Jeanne Deroin (1805 - 1894) Women's History Month 2003 by Sunshine for Women

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Jeanne Deroin

1805 - 1894

Born in 1805 in Paris, France to members of the working-class, Deroin dreamed of a brilliant future as a child, but gave up her dream in her teens because of a lack of money. Self-educated, Deroin would go on to become one of the leading feminists of 19th century France.

Bonnie Anderson in Joyous Greetings identifies "20 core women," women who formed an unofficial, international feminist network in the early and middle portions of the 19th century. For her far-ranging international contacts, Deroin is one of Anderson's core women.

Deroin was introduced to Saint Simonianism by her friend, M. Desroches and converted to the movement, despite its religious emphasis and its free-love positions, because of its feminist positions. Under the name 'Jeanne-Victorie' Deroin published articles in the Saint Simonian feminist journal, Tribune des femmes, on a variety of topics. Deroin married the engineer Desroches and bore him three children. In the 1840s, she studied for, then obtained, her teaching license, then worked in coeducational school. By the mid-1840s, Deroin supported Christianity, believing that "discord, disorder, and violence reign on earth and they will not cease from reigning until men have understood that all the laws which they established alone are incomplete and in opposition to the law of God. "

At the beginning of the 1848 Revolution, she left her children in the care of close female friends then launched into an array of feminist projects. She helped to found the Society for the Emancipation of Women, she joined Eugénie Niboyet's Society of the Voice of Women and wrote articles for its journal La Voix des femmes, sent letters to the editors of other journals, attended political clubs and meetings to press for women's rights, petitioned members of the provisional government to support women's rights, visited government ministers to advocate woman suffrage in person, and operated an adult-education program for women.

The excuse that the "powers that be" had used to justify withholding suffrage from working-class men was that property, not persons, were represented in Parliament. Consequently, only men of property, identified by their payment of some minimum tax or their ownership of a set amount of property, were be permitted to vote. Working-class men responded that they did own property – their labor, and hence, they too had a right to vote. Unfortunately, in trying to "level down to themselves" then to bar the door to women, men needed an excuse to deny the vote to women despite the obvious evidence that women also had property in the form of their labor, either outside the home and paid for or inside the home and not explicitly paid for. Deroin and other feminists of 1848 claimed that if that was the case, women also labored, so they should also have the vote. Men countered that rights and obligations go together, so the vote should be restricted to men. Feminists countered that women, like men, had obligations so they should also be given the vote. Consequently, the writings of the feminist 1848er emphasize women's obligations (duties) to society to underpin their demands for suffrage.

Deroin believed that women and men were inherently equal although they made different, but complimentary, contributions to the family and society. Because women are different from men, they have a duty to take part in the public affairs of the nation. If only one sex is involved in social decision making, bad decisions will inevitably be made because one sex cannot accurately represent the other. Specifically, women have a duty to extend their maternal functions beyond the home into the political domain to watch out for the future of their children.

When Eugenie Niboyet closed La Voix des femmes, Deroin opened La Politique des femmes with first issue June 18-24, 1848. There was a shift in emphasis between La Voix des femmes and La Politique des femmes. Perhaps reflecting different the class-related concerns of Niboyet and Deroin, La Politique emphasized economic issues more than La Voix des femme with a corresponding decrease in emphasis on political issues. As she had all spring, Deroin advocated equal economic opportunities for women, including equal access to the government-sponsored workshops for women, job training for women, opening male-dominated jobs to women, organizing female workers, and increasing job opportunities for women. The government forbid women to participate in political clubs on June 28, causing Deroin to have trouble raising the "caution" money. In August 1848 the only other issue of La Politique des femmes was published before being closed by the government.

That fall elections for Legislative Assembly were set for May 1849 and Deroin decided to run for office from the Department of the Seine. Deroin placarded the city with her statement of candidacy. Seeking permission to speak in men's clubs about her candidacy, either she was not permitted access to speaker's platforms or she was hounded, heckled, shouted down, and ridiculed. Deroin was accorded respect only among the democratic socialists who refused to support her candidacy because they did not want to throw their votes away on a woman whose campaign was illegal. Nonetheless, Deroin made history in April and May of 1849 as the first French woman to stand for a national office.

