Women in the 19th Century: Early Feminists

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WOMEN IN THE 19TH CENTURY: EARLY FEMINISTS

JENNIFER WAELTI-WALTERS AND STEVEN C. HAUSE (ESSAY DATE 1994)

SOURCE: Waelti-Walters, Jennifer and Steven C. Hause. Introduction to Feminisms of the Belle Epoque: A Historical and Literary Anthology, edited by Jennifer Waelti-Walters and Steven C. Hause, pp. 1-13. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
In the following excerpt, Waelti-Walters and Hause argue that France made important contributions to modern feminism even though social and legal obstacles in that country made nineteenth-century reform towards achieving women's rights slower than in England or the United States.

Many of the roots of modern feminism lie in France. This may surprise readers who are more familiar with feminism than they are with France. After all, the philosophic masterworks of early feminism, from Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) to John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women (1869), appeared chiefly in the English language. The first large organizations dedicated to seeking women's rights emerged in Britain and the United States, and the first great feminist reforms, the Married Women's Property Acts, were won across America (1839-50) and in Britain (1882) long before France adopted the Schmahl Law of 1907. In the global struggle to win women's suffrage, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia often led in the adoption of feminist reforms, whereas French women did not even win the vote until 1945.

Such facts show that modern feminism reached its first maturity chiefly in Protestant states, where doctrines of individualism flourished. This pattern, however, should not obscure the roots of feminism in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France. Parisian salons, organized and directed by women such as Madame Geoffrin, involved women in the greatest debates of a lively age. The more enlightened philosophers who assembled there, such as the Marquis de Condorcet, advocated women's rights as early as the 1780s. Subsequently, the French Revolution, despite its record of hostility to women's issues, stimulated the growth of feminism by forcing a long European reconsideration of human rights. It produced an eloquent manifesto calling for women's rights in Olympe de Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791), and it saw the birth of women's political clubs, the precursors of nineteenth-century feminist societies. Indeed, the revolution of 1789 was a profound stimulus to Wollstonecraft, who participated in a radical discussion circle in London and then moved to Paris in 1792, staying in France until 1794. When a European conservative reaction triumphed over French revolutionary ideas in the early nineteenth century, the roots of modern feminism were still to be found in France. French utopian socialism provided an important forum for the continuing discussion of equality and began a tradition of socialist support for women's rights.¹

Even the word "feminism" came to the English-speaking world with French roots. The first appearance in any language of the word "feminism" (and its cognates) occurred in French, as "féminisme" and "féministe," in the late nineteenth century. Some scholars have suggested that the words were first used by French utopian socialists in the 1830s (when parallel "-ism" words, such as "liberalism" and "conservatism," were being coined), but no trace of this has been found in print.² The words did appear in France in the 1870s and 1880s, championed by one of the women included in this anthology (see part 5). By the 1890s, both terms were widely used there.³ The Oxford English Dictionary locates the first English usage in 1895; American advocates of women's rights took even longer to adopt the term.⁴

The struggle for women's equality was slow and difficult in France, however; French religious, legal, and political structures created impediments to a women's rights movement more severe than those in Britain and America.⁵ Feminism grew more readily in Protestant countries, where individualism and the acceptance of individual rights grew naturally from a religious tradition that emphasized direct, individual access to the Bible, individual interpretation and investigation, and individual conscience as a guide to action. Because 97 percent of its population was nominally Catholic, France lacked the stimulus of such traditions; rather, its religious tradition stressed the importance of obedience to authority.

The French legal system also created severe obstacles. Legal structures were a problem for women in all countries, but they were an unusually formidable impediment in France. Two millenia of Roman legal tradition had reduced all women to the status of being permanent minors, without direct rights of their own. Napoleon's codification of French civil law in 1804 reiterated this status and even worsened it. Married women were reduced to a form of servitude: Article 213 of the Napoleonic Code legally required wives to obey their husbands. Other portions of the code made women powerless to control their public or private lives, their bodies, or their offspring.⁶ French laws inhibited the birth of a movement to protest such inequality by limiting the rights of association, assembly, and the press.

