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4 Women of the French Revolution

The French Revolution (1789-1799) sought to dismantle the oppressive society of the old regime and build a new world based on the principles of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". This push for societal change led to a burgeoning feminist movement in Paris, as women leaders emerged to champion both revolutionary and feminist causes.

Prior to the Revolution, women were deemed to be 'passive' citizens, incapable of political agency, whose decisions had to be made for them by men. In France, as in other contemporary western societies, this was one of the justifications given for the subordination of women to men; prior to the Revolution, women barely had rights at all and were expected to do little more than be good wives and mothers. As with many aspects of society, these traditional gender roles were challenged during the French Revolution.

Women demonstrated their own political agency by instigating and leading some of the key moments in the Revolution; for instance, the Women's March on Versailles and the assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday were both moments that exemplified the agencies of women who considered themselves patriots. They made their voices heard through pamphlets and newspapers and even took to the streets, creating their own women-only political clubs and militias. This revolutionary feminist movement was hindered by the Jacobins in 1793 and was reversed by the Napoleonic Code in 1804, which confirmed the status of women as secondary citizens.

The four women discussed in this article each became influential in revolutionary politics. Some advanced women's rights intentionally, while others did it as a byproduct of their zealous participation in the broader Revolution. The first two, Germaine de Staël and Olympe de Gouges, were women of letters who expressed their ideals with pen and paper, hosting political discussions with Paris' elites and intellectuals in their salons. The last two, Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt, were organizers, both of them forming their own political clubs and partaking in some of the most important actions of the Revolution. These are just four women whose leadership affected the French Revolution and advanced the feminist cause at one of the most important and volatile moments in the history of human rights.

Germaine de Staël

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (22 April 1766 to 14 July 1817), better known as Madame de Staël, was a Swiss-French writer, political theorist, and salonnière who rose to political prominence during the Revolution. Born Germaine Necker, she was the daughter of the wildly popular royal finance minister Jacques Necker and the salonnière Susanne Curchod. Germaine was educated in her mother's salon, where she was first exposed to the works of Enlightenment Age philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Baron Montesquieu. In 1786, Germaine married a Swedish diplomat, Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, and completed her first three-act play the same year. In 1788, de Staël rose to prominence when she published a highly regarded book on Rousseau, titled Letters on the Works and Character of J.J. Rousseau. At the time of the book's publication, she was only 22.

With the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, de Staël became politically involved; although she could not legally hold political office, she frequently attended meetings of the National Assembly and became acquainted with many of the elected deputies. She opened her own salon at the Swedish embassy in Paris, where she hosted a slew of French nobles, foreign dignitaries, and influential political figures. The dinners she held at her salon and at her townhouse were frequented by the likes of Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Sophie de Condorcet; these fashionable dinners helped shape public revolutionary discourse in Paris. De Staël delighted in hosting people from across the political spectrum and winning them over to her side through her personal charisma and refined debating skills.

During the early phase of the Revolution, de Staël was considered a radical, favoring the implementation of a parliamentary monarchy based on the model of Great Britain, but as the Revolution continued in an increasingly radical direction, de Staël found her positions aligned more with the moderate Girondin faction. In the summer of 1793, the extremist Jacobins came to power and purged the Girondins from the government. Although initially protected from arrest by her husband's diplomatic status, the escalation of the Reign of Terror forced de Staël to flee to Coppet, Switzerland. Here, she continued writing on French politics, at one point writing in defense of the character of the recently executed Queen Marie Antoinette, arguing in part that her vilification had been tied to her womanhood. De Staël returned to France in 1795 after the Jacobins had been removed from power, but she was forced into exile again in 1804, having become an outspoken opponent of Napoleon Bonaparte. De Staël then traveled throughout Germany, becoming involved in the European Romanticism movement and befriending Lord Byron, before returning to Paris after the Bourbon Restoration in 1815.