Transcript of 545. The French Revolution: The First Feminist (Part 2)

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory. Com and join the club. That is therestishistory. Com. Marie-anne is the embodiment of the French Republic Mariane represents the permanent values that found our citizens' attachment to the Republic, liberty, equality, fraternité. The earliest representation of a woman wearing a Jean Cap, an allegorical figure of liberty and the Republic, made their appearance at the time of the French Revolution. The origins of the name Mariane are uncertain. Marie-anne was a very common first name in the 18th century, and she thus came to represent the people. The counter revolutionaries used the name derisively when referring to the Republic. Tom, that was the website of the Elyceé Palace talking about the great symbol of the French Republic, Mariane. This is a symbol that emerges at the point that we've just got to in the great narrative of the French Revolution, the summer summer and autumn of 1792. We heard last time about the terrible September massacres that took place as the Prussians were advancing on Paris. It's, of course, at this point that people are singing the Marseillaise, the marching song of the Army of the Rhine, that is swept through the capital.

But it's also at this point that people alight upon a new symbol of France, which is this figure of Marie-Anne.

Marie-anne, who who is this woman wearing the fridget cap, the liberty Cap, long flowing hair, will become the emblem of France itself. I think it's really striking that the two of the emblematic embodiments of modern France So the Marseillais, its national anthem, and the figure of Marie-Anne, the embodiment of France herself, emerge in precisely these months, the summer going into the autumn of 1792. I guess the The previous episode that we did where we looked at the September Massacres, it didn't really portray the revolution in a great light, did it? I mean, if we're absolutely honest.

Not best light, no.

But I think this reminds us that even while people are being dragged out of prisons and hack to death, there is also an absolutely invigorating and inspiring sense of optimism and hope that is inspiring terrible deeds, yes, but also it's rallying people to the barricades, and it's giving people dreams of a better future, a future in which all of the people of France will have a stake. You mentioned at the end of the last episode, you left us with this absolute cliffhanger that the Russians are advancing on Paris. But you also talked about how there is this new political settlement, there's this national convention, and elections are being held to it. You said, if the Prussians break into Paris, then maybe the Convention will never even meet. A spoiler alert, the Prussians don't end up meeting advancing on Paris for reasons that we'll discuss in the next episode. The National Convention does meet, and it meets on the 20th of September. The deputies who are going there, they're all going to the tweelery where the royal family had previously been based until the massacre of their guards and their removal to what ultimately is their This is now at the center of the convention, which is an expression of, in a way, popular sovereignty.

What is striking about this, and it's not just in the French context, but in the context of the whole of global history, is that this is a near universal suffrage for men. There are no distinctions of class, there are no distinctions of property. People may remember back in the midsts of time that we talked about, originally, there was this idea of active and passive citizens, weren't there? That active citizens, you had to have certain property qualifications, you couldn't have certain professions. All that has gone. All males, basically over the age of 21, now have the vote. I think this is a noble and inspiring moment in history, no matter what your views on the revolution might be dominant, would you disagree with that or not?

Don't you think- I would. I don't find it inspiring at all. Well, I don't think everybody should have the vote. That's the difference between me and the French revolutionaries.

Who do you think should not have the vote?

I probably wouldn't give it to anybody. But I definitely raised the age thing. I think probably 30.

Thirty-five, 40.

And also property. I think you need to be a property. You need to own property, don't you?

Fine. Okay. The voice of John Bull.

Otherwise, you got no stake in the system.

I think you know that you are just teasing. I'm sure you are a Democrat.

Tom, that has thrown you so much. You don't know.

I can't believe you. I don't really know. I don't really know how to reply to that. Come on. This is universal suffrage. This is democracy in action. It's the closest to the modern ideal of democracy that we have. It's an ideal that Britain now cleaves to. In that sense, you could say that Britain is inspired by this example as well. And Mariane becomes the symbol of it. The reason for that is the motion that is brought before the deputies the day after they meet on the 20th of September, on the 21st of September, when they essentially vote to abolish monarchy. Royalty shall be abolished in France is the motion. This is where the woman who comes to be called Mariane is introduced. Because, again, to quote from the Elysée Palace, Mariane is the embodiment of the French Republic. How does it come about? How does this woman appear? How does she come to be called Maryanne. It's actually not until the middle of the 19th century that she's universally called Mariane.

But the Elisee Palace thing that I read at the beginning is wrong. Am I not right in thinking that we know better than the Alizée Palace? No one. The Elisee Palace said, who knows where the name comes from? We know precisely where the name comes from. The name comes from this poem that is written in, I think, October, is it? October 1792?

To mark the founding of the Republic.

Interestingly, the poem is not in French. I mean, that's what makes it so fascinating.

Yeah. It's by a guy called Guillaume L'Avabre, who is writing in Languedoc. He writes this poem called La guérison de Mariane, The healing of Mariane in French. In that poem, Mariane is clearly an embodiment of the new Republic that's been claimed. This is the first equation of the Republic with a woman called Mariane. But unlike the Marseillais, it doesn't really spread because it's not as accessible, and it takes a long, long time for that equation to spread. As I said, it's not really until the 19th century. Originally, the figure of France as a woman, if she's not called Mariane, she is very clearly liberty, and specifically, Republican liberty. The emergence of an image of France as a woman who embodies liberty, as we said, this is emerging at the same time as the Marseillais is being enshrined as the national anthem. It's expressive of all the convulsions, all the excitments, all the incredible process of change that these months in 1792 that we've been covering in the previous series and in this series are generating. She appears This very precisely in the wake of the abolition of the monarchy, when the Royal Seal, great golden seal of Louis XVI, is melted down and reconfigured.

