Defining Humanity: Gender and Equality In the French revolution ______________________________________________ Erin K. Sheek April 8, 2013 DePauw University ______________________________________________ 2 Table of Contents Introduction … 7 Chapter I: Meanings of humanity in the 18th century: Exploring the gender divide … 12 Chapter II: What did it mean to be a woman in the 18th century? … 26 Chapter III: Test Case - The National Convention … 39 Conclusion … 54 Bibliography … 58 3 4 Acknowledgements A week before this thesis was due, my father called and asked how the project was coming along. The first thing that came to mind was directly from the film Jerry Maguire, when Tom Cruise yelled, “it is an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing SIEGE that I will never fully tell you about, okay??” While saying that to my father may have been somewhat of a joke, I certainly could not have made it through this arduous journey without all of the support I received from faculty, family, and friends over the year. I would first like to sincerely thank my advising committee. James Ward, Barbara Whitehead, and Meryl Altman have put so much time and energy into this project all year long. From countless meetings and edited drafts to pep talks and research assistance, they have been there every step of the way. This thesis would not have been possible without them. To Kevin Moore, Amy Welch, and Peg Lemley for guiding me through four years of the Honor Scholar program and making sure that I made every deadline and kept my sanity when things got tough. They made our Honor Scholar community feel like a family, one of the things that I will miss most after DePauw. I would also like to thank my parents for always being there for me and giving me so much moral support throughout my entire college career, especially during the process of this Honor Scholar thesis. 5 6 Introduction “Legend has it that in France the eighteenth century was the century of women…” - Lieselotte Steinbrugge The French Revolution is legendary for being a time when freedom and equality prevailed over an oppressive, archaic system. Throughout the earliest period of revolution and turmoil in France, much of the discourse within the new political factions focused on human rights. These rights were tied strictly to the idea of citizenship, as defined by humanity. Unfortunately for millions of French women, these rights of citizenship were not grounded in equality -- they were determined by socially constructed gender spheres and Enlightenment concepts of humanity. “In the process [of constructing gender], historically specific, normative definitions of gender (which were taken as givens) were reproduced and embedded in the culture of the French working class.”1 The term “spheres” is most accurate to describe the relationships between the sexes because men and women were never seen as being equal, due to the definition of women. Aristotle, “the most influential non-Christian source for ideas in many fields up to the seventeenth century,” posed a fundamental question that clearly defined what this critical difference was. “What are women for?” stood in stark contrast to his other query, “What is man?”2 Women were objects, an imperfect companion to man, and were not their own autonomous, capable individual. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, esteemed Enlightenment philosopher, agreed, writing, “Woman is specifically made for man’s delight…the reward which he deserves.”3 The extent of the prejudice against women, because of their gender, is evident throughout the period. While during the French Revolution rights of “universal equality” were 1 Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, 5 (December 1986): 1073. 2 Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (New York, NY: Cambridge, 1993), 11. 3 John Darling and Maaike Van De Pijpekamp, “Rousseau on Education, Domination and Violation of Women,” British Journal of Educational Studies 42, 2 (June 1994): 126. 7 eventually granted to all men, including many minority groups (like slaves, religious minorities, and ethnic minorities), these rights were never given to women. There were those within the government, as well as common French individuals, who fought and argued ceaselessly for women’s right to this newfound freedom, to no avail. Why was gendered prejudice the most important factor for rights during the revolution? The answer lies, according to 18th century British philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, in the “progressive minds” and deep-rooted “pathological thinking” of the Enlightenment.4 Man was defined as an individual with the ability to reason; it was this that distinguished men from animals. However, women by their very nature were incapable of reasoning and so were not considered human or equal to men. Thus, the prejudice against women prevailed throughout the revolutionary period. The literature used for this study has inspired and strengthened this argument, as well as revealed a gap in the study and state of the debate. The main source used was Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights. It is a detailed history on the birth of human rights during the French Revolution, following the most important debates and pieces of legislation that came of the new ideals of rights versus those of privilege. The period of the French Revolution and its debates on universal rights shaped the political and social spheres of the coming centuries. Hunt discusses the evolution of humanity and the paradoxes of claims of “self-evident” rights and “universal” rights. She explores the discourse of the human rights revolution and the women’s rights movement, namely through this specific period in French history. Her work, including an extensive document collection titled The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, is featured strongly in this argument. Hunt believes that the autonomous “self” has always been shaped by “social and cultural factors,” which is why the French Revolution, a time full of new social and cultural factors, radical change, and progress, is a 4 Ibid., 122. 8 logical lens through which to observe human rights advancement.5 The experiences of individuals during the revolution “made possible new social and political concepts (human rights),” and allowed human rights to become self-evident over time.6 While Hunt’s work was crucial to understanding the history of human rights during the French Revolution and the dialogues that took place, Lieselotte Steinbrugge’s work was just as necessary to understanding the deeper women’s issues during the same time period. The Moral Sex: Women’s Nature in the French Enlightenment exemplifies how the “nature” of women was created during the Enlightenment and how the new gender roles in turn created the issue of women’s rights during the revolution. Women were forced into simple groupings of being moral, sensitive, and domestic, in which they completely lacked political efficacy. Being denied such rights during a time when the entire nation of France was moving towards democracy and greater equality made women want such things. Steinbrugge focuses on the “division of the human being into two unequal sexes” and women’s thusly created “natural” state, which became one of the largest issues of the revolutionary period.7 Her history of women’s roles in the revolution makes up an important part of the literature surrounding this thesis. There is a plethora of published works fueling Steinbrugge and Hunt’s claims that the reason for women’s inequality was the natural state of their gender. Historian Merry E. Wiesner wrote of religious influences on the creation of women’s roles and how their mantle as the moral leaders of society served only to maintain their silence and oppression.8 Author Joan Scott examined, in both a book and published article, how the gender debate invoked arguments about the presumed nature of women and how this was used for the justification of every action taken 5 Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007), 32. 6 Ibid., 34. 7 Lieselotte Steinbrugge, The Moral Sex: Woman’s Nature in the French Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 158. 8 Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 11. 9 to continue to keep them in their “natural roles”.9 Women were ambiguously identified as objects and subjects, betrayed by the revolution, and condemned to their separate sphere. Historian Karen Offen’s article, “Women’s Memory, Women’s History, Women’s Political Action: The French Revolution in Retrospect, 1789-1889-1989,” included more about the history of the revolution, such as the stories of important men and women who worked to further the cause of women’s equality.10 Offen covered important details of the women’s march on Versailles, their petitions to the king and to the new government of the republic, and the Jacobins’ purposeful subordination of French women in the early 1790s. Sian Reynold’s book, Women, State, and Revolution: Essays on Power and Gender in Europe Since 1789, was another piece that explored the history of the revolution and where women fit into these major historical events.11 Reynold understood how the dominance of men created the reality of female weakness and made women believe that they were powerless, when in reality they only needed to overcome their oppression.12 Reynold, like Hunt, argued that the revolution was key to the beginning of the women’s movement because women began to become more active individuals and realized their issues and their own potential to solve them. Several other authors, including Mary Bellhouse, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Raia Prokhovnik, continued to emphasize the 13 progression of feminist sentiments and debates on citizenship in the literature. 9 Joan Wallach Scott, “French Feminists and the Rights of ‘Man’: Olympe de Gouges’ Declarations,” History Workshop 28 (1989): 2.