women Concerning What Took Place September 16 at The Jacobin Society,” in Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 189.21 Lacombe, 186-196.22 Carla Hess, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern, (Princeton,NJ:Princeton University Press, 2001), 54.23 Etta Palm D’Aelders, “A Call for an End to Sexual Discrimination,” in Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 75.

Jimerson 11

Petitions were also used by groups of women to request action from the government. In

the early days of the Revolution women petitioned the King directly for exclusive rights to the

more “feminine” trades in order to support their families with an increased amount of males in

their fields.24In a petition made by women of the third estate, women requested protection of

their jobs and permission to become educators of the young. The women ask, “that men not be

allowed, under any pretext, to exercise trades that are the prerogative of women˗such as

seamstress, embroiderer, marchande de mode, etc.,etc.; if we are left at least with the needle and

the spindle, we promise to never handle the compass or the square.”25

Petitions were also made by political groups of women. The Society of Revolutionary

Republican Women frequently petitioned the government on behalf of others and to achieve

reform. The Society petitioned the National Convention in response to the resignation of the

then Minister of the Interior, asking for tougher punishment against enemies of the state and to,

“ruin all the nobles without exception”. The women go on to request a, “disorganization of the

army” by removing generals with talent who has bad intentions and replacing them with

patriots.26 The women specifically hit on the law of suspects, demanding tribunals and ruination

of all guilty officials who are suspects under their own law. By petitioning the Assembly, the

Society had a public practical way to be heard and to accuse suspects.

Women’s groups were formed as a way to organize on specific issues. Many groups of

different backgrounds and areas were formed like the Women of La Halle, the Women from

l’Hôtel de Ville, the women of the Section de Montblanc, and the well-known Society of

Revolutionary Republican Women. These groups created petitions like the earlier mentioned

petition on suspects and the running of the armies to spotlight specific issues they felt needed to 24 James F. McMillan, France and Women 1789-1914:Gender Society and Politics, (London: Routledge, 2002), 25 “Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King,” in Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 19.26 “Petition from the Revolutionary Republican Women to the National Convention on the Leadership of the armies and the Law of Suspects,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 173.

Jimerson 12

be address by the government. Women’s groups used the power of the money to push for their

issues, like the Women of La Halle who while making a donation of money, took the opportunity

to make a few political statements on their wish to participate, “We are eager to contribute,

insofar as we can, to the support of the generous Frenchmen who fly to the frontiers to defend

them against traitors and tyrants who wish to give us back out chains.”27 They continue on to

request that their donation be known to the public to receive the public’s support and recognition.

Political groups run by women had their enemies as well. Jean-Baptiste Amar banned the

joining of political clubs by women and the forming of their own political clubs in response to

women wearing trousers and liberty caps trying to force others to dress the same. 28 His decision

to present a ban on women’s clubs is based on woman’s inability to be fully devoted to the

government authority, the inability of women to be active in these groups and complete, “the

more important cares to which nature calls them,” and woman’s incapability to engage in, “loft

conceptions and serious cogitiations.29 This argument was frequently used against women being

political, from Robespierre to Pierre–Gaspard Chaumette who denounced women from entering

the Paris Commune, “Since when is it permitted to give up ones sex? Since when is it decent to

see women abandoning the pious cares of their households, the cribs of their children, to come to

public places, to harangues in the galleries, at the bar of the senate?”30 The women’s groups

responded to these laws prohibiting them with protest, “A deputation of citoyennes is admitted

before the bar, which announces itself as having a very important petition to present… ‘The

27 “Address by the Women of La Halle to the National Assembly, August 27, 1791, as They Make a Donation of Money,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 85.28Jean-Baptiste Amar, “Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs and Their Suppression, 29–30 October 1793,” ed. Lynn Hunt and Jack Censer, in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, accessed April 10, 2015, http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/294/.29 Jean-Baptiste Amar, “Discussion of Women’s Political Clubs".30 Pierre–Gaspard Chaumette, “Speech at the City Hall Denouncing Women’s Political Activism,”ed. Lynn Hunt and Jack Censer, in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, accessed April 10, 2015, http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/294/.

Jimerson 13

Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, this society, composed in large part of mothers of

families, no longer exists. A law obtained on the basis of a false report prohibits us from

meeting’”31 Petitions, speeches and letters were created to remove the law prohibiting women

from organizing as well as going before the General Council of the Paris Commune, which

resulted in the aforementioned lambast by Chaumette. These enemies of the political woman

created an obstacle women were forced to overcome through other means.

The Angry Woman

Women became more active following the Storming of the Bastille. On July fourteenth

1789, a large crowd attempted to gain the ammunition housed within the prison. Women made

up a significant portion of the crowd both outside the bastille, and after the occupation of the

prison. Women also participated in the deconstruction of the walls by removing the stones used

to create the fortress. Margueritte Piningre and her husband participated in the storming of the

Bastille, she collected bottles from shops to be used as cannon shot to, “break the chain on the

drawbridge of the Bastille” while her husband was injured in the assault. 32 Many citizens who

were injured in the storming received compensation like Marguerrite attempted to gain for

herself and her husband.