On the new seal of the Republic, this is where Liberty, who will become Maryanne, first appears.

The figure of Liberty, we've talked so much about the influence of the Romans in particular on the French Revolutionist. This is a very obviously classical figure Basically, a goddess holding the fascies with an ax and a liberty cap. That's right, isn't it? Is there a bit of Athena about this figure, maybe?

She's liberty. She's a classical abstraction given female form. As with so much about the French Revolution, it actually has its roots in the Ancien Regime. The painters, illustrators had been showing liberty as this goddess in the years before the revolution breaks out. There's a particularly famous illustration in a book about Henry IV, who was the great hero of France before the Revolution. He was seen as the people's king. This illustration shows him being carried up to heaven by liberty. By this by this goddess. This is allegorical illustrations and paintings that really have very little cut through, but it's there on the margins. Actually, I think you could say that the very value of liberty is that she is a an empty cipher. She's an abstraction onto which you can project things. Lynn Hunt, the great scholar of the culture of the French Revolution, particular interest in the role of women in the Revolution, she wrote about the figure of liberty that she represented the virtue so desired by the new order, the transcendence of localism, superstition, and particularity in the name of a more disciplined and universalistic worship. Liberty was an abstract quality based on reason.

She belonged to no group, to no particular place, which is another way of saying that the whole point of Liberty is that she's quite boring.

She doesn't bring any baggage.

It's important because, of course, the marketing of Liberty is also a marketing of the Republic, and she's being stamped on the seal at the point where people don't really know what the Republic is about. What's it going to be? It doesn't have any of the the attributes that a thousand-year-old monarchy has. It doesn't bring the the inheritance of symbols that France, particularly Royal France, has been absolutely saturated in. Instead, she's almost Robespierre. She's chilly, poised, up tight, virtuous. Of course, there are the two obvious contrasts here. Even though she will come to be called Mary-Ann, she's not Christian. She's not the virgin. She is a virgin who is not Christian. I think that's, as we will see in probably our next series, what do with Notre Dame, Our Lady, the Virgin, will be a pointed issue in due course for the revolution. So, liberty, Mary-Ann is not the Virgin Mary. But of course, also, she's not an earthly queen. More precisely, she is not Marie-Antoinette. She is not an aristocratic woman. And generally, women who are paintings, images, they're from the aristocracy. The whole point of liberty is she is not.

She's classless, I suppose, isn't she? She's not defined by any... Because she's antique, she doesn't represent any particular group in contemporary France. She's universal.

Exactly. As you said, there are obviously echoes of Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom. In due course, she comes to be shown wearing a helmet. She's shown trampling down various monsters representing counter revolution, a monarchy, or whatever. Pretty much within a year of her appearance, first appearance, on the great seal of France, she's starting to become a bit more proactive. Of course, the classic expression of this isn't in this French Revolution, but in a later one in Delacroix's great painting of liberty leading the people. I'm sure people will have seen it. Liberty standing there in her liberty cap, urging the revolutionaries on. I think you get a presentment of that in the first revolution as well. But, Dominic, I think that's an interesting question There's a question about all this, that France, liberty, the Republic, the Revolution, are all being imaged by this figure of a beautiful, slightly chilly woman. But what does it mean? I mean, does it have any resonance at all for the actual women who were living through the revolution?

We started the entire cycle of French Revolution series with a woman, Marie-Antoinette, and the extraordinary in misogyny of the attacks on her. Then, although virility, masculine friendship, martial virtue, and all of that, these masculine ideas have mattered enormously to the ethos of the French Revolution. There have been moments, haven't there, when women have taken center stage. I think you did an episode about the women's march on Versailles, when the market women go and bring back the king of Marantz Wendel, and the symbolism of it being the market women, I think is really important there, isn't it?

Yeah.

Then, of course, you got women who are prominent in the sans culottes, who are storming the tuileries, who are shouting slogans in the streets. It's not just a man's revolution, by any means.

Absolutely. I think we talked before in the previous series about how the idea of the sansculotte, the man who is wearing trousers rather than the breaches that is the traditional markers of wealth and status, how important dress is There are female sansculottes. They're not wearing trousers, but they're wearing coarse woolen skirts, and they're wearing the wooden clogs that are the markers of a sansculotte. They wear the come and yol this jacket that has ultimately come from revolutionaries in Italy. Because of the role that they played in bringing the King and Queen from Versailles to Paris back in 1789, and as you said, because of the role that they also play in helping the Patriot heroes who stormed the Tuileries in the summer of 1792, they are enshrined as a group, as mothers of the nation. But I think there is a crucial difference between the way that women are portrayed in revolutionary propaganda and the way that men are, because we've talked about revolutionary figures whose names continue to reverberate down. Everyone has heard of Robespierre or Marat or Desmoulins. These are individuals who stand tall in the pages of history. But women, by and large, don't.

That is a trend that goes back to the revolution itself. We talked about Mara, who, of course, in due course, will have a meeting with a woman who's not very keen on him in his bath. But before that, he was very proud of himself as a feminist. He marketed himself not just as a friend of the people, but specifically as the friend of women. But when he writes about women, he never names individuals. It's always about the totality of women. They are a a mass of humanity who are inspired by a animating energy and animating emotional power. They're spontaneous. This is the key to how the march on Versailles is portrayed. They are not individuals, and in that way, they are kept safe. They're not intruding on the masculine sphere. This carries on even when they're not marching on Versailles or attacking palaces or whatever, because women in Paris, in particular, which is the cockpit of revolutionary activity, they are very, very keen spectators. The sense of particularly women from the markets, fishwives, as political junkies is very, very strong. They're generally not allowed to contribute to the public debate itself, but they are given access to the galleries where spectators gather.

