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2020 French Feminist Journalism: Eugénie Niboyet and Simone de Beauvoir in 19th- and 20th-Century French Print Media Maria Villalobos

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES

FRENCH FEMINIST JOURNALISM: EUGÉNIE NIBOYET AND SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

IN 19TH- AND 20TH-CENTURY FRENCH PRINT MEDIA

By

MARIA VILLALOBOS

A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded: Spring, 2020

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Doc ID: a7be883424db5bc2173f101cfa1aee58a66a44d0 Villalobos 1

Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………….2

Introduction…………………………………………………………………3-6

Section 1 – Historical context of 19th century France and Women……….7-21

Section 2 – Eugénie Niboyet’s Life and Feminist Journalism…………...22-39

Section 3 – Historical context of 20th century France and Women……...40-45

Section 4 – Simone de Beauvoir’s Life and Feminist Journalism……….46-72

Conclusion……………………………………………………………….73-75

Bibliography……………………………………………………………..76-79

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Abstract

Topic: Women’s studies, Journalism, French literature, French history

The emergence of early feminism through the printed word — journals, magazines, pamphlets — allowed women’s political voices to be heard and for their cause to be taken with seriousness, whether positively or negatively, by French society. Women’s continuous progress in all aspects, social, political, economic, can be attributed to the collective efforts of early feminists. This research looks at women’s social roles and struggles in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how their restricted condition inspired the early feminist movement.

I write and compare two prominent feminists, Eugénie Niboyet, whose voice has been forgotten and whose contributions to the feminist press are scarcely written about, and Simone de

Beauvoir, who is considered by many one of the most important feminists and whose works and legacy are widely studied and talked about in the academic field of women’s studies. I divide this research into four sections: the historical context of nineteenth century France and women,

Eugénie Niboyet’s life and feminist journalism, the historical context of 20th century France and women, and Simone de Beauvoir’s life and feminist journalism.

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Introduction ​ Feminist works are commonly studied in the form of literary works while journal and magazine publications are often overlooked despite having been the only medium available to women fighting for their rights for hundreds of years. The purpose of this paper is to bring awareness to the emergence of the French feminist press and its effect on women’s integration into the male dominated public sphere of nineteeth- and twentieth-century France, along its obstacles and victories. I will highlight the journalism as well as the activism of two prominent

French literary figures: Eugénie Niboyet and Simone de Beauvoir, and how their use of print media aided their cause for women’s emancipation.

Women’s studies is an academic field I have always found intriguing as we live in a time where girls and women around the world are still discriminated against, restricted, and abused.

We have come a long way, but much is yet to be done. When researching French women’s social conditions and feminist journalism, the primary authors I will be citing include: Claire Goldberg

Moses, Janis Bergman-Carton, Evelyn Sullerot, Jeremy D. Popkin, Sandrine Sanos, Karen Offen,

Toril Moi, and Anne Whitmarsh. I will be using the books French Feminism in the Nineteenth ​ Century (1984), The Woman of Ideas in French Art, 1830-1848 (1995), Press, Revolution, and ​ ​ ​ ​ Social Identities in France, 1830-1835 (2002), Simone de Beauvoir: Creating a Feminist ​ ​ Existence in the World (2017), Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman ​ ​ (2008), European Feminism, 1700-1950: A Political History (2000), among others. I will also ​ ​ use online sources and databases like Gallica by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in order to access older publications such as the Voix des femmes journal. ​ ​

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The reason I have chosen to compare Eugénie Niboyet and Simone de Beauvoir is because both figures were the forefront of the feminist movement in their respective times; however there exists a clear distinction between the two: one has been forgotten while the other is still celebrated today. Information on one is challenging to find while for the other research is abundant. One’s journalism was severely restricted while the other was free to write without any fear of government repression due to her sex. Comparing these two figures can, therefore, help explain why such distinctions exist and bring awareness about seized opportunities and challenges faced by early French feminists.

The structure of this thesis provides a historical overview before discussing each of the feminist journalists’ works. Without such context, we would not be able to consider the social, religious, economic, and political conditions that existed during each respective time period. To me, these factors are just as influential and important as their family, social upbringing, and education. To better understand and appreciate how both Niboyet and Beauvoir were able to achieve social change under government restrictions, social limitations, and harsh criticism, we must also see how the world looked like for French women back then.

In Section 1, Historical context of 19th century France and Women, I will explore what was considered ‘feminism’ at the time. How did women live and what role did they play in society? What were women’s concerns and demands? I will focus on women’s social restriction, political inequality, dependence on men, marriage and motherhood as their ultimate objective in life. I will also consider women’s legal rights and the Civil Code of 1804, lack of educational opportunities, and joining the French workforce. In addition, I will discuss Saint Simonism, a

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religious and socialist movement that opened its doors to women and where we first see early

feminists make use of the press.

In Section 2, Eugénie Niboyet’s Life and Feminist Journalism, I will use Niboyet’s book,

Le Vrai livre des femmes, to examine her life as well as her works, both literary and in the press. ​ I will highlight some of her journals like Le Conseiller des femmes and the highly influential ​ ​ Voix des femmes, which brought together feminists that went on to create their own journals, ​ resulting in the proliferation of the feminist press. I will also examine the reactions the Voix des ​ femmes group provoked with their journal and women’s club, such as political attacks, ​ government repression and antifeminist caricatures in the press.

In Section 3, Historical context of 20th century France and Women, I will examine the evolution of feminism from one century to the other. From the emergence of the French word

‘féminisme’ to women’s struggles with new concerns such as bodily autonomy, reproduction rights, abortion, and suffrage. I will consider the effects of World War I and World War II in women’s lives, including new social expectations imposed on European women such as increasing childbirth and forcing women back into the private sphere.

In Section 4, Simone de Beauvoir’s Life and Feminist Journalism, I will examine

Beauvoir’s life from childhood to adulthood and her struggle with the feminist label. I will consider how her social class and background, educational opportunities, her relationship to

Jean-Paul Sartre and their intellectual friendship circle allowed her to pursue a writing career and to become a distinguished French intellectual. I highlight her long journalist career with the journal Les Temps modernes, founded by Sartre and her, as well as her contributions to ​ ​ numerous other journals and political activism later on in her life.

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Overall, these four sections will give a better idea of women’s social struggles and rightful demands during two rapidly changing time periods. This thesis will attempt to give a voice to Eugénie Niboyet in addition to evaluate her numerous initiatives to publicize women’s concerns in the press. This thesis will also examine Simone de Beauvoir’s journalism as her lesser known contribution to the feminist movement, and her political activism resulting from

Beauvoir’s exposure of an unjust world through the press.

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Section 1: Historical context of 19th century France and Women

In this section I will explore the historical context of nineteenth-century France in relation to women’s social condition and their role in the established patriarchal society following the French Revolution. I survey the rise of first-wave feminism during this time period as I continue to explore its evolution throughout this paper. In addition, I will introduce the Saint

Simonian women, a group of socialist feminists from the 1830s who radically challenged the notion of “equality” between men and women, the differences among women of different social classes, and womanhood among other concepts and notions, to ultimately find ways to achieve women’s liberation and equality between the sexes. In order to understand what was considered

“feminism” back in nineteenth-century France, I will examine the challenges women faced as well as their different goals and demands according to social class, such as opening up opportunities for women with a focus on suffrage and education.

Women’s Social Condition

By the nineteenth century, French women’s lives had seen some change and emerging opportunities that explain the need for a movement that was not only led by women but that worked in the best interest of women. During this period, we see the notion of womanhood change from that of having lesser moral value to being idealized and sharply differentiated from men. Women were positively depicted in literary works; with female characters ranging from spontaneous, fresh, innocent and in need of protection to being consoling and tender-hearted confidantes. This nurturing image of women dominated popular literature, giving women at the time the opportunity to take and build these images to push their cause. However, with the

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Romantic image of women also came a less desirable side, that of weakness. Moses argues that women’s nurturing portrayal in literature also gave way to an image of dependence, self-sacrifice and subordination to men. This weakness further differentiated equality between the sexes

(Moses 17, 18).

The Civil Code, created at the beginning of the nineteenth century under Napoleon, excluded women from enjoying equal rights for all French citizens as they were excluded from the very definition of citizenship. The Civil Code worsened women’s social status and most of its provisions affected women’s rights and family life as well. Nationality could only be transmitted to the children by their father while the French nationality of the mother was completely disregarded. The only people who could obtain French citizenship were those with legitimate

French fathers. Divorce was prohibited by 1816 and the law favored men over women in the case of legal separation. In the event that the wife committed adultery, she would be punished by imprisonment; however, if the husband committed adultery, he would merely get a fine.

Similarly, if the woman was found to be committing adultery, the husband had the right to file for separation, unlike the wife, who had to provide proof that the concubine was residing in the family’s home (Moses 18, 19).

Moses points out that the right for women to be guardians was extremely limited under the new code. Fathers, even if not present in the children’s lives, were the ones with significant legal authority over the children. The men had control over financial affairs of minor children as well as the right of correction, meaning fathers were permitted to send their children to places of correction if they thought the child’s behaviour was not acceptable (19). Male domination of the public sphere was, in great part, the essence of the Napoleonic Code with women being limited

Villalobos 9 to the role of mother and nurturer in the private space of the home. If some noble women escaped the patriarchal laws of the past, the Civil Code eliminated any possibility for them to continue benefiting from legal loopholes and as a result, the ideal of civil equality expanded and became a highly important matter for feminists of all social classes.

In contrast with previous time periods, a major difference in the nineteenth century was the amount of children women had. Women’s daily life and sexuality dramatically changed. In

French society, women’s traditional role was mainly that of bearing and nursing children. High fertility was a distinctive characteristic of the ancient régime. According to Moses, complete ​ ​ families consisted of four to eight children based on marriage age and the younger a woman would marry, the more children she would give birth to. In France, fertility rates decreased by the end of the eighteenth century and by the mid-nineteenth century the average household had two children. Limiting family size began with the upper class and gradually spread down to the lower working classes (Moses 20).

Various explanations for this decline unique to France at the time are given by Moses.

First, she argues that the French believed limiting family size would increase quality of life and lessen the financial burden on the family. Inheritance, which under the Civil Code was to be equally divided among children, may have also played a major role in the decline of fertility with the fewer children, the more each would get from any inheritance left to their names. Another possible explanation is that childhood became an important phase of life as a result of the cultural revolution; by becoming a more important individual to the parents, limiting the family size would allow for more attention to each individual child and overall a better quality of life for both parents and children. In addition, medical advances made it possible to control “fate” when

Villalobos 10 it was previously thought impossible and therefore, people were now able to more effectively control births. Illegitimate births accounted for 30 to 50 percent of all births in cities such as

Paris, Lyon, and Bordeaux, where feminist activity seemed to occur the most (24). Consequences in poor women’s lives resulting from illegitimacy seemed to greatly affect feminists’ attitudes towards marriage and sexuality. However, there was a great divide between upper and lower class feminists as their social classes often clashed due to differing socio-economic experiences.

After the Industrial Revolution, women’s work opportunities became wider. By 1866, almost one and a half million women were working in French industry and 30 percent of the total industrial workforce was made up of women. About 70 percent of these women were employed in the textile industries, of which they represented 45 percent of the workforce. In addition, women were 23 percent of the workforce in the food packaging and processing industries and 13 percent in chemicals. A significant amount of young and single women worked in garment-making in Parisian ateliers. However, conditions in Paris and other major cities were ​ ​ extremely harsh and women experienced discrimination in the workforce (Moses 25).

At any place of employment, women faced lower salaries compared to men, which was attributed to direct discrimination based on sex or due to lack of training. In Paris, women earned around 4 to 6 francs a day for needlework trades and in Lyon, those working in factories earned the highest wages in the north with 3.5 to 4 francs a day. However, the average salary for women was much lower for other types of work from seamstresses to embroiderers and dressmakers making only about 1.70 to 2.50 a day. According to McIlvanney, the increasing urbanisation of

France during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought the development of both manual and low-paid female labor force (200). Unequal pay for equal work resulted in women

Villalobos 11 being assigned to lower positions or lower status occupations and the lower wages also contributed in the replacement of men for women in the workforce, resulting in further male opposition of women in the workforce (Moses 26).

Throughout the nineteenth century, domestic employment rapidly expanded with one-third of domestic women being single by 1851 and one half by 1881. Rural women viewed this type of work as an efficient means to save up a respectable dowry to marry into a higher class as well as to live comfortably with a bourgeois family (McIlvanney 202; Moses 29).

