the question of citizenship in the french revolution

7/28/2019 The Question of Citizenship in the French Revolution

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The Question of Citizenship In

The French Revolution


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The French Revolution of 1789 changed the meaning of the word revolution. Prior to

this year, revolution meant restoring a previous form of government that had been taken away.

Since then, revolution has meant creating a new institution of government that did not previously

exist. This required that a constitution be drafted. After a series of four mini-revolutions from

May to July, the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen was released on the twenty-sixth of

August, 1789. When the French revolutionaries drew up theDeclaration, they wanted to end the

traditions surrounding hereditary monarchy and establish new institutions based on the principles

of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment brought the application of scientific laws and formulas

to society through the use of observation and reason rather than religion or tradition. The

Declaration brought together two streams of thought: one springing from the Anglo-American

tradition of legal and constitutional guarantees of individual liberties, the other from the

Enlightenment's belief that reason should guide all human affairs. Reason rather than tradition

would be its justification.1

Men are born and remain free and equal in rights, began the Declaration of Rights of

Man and Citizen, a document that was supposed to be applicable to all Frenchmen. But did the

Declaration really apply to the Jews, Black African slaves, and women in the same respect as it

applied to its creators, and was it even intended to do so? Historians have taken diverse

approaches to the study of the French Revolutionary era. Perhaps this is because the French

Revolution impacted different groups of people in quite contradictory ways. The interests of the

1Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Washington, D.C.: the Center for History and

New Media at George Mason University, and New York: the American Social History Project at the City University

of New York, supported by the Florence Gould Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.American Social His tory Productions, Inc., 2001. [cited 4 November 2001.] Available from the World Wide Web:

(http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/index.html.)


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accorded; they will learn from these bonds that the Christians worship a SupremeBeing like themselves, and as a result the fraud that the Talmud authorizes in

dealings with pagans will no longer be permitted.3

In supporting the citizenship of the Jews, Horwitz was finding ways to promote their assimilation

into French society. 4

During the two-year term of the Constituent Assembly (1789-1791), deputies discussed

the status of the Jews at approximately thirty sessions. Some wanted Jews to gain civil status,

some found that too dangerous a concept, while others opted for gradual reforms to improve

conditions for the Jews. Those advocating legal equality included Robespierre, Mirabeau,

Talleyrand, Grgoire, and the trio of Barnave, Duport, and Lameth who heatedly argued against

the discriminatory suggestions of some clergymen and anti-Semitic Alsation republican

members. The Bishop of Nancy, La Fare, spoke out to the Assembly against the emancipation of

the Jews. Representing the interests of the Catholic Church, he took an extreme position and

argued against citizenship for all non-Catholics in his Opinion on the Admissibility of Jews to

Full Civil and Political Rights. The majority of the debates in the National Assembly were not

even about civic equality, since few disagreed that all restrictions on Jewish commerce,

residence, education, trades, and professions would be abolished. Rather, the discussion centered

around the eligibility of the Jews for full political rights, particularly the holding of public office.

Political rights were based on strict economic qualifications regardless of race, although one

could argue de facto disenfranchisement. Regardless, most Jews were too impoverished to meet

the requirements. Few met the property prerequisite needed to gain suffrage and even less met

3Zalkind Hourwitz, The Vindication of the Jews, 1789. Hunt, Lynn, ed. The French Revolution and Human Rights:

A Brief Documentary History. (Boston, New York: Beford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996), 48-504Petition of the Jews of Paris, Alsace, and Lorraine to the National Assembly, January 28, 1790. Hunt 93-97;

Hourwitz 48-50; La Fare, Bishop of Nancy, Opinion on the Admissibility of Jews to Full Civil and Political Rights,

Spring1790. Hunt 97-98.


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the conditions mandatory of the deputies. With that said, how could any reasonable Jew have

expected to be elected into public office?5

On January 28, 1790, the French revolutionaries officially decreed that all Portuguese,

Spanish, and Avignonnais Jews in France could enjoy the rights of citizenship. This amounted to

about 3,000 to 4,000 Jews, mostly in the southwestern corner of the country including the cities

of Bordeaux and Bayonne. After heated debate and repeated delays, the rest of the Jews in

France were emancipated on September 27, 1791. This included about 30,000 Ashkenazim6 Jews

primarily from the northeastern Alsace-Lorraine territory. The motion was proposed and

delivered by Adrien Jean Franois Duport, a deputy of the Paris nobility. 7

Across Europe, Jewish thought was dominated by the belief that what happened in France

was now possible everywhere else in Europe, and that based on the emerging liberal-secular

political order to which the future belonged, continental emancipation would indeed happen.

