Telling the story of three overlooked revolutionary thinkers, Liberty in Their Names explores the lives and works of Olympe de Gouges, Sophie de Grouchy and Manon Roland. All three were thinking and writing about political philosophy, especially equality and social justice, before the French Revolution. As they became engaged in its efforts, their political writing became more urgent. At a time when women could neither vote nor speak at the Assembly, they became influential through their writings. Yet instead of Gouges, Grouchy and Roland, we speak of Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot.
Sandrine Bergès examines the lives and writings of these trailblazing women philosophers, and their impact on philosophical thought during the French Revolution. Featuring pictures, a timeline and a bibliography of their works, this book offers exciting new insights into the history of political philosophy and of the French Revolution.
Author(s): Sandrine Bergès
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 283
City: London
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Foreword
Timeline of the French Revolution
Note on the revolutionary calendar
Glossary of people and places
Chapter 1: Women in the Revolution
1 The French Revolution
2 Revolution and philosophers
3 Becoming authors
4 Becoming revolutionaries
5 Dying for their ideas
6 A note on sources and how to find them
Chapter 2: The women and the prisons: A walk through eighteenth-century Paris
1 The Left Bank: Prison de l’Abbaye
2 Rue de la Huchette
3 Ile de la Cité: La Conciergerie
4 The Right Bank: Place de la Revolution
5 Rue St Honoré
Chapter 3: Awakening to injustice: The formative years of Gouges, Roland and Grouchy
1 Introduction
2 The mirror of history
2.1 Historians and women
2.2 What the mirror reflected
3 Beginnings
3.1 Olympe
3.2 Marie-Jeanne
3.3 Sophie
4 Olympe, Marie-Jeanne and Sophie at the eve of the Revolution
Chapter 4: Making her own way: Olympe de Gouges
1 Education, literacy and a famous playwright as a father
2 Learning the theatre and becoming a writer
3 Resistance: ‘Le Bon Sens Français’, Beaumarchais and the actors
4 Impact: ‘Zamore and Mirza’ and le Club des Amis des Noirs
5 Impact: The Patriotic tax and early political writings
6 Impact: Louis’s trial and the real threat to the republic
Chapter 5: Speaking for herself: Marie-Jeanne Roland
1 To write or not to write
1.1 A woman of action
1.2 Silence and the women
2 Philosophical writings – Essays and competition
3 Peace writings: The encyclopedia of textile and other writings
3.1 Textile, botany and tactful editing: Writing the academic career of Jean-Marie Roland
3.2 Productivity eighteenth-century style
4 Political writings – The letters, the memoirs, the ministry’s business
4.1 Women and politics
4.2 Letters to Brissot and Le Patriote François
4.3 ‘They are going to ruin our constitution’: On drafting the Rights of Man
4.4 Ghost writing and coming out of anonymity
Chapter 6: Working together: Sophie de Grouchy
1 Translator
2 Editor
3 Political journalist
4 Moral philosopher
5 ‘An inflamed head’
6 ‘No time for emotion’: Philosophical reflections on the guillotine
7 Lost papertrail
Chapter 7: The women on the other side of the channel
1 England’s influence
2 Travelling in the Republic of Letters
3 Marie-Jeanne Roland travels to England
4 Macaulay
5 Wollstonecraft in Paris
Chapter 8: The American dream: From republican model to asylum of freedom
1 Republican morals
1.1 Virtue and the republic
1.2 A revolution in manners
2 The asylum of freedom
2.1 Republican living
2.2 ‘Philosophy and agriculture’
3 An American in Paris: Thomas Paine and the Girondins women
3.1 A new era of ideas and principles
3.2 Running headlong into atheism
4 Conclusion
Chapter 9: The abolitionist movement and the revolution
1 Slavery, abolitionism and the women
2 Citizenship and freedom
2.1 France and the colonies
2.2 Amis des Noirs and Massiac: Clubs fighting at the Assembly
3 Marie-Jeanne Roland: Slavery as a republican trope
3.1 Marie-Jeanne and the Spartan
3.2 Equiano
4 Sophie de Grouchy and Condorcet’s political arguments
4.1 Condorcet’s texts
4.2 Raimond
5 Olympe de Gouges : Polemic and educating the public
Chapter 10: Women in the city
1 The state of things in 1789 – Caution and prejudice
2 Joining hands – Le Cercle Social, La Société Fraternelle des Deux Sexes and the Condorcet marriage
3 Speaking out: Women in the city
4 When the private is political
5 Amphibious creatures
Epilogue: Writing out the women: Sophie de Grouchy after the Terror
1 Sophie’s writing career
2 The salon in Meulan
3 Napoleonic laws, women and divorce
4 Posterity – where they are buried, fame, pantheon
A revolutionary bookshelf
1 Childhood books
1.1 Olympe
1.2 Marie-Jeanne
1.3 Sophie
2 Young adulthood
2.1 Olympe
2.2 Marie-Jeanne
2.3 Sophie
3 Maturity
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
References
Index
