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French Women's Revolutionary Writings: Madame Roland or the Pleasure of the Mask Author(s): Brigitte Szymanek Source: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 99-122Published by: University of TulsaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463976Accessed: 26-02-2016 02:30 UTC

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French Women's Revolutionary Writings:

Madame Roland or the Pleasure of the Mask

Brigitte Szymanek

Quoi! ce heros fut done vraiment une femme?" (What! This hero was really a woman then?)1

On November 8, 1793, the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal or? dered the execution of Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland, the wife of former Girondist Minister of the Interior, Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere. She was accused of conspiring with her husband to propagate "antirevolution-

ary" ideas through a so-called "Office of Public Opinion," a patriotic edu? cational program initiated by Roland and the Girondists while he was in

power.2 Madame Roland's execution furthered the effort by the Mountain, the more radical revolutionary faction, to annihilate the more moderate Gironde. It was also part of a sudden upsurge of violence against women who dared to participate in politics at a time when they were officially banned from public life.3 She died on the same day.

Throughout her trial, Roland contested her judges' accusations, and, till the end, she denied ever interfering in political matters. Such interfer?

ence, she told her accusers, would have been improper for a woman: "J'ai suivi les progres de la Revolution avec interet, je m'entretenais de la chose

publique avec chaleur, mais je n'ai point depasse les bornes qui m'etaient

imposees par mon sexe" ('I followed the progress of the Revolution with

interest, I spoke of public matters with enthusiasm, but I did not overstep the limits imposed upon me by my sex').4 Moreover, Madame Roland could offer strong support for her denial. Unlike some of her female con?

temporaries, she had never openly written a political pamphlet or spoken publicly: "Je ne me suis jamais melee de rien, bien mo ins encore ai-je rien

dirige; je defie de le prouver" (Memoires, p. 355; 'I never interfered in

anything, even less did I direct anything; I dare anyone to prove it'). She admitted serving as her husband's secretary, but she claimed in this role to have lent only her hand: "[Je repondis] que je n'avais jamais prete mes

pensees a mon mari mais qu'il pouvait avoir quelquefois employe ma main" (Memoires, p. 367); '[I replied] that I had never lent my thoughts to my husband but that he might have sometimes borrowed my hand').

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Roland's disclaimers were disingenuous. Her correspondence and the memoirs she wrote in prison, in the three months that preceded her death, reveal that she consistently tried to exert influence. From the early days of her marriage, Madame Roland had personally handled her husband's busi? ness and private correspondence, and she continued to do so even as her husband engaged in revolutionary politics. Besides attending to his regular correspondence, she later confessed in her memoirs that she had also au? thored a number of his official letters and speeches, most of which he had

sent, or delivered, without a change (Memoires, pp. 304-05). Roland's denials of political involvement have drawn criticism from

some feminist historians and critics: "Madame Roland parle des femmes comme d'une race qui lui est etrangere," writes Marie-Paule Duhet ('Ma? dame Roland speaks of women as of a race foreign to her').5 Candice E. Proctor suggests that Roland simply "lacked courage" to challenge the

revolutionary conception of femininity.6 These critics observe that, unlike her contemporaries Olympe de Gouges, Theroigne de Mericourt, and Etta Palm d'Aelders, who publicly claimed equal political rights for women, Madame Roland never sought to advance women's cause. Upon learning about her imminent decapitation, Roland even implicitly disassociated herself from the other women who had preceded her on the scaffold, as she invoked only the courage of the men who had been executed before her: "Vous me jugez digne de partager le sort des grands hommes que vous avez assassines. Je tacherai de porter a l'echafaud le courage qu'ils y ont montre"

('You deem me worthy to share in the fate of the great men whom you have murdered. I shall seek to emulate the courage they demonstrated on the scaffold').7

Other more sympathetic critics have recognized in Roland's political disclaimers the "gender shackles" of her time. Roland "struggle[d] to com?

ply with eighteenth-century mores and to fulfill her unique potential," explains Marilyn Yalom.8 Chantal Thomas accounts for Roland's retreat to her husband's shadow, and for her declared intent to emulate only the men who had died before her, by the absence of an alternative model for women. She argues that revolutionary women, who were both spatially and linguistically removed from the political sphere, could only "desire" the revolution by transgressing the norms imposed on them by men and by "adhering to virile models."9

While there is much truth in these critics' interpretations of Roland, they generally read her political transgression as a contradiction of her

prior allegiance to Rousseau's model of femininity. For Gita May, Roland

momentarily "violated" her belief in women's domestic role, out of com? mitment for the Revolution.10 In a similar vein, Mary Trouille attributes this rupture to "the pressure of external events" and to Roland's "evolving

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aspirations," which, she argues, led her to "question" and to "subvert" Rousseau's limited ideal, an ideal she had formerly embraced "as a confir? mation of her deepest convictions and longings as a youth."11 By reading Roland's pledges of allegiance to the prevailing feminine views, and her lack of support for other women activists, as inconsistent with Roland's own political activities, the critics (whether hostile or sympathetic) have

essentially viewed Roland as a hypocrite.12 The critics, however, overlook Roland's lifelong ambivalence toward

Rousseau's limited view of women. This essay demonstrates that from an

early age, Roland acutely resented the limits imposed on women's lives.

Although she genuinely subscribed to the prevailing domestic definition of their role, she never ceased to envision a far greater sphere of influence for women than Rousseau permitted. Roland's life and writings read as a con? stant effort to redefine that role while never questioning its domestic boundaries. The increasing politicization of French society provided Ro? land with an opportunity to expand those limits. Although she could never bring herself to embrace the political women of her time, Roland did carve out a deeply influential role for herself, one that she believed to be more in accordance with a woman's natural destiny.13

Madame Roland, although self-taught, was exceptionally well read. Like most men of her generation and class, she had been heavily influenced as a child by the writers of ancient Rome, like Tacitus and Plutarch, and later

by Rousseau. These readings did not provide Roland, as they did her male

counterparts, with models of public virtue to emulate. Neither did they nourish at the time a desire for social and political reform.14 Rather, they fostered a hearty embrace of the fundamentally domestic role these authors envisioned for women. Commenting on Plutarch's Parallel Lives, nineteen-

year-old Marie-Jeanne Phlipon?Roland's maiden name?confessed her desire to emulate the private virtues of Spartan women, not the republican heroes of ancient Rome:

Ou sont ces femmes qui mettaient leur gloire dans le bonheur de leurs epoux, le soin de leur maison et de leurs enfants? Douces et fideles, elles etaient le bien et le charme des families; retirees et sedentaires, elles faisaient regner dans Pinterieur le bon ordre et la paix.15

Where are those women whose glory rested on the happiness of their hus? bands, the care of their homes and children? Sweet and loyal, they brought well-being and charm to family life; withdrawn and sedentary, they main? tained internal peace and order.

