Le Tribune des Femmes
A small group of working-class women who had previously distanced themselves from Enfantin were more strongly drawn to the cause of economic rather than sexual reform. Suzanne Voilquin, Pauline Roland, and Jeanne Deroin, among others, founded a feminist newspaper written entirely by women.23 Anna Wheeler, by then spending much of her time in France, urged them on.
One of their proclamations, printed in Robert Owen's magazine The Crisis, called attention to the paradox of feminine altruism: ‘‘We are born as free as men— their infancy is as helpless as ours, and ours as theirs. Without our tenderness, our sympathy and our care, they could never grow up to be our oppressors.’’24The founders of the Tribune called for a cross-class coalition of women bound by their common role as caregivers.25 They criticized French family law and made a strong case for greater public spending on children. They explained why collective living would promote a more efficient organization of housework by taking advantage of economies of scale. In The New Social Contract Madame Casaubon argued that half of all communally held land should be vested in women to provide a ‘‘mother’s tribute’’ that would repay women’s reproductive services to society.26 These maternalist values did not prevent them from reiterating principles of equal opportunity for women:
If you preserve this old belief that women’s sole purpose is to bear children, clean man’s house, and give him pleasure; if you do not associate woman and the people, each according to their talents, in all branches of the social order; and if you do not give flight to genius in whatever sex or class it is found, you will not be following the path of god, who wants a place and happiness for everyone, and you will always fail.27
Other socialist feminists loosely associated with the de Saint-Simonians, such as Claire Demar, linked the exploitation of women to the exploitation of the proletariat. Flora Tristan gained a wide audience with an autobiography and a novel that publicized feminist ideas.28 But success proved short-lived for Le Tribune des Femmes, which ceased publication in 1834. Two of its most important contributors later played a visible role in the French revolution of 1848, unsuccessfully demanding female suffrage.29 Others were swept up in a new enthusiasm for yet another visionary scheme.