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Hubertine Auclert

1848-1914

Auclert's life spanned a tumultuous era: born in Tilly, France in the revolutionary year of 1848, Auclert died on August 8, 1914, as Europe was preparing for what would become World War I. Her father was a "local notable," a relatively well-to-do peasant who was influential in local politics, specifically republican politics, at a time when republican meant radical and left-wing.

Raised as a pampered child of the well-to-do, against her will, her father sent her to convent school when she was eight years old. Auclert adapted to her new environment, eventually attracting notice for her intense piety. In 1864, at age sixteen, she sought to join the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Rejected by the religious order because of her independent streak, Auclert, devastated, returned to her family home where she resided with her now-widowed mother.

The exact nature of the conversations about women and marriage which occurred between Auclert and her mother have not been preserved for posterity. Later in life, Auclert acknowledged that "certain confidences" between them caused Auclert to fear masculine violence within marriage. It is possible that her mother was beaten by her husband. After all, the folk wisdom of the time held that "women and omelets are never beaten enough." Under her mother's influence, Auclert developed a certain rebelliousness and independence.

When her mother died in 1866, her brother, now the head of the family, sent her to a new convent as a "paying resident." Auclert had long gotten over the trauma of being rejected by religious orders, and, indeed, had intellectually moved quite a distance from the intense piety of her youth. Afraid that she would be confined to the convent for life, Auclert began to accentuate her feminist ideal and independence, eventually getting kicked out of the convent.

In 1871, Auclert came of age and was given control over the money she had inherited from her father. The income from her inheritance enabled Auclert to live comfortably without depending on her own wages, a husband, family and friends, or charity for the remainder of her life. Because she did not have to concern herself with money, she could choose whatever life she wanted. Perhaps, more importantly, she would be able to express her ideas boldly and openly without fearing financial reprisals for exceeding the bounds of propriety.

In 1872, Auclert read a speech given by Victor Hugo to the first great banquet organized to promote the "emancipation" of French women. In it Hugo had equated women and slaves saying, "It is sad to say, that there are still slaves in today's civilization. The law uses euphemisms. Those whom I call slaves, it calls minors; these minors according to the law and slaves according to reality, are women. . . . Women cannot own, they are outside the legal system, they do not vote, they do not count, they do not exist. There are citizens, THERE ARE NOT CITIZENESSES. This is a violent fact; it must cease."

A committed Republican, Auclert was horrified to come to understand that THERE ARE NOT CITIZENESSES. Such a situation she must change. At that moment, she became a devoted suffragist, not merely a woman's rights activist or one who worked to ameliorate the conditions of women. She would be the instrument by which women became French citizens. Auclert channeled the same devotion which she once felt for the church into her new cause – votes for women.

In 1873 Auclert's brother allowed her to move to Paris to live with her older sister, Delphine, and her husband, a retired army captain. Auclert took her inheritance, said "Good-bye" to Tilly, and moved to Paris. Auclert thrived in her new environment. Upon arriving in Paris Auclert joined Léon Richer's and Maria Deraismes's feminist group.

By now, the French Third Republic had been established, but almost no one expected it to long endure. Republicans held back from pushing their agenda both for fear that the Third Republic would fall and for fear of retaliation. The government continued to restrict freedoms by requiring prior authorization for public lectures, regulating the press, and tracking dissidents . Richer's and Deraismes' feminist program was modest, perhaps because they feared retribution in another reactionary crack-down, perhaps because they understood the limitations on the current government. Nonetheless, Auclert joined their organization where she apprenticed in the art of organization building and leadership, meeting newspaper editors and journalists, leaders of the political parties, and activists in several reform organizations, writing emotion-laden polemics and fact-filled newspaper articles, and organizing and leading meetings and volunteers.

After several years, Auclert grew apart from Richer and Deraismes when she came to understand that they would not endorse her suffrage goals. In 1876, she left their organization to found the organization, La Droit des femmes (Women's Rights), and, later, the newspaper, La Citoyenne (The Citizeness), both devoted specifically to winning suffrage for French women. None of the feminist organization that came into being in the last portion of the 19th century drew more than a few hundred members. Nonetheless, in the long term, they would be effective. Henceforth, Auclert would be a one woman suffrage campaign touring the country giving speeches in support of woman suffrage, writing journal and newspaper articles on the subject, polling deputies and candidates on their position on woman suffrage, circulating petitions, marching in the streets (! by heavens) carrying placards supporting woman suffrage, leading a rag-tag band of women in the fight for suffrage, even at one point, running for office. She did almost anything to get the idea of woman suffrage into the newspapers. By the end of a decade she had a certain notoriety, but the issue of woman suffrage was established in the public mind. Further, by taking the extreme position of political rights for women, she made more moderate feminist agenda items, such as married women's property rights, divorce, and child custody, easier for mainstream politicians to adopt.

After the turn of the 20th century and the rise of militant suffragists in England, Auclert herself embraced "militant" actions. Her most scandalous demonstration occurred on election day May 3, 1908 when she went to the local polling place, dumped the ballots out of the urn which held them, stomped on them, and shouted, "These urns are illegal! They contain only masculine ballots!", getting herself arrested in the process. All France was scandalized by her outrageous behavior and the limit of militancy permitted to the suffragists by French public opinion was set. Amazing, isn't it. Men impregnated women then abandoned them and their children, beat their wives, drank the family money away, leaving their wives and children ill-feed and ill-clothed, refused to educate their daughters, and a woman dumping an urn-full of ballots on the floor and denouncing a system in which women, even responsible, property – owning, well-to-do, educated women, are forbidden from voting is considered scandalous. Such is men's justice.