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Not surprisingly, when Roland later discovered Rousseau, she received his ideas warmly. Like Plutarch, Rousseau endorsed a world in which men, who were naturally strong and rational, dominated the world of thought and politics. Women, whose essential quality, Rousseau argued in Emile, was their sensitivity, could only play a derivative public role by serving as

examples of virtue for their husbands and sons.16 Rousseau's revitalization of marriage, in Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise, and his glorification of woman's

private virtues as a cornerstone of a new and beneficent social order, pro? vided women of Roland's generation an attractive role that also secured their unconditional allegiance to his philosophical theories. Writing to her friend and confidante Sophie Cannet upon reading La Nouvelle Heloise, Roland observed: "Concois-tu de jouissance plus delicate que celle de s'im- moler entierement au bonheur d'un homme sensible?" (17 February 1778, Lettres: Nouvelle Serie, II, 200; 'Can you conceive of a sweeter joy than to sacrifice yourself entirely to the happiness of a sensitive man?'). Roland's memoirs demonstrate that even after half a decade of political turmoil and a close encounter with power, she could still express reverence for Rous? seau's model of femininity: "Rousseau me montra le bonheur domestique auquel je pouvais pretendre, et les ineffables delices que j'etais capable de

gouter" (Memoires, p. 302; 'Rousseau revealed to me the domestic happi? ness to which I could aspire, and the ineffable delights that I could enjoy').

But while Roland embraced the prevailing domestic definition of women's role, she resisted some of Rousseau's fundamental precepts. Ro? land's early writings reveal that even as she professed allegiance to Rous? seau's Julie de Wolmar as a model, she continued to chafe against her own limited opportunities. After reading La Nouvelle Heloise, Roland wrote to

Sophie Cannet that she found it difficult to cope with society's prejudices against talented women. Roland stated that she was "bien ennuyee d'etre femme" ('annoyed to be a woman') in her century because she lacked the

required inclinations as well as the gender attributes to act like one. She should rather have been born a woman in Rome or in Sparta, she ex?

plained, where she could presumably have enjoyed, as a virtuous wife and mother, greater influence on public matters.17 But in her century, Roland

continued, she should have been born a French man. For as a man, she could have chosen "pour patrie la republique des lettres" ('the republic of letters for a nation') or lived in a republic "ou Ton peut etre homme et n'obeir qu'aux lois" (5 February 1776, Lettres: Nouvelle Serie, I, 374-75; 'where one can be a man ruled only by laws').

Roland viewed the prejudices against women writers and other excep? tional women as fundamentally unjust. A woman, she later explained in her memoirs, never gained by becoming a writer, for if she were good, men took away her works, and if she lacked talent, she was held in ridicule by

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both men and women. In either case, a woman's books were never judged on the basis of her intellect but on her moral reputation. Roland argued for a single standard of judgment for both sexes, but she spurned all encour?

agements to publish: "Ce sera done sous le nom d'autrui," she stated on one occasion, "car je me mangerais les doigts avant de me faire auteur"

(Memoires, p. 321; 'Then it will be under somebody else's name for I would rather chew off my fingers than become a writer').

From the start, Roland clearly opposed a domestic role for women that failed to provide them an intellectual influence on men. Such an influence also presupposed a level of education denied to most women at the time. Roland recounted in her memoirs how she and her mother had separately resorted to stealing books out of Roland's father's library to provide them the education and intellectual stimulation they sought (Memoires, p. 212). Roland's views on the subject of women's education are reflected in an

anonymous and still largely ignored essay that she wrote at the age of

twenty in response to the topic proposed by the Academie de Besancon, "Comment l'education des femmes pourrait contribuer a rendre les hommes meilleurs" ('How Could Women's Education Contribute to Mak?

ing Men Better').18 Roland's essay dutifully reaffirmed Rousseau's precept that women should exert a moral influence on men, provided that it re? main within the confines of the domestic realm. However, Roland took this precept further in her essay. Women's roles as exemplars, she ex?

plained, permitted a strong, if oblique, form of power. She perceived women's natural sensitivity as a superior asset that allowed them to exert

greater control over public matters than men might suspect: for if "les hommes regissent les empires," she wrote, "les femmes gouvernent les coeurs" (p. 348; 'if men rule empires, women govern hearts'). Women's

sensitivity was thus a natural weapon designed to subjugate hearts and subvert the existing political structure: "Tandis que le legislateur et maftre croit agir d'apres lui, un pouvoir secret le modifie et le dirige par les impres? sions de plaisir et les charmes du sentiment" (p. 348; 'Whereas the legisla? tor and master fancies himself as the sole force behind his actions, a secret

power modifies and guides him through sensations of pleasure and roman? tic impressions').

While Roland borrowed her idea of women governing men through pleasure and sensitivity directly from Rousseau's Emile, she placed new

emphasis on the secrecy of woman's modifying power. In doing so, she thus conferred a subversive quality to what Rousseau had defined as a necessary complement to man's natural ability to reason and govern. In Emile, Rousseau precluded other forms of influence for women, besides morality, by limiting their education to "practical notions" (p. 437). Without nam? ing Rousseau, Roland took issue with his recommendation in her essay:

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"Un grand homme a dit avant moi qu'une femme bel esprit etait le fleau de son mari et de sa maison; je crois ajouter qu'une ignorante, sotte ou frivole, n'est pas un moindre fleau" (p. 354; 'A great man said before me that a

spirited woman was the bane of her husband's existence and of her home; I

might add that an ignorant, stupid, or frivolous woman is no lesser bane'). As these early writings demonstrate, Roland's subscription to Rousseau's

domestic definition of women's role falls short of the wholehearted em? brace critics have generally ascribed to her.19 Madelyn Gutwirth perhaps more aptly describes Roland's subscription to Rousseau as selective. She observes that Roland more likely espoused "Rousseau's construct of Julie" in La Nouvelle Heloise rather than Emile or the Lettre a d'Alembert. Even then Gutwirth observes, Roland could only have espoused such a model

"by default" since "it lent women self-respect in housewifery and helpmee- tery as well as domestic sexuality where nothing else was offered."20 Ro? land's writings clearly reveal that she never settled for such a limited fate and that she resented her inferior status. She strived for that reason to combine her acceptance of a domestic role for women with an expansive view of such a role that allowed women to vent their personal voice.

Roland's realization that she could influence public affairs through her husband during the Revolution can be fairly described as symptomatic of her early ambivalence about the prescribed model of femininity. This am? bivalence triggered a pattern in which the author would seek to transcend feminine power from within the confines of her own limited role. Roland married in a way that allowed her to put her ideas into practice. Acutely aware of her intellectual superiority, she was determined to marry only a man who could appreciate her mind. In 1776, after she had rejected sev? eral marriage proposals, she met Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere. He was

twenty years older than she, yet he was from a superior class and a "philos? opher."21 They were married four years later, and from the earliest days of her marriage, Madame Roland assisted her husband in both his scholarly and administrative pursuits. She assisted in the writing of a Dictionnaire des

Manufactures, Arts et Metiers, a contribution to Panckoucke's Encycbpedie Methodique. From the beginning, Roland also handled her husband's daily correspondence. Among the couple's most frequent correspondents were

Louis-Augustin-Guillaume Bosc, a scientist and personal friend of Ro? land's husband; L.-A. de Champagneux, founder of the Courrier de Lyon; and Jacques Pierre Brissot, future Girondist leader and a founder of the

revolutionary newspaper Le patriote francais.22 Although Roland wrote these letters largely on behalf of her husband and signed them in her own

name, she made an effort to respect a limited domestic role. She almost

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systematically distinguished herself from the literary or philosophical con? tent of these letters by adding personal comments in her own voice on the

delights of the couple's provincial domestic life and through reports of her husband's health.

