Women and the French Revolution

This work represents the first book-length study of attitudes toward women during the French Revolution and the discrepancy between its principles of liberty and equality and the suppression of women's rights. Working from original source material produced in 18th-century France, Proctor traces the striking continuity between pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary thought on the equality of women, and addresses such issues as the extent of support for a sexual equality movement and how the men of the Revolution justified the contradiction of personal rights.

"Desan's deeply researched book tracks the debates about marriage, divorce, parenthood and inheritance in Revolutionary France. Through absorbing, well-told tales of people caught up in a redefinition of identities, Desan brilliantly demonstrates that the "social revolution" of the 1790s largely took place in the realm of family relations. This book is a crucial intervention in the scholarship of the French Revolution."--Sarah Maza, author of "The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary

"In "The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France, Suzanne Desan brings together evidence of the lively struggles among lawmakers, judges, and ordinary women and men to remake family relations during the French Revolution. Marriage, divorce, inheritance, unwed mothers and their children - the Revolution redefined them all. Desan restores the optimism of a revolution which, even while foundering in the Terror and conservative backlash, bequeathed to the 19th century alternative ways of imagining how families might live together in equality and love. A riveting read."--Natalie Zemon Davis, author of "The Gift in Sixteenth Century France

France and Women, 1789-1914 is the first book to offer an authoritative account of women's history throughout the nineteenth century. James McMillan, author of the seminal work Housewife or Harlot , offers a major reinterpretation of the French past in relation to gender throughout these tumultuous decades of revolution and war.This book provides a challenging discussion of the factors which made French political culture so profoundly sexist and in particular, it shows that many of the myths about progress and emancipation associated with modernisation and the coming of mass politics do not stand up to close scrutiny. It also reveals the conservative nature of the republican left and of the ingrained belief throughout french society that women should remain within the domestic sphere. James McMillan considers the role played by French men and women in the politics, culture and society of their country throughout the 1800s.

The essays in this collection, drawn from a Hofstra University bicentennial conference on the French Revolution, seek to come to terms, often from conflicting points of view, with the complex relationship between events and their representations. The question "How did the lived experience that eventually became known as the French Revolution come to be organized?" provides a common thread for the collection. Individual chapters examine the Revolution from the vantage points of theology and philosophy, theater and literature, as well as politics and history.

Citizenship is a fundamental concept in social life, entailing rights, obligations, and relationships with others. Modern citizenship did not emerge from a philosopher's study or a laboratory experiment; instead, it was decisively shaped in the French Revolution. This book is about the processes by which that happened.