But her action also had an up-side. For women were now free to become suffragists, as she once enabled women to become feminists, because they could now proclaim that they were not militant suffragettes like that Auclert woman.

Auclert died believing that she had been abandoned by the women whose lives she committed her life to improving, but a large crowd including representatives of almost every leading feminist organization gathered at her funeral and more than a dozen people spoke over her grave. Perhaps, as Hause writes, "None of them bettered the epitath that Auclert had written for the burial of Feresse-Deraismes in 1911: 'In this city of the dead, you will at last be the equal of the men who despoiled you of your rights and made you their inferior in the city of the living. When the republic becomes the government of everyone . . . feminists will remember that you. . .labored for the emancipation of French women. . . .Adieu.'"

From Votes for Women (Le Vote des femmes, 1908), Hubertine Auclert

Chapter 2: Born with No Civic Rights

Possessing paper power makes it easier to get paper money.

No man is by his role, no matter how small, excluded from the prerogative of being French and a citizen. So why does a woman's role deprive her of her rights as a Frenchwoman and citizen? Is the perpetuation of the human species and the care given to domestic affairs less important than the attention brought to bear on exercising a profession?

"Of you and me," said Socrates, glorifying housework, "he who is the most industrious and economical shall contribute the most to society."

For each person the task imposed is different. But everyone has the same inherent rights.

Gender does not confer particular prerogatives, given that moral and intellectual qualities are independent of sex. One cannot convince people today that being a man extends his intellectual faculties, while being a woman restricts hers.

One objects to the maternity of the claimants; yet it is no more in conflict with exercising political rights than with exercising a skill or trade.

Maria-Theresa of Austria had sixteen children, which hardly prevented her from being the great Statesperson to whom Austria owed its existence. For her, the Hungarian Lords drew their sabers from their sheaths, crying: "Let us die for our king, Maria Theresa!"

All women, mothers or otherwise, married or not, must exercise their political rights so as to put order into the community and state.

Remain Women

Men buck at the idea of women having equal rights! Instead of seeing women as their helpers, enabling them to attain a better quality of life, men seem to think something is going to be taken away from them.

Frenchmen are imploring Frenchwomen not to try to become citizens. They tell them nothing would be gained by universal suffrage and that their superiority lies in remaining enslaved.

Similar language was used by eligible voters on those who didn't get the vote before 1848. The "Remain women!" of today is the equivalent of the "Remain workers!" of yesterday, and it has the same meaning: stay incapable of bettering your condition.

Those women who see the social and economic advantages obtained by the voters, those women who notice that in every country men deprived of suffrage are desperately trying to claim it, are beginning to understand that this paper power, this voting ballot, is just as necessary to them as paper money. For possessing one makes it easier to get the other. The voter's registration card will make housework pay and include housewives among retired workers.

Frenchwomen cannot stay stripped of their political capacity, which a deputy rightly calls, "the beginning of capital."

Work is, in effect, assessed according to the condition of the person accomplishing it. Women's work is so belittled and given such a derisory salary because these women are outside the law; they are slaves whose efforts are not judged worthy of reward. Let women enter into common political rights and soon their economic situation will be changed; their work, ennobled by citizenship, will receive a lucrative salary.

Women will no escape oppression from their husbands or exploitation from their employers until they become their equals at the ballot box.

The voter's registration card, of which Frenchwomen are deprived, is a certificate of honorability that guarantees consideration to the person who caries it.

In the present state of society, suffrage is the surest guarantee for human beings not to be wronged or diminished. It is like insurance bought in order to obtain law and justice. Why should women not enjoy this insurance?

By becoming citizens, Frenchwomen will be able to do their duty even better, since their role as teachers will extend from human unity to the human community and their motherly concern embrace the entire nation.

Since a woman's person and condition depend on politics that hem her in from all sides, it is in her own, as well as the general, interest that she participate in public lide and cooperate in the transformation of society. Thus, she is assured of not being sacrificed in the social structure of the future.

To quote M. Thiers, whose pretty phrase those who disdain feminine competition would do well to deserve: "To put this business in order, I need my women.") Mme. Thiers and Mlle. Dosne). These words prove that even a statesman, whom praise could have made proud, recognized women as having particular faculties complementary to his own. If the male and female parts of every human being seemed indispensable to M. Thiers to fix a difficult, private affair, how much more indispensable is the cooperation of men and women for well-run public affairs!

Women's suffrage is the utilization of the whole, of the nation's intelligence and energy, in order to bring about a greater welfare.

Bringing men and women closer through politics means establishing a beneficial rivalry between the sexes, in the name of progress [. . . . ]

Footnote:

1 Hause, p. 19
2 Hause, p. 25

References:

Steven C. Hause, Hubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette, [New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 1987]

Hubertine Auclert, Le Vote des femmes, (Votes for Women), 1908 reprinted in Jennifer Waelti-Walters and Steven Hause (eds), Jette Kjaer, Lydia Willis, and Jennifer Waelti-Walters (trans.), Feminisms of the Belle Epoque: A Historical and Literary Anthology [Lincoln, Nb: University of Nebraska Press, 1994] pp. 267 – 270

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last updated February 2003