However, work conditions were not always ideal for these workers as they often worked fifteen to eighteen hours a day, had limited, if any, vacation time, lived in miserable housing, were mistreated and lacked independence from their employers. Many would lose their jobs due to illness, aging, illegitimate births and even criminality (Moses 29).

After being let go from their jobs, many young women would turn to begging or stealing while others turned to prostitution and even prison looking for shelter. Moses argues that theft and other crimes became ordinary methods of survival for working-class women and further adds that by 1830, the number of female beggars imprisoned had more than tripled and that police, out of pity, would open the prisons to prostitutes during wintertime to provide shelter from the elements. A system of legal prostitution existed in nineteenth-century France with police regulation and registration. However, clandestine prostitution more than tripled in the first three decades of the century and many of the women who left prison and even maternity hospitals got recruited to work in the sex industry as a living. In addition, exploitative relationships, usually between women from lower classes, like domestic workers, and their upper

Villalobos 12 class employers resulted in almost one-half of illegitimate children born in Paris in the 1880s

(29, 30).

As a result of different social experiences, the concerns of bourgeois women often differed from those of working-class women. Employment opportunities for middle- and upper-class women were frequently related to their private, ‘domestic’ roles as wives and mothers: their work was commonly limited to helping their husbands to manage businesses, such as shops and restaurants, and taking over after their death. Some of the tasks widows took over included selling goods and services, bargaining over prices, collecting the cash from customers, keeping money safe, keeping the accounts, and planning for the long-term development of the enterprise (McIlvanney 199).

According to Offen, politicians and economists voiced concern over women’s participation in the new industrial labor force. These men sought to institutionalize women’s

“enclosure” and subordination in the family by insisting on women’s role in the household as wives and mothers, and by urging daughters to complete their domestic apprenticeships with their mothers, rather than seek employment elsewhere (81). In addition, French women became further excluded from key professional domains, such as the legal profession, which had always been a male preserve, and the medical profession as well by replacing midwives with male doctors from the mid-eighteenth century onwards (McIlvanney 199).

Education for girls in the nineteenth century was almost non-existent and extremely lacking and inferior to that of boys. Free education and schools provided by the government were exclusively for boys as it was believed that girls should be taught at home by their mothers.

Moses explains that some progress was made in 1807, when the government funded a school for

Villalobos 13 a selected group of young girls: the Institution Nationale d’Éducation des Jeunes Filles (32). The school was directed by Madame Campan and its purpose was to educate and make “virtuous women” out of female relatives of members of the Legion of Honor. However, these girls spent more time doing chores than learning. Their supposed education included subjects such as religion, reading, spelling, history, geography, botany and les arts d’agrément: music, dance, and ​ ​ ​ ​ poetry (Moses 33).

It was only in 1850 that the creation of girls’ schools was ordered in every commune with a population of over eight hundred. Nonetheless, this law was not implemented in every commune, as Moses points out, with only 11,836 schools being created for girls and 48,496 for boys (33). Secondary education for young women was established in 1867 in forty towns and cities throughout France but after liberal minister of public education, Victor Duruy, was dismissed in 1869, secondary education was only offered at a total of ten locations in the country.

Women’s education remained focused on skills related to women’s roles within the domestic economy. According to McIlvanney, the education system continued to teach French women that motherhood was the key to “a fulfilled future for self, family and nation” (199). At the time, it was the norm for a mother or grandmother to complete a young girl’s education after the age of thirteen when she left boarding or public school; if the family had the means, a private tutor would continue her education. Bourgeois women were educated for marriage and their education would mainly focus on les arts d’agrément as “the way to be married was to be ​ ​ displayed” (Moses 33). Family gatherings, parties, salons, or balls served to showcase a young woman’s talents for singing, dancing, playing, and more in order to achieve marriage.

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Bourgeois women were highly protected in fear of any corruption to their virtue and were not allowed to freely go out without the watchful eye of their mothers or grandmothers. Young bourgeois women were still considered as a valuable “possession” in the nineteenth century and marriages were almost always arranged. Women married a dowry, not a person. Moses argues that young women were not forced to marry against their will but rather had an internalized set of values that shaped their wills (35). Because of this, daughters would often agree with their families and would not object to an ideal marriage or union of fortunes. Once married, bourgeois women’s main responsibility was to manage the household and take care of the children’s education, usually up to school age for the boys and adulthood for the girls. Unmarried young women of the bourgeoisie suffered from extremely limited freedom, if any. Moses adds that unmarried middle-class women without financial support would often become school teachers or private tutors of music, art or foreign languages (35).

Furthermore, French women were accepting of the status quo with many considering the patriarchal system inevitable and Christianity, with reinforced beliefs that limited women’s freedom, a part of the human condition. Nonetheless, dissatisfaction with the system was recorded through the arts. Nineteenth-century writers, artists and actors were interested in the

“emptiness” of the bourgeois woman’s life. It witnessed many of these famous personalities rebel against the established patriarchal system, like the writer George Sand, who was a well-educated and connected independent woman after separating from her husband, and who adopted masculine mannerisms and lived freely from any society standard, despite her assumed acceptance of it in others. Nineteenth-century France saw women become increasingly involved in their husbands’ work and, with the expansion of the feminine press after 1830, take it upon

Villalobos 15 themselves to teach other women how to become better mothers and homemakers. With the press, information that was of interest to women started circulating, such as beauty advice, menus and recipes, hygiene, childrearing information and more (Moses 36).

It was during this century that the revolutionary ideology that we now know as feminism was created, although it had no specific name, and it addressed the oppression women experienced under the established patriarchal system. In France, feminists were both working class and bourgeois women. Despite their different life experiences, both social classes experienced limited freedom, high dependency and unified subordination to their fathers or husbands, punishments and ultimately the complete exclusion from the public sphere. As a result, women’s initial focus was on civil and legal oppression as well as on the difficulties that single women had in becoming independent through hard work and married women’s limited freedom. And so, the French feminist movement continued to slowly develop throughout the nineteenth century (Moses 37).

Saint-Simonians

Feminist concerns at the beginning of the July Monarchy focused on access to jobs, education, the liberalization of women in terms of the restrictive marriage laws enforced by the

Civil Code of 1804, and the idea of suffrage. McIlvanney argues that the revival of French feminism can be attributed to two main sources: first, Charles Fourier’s work and the Saint

Simonian philosophy, which promoted greater female emancipation as a prerequisite to human progress; and second, French urbanisation that allowed the expansion of employment opportunities available to women (197). Fourier particularly called for the liberation of

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“imprisoned human emotions” and the push for a new marital system based on the “law of attraction” as opposed to the union of men and women for the purpose of increasing their wealth and status. According to Bergman-Carton, this new marital system depended on the equality of women and their sexual freedom to encourage marriages to be freely made and sustained by mutual choice (22, 24). Fourier further attacked the institution of family as he believed in releasing women from family constraints so they could economically contribute to an increasingly urbanised society (McIlvanney 197).

Following the July Revolution of 1830, several newspapers devoted to the cause of women’s emancipation began circulating. Some newspapers focused on legal equality, others on education of girls and young women, and others on protesting the patriarchal system and male domination of the public sphere. The most revolutionary group of women devoted to the cause and who utilized the printed media in their favor were part of the Saint-Simonian movement.

Inspired but never led by Claude Henri, Count of Saint-Simon, and formed in 1826, Saint

Simonism gained influence after the Revolution, when they started to intensively recruit mainly working-class French women (Bergman-Carton 24).

Saint Simonism emphasized the importance of re-evaluating women’s roles in society and also of promoting harmony between the sexes, which would be aided by allowing women’s sexual and professional expression (McIlvanney 197). But, if French feminism was born from male invention, it really was the women’s own shared experiences and motivations that led to the further development and independence of their feminism. Moses explains that the fathers of the

Church, Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Amand Bazard, noticed a high attendance of women to their lectures and that by 1830, an estimated 200 women started showing up either with their husbands

Villalobos 17 or male friends or by themselves (52). Future influential and prominent Saint-Simonian feminists, such as Suzanne Voilquin, attended a lecture for the first time with her brother-in-law, and Jeanne Deroin was brought by her future fiancé. Others, such as Eugénie Niboyet, came upon the lectures by mere chance, stayed to hear the Saint-Simonians speak, and became immediately interested in their cause and joined them shortly after. Working-class women became familiar with Saint Simonism through outreach programs in the quartiers of Paris.

These new members contributed by writing short propagandistic pieces published as pamphlets or in the Saint-Simonian newspapers, such as the Globe, running outreach programs ​ ​ and corresponding with potential women recruits, or hosting soirées where new ideas were brought up and discussed. Based on letters sent to the Globe by women readers, many showed ​ ​ great interest in workers’ rather than women’s emancipation. This shows that the feminism of the

Saint-Simonian women rose from their own experiences rather than public support. Moses argues that Saint-Simonian female converts were initially won over by the movement’s support for their cause but that, in practice, Saint Simonism did not uphold equality between men and women (53). A few letters written by Enfantin show his opposition to women’s equality to men.

Seemingly, he considered women to be more of an inspirational companion to men rather than being active within the public sphere.

Despite Enfantin’s initial views on equality between the sexes, Saint-Simonian ideology progressively called for public functions of the “church” to be shared between the sexes. Several women were appointed to higher positions within the movement but despite their efforts, the hierarchy remained predominantly male dominated composed of only twelve women compared to sixty-seven men. Shortly after, Enfantin regressed to his initial views on women and dismissed

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them from the hierarchy in addition to denying them participation (Moses 54, 56). Consequently,

in August 1832, a small group of Saint-Simonian women broke with him in one of the first

separatist feminist endeavors of the century. To these women, speaking out themselves against

the issues concerning women’s emancipation was of utmost importance. Known as “les

prolétaires Saint-Simoniennes,” most were from the lower levels of the middle class or the upper

levels of the working class. Désirée Gay and Marie-Reine Guindorf went on to found La femme ​ libre, a newspaper published by and for women (Bergman-Carton 24). ​ La Femme libre was produced at the founders’ own expenses in the home of Guindorf ​ and along with other contributors such as Deroin, the group shared how they started this adventure with no other resources than that of their needlework (Sullerot 150). These ‘nouvelles femmes’ denounced the oppression of working women and wives and asserted women’s moral superiority to men (Paletschek and Pietrow-Ennker 80). According to Chastain, they also accepted the philosophy of men and women having different natures, the social individual being a couple, that all human capacities should be developed regardless of sex, that women as wives and mothers were the moralizing agents of society, and that women should serve the cause of all humanity.

Most contributors used their first names only to symbolically demonstrate female emancipation from the patriarchal system: “If we continue to take men’s names… we shall

[continue to] be slaves” (Bergman-Carton 25). In 1833, both Gay and Guindorf left Saint

Simonism, and consequently La femme libre, for Charles Fourier’s utopian socialist movement. ​ ​ The journal was handed to Suzanne Voilquin and other significant contributors including Jeanne

Victoire and non Saint-Simonian women such as Caroline Béranger and Louise Dauriat. Others’

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identities remain anonymous today as a result of signing their first names only, such as

Joséphine, Félicité, and Gertrude. La femme libre had two sides to it: a Saint-Simonian side and a ​ ​ feminist side. Nevertheless, it was more of a feminist than a Saint-Simonian journal.

Figure 1 - La femme libre. Elle est trouvée! - Bibliothèque nationale de France. 1833. Identifier:

ark:/12148/btv1b53006585q

As we will see, early feminists’ efforts in the printed media were subject to harsh

criticism and ridicule. Starting with La femme libre, its title became controversial as the notion of ​ ​ the “free woman” implied it was a place to advertise sexual favors rather than a place declaring female autonomy and liberation. As a result, satirical commentary and imagery, such as caricatures and other types of illustrations, took advantage of the double meaning and targeted both the Saint-Simonians and their new paper. The July Monarchy was notorious for the

Villalobos 20

abolishment of press censorship which resulted in an open press and the proliferation of

newspapers and journals that contained comic illustrations, and in particular French political

caricatures (Bergman-Carton 33).

La Charge, a government-sponsored satiric paper, featured an image titled, La femme ​ ​ libre. Elle est trouvée! (Fig. 1), in 1833. This illustration depicts a meeting between Enfantin, the ​ “Father” and leader of the movement, and a Saint-Simonian woman portrayed as a chimpanzee.

According to Forbes, the primate represents the long-sought “Mother” of Saint Simonism and

adds that, “though Enfantin resists her advances, the scene at once trivializes the activist work of

La femme libre and reunites the splinter group visually with Saint-Simonian male leadership.” ​ (133). Consequently, the editors of La femme libre decided to change its name, first to Apostolat ​ ​ ​ des femmes with variations of words above the title, such as “La femme libre,” “La femme de ​ l’avenir” and “La femme nouvelle.” Though the editors ultimately agreed on Tribune des femmes ​ as the journal’s permanent title.

