feminish

It is a bright clear day today, and cold. A different day from the grey, heavy, wet ones that’ve been shrouding us for a while.

It’s the kind of light that shimmers the dew on the grass, shows you the dirt on the floor and catches a very particular angle on the windowpanes, suddenly revealing a mysterious film of dust-grime you can bet your bottom pound sterling wasn’t there yesterday.

As I was sweeping I noticed how short I was. Nothing particularly remarkable, I just noticed that, well, I’m quite close to the floor. Which is obviously a relative thing. Quite literally relative, given that all of mine are over 5ft9.

My first thought was of being the odd one out. My second was that in fact I embody the height of my two grandmothers, and that I’m the only grandchild to do so. I even thought, for perhaps the first time, Thank goodness I’m short: a little more of them is continued, a little less is lost.

Talking of grandmothers, and losing things…

I’ve promised a post on why it matters that, once upon a time several thousand women in Paris embarked on an unprecedented political act of force and power. Does it matter that we have collectively forgotten? And why should we care anyway?

I did a wee bit of arithmetic and reckon that, give or take a few young and old pregnancies, I had approximately 768 great-great-great-great-great-great-great(and great-) grandmothers (assuming 2 generations were alive simultaneously) of adult age in 1789 when thousands of women marched on Versailles and (in a manner of speaking) captured the king.

At least a few hundred were in France, and even Paris (and not Ireland or England or wherever else; some g’g'g’grandfathers somewhere along the line made wigs in Paris, or so it is told).

768. That’s a lot of women’s genes swimming through my veins. And some of these ancestors may have been the ones that marched. The statistical probability, unfortunately, is that they weren’t. But no matter. The point is that we all have a hell of a lot of great great great great great great great great grandmothers. And we don’t know what they did. We don’t know their loves, their hates, their dreams or their regrets. We don’t know what they thought of themselves and what they might think of us.

Sometimes I forget when I read some history, catch a period drama on television, or see an old portrait, that my flesh-and-blood ancestors were those very women.

There’s a thing I once noticed about the female line. Or rather, about mothers. Let me ask you this: Where did your bodily heat come from? I mean, when were the cells that make you first warm? Your body is warm at the moment, 37 degrees or thereabouts. It is kept warm by food and water and your breath and a lot of chemical reactions - but what is the origin of that heat? When did your heat first become hot?

And there you have it, like a ripple of toppling dominoes chasing into the distance: the heat has always been there, through mothers’ tummies so far back my mind can’t fathom. It’s like a heat-relay, the flame never dying out. Our great-great-great-great-great-grea-great grandmothers are closer than we think.

Which is one case for knowing our female ancestors and knowing our women’s history. If we want to know where we are, we need to know where we’ve been…

But it’s not just to know ourselves that we need to know women’s history, but to know our power, as women. We need to overwrite the echoes of Antonia Fraser’s assertion that in the 17thC “no women had any rights at all” ((The Weaker Vessel: Women’s lot in seventeenth-century England (1984), p.5 )), so we can actually see what rights our women ancestors did have; what powers they could claim and did bring to bear.

What luck, then, to have such a scholar as Olwen Hufton, who has this to say of the women’s protests in Revolutionary France:

In time of dearth the importance of the mother within the family grew beyond measure. It was not merely that her deviousness, her relationship with baker, pawnbroker and priest became more important than before… nor just her assiduity in rooting out what food there was but that when all else failed it was she who had the right to spill over into riot, not the father of the family…. She had to do it collectively and it evidently had to be a very abnormal year. ((”Women in Revolution 1789-1796″, Past and Present, 53 (1971), p.94. See also her Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (1992) ))

This must explain why no women were shot by the Royal Guard, why no women were forcibly evicted from the Assembly Hall at Versailles and why, ultimately, the women’s demands - for cheap bread and punishment of the culprits (in this case the King’s surrender to armed guard) - were met. It may explain that the women’s power was as mothers, more than as women (though evidence shows unmarried women and girls were there too).

Some people might say that that’s not the kind of power we want as women - we don’t just want power as ‘mothers’ but as independent human beings. And that may explain why some women don’t like to remember October 5th/6th 1789. Some may dismiss the march saying the women were ‘the lowest refuse of the streets’, bribed and manipulated by men (the words of one Mary Wollstonecraft ((An Historical and Moral View of the Revolution (1794) )) ); others may tell you that the most important thing we should remember is just that the French Revolution, seen in its entirety, betrayed women (( For example in French see Marand-Fouquet, C. La Femme au temps de la Revolution (1989) )); still others will get their historiographical knickers in a twist trying to determine, once and for all, whether feminisme really was born in France in 1789 ((See Karen Offen’s “The New Sexual Politics of French Revolution Historiography”, French Historical Studies, 16:4 (1990) Link is to Jstor (Athens login required) )).

But the importance of the March of October 5th is much simpler than that.

