Melzer Sara E. - Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Mark Rose, Director

ANNOTATION AND ITS TEXTS
Edited by Stephen A. Barney

EDITED BY

Sara E. Melzer
Leslie W. Rabine

New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1992

Oxford University Press

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Copyright 1992 by The University of California
Humanities Research Institute

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rebel daughters : women and the French Revolution / edited by Sara E.
Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine.
p. cm. (Publications of the University of California Humanities Research Institute)

ISBN 0-19-506886-6
ISBN 0-19-507016-X (pbk.)

1. FranceHistoryRevolution, 17891799Women.

2. FranceHistoryRevolution, 1789-1799Literature and the revolution. 3. Women revolutionairesFranceHistory18th century.

4. Women in public lifeFranceHistory18th century.

I. Melzer, Sara E. II. Rabine, Leslie W., 1944

III. Series.

DC158.8.R44 1991

944.0482dc20 90-49604

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

To commemorate the Womens March on Versailles in October 1789, we organized a conference on Women and the French Revolution that took place in October 1989 at UCLA. Essays, based on those papers, are now collected in this volume.

Our conference was part of 1787/1989 The French Revolution: A UCLA Bicentennial Program. We wish to thank Robert Maniquis, director of that program, for his support, as well as the University of California, Los Angeles, especially Chancellor Charles E. Young, former Executive Vice-Chancellor William D. Schaefer, and Executive Vice-Chancellor Andrea Rich. Our project was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. We would especially like to thank the Florence Gould Foundation, which provided the major support for all our activities.

The initial impetus for the conference came from Karen Rowe, founder and former director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. We owe her a special thanks, as well as to the staff of the Center for the Study of Women, which helped organize the entire project from its inception to its completion. Emily Ooms and Marjorie Pearson were the backbone of the sturdy support staff, and Susan Barnes, Van Do-Nguyen, and Carole Collier Frick gave more than generously of their time at crucial stages of the process.

The University of California Humanities Research Institute helped fund the project and provided administrative assistance. We particularly wish to thank its former director, Murray Krieger, and the current director Mark Rose for their support. Julia Van Camp provided crucial administrative aid.

From yet other corners came much appreciated help. The French Consulate, especially Cultural Attach Alexander Tolstoi, helped us bring distinguished scholars from France. The Los Angeles League of Women Voters helped publicize the conference.

Editing the papers for publication was an essential part of our task. The editorial board deserves a very special mention for their perceptive comments on the essays in this volume. We wish to thank Suzanne Gearhart, Kathryn Norberg, Mark Poster, Karen Rowe, and Domna Stanton.

S.M.

L. R.

HARRIET APPLEWHITE, Professor of Political Science at Southern Connecticut State University, is the author of Political Alignment in the French National Assembly, 17891791 (forthcoming, Louisiana State University Press, 1992). She and Darline Levy are co-editors of a collection of documents, Women in Revolutionary Paris, 178995 (University of Illinois Press, 1979,1980), and an anthology of essays, Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution (University of Michigan Press, 1990). They are presently completing a book, Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris (forthcoming, Duke University Press, 1993).

DOMINIQUE DESANTI is a historian, novelist, and journalist residing in Paris. Her books include Flora Tristan: La Femme rvolte (Hachette, 1972) [translated as A Woman in Revolt: A Biography of Flora Tristan] (Crown, 1976), Flora Tristan: Oeuvres et Vie Meles (U.G.E., 1972), Les Socialistes de Lutopie (Payot, 1971), and numerous other fiction and nonfiction works. She is presently working on her memoirs.

MADELYN GUTWIRTH is author of Mme. de Stael, Novelist: The Emergence of the Artist as Woman (University of Illinois Press, 1978) and a further study, The Twilight of the Goddesses, Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era (Rutgers University Press, 1992). She is retired from Westchester University, where she was Professor of French and Womens Studies. A former ACLS and National Humanities Center Fellow, she remains an active participant in the MLA and the American Society for 18th Century Studies.

MARY JACOBUS is John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist Criticism (Columbia University Press, 1986), the editor of Women Writing and Writing about Women (Croom Helm, 1979), the author of two books on WordsworthTradition and Experiment in Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, 1798 (Clarendon, 1976) and Romanticism, Writing, and Sexual Difference: Essays on the Prelude (Clarendon, 1989)and co-editor of Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (Routledge, 1990). She is currently working on a book about psychoanalysis, feminism, and the maternal body.

JOAN B. LANDES is Professor of Politics and Womens Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She is author of Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Cornell University Press, 1988), and of numerous articles on feminism, political philosophy, critical theory, and cultural history. Her current research focuses on political imagery in the graphic arts of eighteenth-century France.

DARLINE GAY LEVY teaches French and European intellectual and cultural history at New York University. She is the author of The Ideas and Careers of Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linquet. A Study of Eighteenth Century French Politics (University of Illinois Press, 1980). With Harriet Applewhite, she has edited an anthology of documents, Women in Revolutionary Paris, 17891795 (University of Illinois Press, 1979, 1980) and a book of essays, Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution (University of Michigan Press, 1990). She and Harriet Applewhite are presently completing a study Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris (forthcoming, Duke University Press, 1993) that expands and synthesizes their collaborative work.

SARA MELZER, co-editor of this volume, is Associate Professor of French and Womens Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is author of