While one contemporary perspective sees the Revolution as a liberation of the Jews from their

prior restraints, others view it as the first step along the course of modern anti-Semitism that

culminated in the Holocaust of the twentieth century. Contemporary study of Jews and the

Jewish Question during the eighteenth century has been dominated by inquiry into the origins of

modern anti-Semitism. In this way, the Enlightenment has come to be viewed by some scholars

as an emancipatory movement that marks the very antithesis of anti-Semitism and by others as

an essential moment in the rise of those forms of anti-Semitism that led to the Nazi Holocaust.8

5Ronald Schechter, The Jewish Question in Eighteenth-Century France.Eighteenth-Century History 32.1 (1998):

84-91.6 Ashkenazim Jews were among the heirs of those religious and cultural forms that had been fashioned by the

Diaspora in central Europe; they were culturally more foreign and thus more hated by gentile neighbors.7

Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: (New York, London: Columbia University Press,

1968), 1; Adrien Jean Franois Duport,Admission of Jews to Rights of Citizenship , September 27, 1971. Hunt 99-101.8

Jonathan M. Hess, Introduction: Forum: Jewish Questions.Eighteenth-Century Studies. 32.1 (1998): 83.


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The attack on Catholicism impacted the post-war destiny of the Jews. The Jansenist

Baptiste Abb Henri Grgoire, president of the National Assembly and an active defender of the

Jews, was intent on passing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. He was afraid that it would be

condemned as a Jewish and atheist plot against the Catholic Church, and consequently kept his

mouth shut when the issue of Jewish emancipation came up during the session of winter 1790-

91. 9

On January 2, 1792, recently elected political leaders gathered in Nancy for a public

ceremony in which 14 of the towns most prominent Jews, including the Grand Rabbi, swore an

oath of allegiance to the new government. Jewish community leader Berr Isaac Berr said, The

oath that we are about to take, makes us, thanks to the Supreme Being, and to the sovereignty of

the nation, not only men, but French citizens.10 He did stress that emancipation did not mean

assimilation. The mayor of Nancy declared that society should not investigate the beliefs of its

citizens, but only be concerned with the obeying of the laws, loyalty, and service to the the state.

Legalizing citizenship for Jews was not as easy in every town as it was in Nancy. At Bischheim-

au-Saum, near Strasbourg, the town council prevented at least five well-known Jews from

swearing the oath by requiring each oath-taker to perform the sign of the cross on themselves.

According to the officials it was the only way they could be certain a person was telling the truth.

Naturally the Jews refused to cross themselves because it was a violation of their religious

beliefs. Both sides appealed to the Directory, 11 which sided with the Jews, saying the law

required simply the obligation of taking the civic oath, without prescribing either the form nor

the manner in which it will be made, and told the town to proceed with the ceremonies. When

the time came to hold the ceremony, the Jews were told to remove their hats, which they refused

9Singham 115.

10 Kates 103.11

A regional authority that spoke on behalf of the central government.


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for religious reasons, and the event was cancelled. Both sides again appealed to the Directory,

which once more sided with the Jews, and eventually the five prominent Jews of Bischheim

swore their allegiance.12

At the local level, we find leading Jews stubbornly determined to acquire full political

rights and equally determined to maintain their religious identity, wrote Kates. At the same

time, we see French revolutionary leaders insisting on the principles of equality before the law

and religious freedom, even at the risk of offending local constituencies. 13 For the French, this

meant that their nation was the first in modern Europe to offer the Jews political equality. For

Jews, it meant freedom from the ghettos and centuries of separation from gentiles. And for both

groups, it meant a new era of free, secular, and tolerant practices.

Historical hindsight somewhat sours this notion of religious tolerance for the Jews when

we look at the events of the twentieth century from the Dreyfus Affair to the Nazi Holocaust.