French print culture aided in the dissemination of political and social ideas with journalism in particular serving as the most accessible medium for early feminists to share their cause and to demand change on French women’s behalf. Feminists’ attempt to represent an

“imagined community”1 fell short numerous times as its potential members were often largely indifferent to its existence. Despite this, and for the first time, a substantial group of women in the nineteenth century became aware of a female community as well as of their talent and ability to be heard. As a result, the Tribune des femmes became the model and inspiration for dozens of ​ ​

1 ​The concept of “imagined communities” was created by Benedict Anderson to analyze nationalism and refer to a socially constructed community that is imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

Villalobos 21 future feminist newspapers, journals, and magazines launched during the July Monarchy as we will see with La Voix des femmes in particular. ​ ​

Figure 2 - Apostolat des femmes - Bibliothèque nationale de France. 1833. Identifier: ark:/12148/bpt6k85525j

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Section 2: Eugénie Niboyet’s Life and Feminist Journalism

The life and legacy of the founders of the French feminist press, Désirée Gay and Jeanne

Deroin, are often studied in the field of French literature and women’s studies. A fair amount of information is available on their life, activism, and publications. However, the presence and even voice of the third founder and leader, Eugénie Niboyet, is hardly found in books. In this section,

I will bring some light into Niboyet’s life and works, including her involvement with the feminist press, political activism, education, writings and other contributions.

A brave and innovative woman of various talents, Niboyet was at the forefront of the first-wave feminist movement in France. She contributed to journals such as Le Citateur féminin ​ and L’Opinion des Femmes, and is credited for the creation of several feminist newspapers and ​ ​ journals such as Le Conseiller des femmes and the highly influential La Voix des femmes. She ​ ​ ​ ​ was the founder and director of the Société de la Voix des femmes, the president of the Club des ​ ​ ​ femmes, and creator of the Athénée des femmes, the first free women’s university in Lyon. ​ ​ ​ Niboyet’s contributions gave a voice to women as well as to other disadvantaged members of society. Her efforts helped establish the early feminist press in France and shape French women’s emancipation and suffrage movements through the promotion of women’s civil, educational, and economic demands in the press.

Eugénie Niboyet

A woman of letters, Eugénie Mouchon-Niboyet was born in Montpellier, France in 1799.

Although not much is known about her upbringing, we know she married lawyer, Paul-Louis

Niboyet, in 1822 at the age of 23 and together they had two sons, Jean Alexandre and Paulin

Villalobos 23

Niboyet. In her 1862 book Le vrai livre des femmes, Niboyet introduces herself as well as some ​ ​ of her family’s background to her readers. She reveals that she came from a famille lettrée with ​ ​ Swiss origins and notes how her father, Pierre Mouchon, contributed to l’Encyclopédie by ​ ​ Diderot and d’Alembert. She also mentions her father being a student at the faculty of medicine

in Montpellier and that he married the daughter of a pastor from Gard, referring in this simple

way to her mother. During a time of social regeneration in France, Niboyet shares that her father

was a man open to new ideas from the French Revolution but that he was also a moderate.

Had Niboyet not been born in a somewhat moderate family, received an education, or

married a supportive man, she might have been among the countless low income single women

Moses described as having to turn to domestic labor, stealing, or prostitution for a living. Instead,

she left Lyon and arrived in Paris on November 4, 1829 where she immediately started writing

and translating works from English to French for a living. In 1830, she participated in a writing

contest organized by la Société de la morale chrétienne with the prompt: Des Aveugles et de leur ​ éducation. She was awarded a prize of 1000 francs, which she shared with M. Duffaut, a ​ professor at the Institut des jeunes aveugles, and also received a gold medal. Her essay was well received by an additional four societies and it was translated to German and English. She won a second writing contest organized by the same society with the prompt: De la nécessité d’abolir ​ la peine de mort, with M. de Lamartine as rapporteur. Niboyet joined la Société de la morale ​ chrétienne and served in various committees dedicated to orphans and prison reform in Paris.

Under the influence of Élisabeth Fry, Niboyet founded a children’s school and thanks to her work with prisons, she won a third writing contest about the penitentiary system in France. She went on to win another twelve writing contests, one of which was concerned with the health of

Villalobos 24 prisoners and which gave her the title of correspondent member at the Société de médecine de

Bordeaux.

That same year, Niboyet encountered a group of Saint-Simonian followers during a lecture in a hall shared with la Société de la morale chrétienne. She stayed for a day to listen to them speak and was won over by their ideas (Moses 44). According to Riot-Sarcey, she joined

Saint Simonism with her husband and in July 1830, she was given the tasks of preaching, aiding, and educating members of the working class in the 4th and 5th arrondissements (68). In 1831, she wrote to Enfantin concerning her responsibilities being taken away:

C’est par la bouche d’une femme que la parole saint-simonienne doit être, je

crois, enseignée et prêchée aux ouvriers. Nous ôter cette faculté, c’est nous ôter la

vie! […] faire de la propagation individuelle est beaucoup sans doute, mais cela

ne suffit pas à mon activité. J’aime à agir sur les masses parce que c’est là que je

sens toute ma puissance! Je suis apôtre, j’ai beaucoup reçu, j’ai beaucoup à

donner. Je vous en supplie, laissez-moi à mon élément. (“It is through the mouth

of a woman that the Saint-Simonian word must be, I believe, taught and preached

to workers. To take away this ability is to take away our life! […] doing

individual propagation is a lot without a doubt, but this is not enough for my

pursuit. I like to act on the masses because this is where I feel all of my power! I

am an apostle, I have received a lot, I have a lot to give. I beg you, leave me to my

element” Riot-Sarcey 68, note 37).

As a result of conflicting views—Saint-Simonian women being more radical than Enfantin in terms of French marriage laws and female autonomy—Niboyet left Saint Simonism and drew

Villalobos 25 closer to the utopian movement of Charles Fourier, who also initially advocated for women and social progress (Moses 70, 85).

In 1832, Fourier and two others, Victor Prosper Considérant and Jules Lechevalier, founded a “school” and a publication called La Réforme industrielle ou le Phalanstère. ​ ​ Fourierism evolved into a political organization that sought to create associations called

“phalanxes” that focused on communal production and sharing of housekeeping functions. They called themselves “associationists” or members of the Ecole Sociétaire to emphasize their distance from religious groups. That same year, Niboyet became an associationist and while she had hope in the progressive ideas of the new school, such as the freedom to love, reestablishing divorce, the economic independence of women, and household reorganization, the lack of capital and personnel prevented the formation of these phalanxes. This resulted in the organization moving away from feminist concerns and focusing instead on class issues and Franco-German reconciliation (Moses 98).

In 1835, Niboyet wrote an article for the journal Le Citateur féminin, which often ​ ​ featured work by famous women writers, titled, “De l’exagération en ce qui concerne les femmes et leur émancipation.” In it, she addressed male attitudes toward women’s emancipation and women’s social function in the public sphere. She wrote:

Pourquoi ne remplirais-je pas une fonction sociale ? pourquoi ne serais-je pas

poète, artiste, savante, industrielle ? pourquoi, en un mot, resterais-je étrangère

aux intérêts de tous ? (“Why would I not fulfill a social function? Why would I

not be a poet, an artist, a scholar, an industrialist? Why, in one word, would I

remain a stranger to the interests of all?” Niboyet, Le Citateur féminin 278). ​

Villalobos 26

Provocatively, she argues that men, rather than standing tall, proud, and fighting women, should instead tend their hand and help elevate them to their same social status; that women need take their fate into their own hands and let them do as they wish; and that they be able to intervene in legislative questions that concern them. Niboyet also strongly called on men who represented a male dominated past:

Et, quand ces temps seront venus, on vous verra, vous, hommes exclusifs qui ​ ​ représentez le passé, et jouissez, envers et contre tous, de votre soi-disant

supériorité ; vous qui, bercés dans une douce habitude de domination, regardez en

pitié la femme et sa faiblesse, vous qui riez ou vous indignez de ses prétentions,

on vous verra céder et faire place. Aujourd’hui une concession vous sera arrachée,

demain une autre, et, sans vous en douter, du point de départ au point d’arrivée il

y aura pour vous un espace immense… Le progrès est comme le temps, il marche

toujours ; suivez-le… Les femmes ont voulu s’élever jusqu’à vous, et vous avez

crié à l’usurpation ; vous les avez abreuvées de dégoûts, de critiques amères, de

mensonges odieux, et parce qu’elles ne se sont pas servies des mêmes armes, vous

les avez crues vaincues ? c’était à tort la calomnie blesse, mais ne tue pas…

Hommes du passé, vos protestations déclamatoires ont encore servi le progrès.

(“And, when these times come, you will be seen, you, the exclusive men who

represent the past, and enjoy, against all odds, your so-called superiority; you

who, cradled in a gentle habit of domination, look at woman and her weakness

with pity, you who laugh or are indignant at her pretensions, you will be seen to

give way and make way. Today a concession will be torn from you, tomorrow

Villalobos 27

another, and, without suspecting it, from the point of departure to the point of

arrival there will be an immense space for you... Progress is like time, it always

marches onward; follow it... The women wanted to rise up to you, and you cried

out for usurpation; you deluged them with disgust, bitter criticism, heinous lies,

and because they did not use the same weapons, did you believe them defeated?

Libel hurts, but does not kill... Men of the past, your declamatory protests have

further served progress” Niboyet, Le Citateur féminin 280). ​ In the autobiographical section of Le vrai livre des femmes, Niboyet shared having ​ ​ founded numerous journals throughout her life such as the Conseiller des femmes (1833) and the ​ ​ Mosaïque lyonnaise (1834) in Lyon, L’Ami des Familles (1835), the Paix des deux Mondes ​ ​ ​ ​ (1844), L’Avenir (1844) and the Voix des femmes (1848) in Paris. According to Popkin, Niboyet ​ ​ ​ ​ was regarded as Lyon’s leading woman journalist in the early 1830s as the editor of the

Conseiller des femmes, a weekly newspaper well received by Lyon’s other journalists but that ​ lasted only ten months (77, 129). Despite not being able to legally own a business enterprise as a

woman, Niboyet’s paper was the first women’s journal outside the Paris region that also intended

to publish articles only by women, an effort that represented the reconfiguration of the city’s

print culture (Popkin 124).

The purpose of the paper was to provide women in Lyon a journal that represented not

only their gender but their interests as a group after previously being ignored by the general

press. In the prospectus, Niboyet announced:

Depuis trois ans, de toutes parts la presse périodique fait passer tous les jours sous

nos yeux son prisme aux mille couleurs où sont reproduits, sans s’altérer, les

Villalobos 28

opinions et les systèmes d’une société qui marche à grands pas dans la voie d’une

civilisation plus parfaite… Cependant, il faut le dire, dans ce grand mouvement de

la presse, dans cette active agitation de l’humanité, au dix-neuvième siècle, les

femmes ont trouvé peu d’organes pour les représenter, et pas une loi ne stipule

encore en France en faveur de leur éducation. (“For the past three years, the

periodical press has been passing its prism with a thousand colors every day

before our eyes, in which are reproduced, without altering, the opinions and

systems of a society which is marching with great strides along the path to a more

perfect civilization... However, it must be said, in this great movement of the

press, in this active agitation of humanity, in the nineteenth century, women have

found few organs to represent them, and not one law yet stipulates in France in

favor of their education. For three years now, the periodical press has been

passing its prism with a thousand colors every day before our eyes, in which are

reproduced, without altering, the opinions and systems of a society which is

marching with great strides along the path to a more perfect civilization ...

However, it must be said, in this great movement of the press, in this active

agitation of humanity, in the nineteenth century, women have found few organs to

represent them, and not one law yet stipulates in France in favor of their

education” Niboyet, Le Conseiller des femmes). ​ ​ ​ ​ Popkin further argues that Niboyet was mainly interested in challenging women’s exclusion from public discussions in the press and in the improvement of poor women’s social conditions by

Villalobos 29

promoting a sense of unity among them regardless of social class to create a group with common

interests and to encourage them to think of their sex as oppressed (126, 128).

Through the Conseiller des femmes, Niboyet carefully gained the respect of Lyon’s ​ ​ journalists by modestly pushing the idea that women had special moral qualities that

differentiated them from men, rather than being equals, and that they were, in fact, not interested

in playing men’s roles, but rather wished to have the freedom to develop their own capacities

through education to then contribute to civilization. Despite being careful about claiming

equality between the sexes, the Conseiller des femmes published pieces denouncing ​ ​ discrimination caused by the implementation of the Civil Code, it condemned marriage as

women’s ultimate destination, and also the exploitation of female workers (Popkin 128, 129).