They take up public seats at the convention when it meets. And by and large, male revolutionaries are very appreciative of this. There's one when it turns out that women are not being allowed in to watch a political session because too many people have gathered there. And one of the Jacoban deputies posing like a Roman. It's exactly the thing that you could imagine someone in the early pages of Livy or Tuck saying, he orders that more benches be brought in so that they can sit down. These are mothers of families, he tells the other delegates. They are worthy of ancient Rome. It may be because Robespierre, in particular, is so good at playing the Roman, that he is a particular favorite of these women who come to cheer and support the various Jacoban deputies. The fact that Robespierre, despite his slight image of chilly asexuality, is an absolute heartthrob. I mean, he has all these groupies. It's noted by his enemies and causes them some degree of puzzlement, I think.

But is it not because of that image, I would say, the chilliness and the... I think that is the draw, isn't it? The women think I could be the one who melts the ice cold, incorruptible heart. But actually, we're just talking about women as spectators here, watching men. But we've had one woman in particular. We talked about Marion Souinette, but on the side of the revolutionaries, we've had one woman in particular that we've mentioned a few times in the more recent episodes, who actually is an agent She has genuine political influence, and that is Madame Roland. Tell me about Madame Roland.

She is the wife of a Girondin Minister, and she essentially is the of the woman who runs a revolutionary salon. The idea of a salon where movers and shakers meet up, discuss philosophy or current politics or whatever. Again, it's something that is inherited from the Ancien Régime. But Madame Solio sets up the the classic revolutionary salon. But she's not just a hostess. As you said, she is an actor. She, in a way, is much more forceful, much more dynamic, much more proactive than her husband She is the person who comes up with the idea of recruiting the Fédérée from across France. These are the people who will come singing the Marseillais from the south of France, for instance. That's her idea. In the early months of 1792, as the Royal Constitution is starting to implode, she is writing letters left, right, and center. She's writing letters to Briceau and his colleagues, accusing them of being time-wasters, of supporting the king when his regime is clearly on its uppers. She pushes her husband to support the suspension of the king. He'd been hesitant about this. She's very forceful. She has very strong opinions. She is able, because of her position in the salon because she has all these amazing connections, to let her opinions be known.

They have an impact. But again, she does not herself think that women should play a role in public politics. She doesn't invite other women to her salon. It's hers and hers alone.

That's very Margaret Thatcher, isn't it? It's how Margaret Thatcher ran her government.

Madame Roland, I don't think Mr. Thatcher would go this far, but she says, Women must inspire a political endeavor, yet without seeming to be contributing to it. You mentioned Marie-Antoinette. I think it's really striking. Madame Roland is very hostile to Marie-Antoinette. One of the reasons for this is that she condemns Marie-Antoinette for being a malign influence on the king and therefore on politics, generally. She condems what she calls the faint rustling of silk behind the royal curtain. The idea that when Louis XVI is being attended by his ministers, Marie-Antoinette is there, whispering from behind screens. Of course, the irony of that is that these are precisely the terms in which many of her enemies, Robespierre, Danton, the Montagnard, the people who are opposed to the Girondin, and Madame Rollon is a Girondin, this is how they condemn her as someone who is hiding behind a curtain, whispering.

They literally say she is the new Madame de Pompidou, she's the new Madame Dubarry, she is the overmighty female favorite who has corrupted and seduced this slack-minded, gullible men who flock around her. She fits it basically into a standard demonology, doesn't she?

She does. It's to cast her husband as the new Louis XVI, venal, pliable, emasculated. Over the course of that summer, as tensions between the Girondin and those who are further to the left, you might put it like that. She becomes a hate figure for many of the song culotte. She's, I guess, what would she be? Polytoine B, perhaps.

That's the way that which blue collar Trump voters talked about Hillary Clinton, for example, nagging. She's only got where she has because of her husband. She's always telling us off and telling us what's good for us.

All of that thing. I think that it actually... Her role and the things that are said about her and the misogyny that is directed, ironically, is drawing on the traditions of misogyny that had earlier condemned Marie-Antoinette. It helps to polarize the political division between the Montignat and the Girondin. It's striking that it is the Montignat, those who are furthest left, those who are most committed, perhaps, to the ideals of liberty, equality, and of course, fraternity, brotherhood, not sisterhood, who are, I think, the readiest to see female claims to a commanding role in the revolution as actually being counter-revolutionary. Of course, on the furthest left, the Robespierre, the So on. These are the men who most identify with the model of antique virtue, with Spartans, with the Romans of the early Republic.

We know what the Romans thought about women being involved in politics. They thought it was a terrible thing.

Yes, because they saw the role, and Spartans, paradigmatically, saw the role of women to be wives and to be mothers. In other words, women who are dedicated to the male citizen Their role is to serve them, to enable them to do their patriotic duty, and then to give them more sons who can continue to serve the Republic. This is very clearly drawing on Spartan and Roman ideals. It's an ideal that right from the beginning is there in all the festivals that are staged, in the rhetoric, all of that thing. It leaves open the question, which I think we should maybe try and answer after a break, Are there actually any women who are pushing for full political rights? If there are, what is the response to them?

Well, the good news for people who like the rest is history is that there are such women, because otherwise, there would be no second half. Return after the break, and we will meet two of them. See you then. Today's episode is brought to you by A Thousand Blows, the new original series premiering exclusively on Disney A Thousand Blows is inspired by the remarkable true life story of the infamous Mary Carr, who led a notorious all-female London Gang, the 40 Elephants.