After her failed campaign, Deroin returned to ameliorating the economic situation of workers. She formed an Association of Wage-Earning Women for unemployed servants, participated in workers' cooperatives and mutual aid societies, and created a new journal L'Opinion des femmes. Her journal published a plan for the Association Solidaire et Fraternelle de Toutes les Associations Réunies and was fined 5000 francs. Deroin could not pay the fine, so the journal ceased publishing. Nevertheless, Deroin continued to build her new organization, an umbrella organization of workers associations, between Aug 1849 to May 1850. By May 1850, 400 workers organizations which had sprung into being after the revolution had joined. On May 29, 1850, Jeanne Deroin, Pauline Roland, and others were arrested and charged with conspiring to overthrow the government with violence. Most of the others were released, but Deroin and Roland were tried, convicted (was there any doubt that they would be convicted?), and imprisoned. Deroin and Roland were imprisoned in St. Lazare prison in Paris for six months. From prison, they wrote an open letter to the Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Mass and sent a short version of the letter to Anne Knight's Female Political Association of Sheffield, England. After the coup by Louis Napoleon, Deroin and Roland were considered dangerous to the state. Roland was sent to a penal colony in Algeria and died on her return trip to France after her release. Deroin went into exile in England.

Deroin continued her feminist activities. Annually from 1852 to 1854, she published Almanack des femmes either in Paris or in London and on the Isle of Jersey, home of a large French exile community. The 1852 edition published in Paris featured a summary of Harriet Taylor Mill's Enfranchisement of Women under the name "Convention des Femmes en America." The Almanack included news of feminist activities around the world, published news of Pauline Roland's death, and printed Roland's last letters from prison in Paris and in Algeria.

For now, though, the vibrant French feminist movement, the most advanced in the world, was cowed into silence in the anti-revolutionary backlash. For the next twenty years, feminists would be attacked from both the Left and the Right. The only weapon they would be able to employ was their pen – and they were forbidden editorial access to the newspapers and journals of the day.

Jeanne Deroin retained her interest in the feminist movement for the rest of her life. She had a letter published in Richer's Le Droit des femmes. She died in 1894 in London, England.

The first selection is Deroin's rebuttal to misogynist P. J. Proudhon's condemnation of Deroin for standing for public office. The second selection is Deroin's rebuttal to the charming, but nonetheless patriarchal, Michelet, who opposed woman suffrage on the grounds that females would allow priests to dictate how they should vote, resulting in a conservative, reactionary female vote. Michelet's arguments would be used by the Left over the next half-century to deny woman the vote.

Jeanne Deroin vs. P.-J. Proudhon (1849)

[Jeanne Deroin: "Letter to the Democratic Socialist Electoral Committee"]

Citizens:

You are democratic socialists; you want to abolish man's exploitation of man, and man's exploitation of woman; you want complete and radical abolition of all privileges of sex, race, birth, caste, and fortune; you sincerely desire all the consequences of our great principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

It is in the name of these principles, which do not admit unjust exclusions, that I present myself as a candidate to the Legislative Assembly and that I come to ask your support—if not to be included on the list of twenty-eight who will be presented to the electorate, at least to obtain assurance, out of your justice, that I should not be excluded from this list in the name of a privilege of sex that violates the principles of equality and fraternity.

The services rendered to our country and to the social cause, the intellectual superiority, the special capacity and oratorical talents of the large number of candidates who are presenting themselves offer you adequate reasons for excluding me, should you judge this necessary—without your having to invoke a prejudice against which men of the future should protest energetically, if not out of sympathy, then at least out of respect for principle.

[P.-J. Proudhon, Protest Against the Candidacy of Jeanne Deroin]

A very serious incident took place at a recent Socialist banquet that we cannot ignore. A woman seriously proposed her own candidacy for the National Assembly.

[Deroin's election poster, addressed to the Electors of the Department of the Seine.]