Protests were actively participated in and caused by women. The Sugar Riots of 1792

occurred in response to a sharp increase in the price of sugar, a staple foodstuff for coffee.

Coffee had become an essential part of the day for the working Parisian, “the laundresses, who

comprised the largest number of citizens in this canton, were forced to stop using coffee, which

they had been giving to their workers in the morning and to substitute and glass of eau de vie,

31 “Women Protest the Suppression of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 218.32 “A Woman Recounts Her Role in the Conquest of the Bastille,” in Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 30.

Jimerson 14

which was very bad for them.”33 The working people drank large amounts of coffee in the

morning to keep them going until around four or five in the afternoon when they left work.34

Women engaged in the Sugar Riots like the riot mentioned earlier with women in the crowd and

engaged in taxation populaire to protest the prices. The women used the tactic to gain, “a kind of

distributive justice, but one tainted in its principles by violence.”35 Taxation populaire became

the way the people protested against suspected hoarders of sugar, brown sugar, and soap.

Taxation Populaire was also common in the later journées of February 1793. Crowds led

by women would enter shops and enforce a prix juste that the mass would pay to purchase. 36 In

the aforementioned scuffle at Citizen Rousseau’s shop, women actively participated in the

protest, decided the prices, and roused the citizens to action. Women also took part in a raid on

Citizen Commard’s shop where, “the women streamed into the warehouse and seized sugar,

brown sugar, and coffee that was stored there. Several insisted on paying, as follows: twenty

sous a livre for sugar; ten sous a livre for brown sugar; and twenty sous a livre for coffee.”37 The

purposeful fixing of the price as a community increased the importance and significance of

women en masse.

Another form of women’s protest occurred in the October days with the marching to

Versailles. On October fifth, a large crowd of women of Paris gathered together in unrest over,

“why it was so difficult to get bread at such a high price; others wanted most absolutely for the

king and queen to come back to Paris and live in the Louvre where, the women said, they would

33 “Note demandée, dervant d’éclaircissment à la pétition des citoyens de la Section des Gobelins de 26 Février 1792,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 120.34 Charles-A Alexandre, “Parisian Women Protest via Taxation Populaire in February, 1792,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 115.35 Alexandre, 116.36 “A Jacobin Appeals to the Women of Paris to End the Sugar Crisis,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 112. Information found in the explanation of the source not in the source itself. The explanation goes into the sugar riots and explains taxation populaire.37 Jean-Baptiste-Jacques Varangue, “Commisaire’s report on damages committed at the warehouse of Citizen Commard, February 26, 1793, Section des Gardes Françaises,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 134.

Jimerson 15

be infinitely better off than Versailles.”38 Other issues also arose, like the wearing of the black

cockade and the king’s guard allegedly insulting the tricolour and therefore the Revolution. The

women, led by heroes of the Bastille, marched to Versailles arriving at daybreak. They were

greeted to a warm welcome, “the bourgeoisie of Versailles, the Flanders Regiment and the

dragoons clapped their hands, registered their satisfaction with shouts of joy, congratulated the

women on their arrival, and begged them to work for the general good.”39 The women sent

delegates to speak with the National Assembly on their issues, mainly the price of bread and the

return of the king to Paris, “some of these women having demanded bread for 4 pounds of bread

at 8 sous and meat for the same price, the witness begged for silence, and then she said that the

women wished to no longer want for bread, though not at the price that the said women wished

to have it.”40 The National Assembly agreed to some of the women’s demands, a prohibition of

exporting grain, a tax of 24 livres would be put on wheat, and that, “meat would cost no more

than 8 sous under the livre.”41 After their demands were met the citoyennes then set eyes on

ensuring the kings safe return to Paris, where they escorted him the following day. The direct

cooperation between market women, highborn women, and heroes of the bastille to get their

demands met, embodied the early Revolution where the people could protest to change France,

and women were a critical part of this early period.

Public speeches were used by women to politically gain and make opinions more widely

known. Speeches could incite crowds and sway opinions to their favor. For example, the

Citoyennes of the rue du Regard presented a speech to the Cordeliers club to warn against

38 The Woman Cheret, “The Event of Paris and Versailles by One of the Ladies Who Had the Honor to Be in the Deputation to the General Assembly,” In The French Revolution a Document Collection, ed. Laura Mason and Tracey Rizzo (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999), 84. 39 The Woman Cheret, 85.40 “The March of Parisian Market-Women on Versailles, October 1789,” In The French Revolution and Napoleon: A Sourcebook, ed. Phillip G. Dwyer and Peter McPhee (New York: Routledge, 2002), 30.41 The Woman Cheret, 86.

