“THERE IS ALWAYS A LITTLE COQUETRY”: FRENCH WOMEN’S POLITICAL WRITINGS, 1789-1815

Author: Angela Song

ABSTRACT

The debate over women participating and benefitting from the Revolution and its aftermath remains contentious, particularly given the scarcity of political writings and primary sources documenting women’s experiences. Thus, the question of whether women’s rights evolved or relapsed during and after the Revolution persists. Despite the lack of sources, this paper examines the primary documents of two French women around the time of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era, namely Manon Roland and Germaine de Staël to elucidate how their intellectual contributions through penmanship, slowly redefined and challenged contemporary gender norms. Both Roland and Staël used their intellectual privileges to argue against the authoritarian and despotic regimes imposed on them by leaders Maximilien Robespierre, the Jacobin group, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Their writings, whether accidentally or purposefully incorporating gendered language enriched the discourse on gender and citizenship. With reading their excerpts, there comes the necessity to recognize and commend their act of speaking up to diversify the Revolutionary and Napoleonic narrative, in which they used to prove their participation and role of making France to what it is now, even if they played a miniscule part in shaping Revolutionary and Napoleonic discourse, and even if their names don’t ring a bell.

Discipline: European History

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