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

0:10Marianne is the embodiment of the French Republic. Marie-Anne represents the permanent values that found her citizens' attachment to the Republic, liberty, equality, fraternité. The earliest representation of a woman wearing a Phrygian cap, an allegorical figure of liberty and the Republic, made their appearance at the time of the French Revolution. The origins of the name Marie-Anne 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 their name derisively when referring to the République. So, Tom, that was the website of the Élysée Palace, talking about the great symbol of the French Republic, Marie-Anne.

1:05So 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 and autumn of 1792. We heard last time about the terrible September massacres that took place as the Prussians were advancing on Paris. And 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 Marianne. Marianne, who is this woman wearing the Phrygian cap, the Liberty cap, long flowing hair, will become the emblem of France itself.

1:52And I think it's really striking that two of the kind of emblematic embodiments of modern France, so the Marseillais, its national anthem, and the figure of Marianne, the embodiment of France herself, emerging precisely these months, that the summer going into the autumn of 1792. And I guess the previous episode that we did where we looked at the September massacres, I mean, it didn't really portray the revolution in a great light, did it? I mean, if we're absolutely honest. Not best right, no. But I think this kind of reminds us that even while people are being dragged out of prisons and hacked 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.

2:50Yes. A future in which all of the people of France will have a stake. So you mentioned at the end of the last episode, you left us with this absolute cliffhanger that the Prussians 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. And you said, you know, 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. And the national convention does meet, and it meets on the 20th of September.

3:33And the deputies who are going there, they're all going to the Tuileries, where the royal family had previously been based until the massacre of their guards and their removal to what ultimately is their prison. So this is now at the centre 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 mists of time that we talked about.

4:09Originally, 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 is gone. All males, basically over the age of 21, now have the vote. and I think this is a kind of noble and inspiring moment in history no matter what your views on the revolution might be Dominic would you disagree with that or not I mean maybe don't you think I would yeah I don't find it inspiring at all well I don't think everybody should have the vote so that's the difference between me and the French revolutionaries so 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, 35, 40.

4:50And 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've 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 think I've ever seen you. 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. So in that sense, you could say that Britain is inspired by this example as well.

5:25And Marianne kind of becomes the symbol of it. And the reason for that is the motion that is brought before the deputies the day after they meet on the 20th September, on the 21st of September, when they essentially vote to abolish monarchy. Royalty shall be abolished in France is the motion. And this is where the woman who comes to be called Marianne is introduced. Because again, to quote from the Elysee Palace, Marianne is the embodiment of the French Republic. And so how does it come about? How does this woman appear? How does she come to be called Marianne? It's actually not until the middle of the 19th century that she's kind of universally called Marianne.

6:04But the Elysee Palace thing that I read at the beginning is wrong. Am I not right in thinking that we know better than the Elysee Palace? Go on. So the Lise Palace said, you know, 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. And interestingly, the poem is not in French. I mean, that's what makes it so fascinating. Yeah. So it's by a guy called Guillaume Lavabre, who is writing in Languedoc. And he writes this poem called La Guerrisson de Marianne, The Healing of Marianne in French.

6:41And in that poem, Marianne is clearly an embodiment of the new republic that's been proclaimed. And this is the first equation of the republic with a woman called Marianne. But unlike the Marseilles, it doesn't really spread because it's not as accessible. And it takes a long, long time for that equation to kind of spread. As I said, it's not really until the 19th century. And so originally the figure of France as a woman, she's not called Marianne. She is very clearly Liberty and specifically Republican Liberty. And 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 Marseillaise is being enshrined as the national anthem.

7:27And so it's expressive of all the convulsions, all the excitements, all the kind of incredible process of change that these months in 1792 that we've been covering in the previous series and in this series are generating. And she appears 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. And on the new seal of the Republic, this is where Liberty, who will become Marianne, first appears. So the figure of liberty, we've talked so much about the influence of the Romans in particular on the French Revolutionaries.

8:09So this is a very obviously classical figure, basically a goddess holding the Fasces with an axe and a liberty cap. That's right, isn't it? So is there a bit of Athena about this figure maybe? Well, I mean, she's liberty. She's a classical abstraction given female form. And as with so much about the French Revolution, it actually has its roots in the Ancien Régime. So the painters, illustrators had been showing liberty as this kind of goddess in the years before the revolution breaks out. So there was a particularly famous illustration in the book about Henry IV, who was the great hero of France before the revolution.

8:51He was seen as the people's king. And this illustration shows him being carried up to heaven by Liberty, by this goddess. You know, this is kind of allegorical illustrations and paintings that really have very little cut through. But it's kind of there on the margins. And actually, I think you could say that the very value of Liberty is that she is a kind of a bit of an empty cipher. She's a kind of an abstraction onto which you can project things. So 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.

9:38Liberty 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. And 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 attributes that a thousand-year-old monarchy has. It doesn't bring the kind of the inheritance of symbols that France, particularly royal France, has been absolutely saturated in.