When those living in modern time reflect upon the development of the Jews as a people over the

past several centuries, it is not their liberation but rather their destruction on which the focus is

automatically placed. Due to assimilation, murder, and the fleeing from Euorpe, few French and

other European Jewish families can even trace their genealogies to the eighteenth century.

In his book, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-

Semitism , Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg took a new stance on the issue. Before this publication, the

common view was that modern anti-Semitism was a right-wing trend that developed during the

late nineteenth century in opposition to the liberal concepts linked with the French Revolution.

Hertzberg said that instead of conflicting with French revolutionary theory, modern anti-

Semitism actually stems from it. He claimed that the ideas associated with modern, secular anti-

12 Kates 103-104.13

Kates 104.


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Semitism were characteristic of and included in the Revolution and the Enlightenment in and of

themselves. 14

One purpose of the Revolution was to transform French culture and install a free

republic, which required a significant break from the past. Changes in customs, habits, and

education, took place, including the creation of a new calendar and the restructuring of the

language itself in the post-revolutionary period. In an effort to question the dominance of

Catholicism, advocates of Jewish and Protestant civil liberties argued for the elimination of

words such as toleration that connoted a sense of Catholic superiority.15

Gary Kates argued that the Jews were a symbol of something else and that they provided

revolutionaries with a way to discuss the extent to which the Constitution should be democratic.

The Jewish question was a way to test the degree to which the words of the Declaration of

Rights of Man and Citizen would translate to equal political power for all Frenchmen. 16

The two perspectives on the treatment of Jewish people during the eighteenth century

have viewed the movement on one hand as a source of liberation, and on the other as a prelude to

culturally destructive assimilation and a consequential loss of Jewish identity. Ronald Schechter

notes that historians have tended to just accept the Jewish question of eighteenth-century

European history as a given and thus disregarded inquiry into why philosophes, reformers, and

revolutionaries were interested in the Jews to begin with. Eugene Weber made claim that the

Jewish question was no more than that and of little to importance to French gentiles who gave

little thought to the Jews as a people. Even Hertzberg admitted that the question of the Jews

was never, not in the 1770s and 1780s, of dominant importance in France or, for that matter,

elsewhere in Europe. This issue was to become a major storm center only in the nineteenth

14Kates 104-105

15 Singham 116.16

Schechter 86.


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century.17 Some feel that it was Herztberg who really created the image of an eighteenth-

century Jewish problem. Weber points out that Jews constituted .16 percent of the total

population in France, making up about 40,000 Jews, mainly in the northeastern region. Most of

them were very poor, and seldom left the Alsation countryside where they were protected by

their lords. Given these circumstances, it is not surprising to consider that the French may not

have thought about the Jews much at all.18

The road to Jewish citizenship during the French Revolutionary era was long and hard;

the optimal destination was never quite reached either. Enlightenment philosophies inspired the

French Revolutionaries to accept a religiously pluralistic society. Still, the very acts which gave

the Jews religious freedom in France contributed to the growth of modern anti-Semitism that

reached its peak in the Holocaust of the twentieth century and has never completely dissipated

since.

The question of slavery also played a prime role in the Revolutionary debates on

freedom. Some praise the Revolution for abolishing slavery and elevating the black man to the

dignity of citizenship; others consider the French abolition of slavery nothing more than an ex

post facto reaction to the black armed struggle for autonomy, the first successful slave revolution

in Western history. The emancipation of slaves in Saint Domingue 19 was hindered by the

importance of sugar raised in the West Indies to the French economy. 20

At the beginning of the Revolution, French colonies were very prosperous due to the

replacement of cacao and indigo with the sugar cane crop that produced nearly half of Europes

supply. The French colony of Saint Domingue held 30,000 whites, 28,000 freed blacks, and

17Hertzberg 48.

18Schechter 84.

19 The island of Hispaniola including Haiti and Santo Domingo.20

Singham 114-115.


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465,000 slaves who cultivated more sugar than the other West Indian islands. In March 1790,

Antoine Pierre Barnave, a lawyer from Grenoble, proposed that, in the interest of the French

economy, the Declaration and the Constitution not even apply to the colonies. The Code Noir

of 1685 allowed for a substantial class of free mulattoes and blacks in the colonies. In 1789,

representatives of this group came to Paris to demand equal status with the whites in the colony.