Jimerson 16

enemies of the Revolution and to encourage the club to remain vigilant while at the same time

threatening the club that women would leave the home to handle the situation if they fail. They

warn that, “if you deceive our hope, if the machinations of our enemies bind you to the point of

rendering you insensible …despair will impel and drag us into public places.”42 This style of

politics became accessible to women after the Revolution due to the new audiences available.

Speeches were given to political clubs like the previously mentioned Cordeliers club, but also to

the people on the street like the woman during the Sugar Riots who eloquently shared her point

of view which resulted in the commissaire viewing her as a trouble maker.

The Patriotic Dress

After the early Revolution, dress became very important to the people, both

Revolutionary and Counter. The wrong trouser length, the wrong shoe style, or even a certain

hat, could set off a quarrel in certain areas, with clothing viewed as a “political emblem and

potential sources of political and social conflict.”43 For example, the cockade was one of the first

political emblems of the Revolution. In its original form the cockade was a green ribbon that was

soon replaced with a more patriotic tricolor. By donning the new cockade one could be quickly

identified as a revolutionary, on the other hand donning a white or black cockade could identify

you as a bourbon supporter or an antirevolutionary.44 The tricolor cockade became extremely

popular, especially among Parisian men and women, to the point of being legislated by the

National Convention in 1793. It was also extremely important Louis XVI’s life depended on

wearing the cockade to appear to be for the Revolution and the womens’ march to Versailles is

42 “Speech by the Citoyennes of the Rue du Regard to the Cordeliers Club, February 22, 1791,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 67.43 Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 53.44 Hunt, 58.

Jimerson 17

said to have been spurred by the trampling of the cockade by aristocrats, stirring a new

Revolutionary pride.

The tricolor was also used as a political emblem. The white of the Bourbons and the red

and blue of the people became a Revolutionary statement piece. For example, if one wished to

show “sympathy towards the idea of a new constitution, then you could be seen in a dress of fine

Indian muslin embroidered with tiny red, white and blue bouquets.”45 The tricolor cockade as

mentioned before was mandated by the National Assembly in September1793 as a result of

market women refusing to wear the garment at the insistence of the Society of Revolutionary

Republican Women, “women who do not wear the tricolor cockade will be punished with eight

days’ imprisonment for the first offense; in case of repetition, they will be deemed suspect.”46

The Convention goes on to cover antirevolutionary violence against the tricolor cockade as well,

“those who tear a national cockade away from another person or desecrate it will be punished

with six years of confinement.”47 This law forced the Revolution on any who would remain

moderate with stiff punishment on identified antirevolutionaries. This law was not well received

by the market women or moderates, inciting violent abuse of those who wore the cockade and

those who did not, “the fishwives of the place not wanting women to wear the cockade; they

have snatched them from many women, and even injured them and thrown their bonnets to in the

mud.”48 Fear that the wearing of the cockade would be used to enlist women for the front and

allow them to vote were among many of the pressures against the law.

Many women wore the clothing of a sans-culotte to show their patriotism. Sans-culotte

women tended to take better care of themselves than their male counter-parts but were expected

45 Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution, (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc., 1988), 58. 46 “Decree of the National Convention Requiring the Wearing of the Tricolor Cockade,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 197.47 “Decree of the National Convention on Cockade,” 197.48 “Report of Rolin,” In Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson, 200. Also called “Police Reports on Marketplace disturbances” in bibliography, this report is one out of the set.

Jimerson 18

to be frugal and devoted to the nation.49 While male sans-culottes wore dirty shabby clothing and

smoked pipes, female sans-culottes wore headscarves or bonnets and skirts. Figure 1 and 2

exemplify what women sans-culottes wore, simple clothing with the tricolor on their headwear.

Figure 1 shows a frugal woman with devotion to her pet, a good quality in the Sans-Culotte

woman.50 Figure 2 includes a sword, which could have been captured from a guard and was used

to display militancy.51 These political women created the Society of Revolutionary Republican

Women in order to organize like their male counter-parts.52

The rise of the Revolutionary woman doesn’t fit in one category. The question is, in what

ways did women express their new political agency? Women used the Revolution in a variety of

ways to be political, they produced new works, protested and stirred up trouble, and were openly

political in their choice of dress. Women produced written works at an unprecedented rate,

women on the street protested the rise in the cost of food and took matters into their own hands

when they needed to, and women in the face of danger wore their alliances on their sleeve for all

to see. The significance of my argument in the broader Historiography of my subject is that

instead of putting women in just the social field of the Revolution and downplaying their role,

my argument details the political action that was on par if not surpassing men at times. My

argument includes intellectual changes made by women on society instead of family romance, it

focuses on active protest instead of passive disagreement, and it focuses on political dress that

encourages brawls to show their alliances rather than women simply going along with men. The

creation of women’s groups and the constant struggle against the inequality of the law was the

direct result of the Revolution that for women was as much a time for liberation as for men.

49 Ribeiro, 84.50 See Appendix A51 See Appendix A52 McMillan, 23.

Jimerson 19