Citizens:

I present myself for your votes, out of devotion to the consecration of a great principle: the civil and political equality of the sexes. It is in the name of justice that I appeal to the sovereign people against negating the great principles that are the foundation for the future of our society.

If, using your right, you call upon woman to take part in the work to the Legislative Assembly, you will consecrate our republican dogmas in all their integrity: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for all women as well as for all men.

A Legislative Assembly composed entirely of men is as incompetent to make the laws that rule a society of men and women, as an assembly composed entirely of privileged people to debate the interests of workers, or an assembly of capitalists to sustain the honor of the country.

Jeanne Deroin, Candidate

[Proudhon continues:]

We cannot allow such pretensions and similar principle to be put forth, without protesting energetically in the name of public morality and of justice itself. It is essential that socialism not accept solidarity with them.

The political equality of both sexes, that is to say the assimilation of women with men in public functions, is one of those sophisms that are contrary not only to logic but also to the human conscience and the nature of things.

Man, to the extent that his reason is developed, sees clearly that woman is his equal, but he will never see her as identical.

[Jeanne Deroin: "Reply to Proudhon"]

Citizen Editor!

I beg you to insert my reply to the peculiar protest on the subject of my candidacy that appeared in the journal Le Peuple.

By putting forth my candidacy to the Legislative Assembly I have accomplished a duty: I demanded, in the name of public morality and in the name of justice, that the dogma of equality should not be a lie.

It is precisely because woman is equal to man, and yet not identical to him, that she should take part in the work of social reform and incorporate in it those necessary elements that are lacking in man, so that the work can be complete.

Liberty for woman, as for man, is the right to utilize and to develop one's faculties freely.

Life's unity can be considered to be in three parts: individual life, family life, and social life; this is a complete life. To refuse woman the right to live the social life is to commit a crime against humanity. Thus, it is in the name of socialism, which is henceforth the religion of humanity, that I have appealed to all Democratic Socialists and have urged them to accept solidarity, even with a qualification as to its opportuneness, with the fact that this is a holy and legitimate protest against the errors of the old society and against a clear violation of our sacred principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

It is the name of these principles, which are the basis of socialism, that I ask them, if they do not consider it fitting to protest through their votes, to declare boldly that they are not retreating behind a privilege of sex but rather that grave circumstances require capacities and eminent qualities to be called to the honor of defending our sacred cause.

As for me, I declare before God and in the name of humanity that it is never too early to stop on a false route, to repair an error, and to proclaim a great truth.

Jeanne Deroin, Response to Jules Michelet (1850)

That's better! The lines are drawn and clear! To the question so often asked of you: "What do you think of women's political rights?" you replied in your last lecture: "Women have the same rights as men, but the means of exercising these rights is not possible under present conditions— we therefore appeal to women themselves. To award women immediately the right to vote would, in effect, drop into the ballot boxes some eighty thousand ballots for the priests." And then, in order to put an end to the question and, doubtless, hoping to console, you added: "moreover, the number of women who claim the right to exercise political rights is very small."

Because you appealed to women's sentiments in this circumstance, Monsieur, I shall try to reply in their name. I ought to do so all the more, perhaps, because of a remarkable fact, which cannot have escaped attentive observers, that proves to me that in contradicting your conclusions on this subject I am in truth the faithful interpreter of woman's sentiments.

Men, to judge by your auditors, agree entirely with your views on votes for women, and the applause that sanctioned your words, when you so easily caused eighty thousand votes for the priests to drop from the hands of women, proved sufficiently that you too, in this regard, expressed exactly the sentiments of your public. But did the women agree with this point of view? Did they also applaud? No, Monsieur, not one did so; and yet usually on every other question, upon hearing your sympathetic voice the applause of both sexes is mingled and blended. Whence came this quite exceptional reserve of the women upon a point that touches them so closely? Did that reserve not carry the weight of a protest? As far as I am concerned, I did not understand it otherwise and, moreover, I have observed that woman's good sense, easily displayed on the spur of the moment, has later been proved correct by reason.

