28 Floréal
An CCXXXIV
Women of the Revolution
Liberty and equality for all? Non. Women were allowed to mount the scaffold, but not the speaker’s tribune. Resistance arose against this exclusion, especially during the wild phase of the French Revolution up to 1793. Olympe de Gouges, actually rather conservative, demanded equal rights for women. Claire Lacombe and Pauline Léon went even further: women to arms! The radical movement suited the fighters for the new order in their struggle against the old elites. But once the revolutionaries had secured their positions, they made short work of female opposition. They banned women from politics. Claire Lacombe and Pauline Léon were imprisoned, Olympe de Gouges was guillotined. Thus ended the brief flare-up of emancipatory thought in the French Revolution.
1789 - 1794
- July 14, 1789 · Many women take part in the Storming of the Bastille, including Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt.
- August 13, 1789 · Louise de Kéralio becomes the first woman to publish a newspaper: the Journal d'État et du citoyen.
- September 1791 · Olympe de Gouges publishes the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen.
- January 1792 · Théroigne de Méricourt speaks at the Jacobin Club and campaigns for women’s right to bear arms.
- March 6, 1792 · Pauline Léon, at the head of a group of Parisian women and men citizens, demands before the Legislative Assembly that women be allowed to take part in the military struggle against the enemies of the Revolution.
- May 13, 1793 · Claire Lacombe and Pauline Léon found the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women. The association demands women’s suffrage and the socialization of the economy.
- June 2, 1793 · The Revolutionary Republican women take part in the purge of the Girondins.
- July 13, 1793 · The Girondin sympathizer Charlotte Corday assassinates Marat. She is sentenced to death and executed on 17 July.
- August 28, 1793 · Claire Lacombe submits a petition to the Convention calling for the formation of a government in accordance with the Constitution of 1793.
- October 16, 1793 · Execution of Marie Antoinette.
- October 30, 1793 · The Convention decides, on the proposal of Amar, to ban all political women’s societies.
- November 3, 1793 · Execution of Olympe de Gouges.
- November 8, 1793 · Execution of Manon Roland.
- April 2, 1794 · Claire Lacombe is arrested.
- April 3, 1794 · Pauline Léon is arrested.
- April 13, 1794 · Execution of Lucile Desmoulins and Françoise Hébert.
- June 17, 1794 · Execution of Cécile Renault for an attempted attack on Robespierre.
Quotes
Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.
Olympe de Gouges, 1791
Our rights are the rights of the people. If we are oppressed, we will know how to oppose resistance to oppression.
Claire Lacombe, 17 October 1793
Should women take an active part in discussions whose heated nature is incompatible with the gentleness and moderation that constitute the charm of their sex?
André Amar, 30 October 1793
Le Moniteur
Décadi, 1ere décade du Brumaire, l'an II de la République une et indivisible
(October 31, 1793)
Olympe de Gouges
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