As it International Women's Day this week, we thought we'd talk about not necessarily the most notorious women in history, but some of the most remarkable ones, didn't we, Dominic?

We did indeed. I don't know who yours is, Tom, but the person who we've talked about in the rest of this history that I often think about is a young woman called Sophie Scholl, who grew up in Germany in the late 1930s, early 1940s. She was a young woman of enormous earnestness and moral seriousness. She and her brother, Hans, joined and were key parts of an organization called the White Rose Group, which distributed pamphlets and leaflets across Germany attacking the crimes of the Third Reich. As you'll remember, Tom, Sophie came to a very sad end that they where she and Hans were captured, and they were interrogated, and tried, and executed by the Nazis. The story of her in prison, in the Stadelheim Prison, in the last hours before her death, and she's praying, and she's completely unapologetic about standing up against the horrors of Nazism. I think it's one of the most inspirational stories in all history, not just in 20th century history.

Yeah, such a remarkable young woman. I've chosen a young woman who didn't die for liberty, but she was an extraordinary footballer or soccer player, if you're watching this in America. She was called Lily Parr. She was born in St. Helen's in Lancashire in 1905. She was part of a huge family, lots of boys. She, as a girl, loved playing rugby and particularly football. When the First World War hit Britain, men's football basically got canceled Everyone started watching women's football instead. Lily was an incredible, incredible player. When she was 14, she got recruited to play for this munitions factory called Dick Kerr's. She was only 14, and she scored, I think, something like 100 goals in her first season. She played right the way through the First World War into the aftermath of the Second World War. She was famous for the brutality of her kicking She said to have broken the leg of one man when she took a free kick. She broke another man's arm, and footballs then were really, really heavy. So for her to kick it, I mean, absolutely amazing. What made her sporting ability even more remarkable is that she loved smoking and she was never seen without a woodbine between her teeth, and gradually, her teeth all rotted and fell out.

In due course, the men who controlled football in England got resentful of the Fame of the female teams, and so they basically banned them from using the professional football grounds. Very sad. Lily retired and she became a nurse, but she was never forgotten. She's now celebrated as one of England's not just greatest sportswomen, but sports people of all time. I think that she was the first woman to be inducted into English football's Hall of Fame. She's not up there with Sophie Shoal, but she was a remarkable, remarkable woman.

It's brilliant, isn't it, Tom, that women's stories stories like these are being restored to their proper place in recent history. That's one reason I'm looking forward to this new series so much. This segment was brought to you by our friends at Disney+.

A Thousand Blows, that is a new original series, and it is streaming right now on Disney Plus globally. If you're watching this in the US, it is on Hulu. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. Dominic, what What do you find useful about Nord?

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That's one of the things that make me so passionate about NordVPN. So to stay secure online, you really should take advantage of our exclusive NordVPN discount. You Really should, you know. All you need to do is to go to nordvpn. Com/restishistory. When you sign up, you can receive a bonus four months on top of your plan, and there is no risk with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee. The link is also in the episode description box. Welcome back to The Rest is History. Before the break, Tom promised you he said he'd got buy finders full of women who were pushing for full political rights. Actually, one of them is an old friend of the show. A tremendous character who was very prominent in the women's march on Versailles, cut a very flamboyant figure, and that is Tehuanne de Méricourt. She had pistols in her belt. She looked a bit like a pirate. She had a... Adamant. She had a... What?

Adamant.

Like Adamant, yeah. She looked like a new romantic, exactly. She had a liberty cap. She had a fancy She's on a horse, cuts a great figure. But actually, she then gets into a bit of a mess, doesn't she? Terrible scrape. Yeah, a scrape. Is that what it is? It's a scrape. She's captured by Austrian agents. Tell us about How about?

Because she's actually Belgian. She's from Liège, which is under Austrian-ruled low countries. May 1790, she goes there, very ill-advisedly, to catch up with all her old friends, and she gets arrested by Austrian agents, put into prison. The Austrian see this as a great coup because she's notorious as a revolutionary Amazon. This is a great prize. They transport her all the way to Austria, where she is kept in prison for months and months. She's finally released at the end of 1791 because rather sweetly, her jailer has grown very fond of her. She seems to be a very charismatic person. The jailer had obviously developed a shine for her. She then gets released and goes back to Paris. Of course, her role in the woman's march has now been supplemented by the fact that she's been imprisoned by Austrian despots. You couldn't have a better calling card, really. This gives her a stature among revolutionary men as a hero of the revolution that I think no other woman can rival because she's been there, she's done the hard yards, she's got the notches in her escoochon to show that she's really served the revolution. Even before her imprisonment, she had spoken at the Cordelier Club, which is the most radical of all the clubs.

After it, she's allowed to come and give an account of what she'd been getting up to in a prison and everything at the Jacqueminot Club itself. These are very, very distinctive, almost unprecedented markers of her status. But I think the very taste of what it would be to be a political player, to be not just a spectator at these clubs, but a participant, makes it all the more frustrating for her that women are essentially kept out of that, that they're not allowed to do it. She pursues a policy of trying to counter that. She attempts to found women's only clubs, mixed clubs, but it doesn't work. It largely doesn't work because women don't really seem to have wanted to participate in them. Then in 1792, she gives up on the whole sitting around and talking because, of course, she's very much a woman for a pistol in a belt. With Paris being threatened, she agitates for a woman's battalion to be set up to help in the defense of Paris. Again, this is turned down. When the on the Tuilery happens, the attack on the Tuileries happens, the attack that results in the Massacre of the Swiss Guards, she's there, she's all over it.