Mulattoes and blacks were subject to segregation and unequal treatment at the hands of the

whites, who were constantly reminding them of their alleged racial inferiority. The slaves were

treated so harshly that they were unable to produce enough offspring, and a growing number of

slaves had to be imported directly from Africa.21

As a result of the work of writers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, Filangieri,

and Raynal, it was in France that official acts striking a death blow to the most unjust of

institutions, [slavery,] would be announced for the first time. 22 In The Spirit of the Laws,

Montesquieu called for the abolition of slavery half a century before the Revolution even took

place. Speaking of slavery, Montesquieu said, It is not good by its nature In a monarchial

government where it is of sovereign importance never to abuse or defile human nature, there

must be no slaves. In a democracy where the laws themselves must provide that everyone shall

be as equal as the nature of government can permit, slaves violate the spirit of the constitution.23

Gradually, the words of Montesquieu began to ring true to the minds of the French Revolution.

The race issue was complicated further by the question of the colonial mulatto

population. Many of them were slaveholders themselves and thus wanted to ally with the white

planters. However, the whites feared this would encourage slaves to demand equal status as well.

21Cooper 45; Antoine Pierre Barnave, Speech of Barnave, March 8, 1790. Hunt, Lynn 109-111. Singham 129.

22Anna Julia Cooper, Slavery and the French Revolutionists, 1788-1805. (Lewistown and Queenston: The Edwin

Mellen Press, 1988), 35-36.23

Cooper 36.


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Vincent Og the Younger, a mulatto slaveholder, made a rather interesting motion to the

Assembly of Colonists in 1789. While he avowed that freedom should be given to all men, he

did not really mean allmen he was just advocating freedom for the mulattos. Considering he

himself was half black, it could be considered ludicrous that he owned fully black slaves to

begin with, but at the same time it makes sense that he would not want freedom for them because

then he could no longer make his living as a slaveholder. This was not the case with all mulattos,

as their position tended to range anywhere from totally backing the whites, to remaining

independent, to fully supporting rights for the black slave population. 24

Although an ocean separated them, the majority of the French knew, through travel

literature and treatises, of the severe difficulties the slaves and free blacks faced in the colonies.

In 1770 the Abb Raynal was exiled by the French government for publishing thePhilosophical

and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies.

The document used factual evidence to demonstrate European greed and misconduct in dealing

with her colonies, and was therefore outlawed, denounced as, impudent, dangerous, rash and

contrary to good morals and the principles of religion by the French Crown. Regardless, it was

published in 20 approved and 50 pirated editions before the death of Raynal in 1796, and gave

the people yet another reason to fight for the abolition of slavery. Regardless, even the most

adamant defenders of emancipation recognized that there would be consequences for the French

economy if the slave trade was abolished. As in the United States during its Revolutionary

period, some legislators voiced propositions for gradual end to slavery and the slave trade as well

as restructuring of the colonial economies. The Abolition of Negro Slavery or Means for

Ameliorating Their Lotfrom 1789 proposes to the National Assembly that slavery could be

24 Vincent Og the Younger,Motion Made by Vincent Og the Younger to the Assembly of Colonists, 1789.Hunt

103-104.


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phased out gradually, in the manner of a soldiers compulsory servitude in the military for a set

period of time. At the end of the term, freedom would be restored. 25

In addition to supporting citizenship for the Jews, the Abb Baptiste Henri Grgoire also

advocated rights for freed blacks. He spoke out for them in his Memoir in Favor of the People of

Color or Mixed-Race of Saint Domingue. He argued that granting citizenship to freed blacks

would help maintain the institution of slavery since it was they who made up the militias trained

to hunt runway slaves in the colonies. However he claimed to still believe in the ultimate

eradication of slavery as well. 26

Modeled on the Anti-Slavery Society of London, the Society of the Friends of the Blacks

was founded in February of 1788 Brissot, Siyes, and Condorcet. Brissot presented the

Discourse on the Necessity of Establishing in Paris a Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade

and of Negro Slavery, in which he explained, make men free, and they will necessarily and

rapidly become enlightened, and they will necessarily be better27. In theirAddress to the

