This early alliance of feminists with utopian socialists foretold a pattern which would be repeated throughout the century, of feminists linking with and emerging from Left groups committed to social transformation and/or political equality. . . .

      Nineteenth-century French feminists began, then, with a utopian vision, and for sixty years they and the feminists who later continued their work -- Freceric Herbinot de Mauchamps, Flora Tristan, Jeanne Deroin, Desiree Gay, Juliette Adam, Jenny d'Hericourt, Leon Richer, Maria Deraismes, Hubertine Auclert, Leonie Rouzade, Eugenie Potonie-Pierre -- sought to identify the best means to translate vision into reality. Their ideological explorations, their changing priorities, and the development of their program for action are the focus of this study. " p. xi - xii

      First, by defining sovereignty in public rather than personal terms, the codification of laws during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries increasingly secluded women from power. With the simultaneous growth of the modern bureaucratic state and the capitalist economy came the need for well-trained secular personnel. Education came to be highly valued, and the centuries-old exclusion of women from the universities took on a new, more powerful significance. Family life was similarly undergoing a transformation, which further widened the gulf between boys and girls and men and women of the nobility and haute bourgeoisie. An increased number of years was deemed necessary to prepare boys for the expanded responsibilities of male adulthood. The same, however, was not true of girls." p. 3

      But Rousseau's appreciation of women's familial role was central to arguments that actually strengthened older patriarchal values by reformulating them in terms that were relevant to eighteenth-century society. Women's maternal responsibilities now required their exclusion from the civil, political, and economic activities that Rousseau championed for all men and even demanded their exclusion from the intellectual activities that several centuries of practice had seemingly legitimated:

      What makes you think more highly of [a woman] . . . -- to see her busy with feminine occupations, with her household duties, with her children's clothes about her, or to find her writing verses at her dressing table surrounded with pamphlets of every kind . . . ?
      The genuine mother of a family is no woman of the world; she is almost as much of a recluse as the nun in her convent." pp. 4 - 5

      Marie le Jars de Gournay, who in 1622 wrote Egalite des hommes et des femmes, went further than most. The mental and intellectual abilities of women, she wrote, would equal the degree of excellence attained by men if only women could be freed from their handicapped status, which was the result of faulty instruction and social limitation. And writing fifty years later, Francois Poullain de la Barre went even further. Christine de Pizan had defended the female sex by compiling lists of the achievements of women, culled from history and mythology, to prove that women were at least equal, if not superior, to men. Marie de Gournay had based her arguments on the authority of God, the church fathers, and the great thinkers of all times. In contrast, Poullain applied the Cartesian method of rational examination -- "to accept nothing as true which I don 't evidently know to be such" -- to question sexual inequality. His method yielded a doctrine far more revolutionary in its implications than those of any of his predecessors: Poullain became the first writer in the French language to link women's oppression to patriarchy.

      Poullain argued that no field of intellectual endeavor, nor any profession, should be closed to women. He specifically mentioned teaching, the ministry, law, and monarchy or state governance. Acknowledging that it might at first seem surprising, even shocking, to see a woman occupy a chair at a university, march at the head of a police force, argue a legal case, preside over a court, lead an army, or act as an ambassador, he held that it would be strange merely because of the novelty. If women had from the beginning been admitted to the various professions, it would not cause any more astonishment to see them in government positions than in shops. The insistence that women's education be considered in relation to their needs as individuals, not just in respect to their duties as wives or mothers, places Poullain's work in an entirely different category from that of his predecessors or his illustrious contemporaries, Fenlon and Madame de Maintenon. He was not only the first writer in the French language to link women's handicaps to patriarchy but also the first to state approvingly that the purpose of an improved education for women was to overturn male domination.