The advent of the Revolution did not signal the end of Roland's control over her husband's correspondence. This luckily provided her with an

early opportunity for political involvement:

Chargee ordinairement de la correspondance, je trouvais cette tache d'autant plus agreable dans les circonstances; mes lettres, faites avec feu, plai- saient assez a Brissot qui souvent en composaient quelques morceaux de son

journal, ou je les re trouvais avec surprise et plaisir. (Memoires, p. 127)

I was ordinarily in charge of the correspondence, and found that task all the more enjoyable given the circumstances; my letters, written with passion, rather appealed to Brissot who often included parts of them in his newspa? per, where I was surprised and delighted to read them.

These initial political opportunities increased in December 1791 when the

Jacobin Society appointed Jean-Marie Roland as its official secretary:

Je voyais ces lettres; je prenais souvent pour moi le soin de faire les reponses. ... [T]ouchee du bien qu'il etait possible de faire en s'emparant des imagina? tions pour les diriger et les enflammer au profit de la vertu, je m'occupais de cette correspondance avec plaisir, et le comite trouvait Roland travailleur. (Memoires, p. 147)

I saw his letters; I often took upon myself to write the answers... . Moved by the good that one could accomplish by taking hold of men's imagination to guide them and to instill in them a love of virtue, I took care of that corre? spondence with pleasure, and the committee thought Roland industrious.

Roland's effort to distance herself personally from the political content of these letters declined considerably. Roland's personal considerations sur?

reptitiously merged with political preoccupations: "Nous faisons des confi?

tures," she wrote Bosc in late 1788, "et tu n'es pas la pour les gouter. . . .

Que devient Monsieur Necker? Et le grand diable d'archeveque [Brienne]? On le disait parti pour Rome; maintenant on debite qu'il est garde a vue"

('We are making jams . . . and you are not here to taste them. . . . What is

becoming of Mr Necker? And of the devilish archbishop [Brienne]? People said he had left for Rome; now we are told that he is under arrest').23 In a

subsequent letter to Bosc, Roland herself justified this infringement on

patriotic grounds: "II est vrai que je ne vous entretiens plus guere de nos affaires personnelles: quel est le traitre qui en a d'autres aujourd'hui que celles de la nation?" (26 July 1789, Lettres, II, 53; 'It is true that I do not

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inform you as much of our personal affairs; who is the traitor who has other interests today than those of the nation?'). As Roland no longer attempted to separate her views from the political content of the letters, she drasti?

cally modified her epistolary style. Her letter to Bosc illustrates that the

inquisitive tone that characterized her initial interest in political events

grew authoritative, impatient, intimidating, and even vulgar as she ex? horted her male correspondents to political action.24 Roland urged Bosc, in her letter, to support an official trial for the monarchs: "II est vrai, que je vous ai ecrit des choses plus vigoureuses que vous n'en avez faites.... Vous n'etes que des enfants; votre enthousiasme est un feu de paille; et si l'As- semblee ne fait pas en regie le proces de deux tetes illustres . . . vous etes

tous/ . . ." (26 July 1789, Lettres, II, 53; 'It is true that the language I have used in my letters to you has been more vigorous than your own ac? tions. ... You are behaving as children; your enthusiasm is like a straw fire; and if the National Assembly does not legally bring to trial two illustrious heads . . . you will all be /. . .').

The letters from this period do not make clear whether Roland ex?

pressed her own ideas or her husband's. She no doubt relied on this confu? sion as she experienced the need to voice her personal political views. Letter writing provided Roland, in this instance, with a substitute as well as a subversive form of political expression not only because she could claim the views she expressed as her husband's but also because letter

writing had long been an accepted role for women.25 As Roland's later memoirs reveal, she was fully aware of the safe cover the letter form pro? vided. Acknowledging her role in handling her husband's correspondence, she defined such a role as well within the limits of a woman's domestic function: "II n'y a pourtant de singulier dans tout cela que la rarete; pour- quoi une femme ne servirait-elle pas de secretaire a son mari sans qu'il en eut mo ins de merite? On sait bien que les ministres ne peuvent tout faire

par eux-memes" (Memoires, p. 305; 'There is however nothing singular about it, other than it happens only rarely; why should a woman not serve as her husband's secretary without diminishing his own merit? We all know that ministers cannot do everything themselves').26

While Roland may have conceived of her oblique political role as a

necessary extension of her domestic duties, it was not without risk either to herself or to her husband. Not only were women prohibited to play an active role in the public sphere, but as the Revolution progressed, they became increasingly repressed and fully marginalized in the political pro? cess. Women's exclusion was justified in part on the grounds that, through the institution of sexual favoritism, they had contributed to the corruption of monarchical power. As demonstrated by Dorinda Outram, women's

political inclusion threatened the legitimacy of the new order: "the pro-

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duction of male political embodiment cannot be understood as a self-

standing development; it also has to be read as a process of exclusion and differentiation."27

Notwithstanding the increasingly bold manner in which Roland han? dled her husband's correspondence, she therefore never openly took issue with the revolutionaries' antifeminine agenda; nor during her husband's

political career did Roland infringe publicly upon the men's world. As his involvement made him more conspicuous, she prudently retreated to the

backstage. In her Memoires, she described her involvement during the po? litical meetings that took place at the couple's house as peripheral. During such meetings, the author kept a strictly feminine profile as she silently sat "hors du cercle et pres d'une table . . . travaill[ant] des mains, ou fais[ant] des lettres, tandis que Ton deliberait" (p. 63; 'outside of the circle and near a table . . . doing handwork, or writing letters, while they deliberated').

Not only did Roland refrain from open political involvement herself, but she also criticized the more open involvement of other women. She went so far as to close her door to all women, a rule she scrupulously never broke (Memoires, p. 168). She even willingly invoked in her letters the antifeminine rhetoric of male revolutionary discourse: "Adieu!," she once

challenged Bosc. "Si vous vous desolez, je dirais que vous faites un role de femme que je ne voudrais pas prendre pour moi" (22 January 1791, Lettres, II, 220-21; 'Adieu! If you despair, I will say that you are playing a woman's role that I would not want for myself). Roland was well aware of the

castrating effect this feminization could have on her correspondents: "Faites-moi done relever ces indignites par vos ecrivains hommes, puisque vous en avez, je ne connais ici que des eunuques," she later wrote Lan- thenas (February 1791, Lettres, II, 259; 'Ask your men writers to challenge those indignant things, I know only eunuchs around here').

Roland's conduct and writings support the inferences drawn by most critics that she lacked solidarity with women's causes and that her political conduct contradicted her allegiance to Rousseau's model. But Roland's condemnation of openly political women and her antifeminine rhetoric should be distinguished from her basic acceptance of woman's domestic function. Roland's belief in woman's domestic function was sincere, but letters at the time reveal that Roland's efforts to hide her own authorship and her antifeminine rhetoric emanated from insincere, strategic consider? ations that she believed ultimately would advance both the Revolution and the cause of women.

