DBQ8-99

DBQ Question

During the French Revolution, ideas and events influenced women to break from the conformities of their society and fight for their civil rights.

Assess the validity of the above statement, discussing the influences and views of men that pushed women to "break" from traditions and how this affected their roles in revolutionary French society.

Document 1

-Madame, is this where Monsieur Rousseau lives.... Could I speak to him in person?.... I came to fetch an answer to a letter I wrote him several days ago.
-Mademoiselle, you cannot speak to him, but you can tell the people who made you write, for surely it is not you who wrote a letter like that....
-I beg your pardon....
-Why, the handwriting alone shows that it is from a man.... All I can tell you is that my husband has absolutely renounced everything; he would like to be of service, but he is old enough to be entitled rest.
-I know, but at least I should have felt honored to have received his message from him personally. I would have taken advantade fo this opportunity to present my homage to the man I esteem the most in the world. Please, accept it in his stead, Madame.

Dialogue between Mlle. Manon and Mme. Rousseau, 1770

Document 2

You have to be a mother and have heard your children ask for bread you cannot give them to know the level of despair to which this misfortune can bring you…. With children who are hungry and who ask repeatedly and tearfully for food--it seems as if each sound issuing from their chests parched by poverty is the point of a dagger striking their mother's heart. She cannot bear it, and her pain makes her capable of doing anything because she sees nothing, feels nothing, except the imperious law of nature commanding her not to let those perish who owe her their birth.

Elisabeth Guenard, Historical Memoirs of Madame Marie-Therese-Louise de Carignan, Princess of Lamballe, 1789

Document 4

-What a shame that the ministry should be spoiled by such a man! Where on earth did you find him?
-What can we do, he is at the head of a party of barkers. If he wasn't made part of the machinery, he would turn against it, and besides, he has served the Revolution and can be useful to it.
-I doubt it, and your policy strikes me as detestable.... It is better to have one's enemy on the outside than within. Besides, a man who seeks only his private advantage will always be the enemy of the public good.
-This is no reason. People like him need a position and means. Satisfy their ambition and they are your creatures. Besides, Danton has wit and can discuss things pleasantly. He will work out for the best.
-I wish it and don't want to prejudge him because I don't know him. But since you are my good friends, let me tell you frankly that in politics you reason like little boys.

Political dialogue between Mme. Roland and her Girondist friends, 1792

Document 5

"Contending for the rights of women, my main arguement is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue...And how can woman be expected to co-operate unless she knows why to be virtuous? unless freedom strengthens her reason till she comprehends her duty, and sees in what manner it is connected with her real good. If children are top be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring,can only be produced be considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of women at present shuts her out from such investigations...and I have contended, that to render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must more universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected in the male world till the person of a woman is not, as it were, idolised, when little virtue or sense embellish it with the grand traces of mental beauty, or the interesting simplicity of affection..."

A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, a British author, addressing the author of a proposed new constitution for France, 1792

Document 6

"Let us arm ourselves...Let us show men that we are not inferiors in courage or in virtue...Let us rise to the level of our destinies and break our chains; it is high time that women emerged from the shameful state of nullity and ignorance to which the arrogance and injustice of men have so long condemned them. Let us return to the days when the women of Gaul debated with men in public assemblies, and fought side by side with their husbands against the members of liberty. Our conduct at Versailles on October 5 and 6 and numerous decisive and important occasions since proves that we are not strangers to noble and magnanimous sentiments...Why should we not compete with men? Do they alone deserve glory? We too wish to gain a civic crown and claim the right to die for liberty, a liberty perhaps still dearer to us since our sufferings under despotism have been greater."

Theroigne de Mericourt, addressing the fraternal club of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, March 25, 1792

Document 7

"It is horrible, it is contrary to all the laws of nature for a woman to want to make herself a man...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 harangue in the galleries?...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 resist, since it is the despotism of love, and consequently, the work of nature, remain what you are; 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."

Pierre Chaumette, chairperson of the Council of the Paris Commune, in response of women's protest and use of bonnets rouge, 1793

Document 9

.... Mothers, daughters, sisters and representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of the governments, the women have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration,...., will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties....
1. Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility....
10. No one is to be disquieted for his very basic opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not disturb the legally established public order....

Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, 1791