It's very much her scene, brandishing pistols again. For this, she receives public honor. But I think that she remains an anomaly because she's taught between the traditional dimensions of the masculine and the feminine, the active and the domestic, the political and the person who stays at home fostering and looking after the people who will engage in politics, namely men. In due course, as we will see, because we'll continue her story in subsequent episodes, this tension, it ends up destroying her.

Just before you move on to the other person you want to talk about, there are There are other people who agree with her, other women who agree with her and say, especially when war is declared, they want to join the war effort. There are two sisters called the Furnig sisters who took up arms in the defense of Valenciennes in the east of France. The general was so impressed by them, he promised to put them in the line of fire at the first opportunity. Then there's a petition put up by an activist called Pauline Léon, which was read out to the legislative assembly. This is summer 1792. Our father's husbands and sons may perhaps be the victims of erronimous fury. Could we be forbidden the sweetness of avenging them or dying at their sides? You cannot refuse us. Society cannot deny us this right which is given us by nature unless it's claimed that the Declaration of Rights does not apply to women. The legislative assembly, you know what it does? It just ignores them because people are embarrassed. Actually, in April 1793, the convention bans women, officially bans them from going into battle. But that issue of the Declaration of Rights brings us to the other great character that you're going to talk about today, who is a great favorite of mine, and her name is Olimp de Gouges.

Tell us about her.

I think you're absolutely right that there are women who, listening to the revolutionary rhetoric, the talk about the rights of men, draw the logical conclusion and say, Well, if men have rights, why don't women? As you said, war seems to have been a particular focus for this, the idea that men should defend the country. If men can defend it, why not women? There are those who want to do that. But equally, the revolutionary authorities regard it as an embarrassment. They don't really want to give any encouragement to it. That's why nothing really comes of it. There is no revolutionary battalion of Amazons defending the patrie on the barricades. It's left to one woman woman in particular to hammer home what I think clearly, from our perspective, seems a monstrous unfairness. As you said, this is Olimp de Gouges, a woman who is becoming, I think, better known pretty much by the year, would you say?

Yeah, better known now than she's ever been, I would say.

That is because more than anybody else in the revolution, she is exposing this key hypocrisy. If there are rights of men, then why Why not rights of women? She is, I think, a very attractive figure. I mean, literally attractive. She's very charming, described in 1770 as one of Paris's prettiest women. But she's just also, it personality is very appealing. She's witty. She seems fun. I think that's probably the best way to describe it. She's born in the Long Dock, but she comes to Paris in 1768 when she is 20 years old. She She does so initially as the mistress of a wealthy industrialist from Lyon. There is all kinds of gossip in Paris that she is a courtesan. There is a paper called La Correspondance, who writes in 1717, so two years after her appearance in Paris, that she's born with a pretty face as her only heritage. She is known in Paris for some times solely through the favors with which she gratifies her compatriots. One of these compatriots, it was rumored, was Dominate, your old friend, the Duke of Allian, Philippe Egalité.

Truly terrible man.

With whom she was supposed to have had an affair. Whether she had an affair with him or not, she was definitely part of his circle. She goes to the Réal, which people may remember, is this great complex of buildings in the center of Paris, owned by the Duke of Orléans, which in the pre-revolutionary world was a place of free-thinking. Anything could be published there, anything could be said. This is the the world into which Olimp de Gouges moves, and she becomes a leading contributor to it. She's fascinated by it. She is obsessed by all the ideas and the currents of conversation, the politics there. What's amazing about this is that her background is actually unbelievably poor. She'd arrived in Paris barely able to read or write. Much debate among scholars as to whether she could read write at all. On top of that, French wasn't even her first language. She spoke Occitan.

She would have liked Marien.

Yeah, she would. Yeah, exactly. Her background is absolutely full of the melodrama that you get in novels of this period. The identity of her father is very mysterious. On the birth certificate says that she's the daughter of a butcher, but there's much controversy about this. She liked to hint that she was the daughter of a marquis. At times, she might even hint that she was the daughter of the king. Great excitement, a swirl of melodrama there. She had then been forced into marriage at a very young age to a man she absolutely hated, and who, again, in a very melodrama way, drowned in a flood. This is what enabled her then to reject any prospect of future marriage. She hated the institution of marriage, she condemned it as a form of slavery, and to come to Paris, clearly as a kept woman, but maybe a courtesan as well. But she is very, very smart. This woman who, when she arrived in Paris, could barely read or write, she very quickly becomes not just a participant in intellectual debate, but she becomes, first of all, a novelist and then a playwright. She writes her first novel in 1784, then gets very into the theater.

She becomes a friend of Sebastián Mercier, who we talked about in the previous episode, that playwright who came up with all the horrific details about the death of the Princess de Lamballe. Her most famous play is called L'esclavage des Noirs, the slavery of the Blacks, is a very ripe melodrama about a young girl being reunited with her long lost father. So Olympe de Gouges is clearly working issues out there. But it is also very vehemently abolitionist. She is hugely opposed to the slave trade. The impact of this play is such that the slave trade lobby pay to go to the theater and to shout it down. Such as the uproar that this generates, that the play can only be staged for three nights and it has to be withdrawn, which is obviously, on one level, very bad for Olimp de Gouges. She wants the message to get out there. She's going to miss out on the money that she would otherwise have earned. But it does make her famous. It makes her a figure of prestige and status in the intellectual world of pre-revolutionary Paris. And by and large, I think it's fair to say that anyone who is a committed abolitionist before the revolution, when the revolution comes, is pretty much bound to be in favor of it.

