Daily Life During the French Revolution (30 page)

While formally excluded from politics, women were involved
in local causes that included religious rights and food issues. They also
formed auxiliaries to local political clubs and actively participated in civic
festivals and relief work.

In the critical issue of suffrage in the new France, three
categories of people were immediately excluded: the very poor (that is, those
who did not pay tax equivalent to the proceeds of three days’ labor); servants
(because they would vote as instructed by their masters); and women. The first
two exclusions were debated; the last was taken for granted. For the bourgeois
revolutionary leaders, a woman’s place in society was not equal to that of a
man. This point of view existed in France up until 1944, when women finally got
the vote.

For many women during the revolution, the terms “liberty”
and “equality” must have had a hollow ring. The Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen, approved by the Constituent Assembly on August 26, 1789, disenfranchised
well over half the population. Denied their rights, women were judged equal
only in the defining moment of the guillotine. The Constituent Assembly also
rejected the premise that women were citizens, adopting a patriarchal attitude
that made women chattels and, as such, the property of men. When a husband left
home, either to join the army or to simply abandon his family, the wife was
left to bring up their children alone, generally with means that were far from
adequate.

Satire on the death of Louis XVI. A sans-culotte waves
a banner labeled “Fête du 21 Janvier” at a female figure “Humanité”; in the
background is a scene of murder and mayhem.

GRAIN RIOTS AND THE MARCH ON VERSAILLES

There was little new about grain riots in France. They had
taken place long before the revolution and had not been deemed a threat to the
aristocracy. When there were shortages, the uprisings were generally instigated
by women, who blamed the producers and distributors for causing the shortfall
in order to raise the price. This was the case in the spring of 1789, after the
preceding harvest had been severely damaged by bad weather. The price of bread
shot up 60 percent, and riots broke out around the country. There were attacks
on granaries and bakeries in all major cities. At Virally, between Versailles
and Paris, women set up a blockade, checking convoys of wagons before allowing
them to pass. If grain or flour was found, the women helped themselves to it.

Much of the recently harvested grain, what there was of it,
had not yet reached Paris, again due to poor weather. Hence, bread was in short
supply, and prices were rising. About the only thing the city was not short of
were rumors. The king was not cooperating with the National Assembly and was
slowing down the pace of political change, it was said; he was strengthening
his bodyguard in order to attack Paris and destroy the recently established
Commune and the people’s bid for liberty. Bread shortages were a conspiracy of
the nobility to starve the people into submission. The king was controlled by
his evil and dissolute wife, as well as by the sycophantic aristocrats who
wanted to halt the advance of freedom. Many people demanded that the king come
to Paris to escape the grasp of the greedy nobility. They feared the
aristocrats would take him away to some unknown place and that they would then
run the country in his place—the first item on their agenda being to crush the
insurrection in the capital.

On October 5, 1789, excited by rousing orators speaking in
the cafes of the Palais Royal and in the public squares of the city, throngs of
women, outraged by the bread prices and shortages, gathered at the Hôtel de
Ville, from where they set out for Versailles to take their complaints directly
to the king. Organized mainly by workers from the central market and the
faubourg St. Antoine, they came from all over the city, united in their anger.
They were joined by hundreds more, including about 15,000 National Guardsmen
(and even their reluctant general, Lafayette). Taking matters into their own
hands, they marched along the road to Versailles, chanting their demands that
they be given bread and that the king come to Paris, where he would be more
accessible to the people. Brandishing kitchen knives, brooms, skewers, and a
variety of other implements, the women led the march, shouting invectives
directed mostly at the queen. It was raining heavily as they walked the 12
miles, but their spirits were not dampened.

Late in the afternoon, the horde massed in front of the
palace gate, and some of the demonstrators pushed their way into the nearby
meeting hall of the National Assembly, then in session. Shouting for bread and
mocking the deputies, the mud-spattered women sang, danced, and shrieked their
demands, creating an uproar in the hall.

In the meantime, the king returned from hunting and,
although tired and wet, agreed to see a delegation of the protesters. This
decision may have been inspired by the fact that the Versailles National Guard
had joined the protest and the Paris National Guard was approaching the palace,
which was protected by only a few hundred of the king’s bodyguard. The women
met with the king, along with the president of the National Assembly,
Jean-Joseph Mounier. Demanding bread, whose shortage the king blamed on the
deputies of the Constituent Assembly, the women were determined not to leave
Versailles until they had a promise of lower prices and reform. The king
pledged to look into the matter the following day.

By now, some demonstrators who had penetrated the palace
courtyard were shouting abuse and obscenities at the royal family. Frightened
advisers and military officers pleaded with the king to call out the Flanders
regiment, recently moved to Versailles and stationed nearby, or to set up
cannon to intimidate the crowds, but the king refused, hoping no blood would be
shed in spite of the fact that a few of the palace guard had already been
killed. Besides, the soldiers could not be counted on to fire on their own
people, even if so ordered.

A little before midnight, the Paris National Guard arrived,
and Lafayette, apologizing to the king for his inability to control his troops,
guaranteed the safety of the royal family by leaving 2,000 of his guardsmen in
the palace. It was reported that Marie-Antoinette went to bed about two o’clock
in the morning, protected by bodyguards outside her room, as well as by four
maids inside, sitting with their backs against the door. One of these women
later told the queen’s biographer that about 4:30 that morning, they heard loud
shouts and the sound of firearms discharging. The mob had invaded the palace,
and the National Guard had capitulated. Lafayette soon arrived, however, and,
with more soldiers, emptied the building of intruders. Outside, the crowd
demanded that the queen come out.