At least one letter indicates that Roland did not indeed rule out a politi? cal role for women. But unlike Olympe de Gouges,28 she did not think that such new freedom for women could occur simultaneously with men's, but rather that the Revolution would be a condition for the former: "[Les

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femmes] ne peuvent agir ouvertement que lorsque les Francais auront tous merite d'etre libres," she wrote on 6 April 1791 to Bancal des Issarts (Let? tres, II, 258-59; 'Women cannot act openly until all French people have deserved to be free'). In addition, Roland firmly believed that women needed to redeem the bad reputation they had earned during the Ancien

Regime. Until then, their direct participation in public affairs jeopardized not only the success of the Revolution but a possibly more open influence for women later: "jusque la notre legerete, nos mauvaises moeurs rendraient au moins ridicules ce qu'elles tenteraient de faire, et par la meme aneantiraient l'avantage qui, autrement, pourrait en resulter" (Let? tres, II, 258-59; 'until now our frivolity, our poor moral standards would, in the least, cover their attempted actions with ridicule, and would also jeop? ardize any advantage that might otherwise result from them'). Until such a

time, Roland further argued, a woman who might seek political influence could do so more successfully if she presented her ideas through men: "Comme le nom d'une femme ne me semble pas la meilleure recommenda?

tion, je n'ai pas mis le mien a mon epitre mais Lanthenas s'est charge de la remettre afin de donner a son contenu I'authenticite necessaire" (Lettres, II, 258-59, my emphasis; 'Since the name of a woman does not seem to be the best recommendation, I did not put mine in my letter but Lanthenas

agreed to deliver it so as to confer the necessary authority to its content').29 In an earlier letter, Roland had expressed explicit disapproval of another

contemporary, Germaine de Stael. Yet again Roland criticized Stael's more

open political conduct because she feared it could only jeopardize revolu?

tionary progress:

On fait ici des contes de Madame de Staal [sic] qu'on dit fort exacte a l'Assemblee, qu'on pretend y avoir des chevaliers auxquels de la tribune elle envoie des billets pour les encourager a soutenir les motions patriotiques.... Vous ne pouvez vous representer 1'importance que nos aristocrates mettent a ces betises nees peut-etre dans leur cerveau; mais ils veulent montrer l'As? semblee comme conduite par quelques etourdis excites, echauffes par une dizaine de femmes. (To Brissot, 2 November 1789, Lettres, II, 75, 83)

One hears stories about Madame de Staal [sic], who attends the National Assembly with great regularity, who is reported to have suitors there, to whom she sends messages, from the bench, to urge them to support patriotic motions.... You do not realize the importance that aristocrats place on such silly things, born perhaps out of their own imagination; but they wish to portray the National Assembly as led by a few worked-up scatterbrains, fired by a dozen women.

In addition to these contemporary accounts, Roland's later memoirs pro? vide further evidence of a strategic, rather than an ideological, motivation

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behind such statements. In describing her silence and letter writing as she sat in on Girondist meetings, she confessed in her memoirs: "Je preferais ecrire, parce que cela me faisait paraitre plus etrangere a la chose et m'y laissait presque aussi bien" (Memoires, p. 131, my emphasis; 'I preferred to write because it allowed me to appear removed from it all while safely letting me in').

While Roland's strategy may have proved frustrating at times, it pro? vided her with a realm of influence unmatched by any other woman at the time. This caused Roland great personal satisfaction. She related, in par? ticular, the considerable pleasure she had derived from secretly writing a letter to the Pope in the name of the Executive Government of France. She confessed her amusement at the incongruity of her situation. But her

pleasure was contingent, Roland insisted, on the secrecy of her activities. On one other occasion, Roland even confessed pleasure at the expense of her husband:

Si Ton citait un morceau de ses ouvrages ou Ton trouvat plus de graces de style . . . je jouissais de sa satisfaction . . . et il finissait souvent par se persuader que veritablement il avait ete dans une bonne veine lorsqu'il avait ecrit tel passage qui sortait de ma plume. (Memoires, p. 304).

If one quoted a passage from his writings that revealed a more gracious style ... I reveled in his satisfaction . . . and in the end, he often convinced himself that he had been particularly inspired when he had written some? thing that was indeed from my own hand.

Roland's experience during the Revolution allowed her to live a version of the domestic role that was generally consistent with, if on the outer

edge of, her understanding of an active domestic role for women. She

hoped ultimately for a more open role for herself and for other women, but subordinated that goal to the priority she placed on the revolutionary cause. So long as Roland remained able to communicate her voice through the safe cover of her husband, women and women's causes seemed some? how less urgent.

In 1793 when the Mountain attempted to consolidate power, the revo?

lutionary government sought to arrest Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere. With his wife's assistance, he escaped, and the revolutionaries arrested and incarcerated Madame Roland instead. During her incarceration Roland continued to write. While her prison writings initially continued the re?

treating pattern of her letters, Roland's final confessions, Memoires particuliers, gradually reveal acknowledgment of her writing as an independent

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act. With the removal of Roland's mask also came unexpected confessions of feminine pain and anger.

During the first part of her incarceration, Roland wrote some Notices

historiques. They were intended as a "moral and political testament," in which Roland essentially proposed to set the Girondists' political record

straight (Memoires, p. 98). The account was reminiscent of the virile and often accusatory tone of her earlier letters. Throughout the Notices, Ma? dame Roland continued to present herself as a background figure. Al?

though written in the first person, these Notices contained a rather imper? sonal account of her husband's actions while in power. To the extent that the author referred to her own role in his affairs she always carefully opted for the collective subject "we." In describing her influence on Roland's

resignation letter, which she was rumored to have written herself, she care?

fully restricted her role to that of discussant: "il convenait a Pintegrite, au

courage de Roland de s'avancer seul, et nous arretames entre nous deux sa fameuse lettre au roi" (Memoires, p. 69, my emphasis; 'It suited Roland's

integrity and courage to act alone, and we drafted between the two of us his famous letter to the king').

Roland's continued denial of any prior active role stands in ironic con?

trast, however, to the pleasure she suddenly demonstrated in the political significance of her new writings. She confessed an uncontrollable urge to write and to denounce the tyranny of her persecutors from the moment of her incarceration. With the collapse of her party, she now reveled in her role as a Girondist memorialist, taking pride in her rapid writing and savor?

ing the devastating speech she planned to deliver at the Girondists' trial, for which she had been officially cited as a witness: "Je desire meriter la mort en allant leur rendre temoignage tandis qu'ils vivent. . . . Je suis sur les epines, j'attends l'huissier comme une ame en peine attend son liber- ateur" (Memoires, p. 364; 'I wish to deserve to die by paying them [the Girondists] a tribute while they are alive.... I am on edge, and I await the bailiff as a desperate soul would her liberator').

But Roland was never called as witness and had therefore no oppor? tunity to deliver her speech. This disappointment met with another: a false communication that her Notices had been destroyed. The news affected her almost as a dismemberment: "j'ai senti toute l'amertume de cette perte que je ne reparerai point" (Memoires, p. 202; 'This loss has made me so

bitter; it is a loss that I cannot repair'). Bitterness did not keep Roland from writing, but it triggered two very different additional sets of writings.

