Interests and the Revolution

The initial unity of opposition was euphoric. The marvelously named Theroigne de Mdricourt cut a particularly dramatic figure, dressed in a blood-red riding habit with two pistols at her waist.

What struck me most was the air of general benevolence. Selfishness seemed banished from every heart. There was no longer a distinction between classes. People jostled together, talking to one another as though they were one family. The rich, at this moment of fermenta­tion, mixed voluntarily with the poor and did not disdain to speak to them as equals. People’s very expressions seemed changed.²⁰

Women had their supporters among the highly educated theorists of change. Most prominent was the Marquis de Condorcet, student of Voltaire, mathem­atician, writer, and member of the political faction that hoped for a nonviolent transition to democracy, Condorcet had supported early efforts to deregulate the grain trade.²¹ His most enduring passions, however, were democracy and the perfectibility of man, stepping-stones to equality of the sexes.

He outlined his views in an acceptance speech to the French Academy in the early 1780s. He was encouraged in them by the well-educated and highly opinionated Sophie de Grouchy, who soon became his wife. In 1787, he published a pamphlet reflecting on the American Revolution, arguing that it was unjust to exclude women from political representation. In 1789, he developed his ideas still further, contesting the claim that citizenship would take women away from their duties as wives and mothers, and therefore threaten the common good.²² Many pamphlets, letters to editors, and dele­gations to the National Assembly convened in 1789 seconded his views.²³

Still, the word “woman” was conspicuous by its absence from the famous rhetorical flourish known as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, issued in 1789.

The role that women played in challenging the old regime, as well as the activism of groups such as the Society of Republican Revolutionary Women, seemed to create an opening for more radical reforms. After all, the Assem­bly had abolished feudal dues with the stroke of a pen. But reaction began to set in. Men complained that they wanted to come home from meetings to find their homes in order. As one anonymous male journalist put it, ‘‘We don’t teach you how to love your children; kindly refrain from coming to our clubs to teach us the duties of a citizen.’’²⁶

The King was beheaded in 1792, on the grounds that he was a traitor. The Queen, never particularly involved in politics, fell to accusations of sexual perversity. It was alleged, specifically, that she had fondled her son’s genitals and taught him to masturbate.²⁷ Her execution the following year signaled a new willingness to take action against women, and scuffles between the Society of Republican Revolutionary Women and market women who had grown frustrated with price controls on bread created an excuse for new forms of repression.

Rather than merely taking action against one specific group, the Consti­tutional Convention outlawed all forms of female collective action, prohibit­ing all women's clubs and popular societies.

Since when is it decent to see women abandoning the pious cares of their households, the cribs of their children, to come to public places, to harangues in the galleries, in the bars of the Senate? Is it to men that nature confided domestic cares? Has she given us breasts to feed our children?²⁹

Up to 1793, the Girondin faction favoring a decentralized government that would not interfere in economic matters maintained control. Threats of invasion from abroad and a worsening economic situation intensified polit­ical tensions. Thomas Paine, believing that the French were fulfilling his vision of the rights of man, had triumphantly sailed to Paris to be elected as a deputy to the National Convention. He was almost immediately disillu­sioned, and said so publicly. The ascendant Jacobin faction packed him off to prison for eleven months. Their spokesman Robespierre took inspiration from a selective reading of Rousseau, proclaiming that morals should replace egoism, and that any man who wanted to pursue his own selfish interests should leave the country.³⁰ He went on to show just how profoundly the concept of The General Will could be corrupted by justifying the mass executions that he ordered:

Terror without virtue is disastrous, virtue without terror is powerless. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a particular principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most urgent needs of the fatherland.³¹

Robespierre promised to restore the familial responsibility of the state and provide a state-funded welfare system.

Olympe des Gouges was sent to the guillotine. She had, according to a semiofficial paper, forgotten the virtues of her sex.³⁴ Mericourt was attacked on the street by a group of Jacobin women who stripped and beat her. She soon lost her mind and ended her days in an asylum. Perhaps any idealistic vision of human nature had begun to seem insane. Condorcet, an outspoken critic of Jacobin views, was forced into hiding. He distracted himself by writing a Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, a description of ten stages of social evolution that would culminate in the elimination of poverty, misery, and inequality.

He remained confident that the moral and political sciences would solve the problems that Rousseau had raised: ‘‘What are we to expect from the perfection of laws and public institutions, consequent upon the progress of those sciences, but the reconciliation, the identification of the interests of each with the interests of all?”³⁵ He was also confident that inequality between the sexes had no basis whatsoever in differences of intellect or moral sensibility. Men had simply failed to transcend the temptation to abuse their strength.³⁶

Condorcet’s formidable powers of imagination gave him some telling glimpses of the future. He correctly predicted that improved living condi­tions would lead to the use of contraception (an argument that Malthus would soon dismiss).

Condorcet left his refuge in Paris out of concern that he was endangering the friend harboring him there. Disguising himself as a woman, he managed to escape the city, but was soon captured, and died shortly after, possibly from self-inflicted poison.³⁷ His widow Sophie continued to promote their ideas, albeit in more cautious ways. After publishing her own French translation of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, she wrote of ways social institutions might be designed to strengthen the sentiment of sympa- thy.³⁸ In 1797 she happened to meet Napoleon at the house of a mutual friend, where he opined that women shouldn't meddle in politics. Her response: ‘‘In a country where their heads can be cut off, it's hardly surprising that they might want to ask why.''³⁹