The political structure of nineteenth-century France also caused that nation's women's rights movement to lag behind Britain's and America's. The conservative Catholic monarchy of the Bourbon Restoration (1815-30) and Napoleon III's authoritarian Second Empire (1852-70), were less responsive to social innovation, fundamental reform, or the extension of individual rights than were republican America or liberal England. Even when the French finally created an enduring and democratic state, the Third Republic (1871-1940), French politics limited progress toward women's rights. Many of the republican feminists (who dominated the movement in the late nineteenth century) limited their demands and restricted their behavior for fear of adding to the instability of an apparently shaky regime. Many of the democratic men who founded the Third Republic hesitated to give full rights to women for fear that they would use those rights to aid the conservative enemies of the republic. The republican slogan—"Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!"—meant exactly what it says, gender specificity included.

As the nineteenth century passed, French women did win some minor advances, such as the Pelet Law of June 1836, which facilitated the creation of elementary schools for girls and led to a significant increase in the literacy rate among women. What little was achieved, however, had to be won within the misogynistic atmosphere of a society where even a progressive thinker (the anarchist-socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) could insist that women were suited to be only "housewives or harlots," providing for the comfort or pleasure of men.⁷ The model of the socially acceptable choice in this dichotomy was the passive and self-sacrificing bourgeois wife; the ideal woman was held by the cultural norm, as well as the law, to be subservient to men.⁸ This polarized view of women persisted throughout the century and found many cultural expressions. As feminism grew, for example, artists increasingly depicted women as sinners and temptresses who led men to perdition. Woman was either the "idol of perversity" or the "new woman," both of which were a threat to men's happiness, or even to their very survival.⁹ Indeed, according to the male-dominated press of that era, the "new women" were man-hating, man-imitating, cigarette-smoking shrews who refused their "natural" roles while fighting for rights that no real woman either wanted or needed.

Thus, during the belle époque at the end of the nineteenth century, French men could celebrate the centennial of the revolution that had established their basic human rights. French women could not. Victor Hugo predicted that whereas the eighteenth century had proclaimed the Rights of Man, the nineteenth would proclaim the Rights of Woman, but this did not prove true.¹⁰ Instead, French women of the belle époque were still developing their first large feminist organizations and just beginning to educate the French nation about feminist grievances. Indeed, even today, two hundred years after the French Revolution, many of the issues raised by the feminists in this anthology are still at the heart of debates.

The feminist movement of the belle époque was not a homogeneous, monolithic phenomenon: then, as today, there were many varieties of feminism, many feminisms.¹¹ More than a dozen associations for political action were active by the turn of the century, and they represented a wide range of opinion. The older organizations (dating from the 1870s and 1880s) were strongly republican in their political philosophy, reflecting the French struggle to create the Third Republic during the 1870s. Their leadership, and most of their membership, came from the educated, urban (overwhelmingly Parisian) middle classes. Groups such as Léon Richer's Ligue française pour le droit des femmes (the lfdf: the French League for Women's Rights), Maria Deraismes's Société pour l'amélioration du sort de la femme (Society for the Improvement of Woman's Condition), and Hubertine Auclert's Droit des femmes (Women's Rights) and Suffrage des femmes (Women's Suffrage) supported republican France and sought to win the civil and political equality of women within it. They disagreed on priorities, such as seeking the vote, but they typically cooperated well.¹²