      During the eighteenth century, interest in women's issues continued unabated, although no Enlightenment writer developed as far-reaching a feminist position as had Poullain or even the less daring Marie de Gournay. Nonetheless, the basic liberalism of the writers of that era guaranteed that women's plight would be treated with some sympathy. Furthermore, the willingness of the Enlightenment philosophers to question the basic immutability of apparently natural characteristics had revolutionary implications for the status of women. Voltaire wrote that women's inferiority was contingent upon circumstances, not upon natural necessity. Montequieu symbolized human tyranny in the person of a young Persian girl falsely presumed to be happy in her place in the king's harem. In De l'espirit des lois, he advocated equality of treatment of men and women in divorce. In the Encyclopedie, women were judged equal to men in intellectual capacity; their limited education was the reason they had not realized their full potential. Diderot, in his treatise on public education, pointed out that improved education for boys would be in vain if effective reforms were not also carried out for the training of girls. D'Alembert defended women's right to an education equal to men's in a direct challenge to Rousseau, Response a la letter de Jean-Jacques Rousseau sur les spectacles.

      It is not surprising, then, that a feminist perspective on the women's issue reemerged with the Revolution. The years immediately preceding the storming of the Bastille witnessed a stepped-up circulation of pamphlets and brochures on a host of social and political problems. The woman question was not neglected among them. Madame de Coicy published Les Femmes comme il convient de les voir (1787); Madame Gacon-Dufour issued her Memoire pour le sexe feminin contre le sexe masculin (1787). Historian Evelyne Sullerot has discovered other brochures in a Bibliotheque Nationale collections: La Tres humble remonstrance des femmes francaises (1788); and the Lettre au peuple of Olympia de gouges. A document of January 1, 1789, addressed to the king -- Petition des femmes du Tiers Etat au roi -- demanded improved educational opportunities for women and insisted that certain occupations be reserved for them "so that we can be able to live, protected from misfortune." The Cahier des doleances et reclamation des femmes, signed Madame B----- B-----, went further, to demand political rights for those who had fiscal responsibilities: "We believe that it is equally just to collect their grievances, at the foot of the throne; that it is equally just to collect their votes, since they are required, like men, to pay royal taxes and to pay commercial fees.: She demanded not only a better education ("do not raise us as if we were destined for the pleasures of the harem"), but also that the Estates General recognize women's rights to marry according to their individual desires." pp. 7-9

      For unemployed young women an even more common solution to the problem of survival was prostitution. During the nineteenth century, a system of legal prostitution, involving registration and police regulation, existed, but clandestine prostitutes accounted for two-thirds of the total estimated number -- a number which, for the city of Paris, is said to have tripled in the first three decades of the century." pp. 29-30

      Felicie R. . . .daughter of honest peasants, worked at the home of M. C. . . . notary, when it appeared that she was pregnant. She denied this energetically, and, indeed, one day, after a momentary indisposition, she reappeared, svelte, and only a little pale.
      Now, some people doubt everything. Felicie's indisposition came under suspicion, and was denounced; the police commissioner came with a doctor who declared that there had been a delivery. They searched for the child, and discovered it -- where they are always discovered -- in the privy.
      Paternity suits being forbidden by the Law made by fathers, inquiry concerning the identity of the father was made only to know if Felicie had an accomplice in the infanticide. She took it all on herself and courageously refused to name anyone.
      She was arrested, tried, and condemned to death. . . .
      Now, among the jurors was the notary in whose service Felicie was working.
      In the room to which the jury had retired for deliberation, after the evidence had been presented, the notary began suggesting that there had been "extenuating circumstances." But another juror, who had some kind of grudge against the notary, suggested, while smiling, that it was perhaps he who was the father. The notary blushed, and hastened to retract his first opinion and to cast his vote in favor of the death sentence.
      The other votes were cast. A moment later the bell rang to announce to the public that the defendant's fate was determined. . . . The defendant was brought in, then the judges, then the jurors; all eyes turned anxiously to the jury foreman. The notary's enemy was the only one who noticed that Felicie's employer lowered his head and became horribly pale.
      The jury foreman read the indictment.
      To this question: "Is the defendant guilty?" the answer was: "Yes, unanimously."
      Felicie uttered a cry: "Unanimously?" she questioned. And she stared at the notary.
      The jury foreman repeated: "Unanimously."
      "Well!" she said, "when I was asked if I had an accomplice, I said no; I lied! I did more than lie, for it was not I who killed the child, it was the father. And that wasn't good enough for him, now he is going to kill the mother!" . . . .
      The prosecutor, greedy to have another victim, signaled to let her continue speaking.
      "So, you bourgeois! It's not enough that you get us pregnant, that you then kill our children out of fear that they would shame you at home and in the community! You must, in addition, be our judges and sentence us. And then you will go back home, all virtuous, and preach morality to your daughters! Unanimously, you said? In that case, I'll be following the baby to its death -- but you will follow me! Mr. Foreman, I was only an accomplice: there is the assassin!"
      And she pointed to the notary.
      The notary was arrested and sentenced to death in his turn.
      But the judge took into consideration the fact that he was a father, a friend of Order, and went regularly to church on Sundays, and pardoned him due to "extenuating circumstances."