But let us return to your very words, in order to examine various statements. . . .

When you say: "Women have the same rights as men, you offer in its completeness a principle that is increasingly accepted by free thinkers and independent spirits.

But is it the same when you add: "Women under present conditions cannot exercise their political rights without compromising the cause of progress; to let women vote immediately would be to give the priests eighty-thousand ballots"?

On this point we utterly disagree. I believe, on the contrary, that our actual conditions are eminently favorable for the exercise of political rights by women.

Let us consider a case in which women present themselves at the ballot boxes. What would happen in such a case?

Are there large numbers of politically inclined women? That is the first question. This is immaterial; it is not the right question to ask. Are these women of the people or of the bourgeoisie? Are they those who are called Ladies? None of this is significant. Those women who would like to exercise their right to vote would present themselves in the name of the law; they would claim their privilege, they would base themselves on our republican institutions; that is all. What would happen then? The situation, it will no doubt be said, could become embarrassing, if not downright ridiculous. That is no response. Republicans, Democrats, Socialists all agree unanimously that allowing women to vote under present conditions would be the greatest disaster for the Republic and for the cause of progress and, consequently, women who present themselves must be told that they cannot be allowed to vote. Very well, but if these ladies persist, saying that to let them vote is not at all the same thing as to make them vote; if they protest against the illegality committed against their persons, concerning their RIGHTS as women? If, finally, they require that a formal attestation of denial of justice be drawn up, to document the injustice they claim to have suffered, how will you extricate yourself from that embarrassment, and which side will you take?

Have no doubt, sir; this is the manner in which the question will soon be posed and, indeed, the manner in which it has already been raised by a courageous woman, Madame Pauline Roland. But that was an individual case, which occurred in the provinces and, thus, did not make a great noise.

Do not believe, however, that this example will be lost. On the contrary, you may be sure that it will be repeated and multiplied. Do you not sense this when you see the persistence with which women come back to that very question on every occasion? Is this not a sure indication of the importance they attach to this question?

One woman presented herself in the provinces but in Paris a hundred will present themselves.

That number is not at all impressive, you say? So much the better! You will be better able to choose sides before the number increases to infinity.

Do you wish to make a fiction of the law? Do you wish to repulse women in spite of the law and in the most flagrantly illegal manner? Do the democratic journals, in the manner of Le Charivari, wish to settle the question with a few bad jokes? That would be a disastrous course.

This protest of a few women, this example of civic courage and, above all else, your moral persecution will perhaps produce the spark that will leap all the way to the domestic hearth to kindle the fire of independence and liberty!

One should not play either with justice or with fire. Justice is the sacred fire of the conscience; cursed be they who do not tend it!

If Republicans and Socialists join together in refusing women the exercise of their political rights in the present circumstances, it is because they have not considered the matter carefully.

To recognize women's rights in principle is to pledge oneself to consecrate them in fact; no one has the right to appoint himself judge of the opportunity for exercising a right. For the simple reason that women are not excluded from political rights by law, the law consecrates these rights; these rights no more await sanction than do the women themselves; these sanctions can no more be opposed or postponed than women can be placed outside the law. Those who dare to attempt this are guilty of attacking justice and progress; they would threaten the very foundations of the Republic.

Nor is this all. From a question of principle, which has nothing to fear from the facts, you would arbitrarily create a political question. The forces of reaction would not hesitate to employ the tool you have scorned to use. Not only would they recognize women's right, which you have acknowledged to no purpose, but also, in order to profit from your mistakes, they would replace the current conditions for voting with new ones; gallantry would triumph over strict equality, and they would easily find the means of reconciling women's exercise of political rights with the modesty of the sex and the etiquette of the world. For women the ballot box at the church would replace the men's ballot box at the mayor's office; then, and then alone, would eighty thousand ballots fall to the priests from the hands of women.

For heaven's sake, gentlemen, do not presume to teach women delicacy! Do not place yourselves above justice or appoint yourselves the judges of a question of opportuneness that does not concern you. Opportuneness can be sensed and determined only by those who are called to exercise their rights.