The Conseiller the femmes was so different from the rest of the press in the early 1830s, ​ ​ as explained by Popkin, that it was highly praised and not seen as a threat to other publications

despite challenging the boundaries of the public sphere (130, 131). The paper refused to define

women as consumers, divorced from the marketplace and the domestic sphere. Compared to

Beauvoir’s large readership with Les Temps modernes as we will see later on, the Conseiller des ​ ​ ​ femmes struggled with gathering subscribers, which resulted in the paper being financially ​ affected and not viable after just ten months. Popkin explains how this could have been attributed to the difficulty in representing an “imagined community” in the nineteenth century when there was essentially no sense of community among women, and especially among those who were interested in supporting such ideas (132).

Villalobos 30

In 1835, Niboyet had the initiative to create an Athénée des arts in Lyon and later, she ​ ​ contributed to the formation of la Société active de la paix and l’Association des artistes et des ​ ​ ​ gens de lettres. Despite the social struggles women experienced during her time, Niboyet was an ​ activist who believed in the centralisation of women and their education; she shares in her memoir:

J’avais le coeur droit, j’eus le courage ; ce fut mon malheur, la tâche était

au-dessus de mes forces… (“I had an upright heart, I had the courage ; that was

my misfortune, the task was beyond my strength…” Niboyet, Le Vrai livre des ​ femmes 234). ​ Despite being a forgotten figure, Niboyet is best known among scholars for her leadership role within the early French feminist movement and being at the forefront of the feminist press. She experienced great success with several publications and, in particular, with the journals the Conseiller des femmes and the Voix des femmes. As part of the early French ​ ​ ​ ​ feminists, she became highly visible and, consequently, vulnerable to political attacks and

government repression. Despite her efforts, she withdrew herself from public life and went into

exile in Geneva, where she translated books from English to French for a living. Niboyet

returned to Paris in 1860 and, shortly after, published Le Vrai livre des femmes. She continued ​ ​ supporting the feminist movement as evident from her letters to Le Droit des femmes, and, at the ​ ​ age of seventy-eight, she was celebrated at the International Congrès du Droit des Femmes, held

at the time of the Paris Exposition in 1878 (Moses 186, 207).

Villalobos 31

La Voix des femmes

Among the most direct descendants of La Femme libre was the socialist journal, Voix des ​ ​ ​ femmes, a “journal socialiste et politique, organe des intérêts de toutes” founded in 1848 by ​ Eugénie Niboyet. Very few feminist journals were able to achieve the seriousness and purpose of

La Femme libre like the Voix des femmes, which enjoyed the contributions of previous members ​ ​ ​ from Gazette des femmes, another influential journal that ceased publication in 1838, after just ​ ​ two years. Some of these contributors included known feminists like Jeanne Deroin, Désirée

Gay, Suzanne Voilquin, Elisa Lemonnier, and Anaïs Ségalas. However, unlike La Femme libre, ​ ​ Niboyet’s journal did not exclude men, and articles were published by Victor Hugo, Jean Macé, and Paulin Niboyet (Moses 128). Both journals, despite their relatively short-lived success, attracted women of ideas with their focus on French legal codes and women’s civil rights. In addition, Voix des femmes, was the French feminists’ first daily political newspaper, appearing ​ ​ six days every week with four pages of content.

Niboyet published forty-five issues of the Voix des femmes between March 20 and June ​ ​ 18, 1848. As we will see, the journal advocated for principles such as the full moral, intellectual,

and material development of women (Chastain). At the time, this meant demanding civil,

economic and educational rights and opportunities. The journal’s committee established the

Société de la Voix des femmes, also known as the Club des femmes, one of the most powerful

women’s political clubs to appear during the Second Republic. That same year, under a

provisional government, both Niboyet and Deroin led the feminists’ suffrage campaign focusing

on the upcoming elections to the Constituent Assembly in April by illegally sponsoring the

candidacies of several women, including that of writer George Sand. The Voix des femmes group ​ ​

Villalobos 32

as a whole promoted women’s voting rights through free evenings of political drama for

working-class audiences, in addition to lectures on the legal position of women in France

(Bergman-Carton 88).

Figure 3 - Le Club des femmes - Bibliothèque nationale de France. 1848. Identifier : ark:/12148/btv1b53014035c

In addition to campaigning for women’s voting rights, Moses explains that the Voix de ​ femmes group demanded the right of women to run for office as well as civil rights for married ​ women (140). On April 6, Niboyet called for the election of George Sand to the Constituent

Assembly in that day’s issue of the Voix des femmes: ​ ​ Est-il donc besoin de le dire, le représentant qui réunit nos sympathies, c’est le

type un et une, être mâle par la virilité, femme par l’intuition divine, la poésie : ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Nous avons nommé Sand ! (“Needless to say, the representative who unites our

Villalobos 33

sympathies is the male and female type, being male by manhood, woman by

divine intuition, poetry: We nominate Sand!” Niboyet, Voix des femmes). ​ ​ Sand, however, publicly denied any association with the Voix des femmes group and did, in fact, ​ ​ not write to them regarding the matter but instead sent a response to the editors of the Réforme, ​ ​ rejecting her candidacy and making it clear that she did not follow the principles for which the

Voix des femmes stood (Moses 141). In turn, the editors of the Voix des femmes reprinted Sand’s ​ ​ ​ response in the issue of April 10 and addressed her:

Oui, vous avez un immense talent, un admirable génie ; oui, votre nom est célèbre

entre les plus célèbres ; oui, votre voix est puissante et sympathique entre toutes...

Non, nous n’avons pas voulu vous prendre pour drapeau ; non, nous n’avons pas

voulu abriter notre cause sous votre gloire, car notre cause est assez bonne, assez

juste pour marcher tête haute et se défendre elle-même, car aujourd’hui on suit les

idées, non les hommes ; les principes, non l’individu. (“Yes, you have an

immense talent, an admirable genius; yes, your name is famous among the most

famous; yes, your voice is powerful and sympathetic among all... No, we did not

want to take you as our banner; no, we did not want to shield our cause under

your glory, because our cause is good enough, just enough to walk head up and

defend itself, because today we follow ideas, not men; the principles, not the

individual” Niboyet, Voix des femmes). ​ ​ In the end, women were not allowed to run for office nor vote in the April elections to the

Constituent Assembly. According to Moses, feminists still had some optimism as the new

Executive Commission proposed a law to reestablish divorce and Considérant, who was elected

Villalobos 34 as a delegate, proposed a program for educational reform that gave girls equal education opportunities as well as another proposal to the new constitution regarding the right to vote for women. Nevertheless, the proposal on divorce was withdrawn, Considérant’s proposal on education was refused, and the one advocating for women’s suffrage was voted down 899 to 1

(141, 142).

The Voix des femmes continued publishing articles on matters such as women’s education ​ ​ and economic reform. According to Chastain, the group demanded education on grounds of equity and morality with the notion that women’s intellect was equal but different from men’s.

He adds that articles advocated for equal but separate education, demanding the same curriculum and opening of schools, but separate classes as well as women instructors. In terms of economic reform, the journal advocated for women’s place in the workforce with the belief that working women would guarantee the end of low wages, poor conditions, and prostitution.

After the April 1848 elections, the conservative political climate encouraged antifeminism; and both the feminist press and clubs became the target of political attacks in the general press. This could have partially been a result of the September 1835 Laws, which restricted once again freedom of the press by outlawing discussions concerning the king, the dynasty and constitutional monarchy due to an attack directed at the King, who found political caricatures and rebellious drawings responsible for his attempted murder. As the press could no longer target the government, it moved on to attack another social and cultural threat—feminists.

During this period, we see French satirical illustrations surge in popularity, with the women of ideas being a popular choice to depict. Honoré Daumier, a French printmaker and caricaturist, played a central role in the proliferation of prints devoted to the women of ideas between 1848

Villalobos 35

and 1849 (Bergman-Carton 35). He is best known for his series “Les Bas-Bleus” (1844), “Les

Divorceuses” (1848), and “Les Femmes socialistes” (1849). His series contained illustrations of

feminist groups such as the women from La Femme libre, the Gazette des femmes, and the Voix ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ des femmes as well as of powerful female figures such as George Sand, Jeanne Deroin, and ​ writer Delphine de Girardin.

Bergman-Carton argues that Daumier visually characterized the women of ideas in a negative light with themes such as the commercialization of literature, the emasculation of husbands, disrupting households, sexual promiscuity, and maternal irresponsibly, rather than acknowledging their talents and successes (36, 67). The image of women neglecting children was a particularly popular theme in these caricatures, with women depicted as being either too absorbed by their writing or reading as well as shown leaving their house to go to women’s clubs, lectures or workshops while leaving their husbands, depicted as clueless or desperate, to take care of house chores or the children.

Villalobos 36

Figure 4 - Emportez donc ça plus loin impossible de travailler - Honoré Daumier, National Gallery of Art. 1844. Women’s demand to have the right to work, to vote, and to obtain a divorce symbolized for Daumier societal degeneration and the dissolution of the family (Bergman-Carton 90). He directed most of his attacks to bourgeois feminists as he thought them the biggest threat to society. Through his caricatures, Daumier helped create and spread a negative idea of women activists, disregarding their concerns altogether. According to Chastain, the Voix des femmes ​ suspended publication between April 29 and May 28 due to internal tensions mainly between

Niboyet and Deroin. Niboyet’s position was that of caution in the face of government reaction and increased repression towards Left clubs, while Deroin was more determined to continue publicly fighting for women’s rights (Moses 142). As a result, Deroin left the Voix des femmes ​ and went on to create the Politique des femmes. Under Niboyet’s lead, the Voix des femmes ​ ​ ​

Villalobos 37 journal published nine more issues before it was shut down by the government. Moses adds that

Niboyet later on described 1848 as the unhappiest year of her life and that her primary concern was and continued to be women workers (142).

From May to June 1848, the Club des femmes continued gathering but was eventually shut down as well by the police in order to restore order after ruffians started disrupting its meetings and the club’s leaders decided to exclude men altogether and later charge them a double entry fee to be permitted into the meetings (Moses 142). Nevertheless, political caricatures continued to circulate and to negatively depict this group of women associated with

Niboyet and other feminists in the press, as shown in Daumier’s L’Insurrection contre les ​ maris… from “Les Femmes socialistes.” Here, we see three witchlike creatures taking an oath ​ upon a man’s top hat to devote themselves to the rebellion against husbands (fig. 5)

(Bergman-Carton 92). The three women depicted in this image were called by the Journal pour ​ rire “Les trois Niboyennes” referring to colleagues of Niboyet. ​

Villalobos 38

Figure 5 - L’Insurrection contre les maris est proclamée le plus saint des devoirs - Honoré Daumier, Brooklyn

Museum. 1849.

Following their lack of success in achieving political and social change for women such as voting, political participation and even assembly, the Voix des femmes group decided to build ​ ​ voluntary associations of workers and in 1849, they formed the Association of Wage-earning

Women to aid unemployed servants under which they organized the Association Fraternelle des

Ouvriers Lingères with the purpose to provide retirement income and disability insurance to workers, and the United Midwives, who demanded equal training to obstetricians as they performed a public function rather than a female “service” (Moses 146, 147). According to

Moses, some of the women within the group like Deroin went on to create projects such as a

Villalobos 39 federation of workers’ associations, which recruited approximately four hundred fraternal associations by 1850. However, the government fined, arrested and charged Deroin and others for conspiracy to overthrow the government by means of violence. After serving a prison term of six months, Deroin went into exile and by 1852, the leaders of the French feminist movement became scattered with Voilquin leaving for the United States, Deroin to London, Gay to

Belgium, and Niboyet to Geneva (147, 148, 149).

Villalobos 40

Section 3: Historical Context of 20th-century France and Women

Europe entered a period between 1900 and 1914 known as the ‘belle époque’ or the birth

of the“modern age.” Europeans, though mainly the wealthy in big cities, now enjoyed the use of

electricity, cars, bicycles, typewriters, and more technology that allowed societal growth during

this time. Part of this growth included women’s roles and newfound place in the public sphere, as

well as their emancipation, which had already emerged in the nineteenth century, bringing

awareness to political and socio-economic issues pertaining to women. In this section, I will

explore women’s rapid changing conditions and highlight some of the said issues during the

twentieth century, a time period characterized by rapid change and opportunities for women,

despite multiple wars.