National Assembly in Favor of the Abolition of the Slave Trade from February 5, 1790, the

society not only angered those who defended slavery based on the security of the French

economy, but were also accused of stirring up rebellion among the slaves, and were later

partially blamed for the revolt which broke out in Haiti in 1791. 28

25Singham 129; Abb Raynal,From the Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the

Europeans in the East and West Indies, 1770. Hunt 51-55. The Abolition of Slavery or Means for Ameliorating TheirLot, 1789. Hunt 101.26

Abb Grgoire,Memoir in Favor of the People of Color or Mixed-Race of Saint Domingue, 1789. Hunt 105-106.27 Society of the Friends of Blacks,Discourse on the Necessi ty of Establishing in Paris a Society for the Abolition of

the Slave Trade and of Negro Slavery, 1788. Hunt 58-59.28

Cooper 38; Society of the Friends of Blacks,Address to the National Assembly in Favor of the Abolition of the

Slave Trade, February 5, 1790. Hunt 106-107. John D. Garrigus, White Jacobins/Black Jacobins: Bringing the

Haitian and French Revolutions Together in the Classroom,French Historical Studies 23.2 (2000): 259-275.Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below. (Knoxville: University of

Tennessee Press, 1990.)


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Including mulattoes, free blacks, or black slaves in the French definition of citizenship

was even more difficult than the addition of the Jews. Unlike the Jews who, as a religious group

had, in the eyes of French Christians, the potential to be converted, the black population was a

visibly different race. This caused strong and divided tension among the National Assembly.

At last on February 4, 1794, the National Convention of the French Republic declared

that all slaves in French colonies were to be emancipated. The decree made all men equal

regardless of color, and thus entitled to French citizenship and protection under the Constitution.

In his February 18, 1794, speech to the Convention, national revolutionary leader Pierre Gaspard

Chaumette celebrated the abolition of slavery. 29

France paved the way to freedom for other European empires to follow when it abolished

slavery. While emancipation did bring an end to years of suffering on the part of the slaves, this

goal did not come without a cost many of the freedom fighters, such as Chaumette, were sent

to the guillotine during Robespierres Reign of Terror.

Little is known about the exact feelings and grievances of women prior to the meeting of

the Estates General in 1789. They lacked the right to assemble, draft grievances, and vote in the

preparatory elections, with very few and select exceptions. However, some wome n did record

their thoughts and grievances, expressing that, they did not wish to overturn mens authority;

they simply wanted the education and enlightenment that would make them better workers,

better wives, and better mothers.30 They expressed their concern the notion of women working

outside the household not be misconstrued as prostition. On January 1, 1789, thePetition of

Women of the Third Estate to the Kingwas submitted. In it, the women of the Third Estate

presented their plight and then told the King what could be done to improve their conditions.

29Cooper 36; Chaumette, Speech of Chaumette Celebrating the Abolition of Slavery, February 18, 1794. Hunt 116-

118.30

Hunt 60.


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Most women were born into poor families, and if they were offered any education at all, it

proved quite inadequate just enough to fulfill the first duties of religion. They went to work

making meager salaries. If they were not beautiful, they were often married to poor artisans, only

to bear and raise children in this insufficient environment, thus perpetuating the downward cycle.

Women who were pretty regularly fell prey to seduction and were then tossed aside and forced

into prostitution. Furthermore, girls were often written off from the very beginning simply

because of their sex; parents tended to place all of their value in a son who could carry on the

family name. To prevent this cycle from continuing, the women requested to be left at least with

the needle and the spindle, in which case they would promise never to handle the compass or

the square. In other words, they were asking to be provided with sufficient and appropriate

employment opportunities that would not interfere with the jobs of their male counterparts.

Further, so as to not be confused with prostitutes, they asked that such women be forced to wear

a specific mark of identification. Finally, they requested the establishment of free schools to

learn the language on the basis of principles, religion, and ethics and to preclude the ignorance

of their children by providing them with a sound and reasonable education. The goal of all of

this was, of course, to produce subjects better fit to serve the King. 31

Condorcet argued that if these natural rights were truly universal, they should apply to all

adults. In his debates he included Protestants, Jews, argued for the abolition of slavery and the

slave trade, and even went so far as to say that women should also receive political rights.32 In

his publication On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship from July 1790,

Condorcet hit the nail on the head when he wrote, Have they [the philosophers and legislators]

not all violated the principle of equality of rights by quietly depriving half of mankind of the

31 Petition of Women of the Third Estate to the King, January 1, 1789. Hunt 60-63.32

Hunt 119.