10:14And instead, she is she's kind of almost Robespierre. She's kind of chilly, poised, uptight, virtuous. And of course, there are the two obvious contrasts here. So even though she will come to be called Marie Anne, she's not Christian. She's not the Virgin. She is a Virgin who is not Christian. And I think that's, you know, as we will see in probably in our next series, what you do with Notre Dame, Our Lady, the Virgin, will be appointed issue in due course for the revolution. So Liberty, Marie Anne, is not the Virgin Mary. But of course, also, she's not an earthly queen. And more precisely, she is not Marie Antoinette.

11:00She is not an aristocratic woman. And generally, women who are, you know, paintings, images, they're from the aristocracy. The whole point of liberty is she is not. She's classless, I suppose, isn't she? I mean, she's not defined by any. And because she's antique, she doesn't represent any particular group in contemporary France. She's universal. Exactly. um and and as you said there are kind of obviously echoes of of athena the greek goddess of wisdom so in due course she comes to be shown wearing a helmet she's shown kind of trampling down various monsters representing counter-revolution and monarchy or whatever um and so with pretty much within a year of her appearance first appearance on the the um the great seal of france um she's starting to become a bit more proactive.

11:50And 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. And I think you get a kind of presentiment of that in the first revolution as well. But Dominic, I think there's a kind of interesting 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?

12:35So we started the entire cycle of French Revolution series with a woman, with Marie Antoinette, and the extraordinary misogyny of the attacks on her. And 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 centre stage. So I think you did an episode about the women's march on Versailles, when the market women go and bring back the king and Marantoinette, and the symbolism of it being the market women I think is really important there, isn't it?

13:15Yeah. And then, of course, you've got women who are prominent in the sans-culottes, who are storming the tuileries, who are shouting slogans in the streets. So it's not just a man's revolution by any means. Absolutely. So I think we talked before in the previous series about how the idea of the sans-culottes, the man who is wearing trousers rather than the britches that is kind of the traditional markers of wealth and status, how important dress is and there are um there are female sans culotte you know they're not wearing trousers but they're wearing kind of coarse woolen skirts um and they're wearing the wooden clogs that are the markers of of a sans culotte and they they wear the carmagnol this kind of um jacket that has ultimately come from kind of revolutionaries in italy and 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 kind of mothers of the nation.

14:27But 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. So everyone has heard of Ross-Pierre or Marat or Desmoulins. These are individuals who kind of stand tall in the pages of history. But women by and large don't. And that is a trend that goes back to the revolution itself. So 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.

15:11He 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 kind of a mass of humanity who are inspired by a kind of animating energy and animating emotional power. They're spontaneous. This is 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 kind of masculine sphere. And this carries on even when they're not kind of marching on Versailles or attacking palaces or whatever.

15:52because women in Paris in particular, which is the cockpit of revolutionary activity, they are very, very keen spectators. So the sense of particularly women from the markets, fish wives, 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. So 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.

16:35And one of the Jacobin deputies kind of posing like a Roman, it's exactly the kind of thing that you could imagine someone in the early pages of Livy or Plutarch saying, he orders that more benches be brought in so that they can sit down. These These are mothers of families, he tells the other delegates. They are worthy of ancient Rome. And it may be because Robespierre in particular is so good at playing the Roman, that he is a particular favourite of these women who come to cheer and support the various Jacobin deputies. And the fact that Robespierre, despite his kind of slight image of chilly asexuality, is an absolute heartthrob.

17:18I mean, he has all these groupies. It's kind of 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? That 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 there are... Well, we've had one woman in particular. So we talked about Marion Soinette, 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.

17:58She has genuine political influence, and that is Madame Roland. So tell me about Madame Roland. So she is the wife of Girondin, Minister, and she essentially is the archetype of the woman who runs a revolutionary salon. So 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 Roelot sets up the kind of the classic revolutionary salon. But she's not just a hostess. I mean, as you said, she is an actor. She, in a way, I mean, is much more forceful, much more dynamic, much more proactive than her husband.

18:43So she is the person who comes up with the idea of recruiting the Federe from across France. These are the people who will come singing the Marseillais from the south of France, for instance. So that's her idea. and in the um the early months of 1792 as the royal constitution is starting to implode she is writing letters left right and center so she's writing letters to briso and his colleagues um accusing them of being time wasters um of uh 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 kind of hesitant about this so she's very forceful she has very strong opinions and she is able because of her position in the salon because she has all these amazing connections to let her opinions be known yeah they have an impact but again there's this she does not herself think that women should play a role in kind of public politics so she doesn't invite other women to her salon you know It's hers and hers alone.

19:51That's very Margaret Thatcher, isn't it? It's how Margaret Thatcher ran her government. So, Madame Roland, I don't think Mrs. Thatcher would go this far, but she says women must inspire political endeavour, yet without seeming to be contributing to it. Right. And you mentioned Marie Antoinette. I think it's really striking. Madame Roland is very, very hostile to Marie Antoinette. And 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. And so she condemns what she calls the faint rustling of silk behind the royal curtain.