Notes

The bibliography for this volume lists only works published during the belle époque and later works about that period. The footnotes will add brief introductions to the woman question in earlier periods. A good starting place for such background is Claire G. Moses, French Feminism, or Maité Albistur and Daniel Armogathe, Histoire du féminisme français.
For example, in the essay on women in his Oxford history of modern France, Theodore Zeldin stated that "Fourier invented the word" (France, 1848-1945, 2 vols. [Oxford, 1973-77], 1:345) but gave no citation. Karen Offen has undertaken a careful study of this claim and found it in some French dictionaries and even in the writings of French feminists in the 1890s, but none of these claims has provided a verifiable usage in the writings of Fourier; see Offen's "Sur l'origine des mots 'féminisme' et 'féministe'"; "On the Origins of the Word 'Feminist' and 'Feminism'"; and "Defining Feminism: a Comparative Historical Approach." Signs. Claire Moses has also concluded that Fourier did not coin the terms; see her article "Debating the Present."
See Offen's study of this evolution and the claims made by Hubertine Auclert in part 5. For Auclert's role in popularizing the terms, see Steven C. Hause, Huber-tine Auclert.
The supplement to the first edition of the oed acknowledges the French origin of "feminism" and cites Athenaeum magazine, April 27, 1895, as the earliest English usage. For American usage of the terms, see Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1987).
For a fuller discussion of these impediments, see Steven C. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage, 18-27 and esp. 254-81.
The legal treatment of French women as inferiors can be found throughout the original text of the Napoleonic Code, but it is most clear in the eight chapters of Title Five, "On Marriage" (Articles 144-228). The original text of Article 213, promulgated on March 17, 1803, stated simply: "The husband owes protection to his wife, the woman obedience to her husband." That text remained unchanged until Léon Blum's Popular Front government began reconsideration in the mid-1930s, resulting in the law of February 18, 1938. The expanded Article 213 of 1938 still identified the husband as "head of the family" and gave him specific powers, such as the choice of the family residence. The Vichy government of Marshal Pétain rewrote Article 213 in the law of September 22, 1942, asserting a traditional vision of the family in which the father was empowered to act "in the common interest." That text remained the law in France until the new feminist movement won a revision in the law of June 4, 1970 (currently in force), stating that "The spouses together assure the moral and material direction of the family."
Proudhon (1809-65) was one of the most important founders of anarchist thought and a leading influence on the shape of socialism in France. He was vehemently opposed to the emancipation of women, as he showed in this oft-quoted line from his electoral program of 1848. For further translations of Proudhon's pronouncements on the woman question, see Susan Groag Bell and Karen M. Offen, eds., Women, the Family, and Freedom, 1:190-92 and 1:280-81; see also the comments of Hélène Brion in part 3. For further discussion of Proudhon, see Moses, French Feminism, and the works of Marilyn J. Boxer on socialism and feminism.
For an introduction to such cultural attitudes in the mid-nineteenth century, see Anne Martin-Fugier, La Bourgeoise (Paris, 1983).
For a discussion of women as "idols of perversity" in the arts, see Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-siècle Culture (Oxford, 1986). For a discussion of the "new women" in literature, see Jennifer Waelti-Walters, Feminist Novelists of the Belle Epoque.
Hugo (1802-85) supported the feminist movement. In 1853 he delivered a eulogy for Louise Julien that included the following: "Friends, in future times, in that beautiful and peaceful fraternal and social republic of the future, the role of women will be great.…The eighteenth century proclaimed the rights of man; the nineteenth century will proclaim the rights of woman" (Oeuvres complètes [Paris, 1968], 7:872); see Nelly Roussel's discussion of Hugo in part 1. For more on Hugo and feminism, see Moses, French Feminism, esp. 149; Patrick Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up!, 10; and Hause, Hubertine Auclert, esp. 19-20.
The plural form, "feminisms," was used in a variety of ways during the belle époque. It appears, for example, in the title of one contemporary essay found in our bibliography, Jeanne Laloe's "Les Deux féminismes"; it is discussed, as the title shows, in Jean Rabaut's Histoire des féminismes français (Paris, 1978); and it survives in the title of an anthology from present-day France, Marks and Courtivron's New French Feminisms: An Anthology (Amhearst, 1980). For current usage of the plural form, see Jane Jensen, "Ce n'est pas un hasard: The Varieties of French Feminism," in Jolyon Howorth and George Ross, eds., Contemporary France: A Review of Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (1989): 114-43.
For an introduction to the range of the women's movement at the turn of the century, see Hause with Kenney, Women's Suffrage; Moses, French Feminism; Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up!; Albistur and Armogathe, Histoire du féminisme français; and Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L'Egalité en marche.

