On 29 October 1793, a group of women appeared in the National Convention to complain that women militants had tried to force them to wear the red cap of liberty as a sign of their adherence to the Revolution, but they also presented a petition…
In a follow–up to Fabre d’Eglantine’s speech on 29 October, Jean–Baptiste Amar proposed an official decree on 3 October forbidding women to join together in political associations. A deputy tried to argue that this notion ran contrary to the right of…
The case against Olympe de Gouges is worth reading in detail because it is typical of the attacks on those who criticized the authority of the central government that gathered force in the fall of 1793 and continued up to July 1794, when Robespierre…
When a group of women appeared at City Hall wearing red liberty caps, Pierre–Gaspard Chaumette denounced them and all political activism by women. He held out the examples of Madame Roland and Olympe de Gouges as warnings.
Madame Ducroquet wrote to her son in the spring of 1794 about the continuing shortage of food. She expressed her worries upon reading that someone with the same name had been arrested; in fact, it was her son, who went to the guillotine only a few…
This petition from the wife of a wigmaker in Paris demonstrates both the volatility of the political situation (she went to jail for badmouthing a local official while standing in line at a food market) and the conditions in prison.
Agitation over the shortage of bread reached a breaking point in the spring of 1795. Women played critical roles in these disturbances, as they had before the Revolution.
Once the uprising of May 1795 had been suppressed, the government set up a military tribunal, which gathered denunciations of presumed rioters. This one gives a good sense of the charges made and the kind of language used ("infernal sect of Jacobin…
In this review of a book by an author favorable to women’s education, Pipelet argues that republics should demonstrate a different attitude toward women than monarchies. She restates the arguments for more education and more opportunities for women…