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right to participate in the formation of the laws, by excluding women from the rights of

citizenship? Although it was (and often still is) assumed that women are emotional beings while

men are rational beings, Condorcet argued that since women have the same ability to acquire

knowledge, feel emotion, and use reason that men possess, they too should be granted the natural

rights that men have. He claims that there is no truth in the assumption that women use emotion

instead of reason, and their feelings rather than their consciences, to guide themselves in

decision-making; and therefore, these cannot be justifications for the denial of rights to women. 33

Etta Palm dAelders, originally of the Dutch Republic and a member of the Cerce Social,

(Social Circle) that included Condorcet, addressed the Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in

Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women, to the Confederation of the Friends of Truth on

December 30, 1790. The first organization to allow female members, the Confederation argued

for the legalization of divorce, and equality for women as well as men. In the address, dAelders

claims that, Justice must be the first virtue of free men, and justice demands that the laws be the

same for all beings, like the air and the sun. Through her activism, dAelders managed to gain

the respect of the Revolutionary crowd. 34

While the Enlightenment philosophies leading up to the French Revolution and the

Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen symbolized a step forward for humanity, they did fail

to recognize half of the worlds population. TheDeclaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

held out the promise of a political coming of age for all humanity. However, the Declaration left

indeterminate the question of whether universal rights of man were rights of woman and

33Condorcet, On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship, July 1790. Hunt 119-121.

34 Etta Palm dAelders, Discourse on the Injust ice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women,

December 30, 1790. Hunt 122-123.


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whether, or in what sense, woman was a citoyenne. 35 Debates during the writing of the

Constitution(s) included this issue. In 1791 women were denied the political rights of active

citizenship and two years later were denied democratic citizenship. 36

In response to the complete lack of recognition, Marie Gouze produced The Declaration

of the Rights of Woman in September of 1791. Using the name Olympe de Gouges, Marie

published pamphlets and plays on societal issues including slavery, which she denounced to

greed and blind prejudice. 37 In the Preamble to her version ofThe Declaration, de Gouges

mocks the male writers of the first Declaration by using the same exact terminology but inserting

woman instead of man, or adding woman to places where the word man is used

showing how simple it could be to include the female race in granting citizenship. de Gouges

calls out for women to wake up and recognize their rights. She says, Women, when will you

cease to be blind? What advantages have you gathered in the revolution? A score more marked, a

disdain more conspicuous. This quote represents a thought common among women in the

revolution that while they played a significant role, they did not really gain any lasting or

immediate benefits out of it. She goes on to make an interesting comparison regarding women in

commerce and marriage when she says, Can reason hide the fact that every other road to fortune

is closed to a woman bought by a man, bought like a slave from the coast of Africa? de Gouges

somehow knew that although it might be impossible for people then to accept the equal

advancement of women, some day in the future it would happen, and until then women should

35Darline Gay Levy and Harriet B. Applewhite, Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris. Melzer

and Rabine 79.36 Levy and Applewhite 79-101.37

Hunt 124.


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prepare the way with national education, with the restoration of morals, and with conjugal

agreements. 38

In his February 12, 1791 oration On the Influence of the Revolution on Women, Louis

Marie Prudhomme recognized that the traditional roles of women have been defined by society

and that there is no real reason why they should not receive equal rights under the law. For the

most part, however, the prime justification for those against political rights for women was

womens traditional role to remain faithful to their husbands, raise children, and maintain a

peaceful, well-kept household. The ideal woman was to be gentle, reserved, and timid. It was

partially for this reason that the National Convention made a decree to prohibit clubs and popular

societies of women under any denomination. In his October 30, 1793, speech to the Convention,

Jean Baptiste Amar said that women were not nearly as fit as men to partake in governmental

and public affairs which demand knowledge, impassiveness, and abnegation. Further, he stated

that in no way should women be put in the position of having to sacrifice their traditional duties

to home and family. 39

In one discussion of citizenshipas it related to women, Pierre Guyomar suggested in April

1793 that the word citizeness either be banned from the language or have reality put into its

meaning. Guyomar was saying that if the legislators were not planning to give political rights to

women, the women should be referred to as what they were wives or daughters of citizens, not

38Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman, September 1791. Hunt 124-129.