No matter how oppressed the women might (or might not) have been, no matter how narrow their rights before the law, no matter how distorted and marginalised and devalued by religion or intellectual culture or ‘the public sphere’- when women had had enough, when they had reached their limits they did something about it, and it made a difference. Fine, they may not have had female elected representatives; they didn’t yet have organised clubs or unions; they didn’t have much cash; and they were strictly excluded from the day-to-day jostlings of power. So they just took their bodies and they took their drums and rounded everyone up and marched themselves with a few empty cannon through the pouring rain straight to the heart of government - where they made themselves heard and refused to budge until a reasonable change was effected.

That’s it. That’s why it’s important. That’s why it matters. And that’s why it matters still now to women of any age, any race, any colour, any nationality. We don’t ever need to think that our fore-mothers were pushed to their limits and just stood there, dumbstruck. They acted. They got off their butts and did something about it.

So next time you find yourself shouting at the television, ranting at the newspaper, or generally despairing at the state of the world: don’t worry. When the time comes - and the time may yet come - that we’ve had enough and it’s all ‘gone to the dogs’ (as we like to say in England), and something, anything, just has to be done - then the women will be there. It doesn’t matter if there are guns, or tanks, or bulletproof this and satellite that. And yes, we may all be kitted out with mobile phones and blackberries and instant-communications of who-knows-what kind. And we may all be terr’rised by the terr’rists. But we’re still human, and our g’g'g’g'g’g'g’grannies are still with us. Believe me, women’ll be there. And so will I.






FURTHER READING
» Women in Revolutionary Paris 1789-95, H.B.Applewhite, D.G.Levy, M.D.Johnson (1979) (collection of primary documents, with commentary demonstrating ‘the extraordinary intellectual activity, social demands and eventual disillusionment of women in the Revolution)
» “Women in Revolution 1789-1796″, Olwen Hufton, in Past and Present, 53 (1971), p.94. See also her Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (1992)
» “The New Sexual Politics of French Revolution Historiography”, Karen Offen, in French Historical Studies, 16:4 (1990) Link is to Jstor (Athens login required)

ONLINE
» Have a look at Joan Landes’s essay “Representing Women in the Revolutionary Crowd”, part of the Imaging the French Revolution website.
» There is also Sunshine for Women’s accessible account of Women and the French Revolution.
» Primary sources on the web include Stanislas Maillard’s testimony, and the testimonies of two women who took part

Photo courtesy Natascha2006 from Flickr.

Technorati tags: women’s history, feminism, political history, women, protest, French Revolution

It is a bright clear day today, and cold. A different day from the grey, heavy, wet ones that’ve been shrouding us for a while.

It’s the kind of light that shimmers the dew on the grass, shows you the dirt on the floor and catches a very particular angle on the windowpanes, suddenly revealing a mysterious film of dust-grime you can bet your bottom pound sterling wasn’t there yesterday.

As I was sweeping I noticed how short I was. Nothing particularly remarkable, I just noticed that, well, I’m quite close to the floor. Which is obviously a relative thing. Quite literally relative, given that all of mine are over 5ft9.

My first thought was of being the odd one out. My second was that in fact I embody the height of my two grandmothers, and that I’m the only grandchild to do so. I even thought, for perhaps the first time, Thank goodness I’m short: a little more of them is continued, a little less is lost.

Talking of grandmothers, and losing things…

I’ve promised a post on why it matters that, once upon a time several thousand women in Paris embarked on an unprecedented political act of force and power. Does it matter that we have collectively forgotten? And why should we care anyway?

I did a wee bit of arithmetic and reckon that, give or take a few young and old pregnancies, I had approximately 768 great-great-great-great-great-great-great(and great-) grandmothers (assuming 2 generations were alive simultaneously) of adult age in 1789 when thousands of women marched on Versailles and (in a manner of speaking) captured the king.

At least a few hundred were in France, and even Paris (and not Ireland or England or wherever else; some g’g'g’grandfathers somewhere along the line made wigs in Paris, or so it is told).

768. That’s a lot of women’s genes swimming through my veins. And some of these ancestors may have been the ones that marched. The statistical probability, unfortunately, is that they weren’t. But no matter. The point is that we all have a hell of a lot of great great great great great great great great grandmothers. And we don’t know what they did. We don’t know their loves, their hates, their dreams or their regrets. We don’t know what they thought of themselves and what they might think of us.

Sometimes I forget when I read some history, catch a period drama on television, or see an old portrait, that my flesh-and-blood ancestors were those very women.

There’s a thing I once noticed about the female line. Or rather, about mothers. Let me ask you this: Where did your bodily heat come from? I mean, when were the cells that make you first warm? Your body is warm at the moment, 37 degrees or thereabouts. It is kept warm by food and water and your breath and a lot of chemical reactions - but what is the origin of that heat? When did your heat first become hot?

And there you have it, like a ripple of toppling dominoes chasing into the distance: the heat has always been there, through mothers’ tummies so far back my mind can’t fathom. It’s like a heat-relay, the flame never dying out. Our great-great-great-great-great-grea-great grandmothers are closer than we think.

