Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution (University of California Humanities Research Institute Series)

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the important and paradoxical relation between women and the French Revolution. Although the male leaders of the Revolution depended on women's active militant participation, they denied to women the rights that women helped to establish.;Contents; Contributors; 1. Introduction; 2. Representing the Body Politic: The Paradox of Gender in the Graphic Politics of the French Revolution; 3. "Love and Patriotism": Gender and Politics in the Life and Work of Louvet de Couvrai; 4. Incorruptible Milk: Breast-feeding and the French Revolution; 5. Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris; 6. "A Woman Who Has Only Paradoxes to Offer": Olympe de Gouges Claims Rights for Women; 7. Outspoken Women and the Rightful Daughter of the Revolution: Madame de Staël's Considérations sur la Révolution Française. This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines many facets of the important and paradoxical relation between women and the French Revolution. Recent research has unearthed evidence that women of all classes participated actively in the French Revolution, demanding bread for their families, and fighting for the same rights of equality and liberty that men claimed for themselves. The authors contend that although the male leaders of the Revolution depended on the women's active militant participation, they denied to them the rights women helped to establish. At the same time that women were being banned from the political sphere, woman was transformed into an allegorical figure which became the very symbol of (masculine) Liberty and Equality. Bringing together the work of historians and literary critics, this book's multidisciplinary approach provides readers with diverse interpretations of representations of history and culture. Containing the work of some of the most distinguished feminist scholars working today, Rebel Daughters analyzes how the revolutionary process constructed a new gender system at the very foundation of modern liberal culture. This compelling study will be essential reading for students and scholars of French literature, history, art history, and political theory. Contents Contributors 1. Introduction 2. Representing the Body Politic: The Paradox of Gender in the Graphic Politics of the French Revolution 3. "Love and Patriotism": Gender and Politics in the Life and Work of Louvet de Couvrai 4. Incorruptible Milk: Breast-feeding and the French Revolution 5. Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris 6. "A Woman Who Has Only Paradoxes to Offer": Olympe de Gouges Claims Rights for Women 7. Outspoken Women and the Rightful Daughter of the Revolution: Madame de Staël's Considérations sur la Révolution Française. 8. Triste Amérique: Atala and the Postrevolutionary Construction of Woman9. Being René, Buying Atala: Alienated Subjects and Decorative Objects in Postrevolutionary France 10. Exotic Femininity and the Rights of Man: Paul et Virginie and Atala, or the Revolution in Stasis 11. The Engulfed Beloved: Representations of Dead and Dying Women in the Art and Literature of the Revolutionary Era 12. "Equality" and "Difference" in Historica. This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the important and paradoxical relation between women and the French Revolution. Although the male leaders of the Revolution depended on the women's active militant participation, they denied to women the rights they helped to establish. At the same time that women were banned from the political sphere, "woman" was transformed into an allegorical figure which became the very symbol of (masculine) Liberty and Equality. This volume analyzes how the revolutionary process constructed a new gender system at the foundation of modern liberal culture. This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the important and paradoxical relation between women and the French Revolution. Although the male leaders of the Revolution depended on the women's active militant participation, they denied to women the rights they helped to establish. At the same time that women were banned from the political sphere, 'woman' was transformed into an allegorical figure which became the very symbol of (masculine) Liberty and Equality. This volume analyses how the revolutionary process constructed a new gender system at the foundation of modern liberal culture The further one delves into the subject of gender and the French Revolution, the less one can validate Francois Furet's contention that "the French Revolution is over."