39 Prudhomme, On the Influence of the Revolution on Women, February 12, 1791. Hunt 129-131; Olwen H.

Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution. (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of

Toronto Press, 1994), 89-130; Chantal Thomas, Heroism in the Feminine: The Examples of Charlotte Corday and

Madame Roland. Petrey, Sandy, ed. The French Revolution 1789-1989: Two Hundred Years of Rethinking.

(Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech Press, 1989,) 67; Chaumette, Speech at the General Council of the City Governmentof Paris Denouncing Womens Political Activism,November 17, 1793. Hunt 138-139; Godineau 268, 270; Jean

Baptiste Amar,Discussion of Womens Political Clubs and Their Suppression, October 29-30, 1793. Hunt 135-138.


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citizens themselves. While women of the popular classes and some from the middle-class

claimed citizenship, it was under a more general, non-political definition. 40

Women were excluded from the army during the Revolution. Some called for women to

abandon their traditional domestic roles and take up arms in a counterrevolution. Examples of

such militant citizenship include the womens march to Versailles in October 1789, womens

participation in armed demonstrations and their demands for the right to bear arms during the

spring and summer of 1792, and the organized uprising of women in the Society of

Revolutionary Republican women from spring to fall of 1793. In Prudhommes radical political

journalRvolutions de Paris, he urged women to claim their rights, responsibilities, and power

of citizenship through political education and vigilance. Prudhomme recognized the complaint

that it seemed as though there was only one sex in France, and that the entire female population

was being ignored. Women were designated only a few benches in the National Assembly, and if

they were allowed to speak at all it was only for a brief few minutes, after which time they were

quickly dismissed. During the reign of the Gauls, women were given the same civil andpolitical

rights as men. Prudhomme argued that there was never a reason to take these rights away in the

first place. 41

The Rousseauian account of womans influence on the Revolution claims that The

revolution that eventually established principles and practices of democratic politics for men also

would, and should, clarify differences between mens and womens natures, sharpen the

divisions between their roles in the public and private spheres, and overall drastically narrow the

40 Guyomar, The Partisan of Political Equality Between Individuals Discussion of Citizenship under the Proposed

New Constitution, Hunt 133-135; Levy and Applewhite 79.41

Godineau 269-270; Prudhomme 129-130; Levy and Applewhite 83-84; Darline Gay Levy, Womens

Revolutionary Citizenship in Action, 1791: Setting the Boundaries. Waldinger, Renne; Dawson, Philip; andWoloch, Isser; editors. The French Revolution and the Meaning of Citizenship. (Westport, Connecticut and London:

Greenwood Press, 1993) 169-184.


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parameters of womens citizenship.42 However, accounts of women reading and critiquing

political news tended to break down the Rousseauian (and common) view of women as frail

beings, intellectually dependent on men. 43

As far as women were concerned, during the French Revolution few tangible benefits

were achieved. Although women began to come together and speak out more for their rights,

any small advances made during the Revolutionary period were crushed by the restrictive Civil

Code of Napoleon a few years later.44 It was not until about a century later that women across the

[First] world began to make any significant political and economic strides.

Inspired by the philosophies of the Enlightenment, the French revolutionaries broke with

traditional symbols of power and authority, and struggled to create new images of a culturally

advanced society. No issue passed the Assembly, or the public for that matter, without a heated

debate. The four stages of the Revolution culminated in the creation of a new institution of

government that had not previously existed in France. Some historians have written it off as a

failed revolution for various social, political, and economic reasons, while others have praised it

as a vast step forward for humanity. Over time the historiography of the period has changed as

patterns of human thought have evolved, but the notion of the French Revolution as a revolution

for the people has remained undisputed.

42Levy 170.

43Levy 169-170; Landes 15-37.

44 The Napoleonic Code, or Civil Code of Napoleon during his reign in the early 1800s, placed many restrictions on

women and reinforced the notion of their alleged inferiority to men.


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WORKS CITED

BOOKS

Cooper, Anna Julia. Slavery and the French Revolutionists, (1788-1805.) Lewistown,

Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988.