The first set, entitled Portraits et anecdotes, was a failed attempt to re? write the Notices, a task that discouraged the author from its inception: "Cela ne saurait remplacer ce que j'ai perdu, mais ce seront des lambeaux

qui serviront a me le rappeler, et a m'aider un jour a y suppleer, si la faculte

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m'en est laissee" (Memoires, p. 99; 'This cannot replace what I lost, but it will be made of fragments that will make it possible for me to remember, and will help me one day to replace this loss, if I am not deprived of the

faculty to do so'). There ensued a series of portraits of various Girondists and key participants in Roland's two ministeries. Unlike the Notices, Por? traits et anecdotes represented less an attempt to rehabilitate the Girondists than to create a "pantheon of good revolutionaries."30

More importantly, in Portraits et anecdotes, Roland portrayed a more ac? tive role in her husband's political writings. In these new political mem?

oirs, she described her role in her husband's resignation letter, which she had earlier minimized, as: "Je fis la fameuse lettre" (Memoires, p. 154; 'I wrote the famous letter'). In so doing, she also now claimed the better part of her husband's political success:

je peignais mieux qu'il n'aurait dit ce qu'il avait execute ou pouvait promet- tre de faire. . . . avec moi il a produit plus de sensation, parce que je mettais dans ses ecrits ce melange de force et de douceur, d'autorite de la raison et de charmes du sentiment qui n'appartiennent peut-etre qu'a une femme sensi? ble douee d'une tete saine. (Memoires, p. 155)31

I painted better than he could have said what he had accomplished and could promise to do. . . . thanks to me he created more sensation because I infused in his writings this mixture of strength and tenderness, authority and reason, and sensitivity which perhaps only exist in a sensitive woman en? dowed with a sound mind.

Interestingly, despite Roland's new desire to reclaim her own political role, this statement indicates that she still wished to portray her active role in a manner consistent with its fundamentally domestic focus. Throughout this

work, Roland remained the helper of her husband. In addition to triggering a different description of the author's political

responsibilities in Portraits et anecdotes, the loss of her Notices encouraged a second more personal set of writings, Memoires particuliers.32 Unlike Por? traits et anecdotes, written simultaneously, and unlike her earlier Notices, these new personal memoirs hardly mentioned the Revolution, and when

they did, it merely functioned as a backdrop for this new autobiographical enterprise. As impersonal as Roland's political writings had been, Memoires

particuliers were by contrast extremely personal and broke all accepted fem? inine conventions by revealing deeply intimate details.

By contrast to Roland's earlier writings, which focused exclusively on

men, she reserved Memoires particuliers for herself and for the other women who had played an important role in her life. Throughout these confes?

sions, Roland expressed extraordinary compassion for her mother whose

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love and devotion to her she recounted in numerous details. She recalled

warmly her paternal grandmother and great aunt with whom she had spent many delightful hours as a child. Most interestingly, Roland held special feelings for two saintly figures: her wetnurse and a young novice from the convent school she had briefly attended. Roland's admiration for them stemmed as much from their devotion to her as from the terrible sufferings they had endured. One had resisted "la brutalite de son mari [qui] la rendait malheureuse, sans alterer son caractere ni changer sa conduite"

(Memoires, p. 204; 'the brutality of her husband [that] made her unhappy but failed to spoil her character and her conduct'); the other had taken her

vows, for lack of a fortune, and had been subjected to abuse by her commu?

nity (Memoires, p. 230). Roland's compassionate evocations of women stand in striking contrast

to her generally unflattering portraits of men. Roland depicted her father as a man inferior to his wife, with little instruction or virtue, who had shown little interest in his daughter's upbringing and education. Roland's accounts of her dutiful submission to her mother sharply contrast with recollections of Roland's defiance of her father's authority: "Mon pere, assez brusque, ordonnait en maitre et Pobeissance etait tardive ou nulle; ou s'il tentait de me punir en despote, sa douce petite fille devenait un lion. II me donna le fouet en deux ou trois circonstances; je lui mordais la cuisse sur laquelle il m'avait couchee, et je protestais contre sa volonte" (Me? moires, p. 209; 'My father, who was a rather harsh man, commanded as a master and obedience was delayed or worthless; or if he tried to punish me as a despot, his sweet little girl would turn into a lion. He whipped me two or three times; I bit the leg on which he held me, and I protested against his will').

Roland also engaged in lengthy physical descriptions of herself, and she

provocatively recounted her sexual history, a subject traditionally kept be?

yond the realm of female expression. Roland recalled, for example, experi? encing her first menses at age fourteen. Besides recounting the episode in

celebratory fashion, the author also described the mysterious, sensuous

pleasure that had signaled nature's progress. Roland, who believed that one should derive no pleasure from one's body except in situations of legiti? mate matrimony, had first been stricken by guilt and for her repentance had adopted a strict regimen of bread and ash. Roland now complacently recalled her diet's failure to contain the pleasure that she continued to

experience: "ces dejeuners ne me faisaient pas plus de mal que les acci? dents nocturnes pour la reparation desquels je me mettais a cet extrava?

gant regime" (Memoires, p. 252; 'These breakfasts were as harmless to me as the nightly accidents that I intended to correct through that extraordi?

nary diet').

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Roland's sexual revelations not only served to recapture and celebrate a

femininity she had long repressed in her earlier writings, but also expressed a surprising, yet obviously long-harbored antimasculine sentiment. The sexual revelations contained a substantial, rather graphic description of her attempted rape, at age eleven, by one of her father's apprentices. In

recounting the incident, Roland also released her long-repressed outrage at the potentially traumatic effect of man's instinctual behavior on women.

Launching into a moralizing diatribe and expressing her solidarity with all

mothers, she warned women against the other sex "impetueux et toujours brutal" ('impetuous and always brutal') whose "ardeur inconsideree" ('in? considerate ardor') and "corruption si commune" ('common corruption') posed a constant threat to innocent girls (Memoires, p. 222). Emboldened

by these declarations, Roland then frankly recounted her personal disgust with her husband's lovemaking on their wedding night. Roland's new con? fidence led her, as she neared the end of her confessions, to admit her

consuming passion for another man, whom she carefully did not name.33 In Memoires particuliers, Roland for the first time revealed a woman's voice.

Critics have paid little attention to this dramatic shift in subject matter and style or to the solidarity the Memoires particuliers revealed toward women. These deeply personal accounts of a woman's life were unprece? dented. They also mark a profound shift in her lifelong attitude toward

femininity. As a young girl, Roland had expressed only regret about her

gender. As a wife and as a revolutionary, she had obtained political valida? tion by retreating into men's shadow. But as a prisoner awaiting death, Roland felt suddenly inspired to recuperate the femininity she had re?

pressed and to celebrate her womanhood in prohibited fashion. As she turned toward herself, she also turned toward the virtuous women who had surrounded her throughout her life and against the men whose public des?

tiny she had recently glorified. Madame Roland's new expression of antagonism to men was not with?

out political content as well. Read in its historical context, Roland's anger plausibly refers to her present male persecutors, the Mountain, who by instigating the Terror and leading the Revolution astray had regressed to animalistic behavior. To some extent, these memoirs therefore echoed sim?

ilar, contemporary remarks, contained in Roland's undelivered "Projet de defense."34 And through her depiction of man's dangerous instinctual

behavior, Madame Roland countered the view of women's uncontrol? lable emotional nature generally used by men to justify their political exclusion.35

What explains the transition from Roland's first set of memoirs to her second and third? In part, facing death, Roland simply lacked a reason to continue to hide her own earlier political involvement. But this purely

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practical rationale does not satisfactorily explain the passion and new fem? inine focus of the Memoires particuliers. The revealing fact is that Roland's

expressions of identification with, and sympathy for, the members of her sex came only when she had finally been denied all authorized forms of

speech. Before and during the Revolution, she could communicate

through letters and through her husband's voice. Once imprisoned, she

hoped to express herself as a witness and every day gave her political thoughts to her writings. But after the loss of these authorized avenues of

speech, Madame Roland was no longer able to circumvent women's lim? ited role through oblique forms of expression. For the first time, Roland could not satisfactorily reconcile her desires for speech with a purely do? mestic role for women. The result was an awakening of feminine resent? ment and frustrations, of feminine pain and desires.