      If marriage was the ultimate goal of the young bourgeois woman, what happened to the woman who did not marry? According to the nineteenth-century republican theorist Jules Michelet, "The worst fate for a woman was to live alone. . . . So many difficulties. . . she could hardly go out in the evening; she would be taken for a prostitute. There are thousands of places where only men go, and if some business should take the woman there, one would be astonished. . . . For example, if she were late, far from home, and became hungry, she would not dare enter a restaurant. . . . She would make a spectacle of herself." And the historian Adeline Daumard concurs: "the old maid was a burden, useless and disdained. In truth, the older spinster woman, almost always with very limited resources, lived so completely on the edge of society that she hardly even belonged to the bourgeoisie. Balzac's Cousine Bette reveals the bitterness and shame hiding in the heart of one spinster, who had seemed devoted to her family. Aunt Lison of Maupassant's Une Vie is a similar character. The lack of a dowry usually explained the existence of a spinster, and thus her condition was shameful for a family's honor.

      The unmarried middle-class woman who did not have a brother or cousin who would charitably take on her support had few options. She might be a teacher in a public primary school for girls or a girls' pension or a private instructor of music, art, or foreign languages. In any of these professions, her existence was marginal. Elementary school teachers were described by Edith Thomas as "a decently dressed proletariat." More than four thousand schoolteachers each earned less than four hundred francs annually; almost two thousand earned one or two hundred francs. Many instructors in the private boarding schools earned only room and board. Individual private instruction was the least remunerative of all. (According to Daubie, in Paris in 1860, more than three thousand female piano teachers were competing with each other.) And the life of a governess was hardly different from the lives of other servants." pp. 34-35

      Most frequently, those who challenged the entrenched system were brought to their revolutionary perception by special circumstances -- either involvement with other radical political activities or atypical opportunities for intellectual and political growth. Their numbers were small." p. 38

      The utopian socialist feminists were very different from their Revolutionary predecessors. In the first place, they opposed revolution because of its association with violence and terror. Second, they were Romantics rather than Enlightened rationalists. They were spiritual, mystical, and visionary. Concerned with morality, sentiment, and the emotions, they were determinedly nonpolitical or even antipolitical. They called themselves socialists to indicate that they wished to create new ways for individuals and classes to relate to each other. The form of the political regime -- whether it be a monarchy or a republic, for example, was of little concern. Third, they were internationalists and pacifists, opposed not only to war but even to national boundaries." pp. 41-42

      "The most prominent of the Saint-Simonian women from 1829 to 1831 was Claire Bazard; the "mother" to the "daughters" of Saint-Simon, she was in charge of their indoctrination." p. 51

      "Aglae Saint-Hilaire and Cecile Fournel were next in importance after Bazard." p. 52

      "Eugenie Niboyet, who was active in the Societe de la Morale Chretienne, a group which in 1830 shared its lecture halls with the Saint-Simonians, stayed one day to hear the Saint-Simonians speak and was won over to their cause; in turn, she "converted" her husband and son to the new group." p. 52

