Day-Hickman: An Interpretive Study of Prints on the French Revolution

The German print, “Pariser Poisarden,” [Image 19] likewise derides French women who not only witnessed but also endeavored to bear arms and participate in revolutionary violence. The term “poisarden” or “fishwives” could refer to the women who led the March to Versailles in October 1789, or to the market women who confronted and opposed the Society of Revolutionary Republican women during the summer of 1793.9 Whatever the precise historical reference, the engraver presents three women armed with swords, sabers, bayonets, and pitchforks as they band together in militant solidarity. In addition to the armed triumvirate in the center of the composition, a woman in the left background waves a saber in the air while another carries a bayonet. On the right, two women raise a phrygian hat (suggesting a virtual head) on a pole that they parade above the crowd. Though the gestures and symbols are menacing, the print presages but does not portray the actual outbreak of violence.

The three women “in conversation” form a menacing focal point in the center of the composition. As compared with the innocent and delicate trio who dance in Botticelli's “Primavera,” these three display a spirit of conspiratorial militancy. In bearing arms, the women, who represent three different generations (youth, matron, and crone), demonstrate the inversion of their fundamental nature as wives and mothers. In this sense, the print could be read as a parody on the Stages of Life of Woman wherein each age corresponds with normative gender roles related to socialization, reproduction, and Christian redemption.10 But instead of highlighting the cultural or religious prescriptions for women in courtship, marriage, and childbearing, the print reveals women (from three stages of life) who have disassociated themselves from their prescribed gender roles and instead banded together in a militant enterprise to fight as men. The elder woman and matron appear to be drawing the younger woman into their conspiracy. From my reading, the young woman does not embody “Liberty” as Joan Landes suggests, but rather a young woman vulnerable to the intrigues of two elders. The girl responds ingenuously with a toss of her curls and the salute of her hat. The location of church spires and steeples behind the militant crowd of women who surround the triumvirate suggests their disdain for conventional religious or civil prescriptions.

Through his representation of women's transgression of all societal norms, the German artist suggests the imminence of danger and bloodshed. Moreover, the composition is rendered in heavy chiaroscuro emphasizing the determined crone in a Teutonic helmet rendered in dark tones that belie her prescribed nature as mother and matriarch. Storm clouds gather in the right upper plane as a sign of impending battle. In addition to the proximity of violence, the artist/engraver underlines the villainous character of the militant women who have defied their fundamental nature as wives and mothers by bearing arms and preparing for battle. These obstreperous women, by usurping “public space” as members of a militant crowd, have stepped outside of their legitimate roles as mothers and thereby assumed the behavior of dangerous viragoes.

Caricature combined with gender parody was another avenue for artists to lampoon the revolution. For example, in the “Memorable Day at Versailles, 5 October, 1789” [Image 6] the artist derides French market women who allegedly capture and escort the king and his family back from Versailles to Paris. The king, however, is not visible in the foreground in the print. Instead, the composition and text portray market women as “glorious modern amazons” who are engaged in entertaining “several gentlemen from the national guard.” 11 Furthermore, the visual focus on the sexual intrigue between the courtesan and the national guardsman establishes an ironic contrast with the concluding phase in the textual commentary. Instead of celebrating the return of the king, shouts of “Vive la nation. Vive le roi” in the text suggest that the central couple in the image, who are seated on the phallic-shaped gun, have summarily replaced the “absent” sovereign.

A grenadier of the National Guard who wears a fur cap and holds a rifle between his legs appears preoccupied with the brightly dressed courtesan who leans provocatively toward him on their makeshift throne. Wearing red, white, and blue, the couple holds a pole topped with a tricolor hat. Like the prancing horses drawing the cart, the couple on the “cannon” is temporarily “reined in” but prepared to follow the lead of the driver, dressed in a red jacket, blue coat, and white culottes who carries a commanding whip. Representations of two small notables in the left rear of the design (possibly the king and queen) have been reduced in size to mere witnesses of this ribald display. Instead of representing the capture of “the king,” the artist highlights and parodies the triumphal parade of “public women” who openly celebrate their political “tour de force.”

9 Olwen Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1992) 13-17: Hufton determines that for all the controversy about the militant “poissardes,” these market women were intent primarily on finding bread for their families. Though the National Guard joined the march to Versailles with weaponry and cannons, the women demonstrated peaceably and were, for the most part, unarmed.

10 Barbara Ann Day, “Representing Aging and Death in French Culture,” French Historical Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Spring 1992) 709-712.

11 Gay Gullickson, The Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Commune (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) 86-87: According to the Greeks, “the Amazons were a society of skilled and fierce warriors who lived without men, rode horses and fought ferociously in battle. . . . .Typically Greek statues and reliefs showed Amazon warriors with one breast exposed as they moved into battle.” For the most part, the love entanglements of these legendary women warriors ends tragically.