Women’s Social Condition

The French terms ‘féminisme’ and ‘féministe’ were popularized by the press to describe women’s emancipation campaigns at the end of the nineteenth century. According to Offen, the terminology was adopted by several women’s causes, such as the foundation of the Fédération

Française des Sociétés Féministes, formed by Eugénie Potonié-Pierre, which gave way to the

Congrès Général des Institutions Féministes. The French-language press started using both terms and giving coverage to these events, aiding in the popularization of the concept of feminism

(183, 184). Feminists started gathering to continue the demand for suffrage, full citizenship, educational opportunities, marital law reform, sex education, family planning, among other issues faced by women (Offen 343).

Villalobos 41

Factions emerged as many started campaigning for different objectives on women’s

behalf: “familial feminists,” “Christian feminists,” “socialist feminists,” “bourgeois feminists,”

“radical feminists,” as well as “male feminists.” Feminist publications proliferated again in the

1890s including Journal des femmes in 1891, La Femme socialiste in 1892, La Revue féministe ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ in 1895, Le Féminisme chrétien in 1896, and former actor Marguerite Durand’s La Fronde in ​ ​ ​ ​ 1897, which was notably staffed entirely by women (Offen 184, 185). The term ‘féminisme’ was

contested, with antifeminists like Théodore Joran denouncing the idea of feminism with

arguments such as, “Feminism is above all else revolt, discord, disorganization, jealousy of our

masculine nature.” Joran even went on to call feminism an “anti-French disease” (Offen 248).

On the other hand, feminists like Nelly Roussel rejected this negative notion of feminism. She

claimed feminism was not about “masculinizing” women, or replacing male domination. Rather,

feminist was about natural equivalence and the demand of social equality for both sexes. To

Roussel, feminism was about women’s freedom of choice, and in France, the term rested on the

conceptual foundation of liberty, equality, and justice (Offen 187).

This emphasis on women’s freedom in particular was not exactly new, as the ​ ​ Saint-Simonians had launched La Femme libre just decades earlier. What was new, however, ​ ​ was the concept of feminism and the “New Woman,” an educated, often single, and increasingly

employed middle-class woman at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many French women

entered the labor force during World War I, when they were mobilized to work in order to

sustain the war effort. This resulted in women making up approximately 38 percent of the labor

force in France by 1906 (Sanos 14). Girls’ education remained unchanged until the Jules Ferry

educational reform in 1880, in which the state started providing free, non-religious primary

Villalobos 42

education for all. The Loi Camille Sée of 1880 allowed young women to receive a secondary

education but their curriculum was designed to develop a specific female character as well as

disinterested learning. Although the law provided a full course of education for girls aged 12 to

17, it also prevented state schools from letting them sit for the baccalauréat, the equivalent of a ​ ​ high school diploma. Instead, their course lasted one year less than that required for the bac and ​ ​ they received a diplôme (‘diploma of secondary education’), which essentially held no value ​ ​ (Moi 63, 64).

According to Moi, secondary school-teaching opened as a new profession for women

though this presented a series of problems for the government as women were not allowed to

take the bac, which was required to attend university and obtain a licence (similar to a ​ ​ ​ ​ Bachelor’s degree), which was also required in order to earn a secondary teacher’s training

diploma. The agrégation, an arduous and highly competitive postgraduate exam that allowed ​ ​ those who passed it to join France’s educational elite, meant working less and earning more as

well. As a solution, the government set up a new university for women in Sèvres, close to Paris.

Female students were expected first to prepare for the Certificat d’aptitude à l’enseignement ​ secondaire dans les lycées et collèges de jeunes filles, also known as the licence de Sèvres, and ​ ​ ​ then to prepare for the agrégation féminine (64, 65). Despite being provided with this path, ​ ​ women continued to push for equal education opportunities. Women were not allowed to sit in all agrégations reserved for men until 1924, and they finally achieved equal salary as lycée ​ ​ teachers in 1927 (Moi 72, 73).

Women earning high school diplomas jumped from 6 percent in 1914 to 36 percent in

1939. The proportion of female university students doubled in a decade, from 20 percent in 1920

Villalobos 43 to 40 percent in 1930, and after World War II, women made up a third of all university students in France (Sanos 12). However, a majority of French women were still expected to become and remain housewives and mothers. Legislators, political leaders, as well as French society emphasized the urgency of “restoring” motherhood as women’s roles due to the declining birth rates since the previous century as well as to make up for the over one million lives lost during the war. The Ligue pour la vie promoted increased birth rates and conducted propaganda campaigns that linked reproduction to military service, since women wished to participate in war efforts. For instance, a card depicting a pregnant woman encouraged her compatriots to “work for France.” A law making birth control and abortion illegal was passed on July 31, 1920 to further help rebuild the nation along with programs such as Medals for Motherhood and the inaguration of Mother’s Day to honor mothers of large families and to promote natality (Allen

14, 15; Sanos 21; Offen 273).

European nations such as England, Germany, and Sweden rewarded their female citizens with the right to vote after World War I for their displays of patriotism and loyalty to the war effort. France, on the other hand, still denied women political participation. The Chamber of

Deputies held its first formal debate on the woman suffrage question in 1919. An overwhelming majority of pro-suffragists deputies, secular and Catholic, amended a proposal for municipal suffrage to grant the vote to “all French citizens without the distinction of sex.” The Chamber of

Deputies unanimously endorsed this measure, but the French Senate stonewalled, successfully blocking the Chamber’s repeated passage of woman suffrage each time for almost thirty years

(Offen 264). Not only could women not vote, their bodies were still being regulated by the Civil

Code of 1804. Divorce was made legal in 1884, though it was only granted in cases of adultery,

Villalobos 44 conviction for a serious crime, serious bodily or mental harm. Husbands and fathers remained the household authority while women stayed restricted (Sanos 22).

Figure 6 - Ceux qui n’ont pas le droit de voter : les assassins, les voleurs, les fous, les femmes! Françaises!

Groupez-vous en adhérant à l’Union française pour le suffrage des femmes - Adrien Barrère. 1930.

In 1936, three French women were appointed as ministerial undersecretaries, including suffragist leader Cécile Brunschvicg, a huge stepping-stone in a nation where feminists had made the earliest demands for political rights and where they were still not being heard (Offen 342). In

1940, the Vichy regime sought to remake French society as most of its leaders believed that

France had been defeated by the Nazis because it had decayed as a result of socialism, communism, unchecked individualism, secularization, reversed gender roles and sexual freedom.

Nazi occupation of France tightened control over women’s lives: married civil servant women were fired and not allowed to work for the state, divorce was prohibited during the first three years of marriage, large families were highly encouraged, and abortion became punishable by death (Sanos 35). It was only after the German occupation of France ended that women obtained

Villalobos 45 the right to vote. Under the provisional government led by General Charles de Gaulle, women finally casted their vote on April 29, 1945.

Villalobos 46

Section 4: Simone de Beauvoir’s Life and Journalism

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” This simple yet powerful sentence has

become Simone de Beauvoir’s staple quote from her most influential work Le deuxième sexe, ​ ​ published in 1949. Although Beauvoir’s literary and philosophical trajectory was hardly

acknowledged and accepted during her lifetime, after her death she was recognized as an

existentialist along Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as a

prominent feminist in both words and actions. Her journalism, however, is not discussed as much

as her other literary contributions. In this section, I will discuss Beauvoir’s formation and

influences such as her intimate and intellectual relationship with Sartre, her most celebrated

work, Le Deuxième Sexe, her own struggle with the feminist label, and finally her journalism in ​ ​ publications like Les Temps Modernes and Nouvelles Questions Féministes, in addition to her ​ ​ ​ ​ contributions to the press in relation to her feminist activism and the women who collectively

aided her cause such as Gisèle Halimi, Colette Audry, Christine Delphy, among others.

Simone de Beauvoir

Born in Paris in 1908 during Europe’s “modern age,” Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie

Bertrand de Beauvoir enjoyed an uneventful bourgeois childhood until the war broke out in

1914. Her father, Georges de Beauvoir, came from a wealthy family and obtained his education

from Collège Stanislas, a Catholic elite school for boys in Paris. He studied law and worked for a

Parisian conservative lawyer after being admitted to the bar. Her mother, Françoise Brasseur,

also obtained an elite Catholic education at Couvent des Oiseaux (Moi 60, 61). According to

Moi, Beauvoir’s parents greatly differed ideologically and intellectually: her father was

Villalobos 47 right-wing, secular, and possessing or expressing negative feelings towards foreigners, Jews and left-wing intellectuals alike, whereas Beauvoir’s mother, in contrast, followed her Catholic faith to become a model mother and wife (61). These differences between her parents are what led

Beauvoir to take becoming an intellectual woman. At first Beauvoir wasn’t affected by the war due to her father’s poor health condition and inability to serve but by 1918, French society had changed as a result of the physical and psychological devastation of the war (Sanos 8). Sanos adds that the Beauvoir family struggled to maintain its high bourgeois status as their wealth had been lost during the war and Georges was unsuccessful in several business ventures (9). As a result, any possibility of leading the life of a middle-class housewife disappeared when her father told young Simone and her sister, Hélène, that they would have to find their own economic independence.

Beauvoir’s conservative upbringing exemplified the norms against which her feminist stance would soon start rebelling against. From a young age, she abandoned her Catholic faith and replaced it with French literature. She was initiated into the arts and contemporary literature by her cousin, Jacques Champigneulle, and quickly became passionate about Cocteau, Gide,

Claudel, and Péguy among others. She also took pleasure in avant-garde theater, surrealism, and modern paintings (Le Bon 42). She attended the Institut Adéline Désir, a fee-paying Catholic school for girls. Moi argues that such schools expanded rapidly after 1902 and that Beauvoir’s social position to attend such school gave her, as a woman, a real chance at completing a career in higher education which aided her in the path of becoming an intellectual woman (68).

Beauvoir directly and indirectly benefited from the educational reforms taking place at the time as she continued moving through the ranks of the French educational system (Sanos 11). In

Villalobos 48

1925, she completed her secondary education, which had not been accessible to French women for long, and passed both the ‘Latin and languages’ and the mathematics baccalauréats. ​ After earning her high school diploma, Beauvoir had a desire to study philosophy at the

Sorbonne, France’s oldest and highly prestigious university, as it promised to “fulfill her desire to know the world in totality” (Sanos 12). However, due to her mother’s influence and disapproval of a masculine field of study at the time, she continued her education, and preparation for the Sorbonne exams, in mathematics at the Institut catholique, which was a mixed institution, and classics (lettres) at the Institut Sainte-Marie at Neuilly, a single-sex ​ ​ institution (Moi 70). Moi points out that during Beauvoir’s first year at the Sorbonne, between

1925 and 1926, she worked hard to obtain three certificats: one in literature, one in mathematics ​ ​ and one in Latin, when usually a licence would be composed of four total certificats and students ​ ​ ​ ​ aimed to earn one per school year. After showing academic excellence and a continuous strong interest in philosophy, under the support of Mlle Mercier, one of France’s first agrégées in the ​ ​ field, and of her parents as well, Beauvoir decidedly went on to pursue philosophy at the

Sorbonne (71).

During this same time, Beauvoir started a series of journals titled Cahiers de jeunesse, ​ ​ published in 2008, in which she explores the question of the self. Then we see a young Simone eventually transform into Simone de Beauvoir as we know her today. In one of her journals she shares: “J’accepte la grande aventure d’être moi,” which shows the difficulty as well as the reward of the philosophical task of finding not only herself as a woman but as an individual too.

In 1928, she completed her licence in philosophy in just two years and immediately started ​ ​ studying and preparing for the agrégation, as well as for a teaching diploma that would allow her ​ ​

Villalobos 49

to teach secondary school. This latter project required the presentation of a dissertation on a

philosophical topic, which she was advised by Léon Brunschvicg to do on the ‘concept in

Leibniz’ (73).