A truth recognized, admitted, and proclaimed henceforth carries its own charge, which impels it toward complete realization. It would be very strange, then, if the moment when the truth appeared were not also, within the limits of possibility, the moment of its very realization! It would be very strange if the intelligence that expresses a truth were, at the same time, to issue a respectful summons to that truth, asking it to reappear at a more suitable time! No, no! this is impossible! Every truth, by the very fact that it is recognized, begins to be usable.

To return to the question that concerns us—and to preserve the future from the evils we fear just as much as you do—I have but one thing to say, and I address it to all who cherish the realization of orderly progress.

Do you wish to be just as well as prudent? Do you wish to remain within the bounds of legality? Then let women vote freely, and take care only that nothing is changed for them in the present conditions of the vote. These conditions are the very guarantees of progress; every honest opinion submits to them easily.

Does the number of women anxious to exercise their rights still seem too large to you, despite these quite natural restrictions? Would you wish, while still remaining within the confines of legality, to embark on a system that incorporates a more stringent weeding-out? So be it! I shall offer you a last morsel, which I submit to your wise consideration.

Supposing a hundred women present themselves to vote in Pans at the next election, all at different mayors' offices. Among these hundred women will be five widows, fifteen spinsters, and eighty married women.

Bravely make this magnificent purge! Send away the eighty married women, and allow only the other twenty to vote. Why so? What law permits you to act thus, everyone cries? I am much embarrassed to say so, but it is simply by virtue of the Civil Code! Through the very act of marriage, every adult woman is thrown back into legal childhood and may not exercise her civic rights without her husband's authorization. . . . While the twenty spinster and widows vote freely, the eighty married women return to their conjugal hearths, -- Various points of view. – Piquant topics of conversation between the spouses at the dinner table . . . .

Footnotes:

Textbook on Social Rights for Women

References:

Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement 1830 – 1860 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]

Jeanne Deroin, "Aux Citoyens membres du Comité electoral démocratique et socialite," L'Opinion des Femmes, 10 April 1849; Deroin's election poster, "Aus Electeurs du Départment de la Seine," L'Opinion des Femmes, 10 April 1849; P.-J. Proudhon, "Protestation du Peuple contre la candidature de J. D.," Le Peuple, 12 April 1849; Jeanne Deroin, "Résponse a Proudhon," La Démocratie Pacifique, 13 April 1849. All reprinted in Adrien Ranvier, "Une Féministe de 1848, Jeanne Deroin," cited in Doc. 70 above, pp. 335-338 Translater Susan Groag Bell,Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, Woman, the Family, and Freedom Vol 1 [Stanford: Stanford University Pres, 1983] pp. 280-283

Jeanne Deroin, " ' A. M. Michelet, Droit politique des femmes' extrait du 7' numéro de l'Opinion des Femmes qui paraîtra prochainement," Paris, 1 May 1850, translated Karen M. Offen, Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, Woman, the Family, and Freedom Vol 1 [Stanford: Stanford University Pres, 1983] pp. 284-285

Margaret MaFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism [Lexington, Ky: University of Kentucky Press, 1999]

Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the 19th Century [Albany: State University of New York, 1984]

Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996] pp. 55-89

Other On-Line Resources:

Document 4: ["Jeanne-Victoire"], "Appel aux femmes," La Femme Libre, no. 1, 1832, pp. 1-3

Document 11: Jeanne Deroin, "Aux Citoyens Françias!," La Voix des Femmes, no. 7 (27 March 1848).

Document 13: Jeanne Deroin, "Mission de la femme dans le present et dans l'avenir," L'Opinion des Femmes (28 January, 10 March, 10 April 1849). Translation Karen Offen

Document 15: Jeanne Deroin and Pauline Roland, "Letter to the Convention of the Women of America," 15 June 1851. Published in History of Woman Suffrage, Vol 1, 234-37.

Deroin, Jeanne (c. 1810 - 1894) French feminist and socialist, first woman to stand as candidate for election to the National Assembly (1849)

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