20:24The idea that when Louis XVI is being attended by his ministers, Marie Antoinette is there kind of whispering from behind screens. And of course, the irony of that is that these are precisely the terms in which many of her enemies, so Robespierre, Danton, the Montagnard, the people who are opposed to the Girondin and Madame Roland is a Girondin. This is how they condemn her as someone who is kind of hiding behind a curtain, whispering. They literally say she is the new Madame de Pompadour. She is the new Madame du Barry. She is the over-mighty female favourite who has corrupted and seduced the slack-minded, gullible men who flock around her.

21:10I mean, she fits her basically into a standard demonology, doesn't she? She does. And it's to cast her husband as the new Louis XVI. Kind of venal, pliable, emasculated. And over the course of that summer, as tensions between the Girondins and those who are kind of further to the left, you might put it like that, she becomes a kind of hate figure for many of the sans-culottes. She's, I guess, I mean, what would she be? kind of poly-tween-bee perhaps. Right, 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.

21:58All of that kind of thing. And I think that it actually, you know, her role and the things that are said about her and the misogyny that is directed at her, ironically kind of, you know, is drawing on the traditions of misogyny that had earlier condemned Marie Antoinette. It helps to polarise the political division between the Montagnard and the Girondin. And it's kind of striking that it is the Montagnard, those who are furthest left, those who are most committed to 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.

22:39And of course, these on the furthest left, the Robespierre, the Marat, so on. These are the men who most identify with the model of antique virtue, with Spartans, with kind of the Romans of the early republic. And 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, Spartans paradigmatically, saw the role of women to be wives and to be mothers. So 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.

23:23And this is very clearly drawing on kind of Spartan and Roman ideals. And it's an ideal that right from the beginning is there in all the festivals that are staged, in the rhetoric, all of that kind of thing. And 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? And 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. So return after the break and we will meet two of them.

24:00See you then.

24:04Today'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. And as it's 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. So I don't know who yours is, Tom, but the person who we've talked about in the rest is history that I often think about is a young woman called Sophie Scholl, who grew up in Germany in the late 1930s, early 1940s.

24:48And she was a young woman of enormous sort of earnestness and kind of moral seriousness. And 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. And as you'll remember, Tom, Sophie came to a very sad end that she and Hans were captured and they were interrogated and tried and executed by the Nazis. And the story of her in prison, in the Stadelheim prison, in the last hours before her death, and she's sort of praying and she's completely unapologetic about standing up against the horrors of Nazism.

25:34I think it's one of the most inspirational stories in all history, not just in 20th century history. Yes, 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. Helens in Lancashire in 1905. She was part of a huge family, lots of boys. And she, as a girl, loved playing rugby and particularly football. And when the First World War hit Britain, men's football basically got cancelled. And so everyone started watching women's football instead.

26:17And Lily was an incredible, incredible player. So when she was 14, she got recruited to play for this munitions factory called Dick Kerr's. And she was only 14. And she scored, I think, something like 100 goals in her first season. and 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. And 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 uh and in due course the men who controlled football in um england got resentful of the fame of the the female teams and so they basically banned them from using the professional football grounds very sad um but and and so lily uh retired and she became a nurse but she was never forgotten and she's now celebrated um as one of england's not just greatest sports women but sports people of all time and i think that she was the first woman to be inducted into English football's hall of fame so you know I mean she's not up there with Sophie Scholl but she was a remarkable remarkable woman it's brilliant isn't it Tom that women's stories like these are being restored to their proper place in recent history and that's one reason I'm looking forward to this to this new series so much so this segment was brought to you by our friends at Disney Plus so a thousand blows that is a new original series and it is streaming right now on Disney Plus globally.

28:03And if you're watching this in the US, it is on Hulu.

28:36welcome back to the rest is history before the break tom promised you he said he'd got binders full of women who were pushing for full political rights and actually one of them is an old friend of the show so a tremendous character who was very prominent in the women's march on versailles cut a very flamboyant figure and that is Terjuan de Mericor so she had kind of pistols in her belt she looked a bit like a pirate she had a adamant she had a kind of and a what? adamant like adamant yeah she looked like a new romantic exactly she had a kind of liberty cap she had a fancy hat she's on a horse cut scrape figure but actually she then gets into a bit of a mess isn't she?

29:20terrible scrape yeah a scrape is that what it is? it's a scrape So she's captured by Austrian agents. Tell us about that. Well, because she's actually Belgian. So she's from Liege, which is under kind of Austrian ruled low countries. And May 1790, she goes there very ill advisedly, you know, to catch up with all her old friends. And she gets arrested by Austrian agents, put into prison. And the Austrians see this as a great coup because she's notorious as a kind of revolutionary Amazon. And so this is a great prize. And they transport her all the way to Austria, where she is kept in prison for months and months.