Marie-Antoinette bravely appeared on a balcony, which
quieted the throng. Lafayette joined her there for a moment and then led her
back inside while the crowd again let it be known that the royal family must
come to Paris. The king acquiesced, and eventually the royals began the
two-hour-long journey, flanked by the howling Parisian mob. Accompanying the
procession were bodyguards, National Guardsmen, the Flanders regiment,
servants, palace staff, members of the National Assembly, wagons full of
courtiers, and many wagonloads of bread and grain taken from the palace. The
king, the little dauphin, and especially the queen were subjected to verbal
insults and rude gestures throughout the journey. Despite having had little or
no sleep, the immense crowd was highly charged, but the presence of Lafayette,
riding beside the royal carriage, may have deterred any attempt to harm the
royal family, who, on arrival in Paris, were deposited at the rundown Tuileries
palace, which had just been emptied of its aging retainers and retired
officials to make room for the 700 or so members of the royal staff. Bringing
the king back to Paris, it was thought, would guarantee that something would be
done about the women’s grievances.

Urban lower-class women in general caused the government
much distress during the revolution by their demands, rioting, and disruptions
of meetings of the National Assembly, now in Paris. They were seldom physically
violent but generally caused havoc by heckling and resisting removal from the
Convention meetings. Some were able to force issues onto the agendas; however,
women who intervened in a traditionally male activity were not welcome, and
their militant stance infuriated the men of the Assembly. Even more upsetting
was that no one seemed to be able to control them. Numerous drawings and
cartoons of the time of lower-class women show them as decidedly unfeminine,
with ugly, twisted features.

COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY WOMEN

Most women who disagreed with revolutionary politics and
values were less strident. They boycotted Masses given by constitutional
priests, and in the difficult times of 1793–1794 they organized clandestine
Masses. They continued to put a cross on the forehead of the newborn, repeated
the rosary, taught their children prayers, and named their children not after
revolutionary heroes but after saints, to whom they still paid homage. All of
these were counterrevolutionary offenses, and records were kept by the police.
In addition, these women rejected the idea of the Supreme Being and resented
the new calendar, which destroyed the traditional Christian day of the Sabbath.
They did not send their children to state schools, and many buried their
relatives at night with a Christian service.

Most of these women lived in small villages or towns, and,
unlike their compatriots in the big cities who were the products of the early
revolutionary days and who were committed to the overthrow of the old regime,
they were traditional in outlook and opposed to change.

The many thousands of women who supported the church in the
1790s and who objected to the intrusion of the revolution in religious matters
were forced to live with the scorn and opposition of officials of the
government, as well as of their revolutionary neighbors. Such women were often
involved in defending the Catholic Church and their priests. On May 10, 1790,
in Montauban, about 5,000 women, some of whom were armed, massed to stop revolutionary
officials from making an inventory of church property.

In February 1795, in the small town of Montpigié,
Haute-Loire, a government representative ordered (in his words) “a large
assembly of stupid little women” to bear witness as the local
béates
(quasi-nuns, who lived under
simple vows) took a revolutionary oath. The
béates,
however, showed willingness to face the
guillotine for their faith. The other women supported them with loud cheers,
and the official’s attempt to exert his authority by arresting some of them led
to a general free-for-all that grew into a full-scale uprising. The “stupid
little women” then emptied the local prison and incarcerated the city
officials, their collective defiance rendering the official authority
powerless.

At the height of the Terror, in June 1794, in the community
of Saint-Vincent, also in the Haute-Loire, everyone gathered in the church to
hear a talk on the Supreme Being. When the address began, the women stood up
all together, turned around, and displayed their bare buttocks to the speaker.
Word soon spread, and the performance was repeated in other villages.

Staunchly religious women sheltered non-juroring priests
from arrest and persecution and heard secret Masses in houses, wine cellars,
barns, and other safe places. They scrubbed churches that had been used for
profane purposes until they were spotless and removed irreverent posters and
notices from the premises.

They were not often prosecuted for participating in riots
and religious activities, but they had to live with the scorn and arrogance of
the men in power, who considered them to be irrational, unfocused, naive, and
slow witted, hence best suited for tending babies, doing housework and cooking,
performing menial tasks such as sewing and washing, or working as servants.
They were considered by their government to have about as much intelligence as
their farm animals.

TWO CASUALTIES OF THE REVOLUTION

Among the upper-class women who were victims of the
guillotine were Madame Roland and Charlotte Corday. Daughter of a well-to-do
Parisian engraver, Manon Roland was well educated, widely read in classical
literature, and greatly influenced by Rousseau. In 1780, she married the
wealthy Jean-Marie Roland, 20 years her senior and a functionary of the city of
Lyon. They moved to Paris, where he was associated with the Jacobin club and
was twice minister of the interior, the last time under the revolutionary
government, in March 1792. His tenure was short lived, for he was among those
who denounced Robespierre for the September 1792 prison massacres, transferring
his allegiance to the Girondins. His wife, meanwhile, opened a salon, which
soon became a place where the Girondist leaders congregated. Here, twice a
week, she held dinners for the members. She also published newspaper articles
and supported her husband in all his political endeavors. When the Girondins
came under attack, in December 1792, from the Jacobins, she, as well as her
husband, was accused of subversive activity. She defended herself so well
before the National Convention that the deputies voted her the honor of the
day. Manon helped her husband escape from Paris and was arrested by the Paris
commune in May 1793. Again she brilliantly defended herself and was set
free—but not for long. Her courage in thwarting Robespierre and other Jacobins
led to their deep hatred of her, and, on May 31, 1793, she was arrested again
and thrown into prison. She was tried for treason, although her trial focused
as much on her relations with the Girondins as anything else. Accused of
influencing her husband when he was minister, she was insulted by the
prosecutor when she tried to defend herself (she had refused to allow her
lawyer, Chauvieu, to defend her, saying he would only endanger himself without
being able to save her).