Which is one case for knowing our female ancestors and knowing our women’s history. If we want to know where we are, we need to know where we’ve been…

But it’s not just to know ourselves that we need to know women’s history, but to know our power, as women. We need to overwrite the echoes of Antonia Fraser’s assertion that in the 17thC “no women had any rights at all” ((The Weaker Vessel: Women’s lot in seventeenth-century England (1984), p.5 )), so we can actually see what rights our women ancestors did have; what powers they could claim and did bring to bear.

What luck, then, to have such a scholar as Olwen Hufton, who has this to say of the women’s protests in Revolutionary France:

In time of dearth the importance of the mother within the family grew beyond measure. It was not merely that her deviousness, her relationship with baker, pawnbroker and priest became more important than before… nor just her assiduity in rooting out what food there was but that when all else failed it was she who had the right to spill over into riot, not the father of the family…. She had to do it collectively and it evidently had to be a very abnormal year. ((”Women in Revolution 1789-1796″, Past and Present, 53 (1971), p.94. See also her Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (1992) ))

This must explain why no women were shot by the Royal Guard, why no women were forcibly evicted from the Assembly Hall at Versailles and why, ultimately, the women’s demands - for cheap bread and punishment of the culprits (in this case the King’s surrender to armed guard) - were met. It may explain that the women’s power was as mothers, more than as women (though evidence shows unmarried women and girls were there too).

Some people might say that that’s not the kind of power we want as women - we don’t just want power as ‘mothers’ but as independent human beings. And that may explain why some women don’t like to remember October 5th/6th 1789. Some may dismiss the march saying the women were ‘the lowest refuse of the streets’, bribed and manipulated by men (the words of one Mary Wollstonecraft ((An Historical and Moral View of the Revolution (1794) )) ); others may tell you that the most important thing we should remember is just that the French Revolution, seen in its entirety, betrayed women (( For example in French see Marand-Fouquet, C. La Femme au temps de la Revolution (1989) )); still others will get their historiographical knickers in a twist trying to determine, once and for all, whether feminisme really was born in France in 1789 ((See Karen Offen’s “The New Sexual Politics of French Revolution Historiography”, French Historical Studies, 16:4 (1990) Link is to Jstor (Athens login required) )).

But the importance of the March of October 5th is much simpler than that.

No matter how oppressed the women might (or might not) have been, no matter how narrow their rights before the law, no matter how distorted and marginalised and devalued by religion or intellectual culture or ‘the public sphere’- when women had had enough, when they had reached their limits they did something about it, and it made a difference. Fine, they may not have had female elected representatives; they didn’t yet have organised clubs or unions; they didn’t have much cash; and they were strictly excluded from the day-to-day jostlings of power. So they just took their bodies and they took their drums and rounded everyone up and marched themselves with a few empty cannon through the pouring rain straight to the heart of government - where they made themselves heard and refused to budge until a reasonable change was effected.

That’s it. That’s why it’s important. That’s why it matters. And that’s why it matters still now to women of any age, any race, any colour, any nationality. We don’t ever need to think that our fore-mothers were pushed to their limits and just stood there, dumbstruck. They acted. They got off their butts and did something about it.

So next time you find yourself shouting at the television, ranting at the newspaper, or generally despairing at the state of the world: don’t worry. When the time comes - and the time may yet come - that we’ve had enough and it’s all ‘gone to the dogs’ (as we like to say in England), and something, anything, just has to be done - then the women will be there. It doesn’t matter if there are guns, or tanks, or bulletproof this and satellite that. And yes, we may all be kitted out with mobile phones and blackberries and instant-communications of who-knows-what kind. And we may all be terr’rised by the terr’rists. But we’re still human, and our g’g'g’g'g’g'g’grannies are still with us. Believe me, women’ll be there. And so will I.






FURTHER READING
» Women in Revolutionary Paris 1789-95, H.B.Applewhite, D.G.Levy, M.D.Johnson (1979) (collection of primary documents, with commentary demonstrating ‘the extraordinary intellectual activity, social demands and eventual disillusionment of women in the Revolution)
» “Women in Revolution 1789-1796″, Olwen Hufton, in Past and Present, 53 (1971), p.94. See also her Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (1992)
» “The New Sexual Politics of French Revolution Historiography”, Karen Offen, in French Historical Studies, 16:4 (1990) Link is to Jstor (Athens login required)

ONLINE
» Have a look at Joan Landes’s essay “Representing Women in the Revolutionary Crowd”, part of the Imaging the French Revolution website.
» There is also Sunshine for Women’s accessible account of Women and the French Revolution.
» Primary sources on the web include Stanislas Maillard’s testimony, and the testimonies of two women who took part

Photo courtesy Natascha2006 from Flickr.

Technorati tags: women’s history, feminism, political history, women, protest, French Revolution