In the spring of 1929, while studying for both her exam and dissertation, Beauvoir

became good friends with René Maheu, who affectionately gave her the nickname Castor, the ​ ​ French word for “beaver” as he reasoned they go in groups and have a building spirit (Le Bon

50). Through him, she met Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Nizan, philosophy students. That summer,

Beauvoir spent her days talking to this group of young men, final year students at a far more

prestigious school than the Sorbonne, the École normale supérieure (ENS), which did not allow

women in the 1920s. Despite this exclusion, Beauvoir benefited from their friendship and

academic spirits as they not only discussed philosophical matters, but also invited her to prepare

together for the oral portion of the agrégation. She met with Sartre everyday during the summer, ​ ​ before and after taking the exam, to discuss Leibniz and Rousseau, listen to jazz, drive around

Paris in Nizan’s car and exchange poems and drawings with notes from Sartre to Beauvoir signed with “À mon charmant Castor” (Le Bon 57). ​ ​ Beauvoir rejected bourgeois life from an early age as she wished for independence and

autonomy. This led her to reject the idea of marriage and toaccept Sartre’s unorthodox proposal

of entering into an agreement, “unique and impossible to rival,” where they would be bound

together out of love but remain free to engage in “contingent relationships” without putting in

jeopardy their emotional and intellectual bond. Beauvoir accepted the proposal and they both set

a two-year renewal contract to the relationship (Sanos 18). The results of the agrégation were ​ ​ finally released on July 30: Sartre placed first place with 87.5 points with Beauvoir just behind

Villalobos 50 him in second place with 85.5 points. Sanos argues that after much deliberation, the exam committee ultimately opted to give Sartre first place as it was generally more acceptable for a man to receive such distinction (13). Nevertheless, Beauvoir became the youngest student, regardless of sex, to successfully pass the agrégation at only age 22. ​ ​ Simone de Beauvoir’s first teaching position took her to the secondary school of

Mongrand in Marseille, leaving her family, friends and Sartre behind in Paris. The following year, to her relief, she started teaching at another school in Rouen, much closer to Paris.

According to Sanos, as a teacher, she enjoyed mentoring young women on topics considered scandalous at the time. She often combined the schools’ official philosophy curriculum with her own interests and would teach, for instance, the new and controversial ideas of Sigmund Freud as well as the novels of André Gide, whose positive views on homosexuality and communism were not well received by the far-right (15). Sanos points out Beauvoir’s portrayal of the “New

Woman” that emerged after World War I, as she lived in hotels and worked at cafés, giving an air of great freedom to those around her, including her students (16). By 1930, Beauvoir was a financially independent professional who lived alone, was unmarried and had quite an erotic life, forming “contingent” relationships with several of her former female students (Sanos 20).

The 1930s was a period of freedom for Beauvoir as she embraced a bohemian lifestyle devoted to writing. An independent woman, her social and economic status allowed her to become consumed by both literature and philosophy and to take the task of writing seriously.

Unlike other intellectuals at the time, however, she did not care much for either domestic or international political events. The French political climate had become volatile with demonstrations, riots, and strikes being a common occurrence in the streets of Paris. She payed

Villalobos 51

little to no attention to the new Nazi regime, to fascism in Italy, to communism in the Soviet

Union or even to the eruption of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. She was also indifferent to her

own political rights, such as being unable to vote, rights which were granted to women in

countries such as England, Germany, and Sweden after World War I (Sanos 22). Sanos explains

that both Beauvoir and Sartre were rather small-minded in their vision of the world and too

preoccupied by their own selfish concerns, later on describing themselves as idealists who had

not escaped their social and economic class due to being too absorbed into the literary world.

Despite this belief and lack of interest in politics, Beauvoir still condemned and felt strong about

“violence and stupidity,” religion and spiritualism, lack of individualism, and the bourgeois

conventions she had the privilege to escape from (27).

Her first literary endeavor came in the form of a collection of short stories titled Quand ​ prime le spirituel in 1935 that attacked bourgeois Catholic society in 1920s France. She focused ​ on women’s perspectives, with a touch of her own experiences, of being caught up, oppressed, and fooled by the societal demands of women. Her collection of stories was rejected by Paris’ biggest publishing houses while Sartre began enjoying success in 1938 with his first novel, La ​ nausée (Sanos 28). Beauvoir’s world was suddenly shaken the following year, when England ​ and France declared war on Germany after the Nazis invaded Poland in September of 1939. In

May 1940, Hitler invaded France and occupied Paris; the men in her life were greatly affected by the war with some becoming injured, Nizan losing his life, and Sartre being imprisoned.

According to Le Bon, Sartre was released in March 1941 and together with Beauvoir judged the situation similarly: they must act against the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis.

Villalobos 52

They founded the Socialisme et Liberté, a resistance group, along with close friends that

included Maurice Merleau-Ponty (98).

The idea of the group was to bring together intellectuals to create and distribute

anti-German pamphlets and leaflets as well as to work against German propaganda to disrupt and

subvert Nazi and collaborationsit ideology in France. By the time Sartre was released, the Nazis

had imposed censorship on publications, the press, and cultural affairs. Prestigious literary

magazines had been taken and replaced with far-right and fascist ideas and principles. Baffled by

these events and changes, the Socialisme et Liberté group grew to about fifty writers, university

professors and students. Sartre and Beauvoir aimed to continue recruiting recognized literary

figures such as André Malraux and André Gide, to secure their legitimacy as an intellectual

resistance. Unfortunately, their project failed as the Vichy regime continued to push Nazi

ideology and measures like the exlusion of Jews in public life and ending Jewish holidays in

France (Sanos 41, 42).

Beauvoir and Sartre, nevertheless, decided to continue their intellectual fight against

Vichy and the Nazis within their published works. Beauvoir finished a novel she began in 1938

titled L’invitée, deemed scandalous by the Vichy regime due to its lack of conservative moral ​ ​ values. The year 1943 brought personal uncertainty as well as success to Beauvoir. She was accused of having lesbian relations with a former student in 1941 and despite being cleared of said accusation, the Ministry of Education fired her in 1943 as a result of being an unmarried teacher, living in hotels, working in cafés, and assigning literary readings to her students by homosexual writers such as Proust and Gide. Sanos argues that it mattered whether Beauvoir was a woman when she got fired, as Sartre never experienced the same scrutiny and had, in fact,

Villalobos 53

become a public figure. Not only that, his first play, Les mouches was celebrated while ​ ​ Beauvoir’s Les bouches inutiles had failed, though this did not faze her (48). ​ ​

Figure 7 - Combat : organe du Mouvement de libération française - Bibliothèque nationale de France. 1944.

ark:/12148/bpt6k4748566j

Things started looking up when in the fall of that same year Gallimard accepted and

published L’invitée, which was praised by a wide variety of critics. Beauvoir kept on writing ​ ​ while briefly supporting herself with a job at a radio station. After finishing her second novel, Le ​ sang des autres, she immediately started a third one, Tous les hommes sont mortels. Following ​ ​ ​ her literary success, she formed new friendships and expanded her social circle to include Albert

Camus, writer and editor of the Resistance newspaper Combat, which inspired Beauvoir to get ​ ​ further involved in the cause. In August 1944, the Paris insurrection was launched and Camus

asked Sartre to write a report on the days from the 22nd to the 27th (Fig. 6). According to Le

Bon, however, Sartre was held by the Comité national du théâtre, and it was Simone de Beauvoir

who roamed the capital and who wrote a big part of the report for the Combat despite Sartre ​ ​ signing it as his own work (110, 114).

Villalobos 54

The year 1945 signaled two major developments in Beauvoir’s life as her second novel,

Le sang des autres, was published: her commitment to literature, and her political awakening ​ after the war and the experience of Occupation were forced upon her (Sanos 53). She abandoned

her individualism—to a certain extent—for solidarity. However, Beauvoir refused to choose,

unlike Sartre, between philosophy and literature. From 1943 to the early 1950s, she published a

diverse body of works: a philosophical essay, Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944), the play Les bouches ​ ​ ​ inutiles (1945), novels like Tous les hommes sont mortels (1946), a travel narrative titled ​ ​ ​ L’Amérique au jour le jour (1948), her most famous book Le deuxième sexe (1949), as well as ​ ​ ​ four autobiographies including Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (1958). Inspired by solidarity, ​ ​ social responsibility, and her introduction to the press by Camus, she went on to found several

newspapers including Les Temps modernes along with Sartre right after World War II, and ​ ​ Questions féministes in the 1970s. ​

Les Temps modernes

Feeling they could no longer ignore the political world in the aftermath of the war,

Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s concerns changed to that of engagement, responsibility, and freedom. In the autumn of 1945, they launched a campaign called the “existentialist offensive,” with the goal of shaping the cultural and political landscape by mapping the world and making their mark on it. They also wished to put a name to their philosophy—Existentialism (Webber, Sanos 57).

Together they founded a monthly magazine called Les Temps modernes, named after Charlie ​ ​ Chaplin’s 1936 comedy. The magazine would go on to expose Beauvoir to the injustices of the

world, the importance of political activism in achieving social change, and also play a major role

Villalobos 55 in the gradual development of her interest towards feminism, in particular her strong stance on women’s political participation and reproductive rights.

The main purpose of Les Temps modernes was to create a literary, intellectual, and ​ ​ political magazine with the goal to not only inform but also initiate a space in which readers could be literary and politically engaged in the world. In the preface of the magazine, Sartre shared:

C’est pourquoi, au contraire de la coutume, nous n’hésiterons plus à passer sous

silence un livre excellent mais qui, du point de vue où nous nous plaçons, ne nous

apprend rien de nouveau sur notre époque, qu’à nous attarder, au contraire, sur un

livre médiocre qui nous semblera, dans sa médiocrité même, révélateur. […] Nous

faisons appel à toutes les bonnes volontés ; tous les manuscrits seront acceptés,

d’où qu’ils viennent, pourvu qu’ils s’inspirent de préoccupations qui rejoignent

les nôtres et qu’ils présentent, en outre, une valeur littéraire. Je rappelle, en effet,

que dans la “littérature engagée,” l’engagement ne doit, en aucun cas, faire

oublier la littérature et que notre préoccupation doit être de servir la littérature en

lui infusant un sang nouveau, tout autant que de servir la collectivité en essayant

de lui donner la littérature qui lui convient. (“This is why, contrary to custom, we

will no longer hesitate to pass over in silence an excellent book but which, from

the point of view where we place ourselves, teaches us nothing new about our

time, instead of lingering, on the contrary, on a mediocre book which will seem to

us, in its very mediocrity, revealing. […] We appeal to all goodwill; all

manuscripts will be accepted no matter where they come from, provided they are

Villalobos 56

inspired by concerns of ours and, moreover, of literary value. I remind you, in

fact, that in “littérature engagée,” engagement must not, in any case, make us

forget literature and that our concern must be to serve literature by shedding new

blood on it, as well as to serve the community by trying to give it the literature

that suits it” Sartre, “Présentation des Temps modernes” 20–21). ​ ​

Figure 8 - Les Temps Modernes, n° 1. 1945.

Les Temps modernes (Fig. 7) was born right after a law in September 1944 forbade the ​ publications of newspapers published in the Occupied zone during the Vichy regime. As many as

nine hundred publications were affected and only few Resistance underground newspapers like

Camus’ Combat and Sartre’s Libération survived. During this press renewal period, we see new ​ ​ ​ ​ publications appear with a similar format to that of Les Temps modernes, though focusing on a ​ ​

Villalobos 57 variety of topics such as colonialism and the noncommunist left. According to Sanos, Beauvoir and Sartre’s new publication became a symbol of what it meant to be an engaged intellectual as it focused on contemporary times and its injustices as well as its possibilities. Sartre explained during a conference called “Existentialism Is Humanism” that their project was influenced by leftist humanism. To Beauvoir, existentialism meant being defined by one’s actions and she agreed with Sartre on it positing freedom (for oneself) and responsibility (to others) as guiding principles of human life (Sanos 59, 60, 62). If change was to happen, it had to come from actions. Despite being criticized by Catholics, communists, and the right-wing, Beauvoir continued writing with no regard to criticism.

The magazine was seen as prestigious thanks to its outstanding political credentials and

Sartre’s fame. Along with the editorial committee, which included some of the minds from their intellectual circle, they wrote and published critical articles, reports, philosophical essays, interviews, and more. As opposed to Satre, who viewed engagement as doing more than writing political essays, Beauvoir thought of literature as being just as much of an existential act. As a ​ ​ result, she fully devoted herself to Les Temps modernes by reading manuscripts, reviewing ​ ​ articles, and making decisions concerning future issues (Le Bon 117, 123; Abidor “‘Les Temps

Modernes’: End of an Epoch”).

Les Temps modernes attempted to create a new left that criticized without fear political ​ leaders and right-wing policy (Sanos 59). According to Le Bon, among the issues they denounced and wrote about were Stalin’s slave labor camps, Soviet invasion of Budapest, French colonialism and “the dirty war” in Indochina as well as the massacres resulting from the

Malagasy Uprising in Madagascar (123). Beauvoir’s rising fame took her to a few countries in

Villalobos 58 which she was invited to give lectures and interviews. When she returned to Paris, she started a series of reports on her visits for Combat such as “Quatre jours à Madrid” and “Le Portugal sous ​ ​ le régime de Salazar.” She contributed to other journals with similar articles on Salazar’s dictatorship but this time under different male pseudonyms in order to protect her sister, who married and was living in Portugal.