But as different as Roland's Memoires particuliers were from her earlier

writings, she continued to feel the need to portray herself as a reluctant memorialist?a woman forced out of the conventional domestic sphere to redeem her moral reputation:

Si ceux qui m'ont penetree eussent juge les faits ce qu'ils etaient, ils m'au- raient epargne une sorte de celebrite que je n'ai point enviee; au lieu de passer aujourd'hui mon temps a detruire le mensonge, je lirais un chapitre de Montaigne, je dessinerais une fleur ou jouerais une ariette, et j'adoucirais la solitude de ma prison, sans m'appliquer a faire ma confession. (Memoires, p. 305)

If those who penetrated me had judged the facts such as they were, they would have spared me a form of celebrity that I did not seek; instead of devoting my life today to destroying lies, I might be reading a chapter from Montaigne, drawing a flower or performing an arietta, and I might alleviate the solitude of my cell, without applying myself to my confession.

Furthermore, in a pattern reminiscent of her letters, Roland felt the need to contain her latest transgression within a male framework, namely the model of Rousseau's Confessions.36 Like Rousseau, Roland promised her readers the complete truth about herself. In her case, however, this truth served essentially as a pretext for telling the harsh truth about others, in

large part the men who had surrounded her: "Avec cette franchise pour mon propre compte, je ne me generai pas sur celui d'autrui" (p. 202; 'With this sincerity for my own account, I will not feel inhibited to tell the truth about others').

While confessing guilt about recounting her attempted rape, Roland

justified these personal revelations too with Rousseau's precedent: "il m'a fallu faire dans ce moment encore, autant d'efforts pour l'ecrire que Rous? seau en fit pour consigner l'histoire de son ruban vole" (Memoires, p. 221;

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'it has taken me, even after all this time, as much effort as it took Rousseau when he related the story of his stolen ribbon'). Here, however, what is

perhaps most revealing is not what Madame Roland directly attributed to Rousseau but what she did not. By comparing her attempted rape to Rous? seau's ribbon-stealing episode, Roland ignored the far closer parallel in Rousseau's Confessions of his own near rape by a novice at a monastery.37 Like Roland's account, Rousseau's depiction of the incident was highly graphic and revealed his disgust with male bestial sexuality. Like Roland, Rousseau also sympathized, in his account, with women's endangered con? dition: "si nous sommes ainsi dans nos transports pres des femmes, il faut

qu'elles aient les yeux bien fascines pour ne pas nous prendre en horreur"

(p. 73; 'if this is the way we behave in our rapturous delight toward

women, their eyes must be truly fascinated for them not to take an imme? diate disgust for us'). Madame Roland's failure to cite Rousseau's rape ac? count is puzzling, for in the ribbon episode Rousseau had perpetrated the

crime, while in the seduction episode Rousseau, like Roland, was a victim.

Perhaps Roland's choice of comparison points to her continued reticence.

By comparing her experience to Rousseau's ribbon episode, she could

present it in a manner that emphasized her guilt, an appropriate attitude for a woman in recounting such details. Had Roland instead compared her

story to Rousseau's seduction, she would have conveyed only a sense of

outrage. Rousseau's confession conveyed such outrage at the other men of the monastery, who had encouraged him to conceal the incident. Roland's decision to emphasize guilt instead may be an indication of her difficulty in

coming to terms with her own prior restraints. Guilt allowed Roland to maintain a traditional feminine posture while subliminally longing for Rousseau's free denunciation.

There is a revealing irony in the history of the posthumous publication of Madame Roland's written legacy. For nearly one century, she exerted a fascination for people, unparallelled by any other woman of her time. The Romantics praised her rare political leadership. In his History of Girondists, Lamartine idealized Roland as the "soul" of Girondist politics. Summing up her brief political career, he portrayed her as a "party leader," who had "founded the republic, ruled for a while and died."38 Literary critic Sainte- Beuve praised her genius and demonstrated courage in five consecutive

essays.39 The woman Roland's romantic admirers so revered was, rather

uncharacteristically, the "femme virile." For Sainte-Beuve, it was the

"rigor" of her "male intelligence," which alone could account for Roland's control over the men of her party (Portraits de femmes, pp. 1145-47). For

Jules Michelet also, Roland's "male esprit, son coeur stoique, etaient d'un

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homme" (p. 419; '[her] male spirit, her stoic heart, were those of a man'). And a virile man she was, the historian insisted, so virile that none of her friends could match her: "On dirait plutot, a regarder ses amis, que, pres d'elle, ce sont eux qui sont femmes" (pp. 422-23; 'When one looks at her

friends, it looks as if it is they who are women'). If Roland's romantic chroniclers could admire her virility so openly, it was by no means out of a

general sympathy for women's revolutionary claims. Sainte-Beuve indeed warned the women of his generation not to emulate Roland. Women like Madame Roland, he argued, remained an exception: "ce genie qui percait malgre tout et s'imposait souvent, n'appartenant qu'a elle seule, ne saurait sans une etrange illusion, faire autorite pour d'autres" (Portraits de femmes, p. 1158; 'this brilliance that surfaced against all odds and often imposed itself was unique to her, and women who might arrogate such authority to themselves would be strangely deluded').

What made Roland's "unique" virility so acceptable to these critics was her propensity for self-effacement and her ability to maintain a feminine

profile while she engaged in manly matters: "Madame Roland, malgre les

qualites viriles dont elle a fait preuve, n'avait rien de masculin dans tout son aspect, ni dans son ensemble; elle etait femme et tres femme," ex? claimed Sainte-Beuve (Nouveaux lundis, p. 221; 'In spite of Madame Ro? land's proven virile qualities, there was nothing masculine about her ap? pearance, nor in her personality as a whole; she was a woman and a very womanly one'). While lauding Roland for the temerity she had demon? strated in her letters and on the scaffold, the critic admitted being moved also by confessions of her domestic bliss, her maternal calling, and her

ability to comprehend nature. Similarly, Michelet admired Roland for the

way she softened, in her writings, her virile authorial style with an occa? sional feminine touch. If Roland's Memoires seemed as if they were "moins ecrits d'une plume de femme que du poignard de Caton" ('less written by women's pen than by Cato's dagger'), Michelet remarked that occasional confessions of a mother's concern for her young daughter revealed "que ce

grand homme etait une femme, que cette ame, pour etre si forte, helas! n'en etait pas moins tendre" (p. 425; 'that this great man was a woman, and that this soul, which was so strong, alas! was no less tender').

This admiration for Roland, however, was not based on the deeply per? sonal qualities of her final memoirs. Michelet and Sainte-Beuve based their judgments indeed on incomplete versions of Roland's works that omitted the intimate details she revealed in Memoires particuliers. Not until 1864 was a complete edition of Roland's writings published.40 Prior to that

edition, Roland's private life had been a subject of controversy, as rumors of her passion for another man had tarnished her revolutionary image. Intent upon preserving that image, Michelet had sought to minimize the

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issue. Only after celebrating Roland's virile qualities had he reluctantly conceded: "Quoi! ce heros fut done vraiment une femme? Voila done un moment (l'unique) ou ce grand courage a flechi. La cuirasse du guerrier s'entrouvre, et c'est une femme qu'on voit, le sein blesse de Clorinde" (pp. 419-20; 'What! this hero was really a woman then? This represents the

unique moment in which her great courage weakened. The warrior's ar? mour half-opened, revealing a woman, Clorinda's wounded breast').