      "Susan Voilquin became a Saint-Simonian late in 1830." p. 53

      "Some of their projects -- such as a medical and pharmaceutical service, a free vaccination program for children, and a cooperative workshop for seamstresses -- reached out directly to women." p. 53

      But that experience was fraught with contradictions. Although Saint-Simonian theory encouraged women to believe themselves equal to men, the reality did not uphold the ideology. The story of the Saint-Simonian women parallels, in ways that are thought-provoking, the experience of American women in the nineteenth-century abolition movement and in the new Left of the 1960s. Out of the contradiction of their subordinate role within a male-dominated social change movement that touted egalitarianism, women became feminists and ultimately built a separate and autonomous movement.

      Initially, Enfantin wrote letters indicating that he did not consider women to be the true equals to men. The distinction he conceptualized between the "natures" of men and women would empower men with rights that women would not share. In August 1829 he wrote to Charles Duveyrier: "Would woman be more powerful than man? yes, religiously; no, politically. Yes, when it comes to reminding us of our goals; no, when it comes to conceptualizing or administering the means of attaining our goals. Yes, as prophet revealing the future; no, when we must administer the social movement which will bring that future into being." These words, of course, were an expression of patriarchal Romanticism, seeing woman as inspiration, man as historical agent.

      By 1831, however, Saint-Simonian theory was clearer that women and men should share power and all public functions including governance of the "church": "All law that has been made by man alone if bad, for it is progressive to woman. All law should be made by man and by woman." " pp. 54-55

      The first issue, undated, was entitled La Femme libre (The free woman), an unfortunate choice that exposed the fledgling enterprise to public ridicule. The second took the title Apostolat des femmes (The apostolate of women) and used the words "La Femme libre" in smaller type above the title. The third issue removed the words "La Femme libre" and substituted for them "La Femme de l'avenir" (The woman of the future). The fourth issue used "La Femme nouvelle" (The new woman) in small type above Apostolate des femmes; later issues place "La Femme nouvelle" above Affranchissement des femmes (The emancipation of women). Finally, La Tribune des femmes (The tribune of women) was settled on. Issues number three and four of the newspaper carried the slogan:

      With the emancipation of woman
      Will come the emancipation of the worker.

Later issues declared:

      Liberty for women, liberty for the people through
      a new organization of the household and industry.

And eventually the slogan became:

      Equality among us, of rights and duties;
      Since our banner is to pain,
      It is just that it be to honor (Jeanne d'Arc.)

      In publications, the editors used only first names, a symbolic gesture of female emancipation from masculine control: "We who bear men must give them our name and take our name from our mothers and from God . . . . If we continue to take men's names. . . .we shall [continue to] be slaves." The first issue named Jeanne-Desiree (Desiree Veret) the founder, and Marie-Reine (Reine Guinford) the director. Both were young seamstresses, ages twenty-two and twenty, respectively. In September Suzanne (Suzanne Voilquin) joined Marie-Reine as codirector. Some months later, Marie-Reine gave up her administrative responsibilities to devote more time to teaching in a night school for poor women, but she continued to write articles for the journal. Suzanne Voilquin continued to direct the publication, sometimes alone, sometimes with a codirector (Isabelle, Celestine, or Angelique).

      Among other regular contributors were Marie-Pauline (Pauline Roland), Jeanne-Victoire (Jeanne Deroin), Isabelle (Isabelle Gobert), Celestine (Celestine Montagny), and several who cannot be identified beyond their first names -- Sophy-Caroline, Amanda, Nancy, Angelique, Jospehine-Felicite, Christine-Sophie-- destined to be known only as they designated themselves, femmes proletaires. Other writers, clearly sympathizers, nonetheless distanced themselves from the regular contributors by signing two names -- Caroline Beranger, Angeline Pignot, Adele Miguet, Louise Dauriat, and Adele de Saint-Amand.