In 1947, she was invited to attend a series of conferences across the United States, starting in New York. According to Sanos, Beauvoir describes her travel to America as an existential act, stating that it had changed her relation to the world, to space, and to time. She adds how struck Beauvoir was by racism, especially as she traveled to the South, and by

American women’s lives and experiences. She witnessed a lack of “freedom” compared to their

French counterparts (74, 75). In May 1947, the New York Times published an article on ​ ​ Beauvoir’s strong impressions of America titled, “An Existentialist Looks at Americans,” which she later published as a travel narrative. She met writer Nelson Algren in Chicago and they quickly formed a relationship that lasted until 1951, when they both decided to put an end to it due to their prolonged separations and Beauvoir’s lack of interest in permanently moving to

America to marry him. To her, doing such would have meant giving up on her principles, and not only did she highly value her relationship with Sartre, but also her autonomy, freedom, and Paris

(Sanos 78). In 1949, she started writing another novel dedicated to Algren and their experiences together, Les mandarins, which later on brought her fame as a novelist, but this was not new to ​ ​ her as she had already become a scandalous figure with Le deuxième sexe. ​ ​ Inspired by Sartre, Beauvoir’s novels often include desexualiazed heroines with a free consciousness. However, compared to his sexist portrayal of female characters, Beauvoir

Villalobos 59 transmits her faith in women’s moral and philosophical capacities through her novels as it never occurs to her to label the act of thinking or philosophy as ‘male’. Le deuxième sexe, published in ​ ​ 1949, was the unexpected outcome of an autobiographical essai-martyr, a text in which the ​ ​ protagonist reveals the innermost truth of her being, regardless of the consequences (Moi 163,

165). The book is a combination of facts, historical context, myths, and rationalistic philosophy of existentialist persuasion. Through the book, Beauvoir maintains that women should be considered human beings in the fullest sense and starts by considering women abstractly from three points of view: her biological fate as the weaker and childbearing sex; men’s transformance of her biological dependence into cultural and existential dependence, and even inferiority, in an historical context; and finally, the contradicting myths that men have created about women, from exalted to defamed, but always “the other,” the inessential (Leighton 30).

Beauvoir goes on to radically argue that there is no innate feminine psyche, no characteristics except for a woman’s sexual function. Women’s attitudes are a result of her

“situation”:

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient. Aucun destin biologique, psychique,

économique ne définit la figure que revêt au sein de la société la femelle

humaine; c’est l’ensemble de la civilisation qui élabore ce produit intermédiaire

entre le mâle et le castrat qu’on qualifie de féminin. Seule la médiation d’autrui

peut constituer un individu comme un Autre. En tant qu’il existe pour soi, l’enfant ​ ​ ne saurait se saisir comme sexuellement différencié. Chez les filles et les garçons,

le corps est d’abord le rayonnement d’une subjectivité, l’instrument qui effectue

la compréhension du monde: c’est à travers les yeux, les mains, non par les

Villalobos 60

parties sexuelles qu’ils appréhendent l’univers. (“One is not born, but rather

becomes, a woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the

figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that

elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is

called feminine. Only the mediation of another can constitute an individual as an

Other. Inasmuch as he exists for himself, the child would not grasp himself as

sexually differentiated. For girls and boys, the body is first the radiation of a

subjectivity, the instrument that brings about the comprehension of the world:

they apprehend the universe through their eyes and hands, and not through their

sexual parts” Céline Leboeuf, Feminist Moments: Reading Feminist Texts 139). ​ ​ According to Leighton, Beauvoir also argues that marriage and motherhood as the reasons for a woman’s existence are insufficient. Furthermore, accepting economic support from a man makes women dependent and so long as she remains such, legal and political rights are meaningless. To achieve independence, she suggests working for money, like men, which would create real symmetry, eliminating that way the notion of women as “the other.” In the last part of the book,

Beauvoir mentions the false idea of femininity, which results in the continual conflict between men and women. She goes on to argue that only women’s total equality and independence from men can promote trust and mutual affection. Women’s liberation should be fully welcomed as both old feminine and masculine stereotypes are detrimental to human relations (35, 36).

Le deuxième sexe was released in parts in order to tease the public on Beauvoir’s ​ “soon-to-be published work on the situation of women.” Two major excerpts, Les faits et les ​ mythes and L’expérience vécue, were published in Les Temps modernes, which had enraged ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Villalobos 61

some men. She shared in a letter to Algren how, “[these men] seem to have been affected at their

most sensitive point” (Sanos 101). Three more excerpts were published in the Les Temps ​ modernes on women’s sexuality, from sexual initiation to lesbian relationships to motherhood. ​ These excerpts shocked and further enraged readers. According to Sanos, in order to be more daring, Beauvoir had more excerpts published in a different, lighter, publication called the

Paris-Match (102). Beauvoir was introduced as “Jean-Paul Sartre’s lieutenant and expert in ​ existentialism, [who] is without a doubt the first woman philosopher to have appeared in men’s history. It fell to her extract a philosophy of her sex from the great human adventure”

(Kirkpatrick). The headline was also explicit this time, announcing, “a woman calls upon other women to embrace freedom.” Success followed with twenty thousand copies of the issue sold in the first week.

Similar to the ridicule Niboyet endured from the general press as a result of her activism and involvement in the feminist press, Beauvoir was subject to every kind of insult, insinuation, obscenity, and even propositions. She received mixed criticism for her most scandalous work, Le ​ deuxième sexe, ranging from negative reactions from the conservative side, to disappointing ​ responses such as that from her friend Albert Camus, who was baffled and shocked by the book and who took it as an affront to his masculinity. Novelist François Mauriac condemned the book and even wrote to one of the contributors of Les Temps modernes: “Your employer’s vagina has ​ ​ no secrets from me.” (Whitmarsh 151).

On the other hand, numerous journalists and readers called it “revolutionary.” Her

friends, colleagues and contributors from Les Temps modernes took her side and defended her, ​ ​ including her longtime friend, Colette Audry, who was a leftist writer and activist. Sanos argues

Villalobos 62 that Beauvoir formed part of a new generation of women in which their experiences were not an oddity, but rather a symptom of the changing times, and that women’s magazines, novels, and journalism sought the conditions for a different and more equal society (104, 105).

Despite not calling for the reform of laws on divorce, abortion, contraception, equality in the workplace, voting rights, among other feminist concerns, she did open the door for discussion of French women’s socio-political condition. Surprisingly, Beauvoir did not label herself a feminist after publishing Le deuxième sexe. As we will see, Les Temps modernes will ​ ​ ​ ​ continue to serve as a tool for Beauvoir to share her beliefs through her writings, as well as to shape her development as a feminist through political activism, something that Le deuxième sexe ​ did not initially accomplish.

In the following years, leftist intellectuals, including Beauvoir and the Temps modernes ​ team, took sides and argued for the end of French colonialism. To them, colonialism was the greatest contemporary injustice to fight against. Despite not writing or participating in anticolonial activism, Beauvoir expressed satisfaction with the French empires’ defeats against the colonies. During this time, she was seen with Sartre and other anticolonial intellectuals in cafés, bars, and clubs although she did not pay much attention to side projects like Sartre’s and

Camus’ involvement with the magazine Présence Africaine, which organized the first ​ ​ “International Conference of Black Writers and Artists” on September 1956 at the Sorbonne

(Sanos 110). Beauvoir was mainly interested in Algeria, which she visited multiple times before and after the war of independence that started in 1954. Sanos states that Beauvoir found it both shocking and horrifying how French citizens did not understand colonialism as a “system”

Villalobos 63

organized through a racist vision of the world, in addition to their silence and indifference to the

treatment and evident racism towards Algerian workers in France (114).

Beauvoir’s most important undertaking in regard to the Algerian crisis was getting

involved with Djamila Boupacha’s case. Beauvoir was appalled by the French army’s use of

torture against Algerians. Lawyer Gisèle Halimi requested a meeting with her in May 1960,

where she told Beauvoir about a young Algerian woman who had been arrested in February

under the suspicion of having planted a bomb in a restaurant in central Algiers for the Front de ​ Libération Nationale (FLN), a nationalist movement aiming to restore Algeria as a nation. ​ Although Boupacha was not the first Algerian woman to join the independence cause, she stood out for agreeing to testify about her ordeal as she was not only tortured but also raped, and under

Halimi’s advice, she sued French authorities (Sanos 123). According to Whitmarsh, Halimi asked Beauvoir to write an article demanding an enquiry into the tortures to which Boupacha had been subjected (122). She wrote an article for Le Monde, in which she states: ​ ​ Ce qu’il y a de plus scandaleux dans le scandale c’est qu’on s’y habitue. […] Pour

établir sa culpabilité il fallait des aveux : on les a obtenus. Dans la plainte en

séquestration et tortures qu’elle vient de déposer, Djamila les rétracte et elle décrit

les conditions dans lesquelles elle les a passés. (“What is most scandalous about

the scandal of torture, is that one gets used to it. […] To establish her guilt,

confessions were needed, and they were obtained. In the kidnapping and torture

complaint she has just filed, Djamila retracts them and describes the conditions

she endured” Beauvoir, Le Monde). ​ ​

Villalobos 64

The rest of Beauvoir’s article contains gruesome details of Boupacha’s torture and rape.

Whitmarsh adds that Beauvoir got further involved by forming a committee called ‘Comité pour

Djamila Boupacha’ in order to launch a press campaign asking readers to take political action

(122).

In January 1962, Beauvoir and Halimi published a book on Djamila Boupacha with the

cover displaying a portrait of her by Pablo Picasso. As stated by Sanos, in April, a referendum

took place in which 91 percent of French voters agreed Algeria should become independent out

of fear of domestic terrorism from the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a far-right organization

committed to fight those in favor of Algeria’s independence. The following month, Djamila

Boupacha was released, and Beauvoir felt relief but little joy due to the conditions in which she

had to fight for Boupacha’s release— losing friends, witnessing unjust violence, and seeing the

worst of French society (130).

Between 1962 and 1968, Beauvoir physically stood aside from events in France and

worked on numerous literary projects like one of her autobiographies, La force des choses ​ (1963), the preface for Violette Leduc’s novel, La bâtarde (1964), a novel titled Les belles ​ ​ ​ images (1966), a collection of short stories, La femme rompue (1967), and her editorial work at ​ ​ ​ Les Temps Modernes, which by 1964 had gathered twenty thousand subscribers. The magazine ​ was focusing on issues from the Civil Rights movement in America, to the nuclear threat, to the

decolonization movements around the world. The 1960s was a decade in which Sartre and

Beauvoir were asked to participate and lend their names to many causes. Existentialism, and

Beauvoir in particular, inspired new groups focusing on or appealing to women such as the

Mouvement des jeunes filles. An older group of women intellectuals and friends of Beauvoir that ​

Villalobos 65 included Colette Audry and Evelyne Sullerot, also became active and committed to changing the status quo (Sanos 133, 145).

Despite Beauvoir’s decrease in activism as a result of previous years’ disillusionment, she readily participated in the cause for women’s autonomy, sexual education, the right to birth control, and the right to abort. Marie-Andrée Lagroua Weill-Hallé, a doctor and gynecologist who had decided to tackle the issue, created an organization named “Maternité heureuse” in

1956, later known as Le Mouvement Français pour le Planning Familial, and asked Beauvoir to write the preface to a pamphlet titled Le « Planning » Familial. Along with Beauvoir, prominent ​ ​ personalities joined its board including Colette Audry, Clara Malraux, journalists Françoise

Giroud and Gilles Martinet, and League of Rights of Man director Daniel Mayer. After 1965, the movement started receiving huge support as more readers became convinced of women’s rights.

As a result, a bill known as the Neuwirth law to legalize birth control, especially the contraceptive pill, was introduced and passed in December 1967 (Sanos 145).

The 1970s marked a time of radical change for Beauvoir: she was now a militant feminist. She insisted that the change had been in her relation to the world, most notably her relation to political activism and the cause of women. How did she come to accept the feminist label at this point in her life? According to Whitmarsh, her own explanation was two-fold: First, contemporary feminist groups, or the ‘new wave of feminism’ became radical and feminists now wished to change the world that had been fashioned for men. Second, her attitude towards socialism as the answer and path toward women’s emancipation changed as she recognized that real social and political change could be achieved in the present time. Theoretically, she claimed that ‘real feminists’ are left wing whether they realise it or not, because they are working for

Villalobos 66 absolute equality and complete transformation of society. She goes on to say that feminism is revolutionary as it is a way of attacking and overthrowing society as it now exists (154, 155).