Yeah, of course. And Olimp de Gouges, she's a big fan of the revolution.

But with caveats, right?

Yeah, quite an idiosyncratic take on it. She always has a very soft spot for Louis XVI. Again, it may be this thing if she identifies with Louis XVI as a man who's unfortunate in his parents, a bit like she was her father.

Or maybe she's really his daughter after all.

Well, I think she was meant to be the daughter of Louis XV. All right.

She's his... What does that make her? His... Stepsister. Yeah, stepsister.

Yeah. Half-sister. Half-sister. Oh, no, it's too complicated. I can't work it out. But anyway, she feels that Louis XVI has been dealt a very bad hand by his predecessors, by Louis XV, and the people who have gone before. She wrote about him, An unhappier king and his ancestors. Is he to be made responsible for their mistakes? So right the way through everything that follows the fall of the Bastille, right the way up to the flight to Varennes when Louis XVI and the royal family try to escape Paris and France, she's always picking up for him. When he makes his flight to Forren, she's very, very disappointed in him.

Yeah, understandably.

She feels that he's let her down, he's let France down, but worst of all, he's let himself down. But she still feels sorry for I think that's reflective of the fact that above all, she has a big heart, Dominic. She feels the sufferings of others deeply. Whether it's the slaves in the Caribbean, whether it's the poor, whether it's the king, whether it's animals, she's a great animal lover. She feels compassion for them all.

That's lovely. We love somebody with a big heart.

I think that this explains why she comes to feel as she does about the revolution, just as the king has let her down, so she feels that the revolution is letting her down. People may remember. I can't even remember which episode it was now. We've done so many episodes on the revolution. But back in 1791, France gets its first written Constitution. This is the one that Louis XVI had been trying not to sign, and eventually, he feels bulldozed into doing it. It passes into law on the third of September 1791. Louis XVI accepts it 10 days later. This now the Constitution that is going to govern France. This is the one that offers a measure of suffrage to men, but not to women. Olympe de Gouges is appalled by this. She says, Well, what about women? Why shouldn't women have the vote? Why shouldn't women have rights as well? Twelve days later, on the 15th of September, she's written this ripost and she publishes it, and it's called, very pointedly, the Declaration of the Rights of woman and of the female citizen. It's an obvious parody of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

It's a marker of her, again, idiosyncratic take on politics that she dedicates this to Marie-Antoinette That's the last person that you will choose, right?

If you were worried about your standing in revolutionary Paris.

It's simultaneously a parody of revolutionary idealism, but also, I think it's ultimate expression, because by echoing the original declaration, she's aiming to remind the world what it's missing. So woman is born free and is equal to man in her rights. She's deliberately parading the phrases of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. She is demanding that women share in all these rights, which, of course, includes sufferage. She articulates this in a very famous way and one that looks forward forward notoriously to what is to happen in 1793, when she writes, Woman has the right to climb onto the scaffold, she must equally have the right to climb onto the tribunal. In other words, if she can be executed, then she should have the right to govern the laws to vote.

Grimly, ironic words.

Very grimly, ironic. Now, what is the response to this Declaration of the Rights of Woman? There are certainly revolution revolutionaries who accept male revolutionaries, who accept its force. The most prominent of these is the erstwell Marquis de Condensé, who we met again ages ago. He's a philosopher, enlightenment, philosopher, He's very, very anti-Christian. He's an economist. He's very agitated by polluted rivers. Like Olimp de Guj, he's a very committed abolitionist. So all reasons why he would be sympathetic to what she's arguing. He absolutely supports female suffrage. I think it's not just Olymp de Guj, who is influencing him on this. It's also his own wife, who is a very, very impressive woman called Sophie de Grouchy, who is sister of a guy who will in due course become one of Napoleon's most celebrated marshals, Emmanuelle de Grouchy. Now, we've had quite a lot of relationships in this series, and indeed in the rest of history, generally, where the man is quite a lot older than the woman. The age gap between Condorce and Sophie is 20. She marries him when he's 22 and he's 42, but it's a very happy match. They're both philosophers, so you can imagine they have a lovely time sitting around discussing Diderot or Rousseau or whatever.

She's also a very skilled linguist. Dominic, the tremendous news is that her best second language is English.

Good for her. Is she translated Adam Smith? Yeah. Tremendous.

Thomas Payne.

Thomas Payne. She actually runs her salon. Unlike Madame Roland, she allows other women to come to her salon.

Including Olymp de Gouges. That's where they would all have met. The condos say they're not card-carrying Girondin, but they're definitely aligned with them. I think it's true I would say that the Girondin are much more in favor of female participation in public life than the Montagnard. Even though Madame Roland, she's a Girondin, she's not, it is a part of intellectual discussion among Girondin salon, and particularly Condorcey salon, that perhaps there should be female suffrage. It's not surprising that Elimte Gouges, she thinks the Girondin's are great. She calls them Tortures of Liberty, Thierry de Méricourt, she also aligns herself with the Girondin. But in general, it has to be said that the reaction to the Declaration of the Rights of Women, when people can be bothered so much as to respond to is either hilarity or just utter contempt.

Isn't it interesting that the more hard core Jacquemin, the Montagnard, as they call, Rob Speer in his circle, people like that, they're often among the most contempluous and the most scornful. You would think in other respects, it's a really good example, I guess, of what some listeners may say is the patriarchal attitudes, the misogyny, that in other respects, they are so democratic. But on this issue, they say, women, are you joking? I mean, Ha, ha, ha, women voting. Wouldn't that be a thing?