      Specific biographical information is available for only a few of the regular contributors to the Tribune des femmes, but, from the little that can be pieced together about them, it appears that they were either of the lower levels of the urban middle class or the upper levels of the working class. Suzanne Voilquin labels them all femmes proletaires, as does Pauline Roland in an 1834 letter to Charles Lanbert. Voilquin had been an embroiderer before her association with Saint-Simonism. Roland was an instructor (sous-maitresse sans appointment) in a girls' boarding school in 1832; she began her always uncertain career as a free-lance journalist in 1834. Reine Guindorf and Desiree Veret were seamstresses. None of the women were from the former Saint-Simonian hierarchy, which in contrast, consisted entirely of bourgeois women.

      The women of the Tribume des femmes also differed from those of the former hierarchy by their greater distance from the men of the hierarchy. Most were either unmarried or, if living with a man in either marriage of "free union", were with men who held no power within the Saint-Simonian establishment and had played no role in the development of its ideology. Unlike Cecile Fournel's Foi nouvelle: Livre des actes, the Tribune des femmes was entirely the inspiration of the women rather than of Enfantin or other male leaders. The journal also did not receive any direct financial support from the Saint-Simonian group." pp. 63-66

      First, the "new women" were threatened by the hardship of social isolation. Following her "divorce," Suzanne Voilquin experienced this

      [Enfantin to Voilquin] Well, dear daughter, I received your letter, are you free now?
      [Voilquin] Independent, yes Father, but free, in the accepted meaning of that word, oh no, less than ever. I am prepared to accept responsibility for my actions, but in the face of the world, I remain isolated outside of the law, under constant suspicion.

      Both Claire Bazard and Euphrasie Rodrigues, having privately confided "indiscretions" to Enfantin, were humiliated by having their secrets divulged to the College. Family life became burdensome. Claire Bazard wrote, "Among us, we are oblige to reveal all the secrets of the heart; . . .we lose, little by little, our spontaneity; we withdraw into ourselves. . . we write no more letters which became like bulletins of the Grand Army. This farce that we can love everyone in the same way results in loving no one." pp. 75-76

      This short period of time during which some of these "new women" championed sexual activity for women outside of marriage coincided with the brief period in which they had cause to view their economic future optimistically. The "new women" were, for the most part, young, unmarried, self-supporting, and living apart from their families of birth. They expected that their financial independence would continue." pp. 79-80

      As a general thesis: Social progress and changes from one era to the next are brought about in proportion to the progress of women toward freedom, and social decline is brought about in proportion to the decrease in women's freedom       Other events influence political change; but there is no other cause that produces so rapid a social improvement or so rapid a social decline as the change in women's lot." p. 92.

      In Theorie des quarte mouvements, Fourier placed women center stage in the drama of history. Not only did the position of women serve as an indicator, measuring and setting the standard for the degree of progress of a particular epoch, but, more significantly, a change in the position of women acted as a catalyst for other change, forcing a culture upward or downward in historical evolution. The emancipation of women would serve to liberate the entire human race. Conversely, human progress would forever be blocked if the talents and capacities of half the human race were not fully used. Human liberty remained a chimera if all humans, male and female, were not free: "Now, God only recognizes as freedom that which extends to both sexes, and not just to one; thus, he willed that all precepts of social men, in the stages of savagery, barbarity, and civilization, derive from the servitude of women; and that all precepts of social good, such as in the 6th, 7th, and 8th stages, derive from the emancipation of the fair sex."