As Roland had herself suspected, her personal, feminine writings ex?

posed her to criticism. The sudden discovery of Roland's "feminine" pas? sages sullied forever the image of the great writer. In particular, Roland's account of her attempted seduction prompted angry comments from Sainte-Beuve. For this former admirer, truth, Madame Roland's excuse for

confiding to her readers, was not meant for women. Referring to her use of Rousseau's precedent in the Confessions, he exclaimed:

Nous y avons tous cede plus ou moins, dans nos propres confessions aussi, en vers ou en prose; mais elle, elle etait femme et devait s'en souvenir, elle pouvait, si elle le voulait absolument, indiquer le fait en glissant un peu; il y a maniere de tout faire comprendre et de tout dire. (Nouveaux lundis, pp. 199-20)

We all have more or less succumbed to the temptation, in our own confes? sions, in verse or prose; but she was a woman and should have remembered that; she could, if she absolutely needed to, have referred to the incident obliquely; there is a way to make oneself understood and to say it all.

As a politician, Roland had thrived by communicating her commitment

through her husband and the other members of the Gironde, thereby cele?

brating masculine virtues over feminine ones. Like Roland herself, the

nineteenth-century critics did not see an inconsistency in this double role. Their admiration for this woman writer was thus primarily a projection of their narcissistic delight in their own virile style. The judgment of nine?

teenth-century critics vindicated Roland's belief that she needed to forget herself if she hoped to be remembered.

If Roland failed her nineteenth-century admirers by becoming too

"womanly" in her writings, she is paradoxically perceived today by some critics as not "womanly" enough. As this essay demonstrates, Roland es?

capes reductive categorization. Roland's writings depict the deep conflict of a woman with powerful, individual needs for expression but with con? servative social instincts born of the culture of her time. While she never

fully accepted those views, she never could fully reject them either. Roland

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was a woman who, above all, felt the need to participate in the political process. For most of her life she could do so without openly transgressing a woman's limited public role. When blocked from expressing her views

through men, she was left no other option than to reveal her political savvy more openly. Yet when facing death?the ultimate silencing?she also revealed a feminine voice with an audacity and rage unprecedented at the time.

Roland's final memoirs disclosed feelings of solidarity with other women in excess of those typically attributed to her by critics. And even though Roland only expressed these views at her death, her earlier life was not one of simple hypocrisy as typically depicted whereby Roland's political activ? ities are seen as contradicting her own beliefs in women's fundamentally domestic role and her critical attitude toward the political activities of other women. Although Roland accepted that women should live within the domestic sphere, she also believed that the domestic sphere should have a wide radius. Her solidarity with women, which received expression at the end of her life, probably did not reveal a shift in her views so much as her abandonment of a strategy that required her to deny this solidarity to contribute to her revolutionary goals.

Roland's writings exemplify a woman's complex struggle to overcome the limited conception of femininity of her time. In the more general context of revolutionary discourse, Roland's hiding behind male authori? ties reads as a woman's ingenious strategy to reintegrate herself into a

fundamentally exclusionary ideology. Roland's expansion of the domestic

sphere reads as a concomitant effort to press against the boundaries of women's role. Roland's retreat in the face of male adversity reads therefore more as adaptation than resignation. It attests, in the end, to Roland's

personal courage and ultimate sacrifice.

NOTES

1 Jules Michelet, "Madame Roland," in Les Femmes de la Revolution, in Oeuvres Completes de Jules Michelet (1851; Paris: Flammarion, 1971-87), XVI, 419. All further references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text. All transla? tions in this article are mine.

2 The Girondists, who formed the majority at the Conventional Assembly, hoped, with this program, to exterminate the Mountain as well as the Commune of Paris who, they felt, were far too inclined to impose their views on the rest of the nation.

3 In July 1789, the legislators of the Estates-General had denied women the right to vote. Equating women with "children" and "foreigners," Abbe Sieves, who voiced the general opinion had concluded: "[I]n short those who contribute noth-

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ing to the public establishment should have no direct influence on the govern? ment," quoted by Jane Albray in "Feminism in the French Revolution," American Historical Review, 80, No. 1 (1975), 54. On 4 November 1793, the Committee of Public Safety had also ordered the closing of all women's clubs. See also Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), chapter 11.

4 M.-J. (Phlipon) Roland, "Projet de defense," in Memoires de Madame Roland, ed. Paul de Roux (Paris: Mercure de France, 1986), p. 371. This edition of the

published memoirs includes, in addition to her letters, the Notices historiques, Por? traits et anecdotes, and Memoires particuliers. Further references to all these memoirs will appear parenthetically in the text as Memoires.

5 Marie-Paule Duhet, Les femmes et la Revolution (Paris: Julliard, 1971), p. 78. All further references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text.

6 Candice E. Proctor, Women, Equality and the French Revolution, in Contribu? tions in Women's Studies (New York; Westport, Connecticut; London: Greenwood Press, 1990), No. 155, p. 181.

7 Quoted by de Roux in "Introduction," Memoires, p. 27. 8 Marilyn Yalom, Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's History (New

York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 94. 9 Chantal Thomas, "Heroism in the Feminine: The Examples of Charlotte

Corday and Madame Roland," in The French Revolution: Two Hundred Years of Rethinking, ed. Sandy Petrey, special issue of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1989), p. 69.

10 Gita May, Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 170.

11 Mary Trouille, "Revolution in the Boudoir: Madame Roland's Subversion of Rousseau's Feminine Ideals," in Eighteenth-Century Life, 13, No. 2 (1989), 83.

12 Yalom presents this view pithily in Blood Sisters. According to Yalom, Ro? land's "life and writing prove that . . . she played the queen bee to her sister creatures" and that she "dealt with being female in contradictory ways" (p. 94).

13 Roland's opposition to, or at least unwillingness to champion, women's eman? cipatory claims was not unique. For Proctor, it reflects "the failure on the part of any of the women of the late eighteenth century who had earned a reputation for either talent or intelligence willingly to champion the cause of their own sex." Such hostility was reflected, Proctor argues, in the writings of Germaine de Stael, and later George Sand who "far from seeking the emancipation of their own sex, actually professed to despise them and sought, instead, to identify themselves with the dominant sex" (Women, Equality and the French Revolution, p. 181). This hostil? ity, which Proctor and other critics generally exaggerate, has been attributed by some critics to Roland's and these other women's comfortable social position, which allowed them to engage in public debates on a personal basis (Duhet, p. 77). As this study demonstrates, Roland's opposition had a more strategic purpose and stems from her personal commitment to the success of the Revolution, which could only be predicated on the exclusion of women from the political process. She did not, however, exclude a political role later, after women had redeemed their tar? nished reputation.

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14 See Harold T. Parker's excellent study of the influence of Roman classical authors on French revolutionaries, including Madame Roland, in The Cult of An?

tiquity and the French Revolutionaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), in

particular, chapters 1, 2 and 3. 15 Madame Roland, Lettres de Madame Roland: Nouvelle Serie (1767-1780), ed.

Claude Perroud, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1913-15), letter to Sophie Cannet, November 1773, I, 166. Significantly, Roland expressed this understand?

ing before she read Rousseau. Parker writes that Plutarch awakened in Roland "a

republican character, an enthusiasm for liberty and for public virtue, and a discon? tent with the present" (The Cult of Antiquity, p. 41).