Yeah. These are the people who, of course, they're all in favor of sansculott wearing the liberty Cap, the Bonet Rouge, and indeed of the female representative of the Republic, Liberty, the future Mariah, wearing the Liberty Cap, but not actual women. They try and legislate to stop women from wearing it. Their justification Mission for this, it's not just the Spartans, it's not just the Romans. There are also more recent influences of whom the main ones are the philosophs, so Diderot, but particularly Rousseau. Rousseau has an incredible vein of hostility to any notion of female emancipation, of female suffrage. He wrote in his novel, which was a massive bestseller, La Nouvelle Héloïse, A Brilliant Wife is a plague to her husband, her children, her friends, her valet, everyone. Rousseau is such a massive influence on the way that particularly young male revolutionaries think, that he provides them with a sanction for celebrating a very overtly masculine ideal of virtue. Of course, as we've said earlier, these are all people who are saturated in Roman literature, so they know that the word virtue itself derives from the Latin for man, ver. Viertus to have masculine qualities. When these young revolutionaries are playing the Roman, we talked about this in an earlier episode, to play the Roman often requires a counterpointing of a masculine virtue against a female inadequacy.

David, the great painter, in 1789, he does a painting of Brutus, the man who expelled the king, the founder of the Roman Republic. In this painting, the man is shown stern, unyielding, flinty in the cause of liberty. Meanwhile, in the background, you have women having the vapors. They're in hysterics, screaming and generally losing the plot. It is the role of the man to put the patrie first, then the family. It is the role of the woman to stay within the domestic household and to raise citizens who can then go out and play their part serving the patrie.

I mean, you could translate patri as homeland or as fatherland, couldn't you?

You absolutely could, yeah. For men, radicals, even those on, or maybe especially those on the furthest left, it's this combination, this fusion of the ancient and the cutting edge that serves to justify them in their... Well, yeah, their contempt for everything that a limp de as Juj is arguing for. But I think the thing that's unsettling, perhaps, for us today, and certainly for many of the feminist scholars that I read on this, is that it's not just men who are thinking this. A majority of women seem to have thought so, too. Condorce, who's in favor of female suffrage, he's really puzzled by it. He's one of the people who watches women idolizing Robespierre, who's absolutely against female suffrage. He's really puzzled by it. He writes, One wonders sometimes why there are so many women following Robespierre at his home, at the podium of the Jacobin, at the Cordelier, at the Convention. He says, which is absolutely right, well, maybe one reason for this is that women are reading Rousseau Rousseau, and La Nouvelle Héloïse, his great novel, that's a massive with women. Maybe they're imbibing it. Madame Roland is a big fan of Rousseau. Rosalie Julien, who you were quoting in the previous episode.

She was a big fan of Rousseau. Maybe it's that, but I can't really believe that that's- It's not just that there is it?

If you think 100 years hence, when there are going to be huge arguments about women voting, Often, among the most vociferous opponents of it are other women, opposing suffrage campaigns, not just in France, in Britain, in the United States, wherever. Don't historians think that effectively a lot of women had internalized the assumptions of the age, that they have come to believe, they come to believe what they're told, that they have their domestic sphere, which is their domain, and that there is the public sphere, which is the domain of men.

I think it's this language of rights, perhaps, that underpins it, which Olimp de Guj is drawing on. But it also applies to men. One of the striking things about this election to the convention, which is it's the first really full male suffrage in any election. I think our perspective today would be people denied a right to vote would embrace it. They would feel that a great weight had been lifted off their shoulders, that a great injustice had been righted. But what's striking about that election is how few people participate in it. I think it's something like one in six. Yeah, terrible. Yeah, maybe one in 10. That must reflect maybe a bewilderment, a puzzelment, simply an inability to understand what's being offered on the part of men who are being given this right. Presumably then, the same would be true of women, that this is such a novel way of understanding politics and the role of individuals within a policy that people just can't get a handle on it. Maybe it's a bit about slavery, where similar debates are happening, and it's striking that Olymp de Guj is an abolitionist as well as an enthusiast for female suffrage, that she's arguing for things that today we take so for granted that we can't even understand how people could possibly have thought otherwise.

Yet the fact that she is so scorned and despised and mocked does, I think, remind us of just how revolutionary principles that today we completely accept once were. I think there's a case for saying that for all her soft spot for Louis XVI, for all the fact that she dedicates her Declaration of the Rights of Women to Marie-Antoinette, there is a case for saying that the Toulimpe de Gouges is as radical, if not more radical, than any of the revolutionaries that we've talked about in this series.

Tom, I could not agree with you more. I think, actually, by far, she's the most radical. All that the men are arguing for, Robespierre, the Maras, whatever, it's within the bounds of the imagination. There have been republics, right? I mean, England executed its king. There has been the Dutch Republic. There's the Roman Republic. It is perfectly plausible to imagine that. You might think it's a bad thing, which a lot of people in France obviously did, but you can imagine it. It's not making your head hurt to think about it. But I think with this, what's clearly the case when she presents that Declaration of the Rights of Women, when she unveils it, the ridicule, the contempt, the disbelief that greets it is a sign that a lot of people just simply cannot imagine a world in which women exercise political power.

Including women?

Yeah, Excluding women themselves. Excluding women themselves, exactly. That they are, as it were, I don't want to say prisoners of the same imagination because that cast people in the past as somehow lesser than us. We're more enlightened. I don't generally like that language, but I think it is fair to say that just as we are trapped by our own preconceptions in ways that we don't even recognize, they are absolutely trapped by theirs.