      Fourier's complex cosmology viewed human progression through stages of development. France had already passed through savagery, patriarchy, and barbarity and was then in the stage of civilization (nothing to boast about, in Fourier's vocabulary). Higher stages were the fifth, sixth, and seventh ones. In the final (eight) utopian stage of human progress, which Fourier named Harmony, men and women would be equal, free, and productive. A unique educational system would scrupulously treat girls and boys alike. Fourier even demanded that the two sexes dress the same, in recognition of the variety of ways that socialization may affect equality. In Harmony, women would not be excluded from any social or economic function, "not even from medicine or teaching." The corps of professors ("le corps Sybillin"), the most important in his social system, would include as many women as men. True, Fourier declared that men were more gifted in science, women in the arts, and that many occupations would be more suited to one or the other sex. But no function would ever have fewer than one-eighth representation of one or the other sex." p. 92-93

      Herbinot had overstepped the boundaries of acceptable protest. In the spring of 1838, he and Poutret were tried for "corruption of morals." The charges against them recall the charges that had sent Enfantin and Chevalier to prison for a year. The case against Poutret and Herbinot is shrouded in mystery. Both Puech and Sullerot have examined the court records as best they could -- much of it was huis clos -- as well as the press accounts of their trials. Herbinot was accused of seducing three young women who worked in his home as domestics. Two withdrew their accusations, but one of them insisted he was guilty. Herbinot was convicted and condemned to prison for ten years. Poutret was tried as an accomplice, acquitted, then tried again in a different court for "Habitual incitement to debauchery." The prosecutor, declaring that in the publications she directed, "everything that is disgusting to good morals is exalted," this time he got the guilty verdict he had sought. Poutret was sent to prison for eighteen months.

      Both Sullerot and Puech suggest that the charges against Herbinot and Poutret were trumped up. The biographical information that both authors have uncovered does not suggest that Herbinot was given to "debauchery." According to Sullerot, the court record indicates that in 1830 Herbinot was found guilty of a similar crime, but Sullerot believes that the 1830 charges may also have been fabricated; his crime then most likely related to his role on the opposition newspaper L'Opinion. Even if he was guilty as charged in 1838, Herbinot's sentence was extremely severe. In France in the 1830s, it was extraordinary for a man of property to be found guilty of seducing a nineteen-year-old servant and be imprisoned for ten years for that crime. The case against Poutret was even more obviously unfair; she was found guilty of charges that related entirely to the Gazette des femmes. The fate of Poutret and Herbinot was unexpectedly severe, reminding us that it was very dangerous to espouse even a moderate version of feminism in the 1830s." p. 106

In the life of the workers, woman is everything. She is their provident. If she is missing, everything is missing. It is woman who makes or breaks a home. . . . As a mother, she influences man during his childhood, it is from her and only her that he draws his first notions of this science so important to acquire, the science of life. . . . As a sweetheart, she influences him during his entire youth. . . . As a wife, she influences him during three-fourths of his life. -- Lastly, as a daughter, she influences him in his old age.

      Whereas Enfantin made woman central to human emancipation because of her special nature, Tristan exalted woman because of her unique role within the family.

      Despite her emphasis on women's domestic influence, however, Tristan did not envision limiting women's role to the family. She attacked the subordination of women within marriage and called for two changes that would liberate women from marital bondage: the right to work at a remunerative wage equal to men's and the reinstitution of divorce, without which all women were condemned to one or another form of prostitution." pp. 100-111

      The ability to earn the same wage for the same work was, in Tristan's estimation, simple justice for women; it was also seen as a necessity for male workers:

[Men] workers, you have not foreseen the disastrous consequences for you that would result from a similar injustice that is to the prejudice of your mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. What has happened? The manufacturers, seeing how women workers are working faster and at half the pay, discharge every day men workers from their shops and replace them with women workers -- And men fold their arms and die of hunger in the street! -- That is how the factory heads have proceeded in England -- Once entered upon this path, women are discharged to be replaced by twelve-year-old children.-- Saving of half of the salary! At last, only seven- or eight-year-old children are given jobs. -- If you let one injustice go by then you may be sure that it will give birth to thousands of others.