Francis Richardson Kellers translation of Cooper, a black American of the 1920s, who studiedthe French Revolution and its relations to slavery in French Santo Domingo and the West Indies

with good attention paid to the international relations of the races.

Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below.Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.

Discusses the background to the revolution, the revolts of 1791, and the south.

Fehr, Ferenc, ed. The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity. Berkeley, Los

Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1990.

A collection of essays by scholars of the French Revolution. Quite notable is Gary Kates Jews

into Frenchmen: Nationality and Representation in Revolutionary France.

Godineau, Dominique. The Women of Paris and Their French Revolution. Berkely, LosAngeles, London: University of California Press, 1998.

Thoroughly discusses the roles of various types of women during the revolution, including the

working women, the Sansculottes Movement, etc.

Hertzberg, Arthur. The French Enlightenment and the Jews. New York, London,Columbia University Press: 1968.

The first book to look at the origins of modern anti-Semitism in the Enlightenment and theFrench Revolution; discusses the position of the Jews in France prior and up to the period of the

French Revolution during the Enlightenment.

Hufton, Olwen H. Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution.Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1992.

Focuses on three aspects of women in the French Revolution through four chapters: women and

politics; poverty and charity: revolutionary mythology and real women; in search of counter-revolutionary women; and the legacy: myth and memory.


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Melzer, Sarah E. and Rabine, Leslie W., editors.Rebel Daughters. New York, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1992.

Through various essays by female scholars of the revolution, discusses the formation of female

revolutionary ideology, the paradox of gender in the politics of the revolution, etc.

Petrey, Sandy, ed. The French Revolution 1789-1989: Two Hundred Years of Rethinking.

Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1989.

Collection of various scholarly essays on the revolution.

Van Kley, Dale, ed. The French Idea of Freedom: The Old Regime and theDeclaration of Rights of 1789. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994

Another collection of scholarly essays on the French Revolution; one that particularly stands outis Singhams Betwixt Cattle and Men: Jews, Blacks, and Women, and the Declaration of the

Rights of Man.

Waldinger, Renee; Dawson, Philip; and Woloch, Isser; editors. The French Revolutionand the Meaning of Citizenship. Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press,

1993.

A collection of scholarly essays on the French Revolution.

Wells, Charlotte C.Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France. Baltimore, London:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Discusses the practices and theories of citizenship in the sixteenth century, the transformation ofcitizenship in the seventeenth century, and the fortunes of citizenship in the eighteenth century.

ARTICLES

Desan, Suzanne. Whats after Political Culture? Recent French Revolutionary

Historiography,French Historical Studies 23.1 (2000): 163-196.

Looks at the socialist French historiographies of Furet and other historians surrounding the

bicentennial of the 1789 French Revolution in 1989.


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Garrigus, John D. White Jacobins/Black Jacobins: Bringing the Haitian and FrenchRevolutions Together in the Classroom,French Historical Studies 23.2 (2000):

259-275.

Connects the Haitian and French Revolutions by discussing the conditions in each pre-

revolutionary state.

Hess, Jonathan M. Introduction: Forum: Jewish Questions.Eighteenth-Century

Studies 32.1 (1998): 83-84.

Looks at the Jewish question during the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment periods, and

discusses Hertzberg and Schechter.

Schechter, Ronald. The Jewish Question in Eighteenth-Century France.Eighteenth-Century History 32.1 (1998): 84-91.

Discusses the plight of the Jewish people during the Revolutionary period.

Swenson, J. A Small Change in Terminology or a Great Leap Forward? Culture and

Civilization in Revolution. Modern Language Notes, 112.3 (1997): 322-348.

Discusses the paradoxes and ambiguities of the so-called steps forward of the FrenchRevolution.

PRIMARY SOURCES

Hunt, Lynn, ed.. The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief DocumentaryHistory. Boston, New York: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996.

Very useful collection of primary sources including from the French Revolution including The

Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen and theDeclaration of Rights of Woman among others,with good biographical references.

WEBSITES

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Washington, D.C.: the Center forHistory and New Media at George Mason University, and New York: the American Social

History Project at the City University of New York, supported by the Florence Gould Foundationand the National Endowment for the Humanities. American Social History Productions, Inc.,

2001. [cited 4 November 2001.] Available from the World Wide Web:(http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/index.html.)


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the question of citizenship in the french revolution

Documents