Beauvoir’s previous efforts, such as her political involvement during the Algerian independence with Boupacha, were individual and so she never felt she was an “activist.” To her, feminism meant collective struggle and the need for collective action, which she only came to understand in the 1970s (Sanos 160).

Towards the end of 1970, Beauvoir became highly impressed by the energy and political commitment of the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF), which focused on feminism, gender, and sexuality. Several members asked her for support in their campaign for the legalization of abortion, which was at the time still punishable with prison. She happily provided her support and aided the cause by first publicizing the issue with a manifesto, and then by joining demonstrations. In November, she marched alongside four thousand women demanding reproductive rights and later joined them in occupying a school in which young, pregnant, single girls were being forced to stay (Sanos 163). Earlier that year, Sartre had taken over as the director for the far-left magazine, La Cause du Peuple. Beauvoir wrote an article for the ​ ​ magazine denouncing the issues she was now marching for in the streets. In 1971, Beauvoir signed the Manifeste des 343, in which she and other women claimed to have had an abortion, a ​ ​ risky yet brave move.

Inspired by the feminists’ collective actions, Beauvoir joined forces with Halimi once more and together they founded a pressure group named Choisir, in order to push for free contraception for all, changes in the laws relative to abortion to make them less repressive, and free legal aid to anyone accused under those laws of obtaining or performing an abortion

Villalobos 67

(Whitmarsh 158). In October 1972, Beauvoir and Halimi got involved in the case of

Marie-Claire Chevalier, a young woman being tried for undergoing an abortion. Despite being

acquitted of all charges, Choisir still chose to publish in an issue the complete transcripts of the

proceedings as they found the judge’s argument to be unacceptable: it emphasized a woman’s

inability to act as a rational and autonomous individual. Beauvoir concluded in the issue that,

“once a woman has mastery over her body, and [is] no longer poisoned by fear or remorse, she

will be ready for other struggles.” (Sanos 168).

Other varied feminist activities Beauvoir participated in during this time include

conferences such as the ‘Journées pour la dénonciation des crimes contre la femme’ in May

1972, writing letters of sympathy to women believed to be victims of injustices, of support to

feminist events abroad that she was unable to attend, and protesting anti-feminism. She also

became the president of the Ligue des droits des femmes in 1974, which was a group actively

fighting discrimination against women, especially in the workplace (Whitmarsh 159). That same

year, she decided to open Les Temps modernes to some of the feminists of the so-called ‘new ​ ​ wave of feminism’ in order to share their reflections and claims. Similarly to the Voix des ​ femmes, Beauvoir shared in a New York Times interview, “We are devoting an entire issue of ​ Les Temps Modernes to women, written by women, for women.” This special issue was ​ published in the Spring under the title “Les Femmes s’entêtent”. In her foreword, Beauvoir

underlines the importance of new ideas:

C’est sous le signe de la perturbation que ce numéro se présente. […] Nous

n’avons établi aucun plan préconçu. Des femmes — dont certaines sont même

restées pour nous anonymes — ont spontanément choisi de parler [...] A priori il y

Villalobos 68 avait entre elles un point commun : un radical refus de l’oppression des femmes.

Il n’en existe pas moins entre ceux-ci de grandes différences et même parfois des contradictions. La pensée féministe n’a rien de monolithique; [...] certaines estiment quel le langage et la logique en usage dans notre monde sont des instruments universellement valables […] D’autres au contraire considèrent que la culture même représente une des formes de leur oppression; […] c’est à leurs propres valeurs quelles veulent se référer en s’inventant une parole où se reflète leur spécificité. Invention difficile, parfois tâtonnante, mais lorsque cet effort aboutit il nous enrichit d’un apport vraiment neuf. Dans les deux cas, les voix que vous allez entendre souhaitent avant tout vous déranger. L’oppression des femmes c’est un fait auquel la société est tellement habituée que, même ceux d’entre nous qui la condamnent en gros, au nom de principes démocratiques abstraits, en prennent pour amendés beaucoup d’aspects. Ce que m’a fait comprendre la nouvelle génération de femmes en révolte, c’est qu’il entrait de la complicité dans cette désinvolture. En fait, accepter entre les deux sexes la moindre inégalité, c’est consentir à l’Inégalité. (“It is under the sign of the disturbance that this number presents itself. […] We have not established any preconceived plan.

Women—some of whom even remained anonymous to us—spontaneously chose to speak… A priori there was a common point between them: a radical rejection of women’s oppression. There are nevertheless great differences between them and even sometimes contradictions. Feminist thinking is not monolithic; [...] some consider that the language and the logic in use in our world are universally

Villalobos 69

valid instruments. Others, on the contrary, consider that culture itself represents

one of the forms of their oppression; […] it is to their own values that they want ​​ to refer by inventing a word in which their specificity is reflected. A difficult

invention, sometimes groping, but when this effort succeeds it enriches us with a

truly new contribution. In either case, the voice you are about to hear is primarily

intended to disturb you. The oppression of women is a fact to which society is so

accustomed that even those of us who condemn it roughly, in the name of abstract

democratic principles, take many aspects of it as amended. What the new

generation of women in revolt has made me understand is that they were

complicit in this indifference. In fact, to accept the slightest inequality between

the sexes, is to consent to inequality” Beauvoir, “Les Femmes s’entêtent,” Les ​ Temps modernes). ​ By the end of 1973, Beauvoir took an interest in the language question in relation to women. Together with a young group of feminists, “les désorganisatrices” as they called themselves, they started a new column within Les Temps modernes titled Le Sexisme ordinaire. ​ ​ Beauvoir also shared in the New York Times, “Since December we have collected all the insults, ​ ​ all the stupidities written about women to try to shame men.” The column was around for several years and it gathered a lot of readers’ reports from different media including journals, advertising, school handbooks, and more (Bertoni 4). The group highlighted the sexist language circulating in journals regarding the appointment of Simone Veil as Minister of Health, the first woman to become a full government minister, in the issue of August-September 1974:

Villalobos 70

Pour la première fois en France une femme dans le Ministère. Ce qui voudrait dire

: quand la femme a des “mérites”, elle peut occuper les mêmes postes que les

hommes. En France, l’égalité est totale. Voyons comment on lit cette égalité dans

la presse :

Mme Simone Veil—sous-titre qui paraît à côté de son nom: Une mère de trois ​ enfants. Par contre, pour messieurs les ministres appartenant au sexe masculin les ​ sous-titres sont par exemple : un champion de la 3e force instituteur, proviseur, ​ recteur, ministre des préoccupations sociales—etc...

Mme Simone Veil est ‘l’épouse’ d’un monsieur bien défini qui a un nom et prénom spécifié par cette presse, en plus de son poste dans sa profession (M.

Antoine Veil, inspecteur des Finances). Pour messieurs les ministres on dit qu’ils sont mariés sans jamais citer les prénoms de leurs femmes, sauf une légère ​ allusion dans le cas de M.P. Abelin qui a « épousé la petite fille d’Edouard Branly

(inventeur de la télégraphie sans fil) ». Ils ne sont pas non plus les ‘maris’ de

quelqu’un, ils sont tout simplement ‘mariés’ avec des enfants. (“For the first time

in France a woman in the Ministry. What this means: when the woman has

“merits,” she can occupy the same positions as the men. In France, equality is

total. Let’s see how it reads in the press:

Simone Veil—subtitle next to her name: A mother of three children. On the other ​ ​ ​ hand, for gentlemen the ministers belonging to the male gender, the subtitles are

for example: a champion of the 3rd force teacher, rector, minister of social ​ concerns—etc… ​

Villalobos 71

Simone Veil is the wife of a well-defined gentleman who has a name and surname

specified by this press, in addition to his position in his profession (Antoine Veil,

Financial Inspector). For the ministers, it is said that they are married without ever ​ mentioning the names of their wives, except for a slight allusion in the case of

M.P. Abelin, who “married the young daughter of Edouard Branly (inventor of

the wireless telegraphy).” They are not either seen as the ‘husbands’ of someone,

they are simply the ‘married’ with children” Beauvoir, “Les Élections en France:

le nouveau Ministère,” Les Temps modernes 2859–60). ​ Beauvoir’s priority among her political concerns was now feminism. She started giving numerous interviews to both the French and international press on the question of feminism, women’s rights, marriage, and prostitution. After relentless campaigning from French feminists, the government decided to finally address the abortion issue. Veil proposed a law legalizing voluntary abortion that was passed in 1975, and made permanent in 1979, with the support of socialists and communists (Sanos 172). Despite another victory for women, Beauvoir was not done.

In 1977, she starts an academic and political magazine, Questions féministes, with a ​ ​ group of feminist intellectuals and activists including Christine Delphy, Colette Guillaumin,

Emmanuèle de Lesseps, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, and Monique Wittig. They focused on issues such as the relationship between “Sexism and Racism” and “Heterosexuality and Feminism”

(Sanos 179). Due to a dispute over the role of sexuality in individuals’ lives and in politics in

1979, the magazine ceased publishing and part of the editorial committee, including Beauvoir, started another magazine called Nouvelles questions féministes, which is actively publishing ​ ​

Villalobos 72 biannually today. Notwithstanding her weakening health, Beauvoir continued writing for her multiple magazines. According to Sanos, she published an editorial in the November 1983 issue of Les Temps modernes comparing the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres with the Nazi massacre ​ ​ of the French town of Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944. She also edited and published Sartre’s letters to her in a book under the title, Lettres au Castor, after his death in the spring of 1980 (185). ​ ​ Beauvoir lent her name for a few more projects before succumbing to pneumonia on April 14,

1986 at the age of seventy-eight. Her funeral procession gathered five thousand people paying their respects. Beauvoir’s ashes are currently placed in the Montparnasse cemetery, right next to

Sartre’s.

73

Conclusion

Eugénie Niboyet and Simone de Beauvoir became revolutionary figures within the feminist movement and press in France. Their initiatives to create a safe place for women to be heard and their political activism on behalf of French women’s interests and emancipation helped shape the way women participate in society today. Despite having different concerns and interests initially, with Niboyet being preoccupied with social welfare and education, and

Beauvoir with her own literary career, they were both brought up under conditions that allowed them to seize opportunities in the literary field. And yet, considering these differences, both feminist journalists still gravitated towards the woman question and opened doors for discussion through their works in the feminist press during time periods when women’s voices were silenced.

In this paper, I primarily argue that the printed media served as a powerful tool to voice early feminists’ concerns and women’s struggles of everyday life as the press became the only organ available for women to freely express themselves during the nineteenth century when complete press censorship was briefly abolished and again in the twentieth century when the press was liberalized and free public discussion was promoted.

Beginning with “imagined communities” where women were not entirely aware of this idea that we now call “feminism” and where there was no sense of community among French women, Niboyet started building readership through the creation of multiple journals after several either failed due to a lack of said awareness and subscribers such as the Conseiller des ​ femmes, or were shut down as a result of government repression like the Voix des femmes. ​ ​ ​ Niboyet’s efforts were in no way individual, but instead part of a collective movement united by 74

the same interests. Without the contributions of others, her mark in the press would have been

nearly impossible to accomplish.

In contrast, Beauvoir’s exploration of feminism through the press started as an individual

effort that gradually became collective with the help of other intellectual women in her life. Her

incorporation of feminist topics in Les Temps modernes came after Beauvoir’s exposure to the ​ ​ injustices of the world, including that of Djamila Boupacha, which drove her to become

politically active outside her writings. Le Sexisme ordinaire, her celebrated column within Les ​ Temps modernes, demonstrated her social influence and large feminist readership, with many ​ outside the paper contributing to the effort of calling out sexist insults in the press. Beauvoir’s feminist development was more gradual than Niboyet’s, who considered herself a free woman, as she only came to accept the feminist label in the 1970s. The social conditions in the second half of the twentieth century allowed Beauvoir to partially break from Les Temps modernes in ​ ​ order to successfully initiate a literary space with Questions féministes, uniquely created by and ​ ​ for women.

Despite the ridicule from the general press supported by the government and their efforts

being under constant attack, Niboyet, along the Voix des femmes group, advocated for principles ​ ​ like the full moral, intellectual, and material development of women. Their efforts directly

resulted in the creation of one of the most powerful women’s political clubs during the Second

Republic, the positioning of women in the political arena by promoting French women’s

citizenship, the vote, and political participation, economic reform, educational opportunities, and

the development of the feminist movement during the nineteenth century. As we saw, Beauvoir

went further and advocated for women’s social justice, sexual freedom, and reproductive rights 75 in both words and actions. By overcoming obstacles, Beauvoir and her numerous collaborators denounced sexism in the press by targeting language and left their mark well into the twenty-first century with on-going publications, like Nouvelles questions féministes. ​ ​

76

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