      The lifting of all restrictions on the press and assembly allowed feminists to regroup and renew their propaganda. From March until June their activities kept pace with the generally stepped-up rate of mass political involvement. (In Paris alone, 171 new newspapers and some 200 to 450 political clubs came into existence between March and mid-June.) On March 19, Eugenie Niboyet began to publish Voix des femmes, a "socialist and political journal, organ of the interests of all women." It was the French feminists' first daily political newspaper. Niboyet was immediately joined by feminists who had earlier been active in Saint-Simonism or Fourierism or had written for the Gazette des femmes: Jeanne Deroin, Desiree Gay (formerly Veret), Suzanne Voilquin, Elisa Lemonnier, and Anais Segalas. Among the signers of articles are popular writers like Gabrielle Soumet, Amelie Prai, and Adele Esquiros. Unlike the Tribune des femmes, the Voix des femmes did not exclude men. Articles were written by Victor Hugo, Jean Mace, and Paulin Niboyet (Eugenie Niboyet's son). But the concept of feminist autonomy, if not female separatism, was retained. The first issue noted, "It is a mistake to believe that by improving the lot of men, that by that fact alone, the lot of women is improved." "p. 138

      That 1848 feminists had rejected the Saint-Simonian love-priestess image is not surprising; it was too closely tied to Enfantin's system of sexual morality. Feminist feared, with good reason, that the public would connect feminism to "immorality," and they hastened to reassure their audience. Not that they were covering up their real feelings: by 1848, there were no sexual radicals among them. When feminists discussed sexual issues, they talked only about women's vulnerability to men's exploitation, never of women's potential sexual pleasure." p. 133

      God created the human species double; we utilize but half of it. Nature says two; we say one. We must agree with Nature. . . . The feminist spirit is stifled, but not dead. . . . We cannot annihilate at our pleasure a force created by God, or extinguish a torch lighted by his hand. . . . Let us then open wide the gates of the world to this new element, we have need of it.

      The general repression fell upon women with particular severity. On June 28, they were forbidden to participate in political clubs. The Politique des femmes was doubly struck. First, Deroin had difficulty raising the "caution" money and could publish only one other issue (August) during all of 1848. Then when she finally secured adequate financial backing -- Hortense Wild and the former Saint-Simonian Olinde Rodrigues came to her aid-- the government required her to change the journal's name to Opinion des femmes. "La Politique" was denied to women." p. 145

      "There is a blending of old and new ideas, old and new priorities, in idees anti-proudhoniennes. Alongside Saint-Simonian arguments that honor womanly capacities and emphasize their value to society, Adam placed new arguments that were derived from a recognition of the rights of individuals. These arguments were, in fact, not new; they recalled feminism's French Revolutionary past. Their reemergence in mid-nineteenth century prepared the later alliance between feminism and republicanism." p. 167

Let us leave each one to make her own autonomous law and to manifest herself in conformity with her nature, and take care only that rights shall be equal for all; that the strong shall not oppress the weak; that each function shall be entrusted to the one individual that is proved the best qualified to perform it. . . . Let us refrain then from all classifications of faculties and functions according to sex. Besides being false, they will lead us to cruelty; for we shall oppress those, whether men or women who are neither yielding enough to submit to it nor hypocritical enough to appear to do so; and we shall do this without profit to human destiny, but, on the contrary, to its detriment. p. 170

      The Falloux Law of 1850 had required that communes of more than eight hundred persons establish girls' primary schools, an improvement over earlier governments' neglect of girls' schooling. Then, in 1867, the freethinker Victor Duruy (minister of public instruction during the Empire's more liberal phase) required girls' primary schooling in communes of five hundred persons. He established the first secondary level courses (not yet schools) for girls at this same time. It seemed, from the outpouring of books on the subject, that nearly everyone now favored a serious education for girls, or at least young girls. But opinion divided sharply over the role of the church. Before the passage of the Falloux Law, the church held a near monopoly on girls' education. The Falloux Law left the church's advantage over the state intact primarily by making it difficult for women other than nuns to obtain teaching positions. Although secular teachers were severely underpaid, nuns who did not have to meet the same certification requirements as secular instructors, could be paid even less. Duruy's secondary-level courses, taught by secular teachers, were viewed as a threat to the church's role in girls' schooling, and the church (led by Monseigneur Felix Dupanloup, the bishop of Orleans) opposed the courses primarily for this reason." pp. 174-175