16 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, in Oeuvres Completes, 8 vols. (Paris: Lefevre, 1839), III, 437. All further references to this work will appear parenthetically in the text.

17 See Parker, The Cult of Antiquity, p. 54. 18 "Comment l'education des femmes pourrait contribuer a rendre les hommes

meilleurs," in Oeuvres de J.-M. Ph. Roland, femme de I'ex-ministre de I'lnterieur, ed. L.-A. Champagneux, 3 vols. (Paris: Bidault, 1800), II, 335-57. All further refer? ences will appear parenthetically in the text.

19 In Women, Equality and the French Revolution, Proctor writes that "Madame Roland, in fact, was a devoted disciple of Rousseau" (p. 164). Trouille in "Revolu? tion dans le boudoir" describes "Roland's initial enthusiasm for Rousseau as a con? firmation of the deepest convictions and longings of her youth, which gradually gave way to a questioning and subversion of his narrow ideals under the pressure of external events and in response to her own evolving aspirations" (p. 83). Trouille

distinguishes her views from May's interpretation that Rousseau's writings affected Roland as a "conversion" to which Roland attempted to adhere all her life. Al?

though I agree with Trouille that Rousseau largely confirmed Roland's own vision of a domestic role for women, her "subversion" of Rousseau's "narrow ideals" oc? curred from the start and was not merely in response to later events.

20 Madelyn Gutwirth, The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), p. 194. This work is insightful even though it addresses Roland only briefly.

21 In a letter to Cannet, she wrote: "Cette lettre te sera remise par le philosophe dont je t'ai fait quelquefois mention, M. Roland de la Platiere, homme eclaire, de moeurs pures, a qui Ton ne peut reprocher que sa trop grande admiration pour les anciens aux depens des modernes qu'il meprise, et le faible de trop aimer a parler de lui" (Quoted by de Roux in Introduction, Memoires, p. 13; 'You will receive this lettter from the hand of the philosopher whom I have sometimes mentioned to you, M. Roland de la Platiere, an enlightened and virtuous man. One can only reproach him for his excessive admiration for classical authors and despise for our modern ones, and for his propensity to enjoy talking about himself).

22 The Rolands' friendship with Brissot dates back to 1787, when the latter wrote Roland de la Platiere to congratulate him on the publication of his Dictionnaire.

23 Letter to Bosc, 1 October 1788, in M.-J. (Phlipon) Roland, Lettres (1780- 1793), ed. Claude Perroud, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1900-02), II, 29.

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All further parenthetical references to Roland's correspondence are taken from this edition.

24 Parker observes that Roland's virile tone patterned the speech of male revolu?

tionary orators who drew their own aggressive, virile style from Roman classical sources (The Cult of Antiquity, p. 26). See also Dorinda Outram, "Le langage male de la vertu: Women and the Discourse of the French Revolution," in The Social

History of Language, ed. Peter Burke and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni?

versity Press, 1987), pp. 120-35. 25 Elizabeth C. MacArthur has observed: "Letter writing was perhaps the liter?

ary pursuit most accessible to women, since letters did not have to be directed toward publication, nor to obey strict genre requirements. Women could write letters without considering themselves and without being considered by others, as authors," in "Devious Narratives: Refusal of Closure in Two Eighteenth-Century Epistolary Novels," in Eighteenth-Century Studies, 21, No. 1 (1987), 19.

26 In justifying her role, Roland was also intent upon distancing her own actions from the traditional corrupt influence exerted by women in the Ancien Regime. Interestingly Roland blamed this corruption not on the women themselves but rather on the restrictions that kept women from contributing more directly to politics by drafting letters, circulars, or posters. Only such restrictions could lead women to solicit favors and conspire on behalf of a third or fourth party.

27 Outram, The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Class and Political Structure (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 125-26.

28 See Olympe de Gouges, "Declaration des droits de la femme et de la citoy- enne" (1791), in Marie-Olympe de Gouges: Politische Schriften in Auswahl, ed. M. Volters and C. Sutor (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1979).

29 Francois-Xavier Lanthenas (1754-1799) worked in close association with Roland during his first ministry. Later elected Girondist deputy, he escaped pro? scription as he supported some of Marat's policies.

30 V. Kapp, "Madame Roland ou l'auto-thematisation comme moyen de combat dans la France revolutionnaire," in Litterature et Revolution en France, ed. G. T. Harris and P. M. Wetherhill (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), p. 45.

31 Sensitivity was a determining feature of revolutionary character, regardless of gender. As disciples of Rousseau, revolutionary men aimed to combine a reasonable mind with a sensitive heart. Women, whom Rousseau endowed with greater sensi? tivity than men, were not believed, however, to be capable of exercising reason. Roland's claim that she possessed a "sound mind," must again be read as a chal? lenge to Rousseau's general assumption about women's poor intellectual abilities. For further details on the role of sensitivity in revolutionary ideology, consult Pierre Trahard's La sensibilite revolutionnaire (1789-1794) (Paris: Boivin & Cie, 1936), particularly chapters 1, 2, 9, 10.

32 She began writing her Memoires particuliers just a day after she set out to write Portraits et anecdotes, on 9 August 1793.

33 Although she did not name the man in her memoirs, historians have sus? pected that she referred to Girondist deputy Francois Buzot.

34 In it, the author condemned her political oppressors in these terms: "[La liberte] n'est pas pour ces hommes faibles qui temporisent avec le crime, en cou-

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vrant du nom de prudence leur egoisme et leur lachete. Elle n'est pas pour ces hommes corrompus qui sortent du lit de la debauche ou de la fange de la misere

pour s'abreuver dans le sang qui ruisselle des echafauds" (Memoires, p. 373; '[Free? dom] is not for those weak men who compromise with crime, by covering their selfishness and cowardice with the name of prudence. It is not for those corrupt men who rise from the bed of debauchery or from the mire of misery to quench their thirst in the blood that flows from scaffolds').

35 See Andre Amar's report to the Convention, on behalf of the Committee for Public Safety (16 September 1793): "let us add that women, by their constitution, are open to an exaltation which could be ominous in public life. The interests of the state would soon be sacrificed to all the kinds of disruption and disorder that

hysteria can produce" (quoted by Albray in "Feminism in the French Revolution," p. 57). See also Elissa D. Gelfand's political analysis of the Memoires in Imagination in Confinement: Women's Writings from French Prisons (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 150.

36 No woman had written or published personal confessions to date. Because of the intimate, often sexual, character of such writings, confessions remain on the whole a male-dominated genre.

37 Rousseau, Les Confessions, 3 vols. (Paris: Gamier, 1964), p. 72. All further references to this text will appear parenthetically in the text.

38 Alphonse-Louis-Marie de Lamartine, Histoire des Girondins, 4 vols. (Brux- elles: Wouters Freres, 1847), I, 283-84, 397.

39 For the first two essays dated 1835 and 1840, see Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de

femmes, in Oeuvres, ed. Maxime Leroy, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), II, 1133- 76. For the three additional essays published in 1865, see Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux lundis, 13 vols. (Paris: Michel Levy Freres, 1864-70), VII, 190-265. Further refer? ences to these essays will appear parenthetically in the text.

40 Madame Roland, Memoires de Madame Roland, ed. M.-P Faugere, 2 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1864).

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