This book is organized around the personal struggles of ten extraordinary French women activists: Eugenie Niboyet, Eugenie Foa, Suzanne Voilquin, Josephine Bachellery, Pauline Roland, Jeanne Deroin, Elisa Lemonnier, Desiree Gay, Adele Esquiros, and Marie Noemie Constant. Ranging in age from 52 to 20 in 1848, coming from different economic backgrounds, these women share a common quest to be included in the economic and political rights won by the revolt against the July Monarchy.
Banding together in the face of exclusion from the right to work guaranteed to all men in February 1848, they write petitions to the Provisional Government, and create the first daily feminist newspaper, "La Voix des femmes." The newspaper is a forum for their demands: midwives who demand to be paid as civil servants, domestic workers who demand support while unemployed, teachers who demand opportunities for higher education and for higher wages. The right to vote and the right to divorce are debated inthe newspaper.
Seeking to widen their support, Niboyet and her cohort launch a political club, Le Club de femmes, which is ridiculed in the satiric press. The women activists of 1848 do not withdraw from the public sphere. They form workers' associations. Deroin and Roland are imprisoned for their activism. All continue to work for women's rights as teachers, writers, and artists.
The women of 1848 inspire successive generations of women to continue their struggle.
'Laura S. Schor offers readers a reinterpretation of the 1848 revolution in France, as seen through the lives of ten intrepid women who were front-line advocates of legal rights, economic justice, and citizenship for French women. Her portraits are engaging, thoughtful, and beautifully written. Schor provides new insights into the possibilities for women's activism in a time of revolution on behalf of democratic government. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in past - and present - struggles for truly inclusive democracy.'
- Karen Offen,Stanford University, USA
'Decades before the words "feminism" and "feminist" came into use in France and other western countries there were women boldly asserting that women were fully the equals of men and thus contending that women deserved more education and employment opportunities, and even political rights. Drawing on archival and published sources, Laura S. Schor ably presents a group of ten pioneering women who made the case for women's rights during the 1830s and, notably, during the French revolution of 1848, when King Louis-Philippe was ousted and replaced by a democratic republic, albeit one that proved short-lived.'
- Linda L. Clark, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, USA
This book is organized around the personal struggles of ten extraordinary French women activists: Eugenie Niboyet, Eugenie Foa, Suzanne Voilquin, Josephine Bachellery, Pauline Roland, Jeanne Deroin, Elisa Lemonnier, Desiree Gay, Adele Esquiros, and Marie Noemie Constant. Ranging in age from 52 to 20 in 1848, coming from different economic backgrounds, these women shared a common quest to be included in the economic and political rights won by the revolt against the July Monarchy. Banding together in the face of exclusion from the right to work guaranteed to all men in February 1848, the women of 1848 inspired successive generations of women to continue their struggle.
Laura S. Schor is Professor of History at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, USA.
