Women and the Commune of Paris (1793)
[The author of this document, Chaumette, was one of the most militant of sans-culottes revolutionaries. He makes it clear in the following document that revolution in France did not necessarily imply the adoption of a new understanding of the role of women in society. The women who wore the red caps of the freedom fighter were trying to protest the dissolution of the militantly feminist "Society of Revolutionary Republican Women." One of its founders, Olympe de Gouges had been executed as a royalist two weeks before the events described here.]
Commune of Paris: General Council, 27 Brumaire.
A deputation headed by women wearing red caps comes before the Council. There is furious hooting in the galleries, where they cry out: Off with the women's red caps! The noise increases; the president dons his hat and calls the galleries to order; calm is restored.
Chaumette: I demand a civic mention in the [official record] of the murmurs that have just broken out; this is an homage to morals. It is horrible, it is contrary to all the laws of nature for a woman to want to make herself a man. The Council must recall that some time ago these denatured women, these viragos, wandered through the markets with the red cap to sully that badge of liberty and wanted to force all women to take oft the modest headdress that is appropriate for them. The place where the people's magistrates deliberate must be forbidden to every person who insults nature.
A member: No, the law allows them to enter; let the law be read....
Chaumette: The law orders that morals be respected and that they be made to be respected. And here I see them despised. Well! Since when is it permitted to give up one's sex? Since when is it decent to see women abandoning the pious cares of their households, the cribs of their children, to come to public places, to harangues in the galleries, at the bar of the senate? Is it to men that nature confided domestic cares? Has she given us breasts to breastfeed our children? No, she has said to man: "Be a man: hunting, farming, political concerns, toils of every kind, that is your appanage." She has said to woman: "Be a woman. The anxieties of maternity, these are your labors; but your attentive cares deserve a reward. Fine! You will have it, and you will be the divinity of the domestic sanctuary; you will reign over everything that surrounds you by the invincible charm of the graces and of virtue."
Impudent women who want to become men, aren't you well enough provided for? What else do you need? Your despotism is the only one our strength cannot conquer, because it is (the despotism) of love, and consequently the work of nature. In the name of this very nature, remain what you are, and far from envying us the perils of a stormy life, be content to make us forget them in the heart of our families, in resting our eyes on the enchanting spectacle of our children made happy by your cares. (The women wearing the red cap immediately replace this respectable badge by a headdress suitable to their sex.)
Ah, I see it, you do not want to imitate women who no longer blush; the sentiments that are the charms of society are not extinguished in you. I pay homage to your sensitivity, but I must make you see the full depth of the abyss where a moment's error was plunging you.
Remember this haughty wife of a stupid, perfidious husband, La Roland [Mme. Roland and her husband were prominent Girondists; they were guillotined in mid-summer 1793], who thought herself to govern the republic and who rushed to her downfall; remember the impudent Olympe de Gouges, who was the first to set up women's societies, who abandoned the cares of her household to get mixed up in the republic, and whose head fell beneath the avenging knife of the laws. Is it the place of women to propose motions? Is it the place of women to place themselves at the head of our armies? If there was a Joan of Arc, that is because there was a Charles VII; if the fate of France was once in the hands of a women, that is because there was a king who did not have the head of a man and because his subjects were worth less than nothing.
Chaumette ended by demanding that the deputation of women not be heard, and that the Council not receive any more deputations of women except following a decree passed ad hoc, without this prejudicing the right of citoyennes [citizens] to bring their requests and individual complaints before the magistrates.
Chaumette's speech is frequently interrupted by warm applause, and his indictment [reguistoire] is adopted unanimously.
Source: Darline Levy, Harriet Applewhite, & Mary Johnson (eds. and trans.), Women in Revolutionary Paris 1789-1795: Selected Documents (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1979), pp. 219-220.