      In 1878, feminists were all on the side of the Republic. Already the republican victory in the 1877 Chamber of Deputies's election had worked for them: prohibitions against their public meetings had been lifted, and they were free to move ahead with their plans for an international congress. In 1879, the government gave its stamp of approval to their Societe pour l'Amelioration du Sort des Femmes. Then, in 1881, after the republicans were firmly entrenched in power, the Ferry government passed a series of laws aimed at guaranteeing the fundamental liberties promised in the Declaration of the Rights of Man but only rarely permitted in the century then: the law of June 30, 1881, guaranteed the freedom of assembly, and the law of July 29 guaranteed the freedom of the press. No longer would feminists have to obtain prior government approval for their meetings or public lectures, no matter the size of their expected audience. No longer would they have to secure large sums for "caution" money or obtain prior official approval for their journals. Finally, women were free to publish political newspapers.

      One cannot overestimate the importance of these measures to the future of the French feminist movement. Before 1881, feminism had had a start-and-stop history. Arbitrary governments had the necessary apparatus to check energetic feminists whenever it was deemed that they had gone too far. Continuous censorship effectively limited the impact of the feminists' message. And from time to time, harsher forms of repression swept away feminists whose experience and leadership skills threatened the status quo. Historians who look for an explanation for the slowness with which feminist victories were achieved in modern France all too often overlook the obvious -- the effectiveness of repressive governments in delaying the development of a mass movement.

      The establishment of the Third Republic initiated a new phase in the history of the French feminist movement. For the first time, feminist groups survived beyond their infancy to reach maturity. Leaders who directed feminist efforts during these years did so for decades until retirement or death, not repression, removed them from the scene. They gained experience over the years and won more and more friends to their cause. Their organizations and their newspapers were institutionalized, and the next generation of leaders, theorists, and organizers were trained before the first retires.

      The feminist program during the 1870s and the 1880s was the result of the collaboration of two dominant personalities: Maria Deraismes and Leon Richer. Deraismes was primarily active on the lecture circuit, and Richer ran the paper, Le Droit des femmes. Both were well known and respected by people who held power and could effect change.

      Maria Deraismes was especially well known. Following her death, both Paris and Pontoise named streets after her. In Pontoise, where her country estate was located, she was the leader of the republican party. In 1881, she took over a daily political newspaper, La Republicain de Seine-et-Oise, which successfully backed republicans for politician office from this formerly monarchist stronghold. Deraismes was also active in the anticlerical movement. She was honorary president of the Federation de Groupes de la Libre Pensee of Seine-et-Oise, and in 1881 she served as vice-president of the first Anticlerical Congress. She successfully fought the exclusion of women from French Masonic lodges and became, in 1882, the first woman member of the lodge Les Libres Penseurs du Pecq. The lodge was soon dissolved as a result of this act of "impropriety," but in 1893, immediately before Deraismes's death, the Masons acceded to her efforts. With Georges Martin, she founded the first mixed lodge, La Grande Loge Symbolique Ecossaise de France Le Droit Humain.

      Leon Richer, although more humbly born, was also well connected to the moderate republican leadership and, like Deraismes, his activities spanned the full range of republican concerns, including anticlericalism. He was a journalist who, during the 1860s, had written a weekly column, "Lettres d'un libre-penseur a un cure de village" for Adolphe Gueroult's L'Opinion national. From 1869, he was feminism's most tireless organizer, putting together both the 1872 banquet and the 1878 congress. Because Le Droit des femmes always had financial difficulties and could therefore never employ a sizable staff or pay outside contributors, the journal remained the personal expression of his ideas. He was, until his retirement in 1891, its principal writer (although often under the pseudonyms Georges Bath or Jeanne Mercoeur)." pp. 197-199

      Eleven countries and sixteen organizations were officially represented at the 1878 congress." p. 207

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