But I think it also suggests that we are beneficiaries of the events that we're describing in this series in ways that we may not appreciate, that we may mistake for truth so self-evident that they don't need to be argued for, that that's not what they are at all, that they are, in fact, radical intellectual ideological innovations that ultimately succeed because we come to feel, yeah, they're absolutely right. But when they are first proposed, just seem absolutely mad.

Tom, there are a lot of people in the world right now, when we're recording this, who would listen to this episode and would say they are mad. I mean, there are people right now, the people who are currently administering Afghanistan or indeed Iran, who would say a lot of what Olim De Guj was arguing was bonkers. So maybe we shouldn't be entirely complacent about it, I guess.

Yes. But it's nice to hear you finally say something good about the revolution. So Theo will be pleased about that.

Well, I'm not saying something good about the revolution. I'm saying about Olim De Guj, because as we will discover in a future episode-Revolution doesn't treat her well, does it? No, does not treat her well, which is yet another black mark, I'm afraid. So Jolly Good tom. That was absolutely fascinating. And overdue, we should have done a lot about men in the revolution.

We've done quite a lot about women as well.

Well, we have. We did start with a woman, I guess. Next week, we will be getting back to the narrative, won't we? Because I think we left it last time with the Prussians.

Cliffhanger.

They were approaching Paris, they're 120 miles away, and they've just turned to finish off the last French army at Valmy. Listeners will be excited to hear that there is going to be a thrilling twist to the story We love a thrilling twist on the Rest is History. Can't wait. Tom, what could people do if they wanted to hear that episode now, literally now?

They could sign up to The Rest is History Club. Not only will they be able to hear both the two episodes yet to come, but they will get a slew, Dominic, a slew of additional benefits.

Just to be very clear, we are a mixed club. Tom, do we treat our male and female members equally?

We're all about egalité.

We treat them equally badly. On that bombshell, we will see you next time for the most exciting twist in European history. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Now, Tom, as you know, I am not just a man of history. I'm also known for my involvement in the performing arts. Are you now? I must confess that early on in my acting career, my stage presence did come under a little scrutiny from Britain's finest newspapers.

Yes, this is the famous, notorious one-star review in the Scotsmanism.

Yeah, and I will remind the listeners that in Scotland, they order their reviews in a different way, so one is at top and five stars is the worst review you could get. So we were very happy with that one-star review. But like a lot of great masters of their craft, Tom, I learned from it. I grew, I evolved. I knew I would bide my time before returning to the boards. And guess what? You're not No. Yes. Tom, I have to tell you, I have returned to the boards. I'm performing once again. The brilliant news for our listeners is that you can go and you can be transfixed by my performance right now because I am honored and privileged to appear here in the latest Sherlock and Co. Adventure, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder.

Please tell me that you are playing the Norwood Builder.

I'm playing a much better character. I'm playing Hector McFarlon, a solicitor from Blackheath accused of murder. Goodness, as Lestrade's officers bear down on me, Tom, I have nowhere else to turn but to 221B Baker Street.

This is amazing, Dominic. The fact that you were cast in this role, it has nothing to do with the fact that Sherlock & Co is a goalhanger production like this one.

Well, very much like this one with a better acting, I think it's fair to say. It's a stablemate of ours. They are a massive show. They get 10 million downloads. Outside, I believe The Archers, this is the biggest audio drama in Britain.

Well, I have no doubt, Dominic, that it is more interesting than The Archers.

It genuinely is brilliant. My son is a massive Sherlock and co aficionado. It basically goes through all the original short stories and the short stories that are often forgotten in modern-day adaptations. It exposes for Arthur Conadoy's narratives to the modern day. So Watson himself is making the podcast while they're doing the adventures. You can pick up any adventure you want. You don't have to follow the whole series to get stuck in. It is absolutely brilliant. Do you know who else thinks it's brilliant, Tom? The Guardian newspaper.

One of those prized one-star reviews?

No, a five-star. They said, and I quote, Very funny, mildly sweary, and hugely popular. Do you want to know what the Times said? It said, A break-next series that Gen Z, or Gen Z, as members of it say that Gen Z is hooked on. Wow.

Now that you're appearing on the show, that will confirm the hook, won't it?

It absolutely will. The Guardian listeners will be beside themselves with joy. Everybody, please listen to Sherlock and Co, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder. It's multi-part. It's brilliant. Part one is out now. Jump right in wherever you get your podcasts. Here is a clip from that very episode. He was murdered.

Supposedly, no body has been found yet, Watson.

Yeah, but- Now, listen, you said you would hear me out, didn't you?

Do you want to just dial it down a bit, Hector?

Would you dial it down when you're smeared over every paper? Look at this. In the Times here, look, solicitor suspected for contractor disappearance. The telegraph. Solicitor faces long arm of law. The Daily Mail, bully of Blackheath, elite London lawyer facing murder charge. This is the Here, look at this. Old Acre murder. How neoliberal materialism and Kirsty Allsop home renovations are the real killers that they're working. That one goes on a bit. Yeah, we get the point. Do you? I'm not sure you do. The Daily I'm not a sport. Big job love. Mcfarlon's wife's steamy romp with missing builder. I mean, look, there's a thought bubble above my wife's head saying, Nob the builder, can he fix it? Hector. The speech bubble on him as well. Here's your extension, love. I mean, this is just the son, Cannibal Hector. Mcfarlon confesses to eating Norwood tradesman. You confess to what? Sorry. I didn't confess to a damn thing. I said I was hungry for justice. That's all. It is slander. It's disgraceful. It's bloody humiliating.

Could we perhaps return chain of events as you, not the press, perceive them?