Works Cited

Albistur, Maïté, and Daniel Armogathe. Histoire du féminisme français. 2 vols. Paris: Editions des femmes, 1977.

Bell, Susan Groag, and Karen M. Offen, eds. Women, the Family and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, 1750-1950. 2 vols. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1983.

Bidelman, Patrick. Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858-1889. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982.

Boxer, Marilyn J. "French Socialism, Feminism, and the Family." Third Republic/Troisième République, 3-4 (1977): 128-67.

——. "Socialism Faces Feminism: The Failure of Synthesis in France, 1879-1914." In Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, eds., Socialist Women, 75-111. New York: Greenwood, 1978.

——. "Socialism Faces Feminism in France, 1879-1913." Diss. Univ. of California-Riverside, 1975.

——. "When Radical and Socialist Women Were Joined: The Extraordinary Failure of Madeleine Pelletier." In Jane Slaughter and Robert Kern, eds., European Women on the Left: Socialism, Feminism, and the Problems Faced by Political Women, 57-74. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981.

Hause, Steven C. Hubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1987.

Hause, Steven C., with Anne R. Kenney. Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic. Princeton UP, 1984.

Klejman, Laurence, and Florence Rochefort. L'Egalité en marche: le féminisme sous la Troisième République. Paris: Editions des femmes, 1989.

Moses, Claire G. French Feminism in the 19th Century. Albany: SUNY P, 1984.

——. "Debating the Present, Writing the Past: 'Feminism' in French History and Historiography." Radical History Review 52 (1992): 79-94.

——. "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach." Signs 14 (1988): 119-57.

——. "On the Origins of the Words 'Feminist' and 'Feminism.'" Feminist Issues 8 (1988).

——. "Sur l'origine des mots 'féminisme et féministe.'" Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 34 (1987): 492-96.

Waelti-Walters, Jennifer. Feminist Novelists of the Belle Epoque: Love as a Lifestyle. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990.

KATHRYN GLEADLE (ESSAY DATE 1995)

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SYLVIA D. HOFFERT (ESSAY DATE 1995)

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ON THE SUBJECT OF…

SARAH WINNEMUCCA (1844?-1891)

Sarah Winnemucca was born in approximately 1844 on Paiute land near Humboldt Lake in what is now Nevada. In 1866 she traveled to Fort McDermit to persuade the United States military to put an end to white aggression against her tribe. Shortly thereafter, a segment of the Paiute were resettled to a reservation at Malheur, Oregon. In the ensuing years, Winnemucca was frequently engaged as a military interpreter and liaison to the Paiute, a capacity in which she served when hostilities between U. S. armed forces and the Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshoni people erupted in the Bannock War of 1878. The conflict ended with the indefinite relocation of Paiute prisoners to the Yakima reservation in Washington State. Winnemucca, meanwhile, spoke out publicly in a number of lectures designed to raise awareness of inhumane practices demonstrated by government agents and missionaries on the reservation.

In 1883, Winnemucca began a lengthy lecture tour of New England, denouncing U. S. government policy toward Native Americans, and while speaking in Boston she formed a friendship with Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, an educator, and her sister Mary Mann. Both women encouraged Winnemucca in her political activities, and provided her with the financial and editorial assistance to write her autobiography, Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1883). In Life Among the Piutes Winnemucca recounts, in stark detail, the violence, injustices, and devastation inflicted upon the Paiutes between 1844 and 1883.

Winnemucca is noted for her endeavors to overturn negative stereotypes of Native Americans through her lectures, stage appearances, and autobiography, and her espousal of the peaceful coexistence of whites and Native Americans. She has come to represent the struggles of Native American women in the nineteenth century, and her autobiography is studied as an important cultural document.

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Feminism in Literature: A Gale Critical Companion