Des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne: Four revolutionary decrees on women

Unrecorded issues of four very rare and interesting decrees, not traced on OCLC or CCfr, issued by the National Convention during the Reign of Terror (1793–94) relating to women in the army, women’s clubs, former nuns, and marriage.

When the French Revolution began in 1789, French women were largely confined to the private sphere. Domestic duty and family obligation dictated their behavior, and public life was a man’s domain. However, the ideas of equality and solidarity that sparked the Enlightenment captivated women from all backgrounds. Although women never gained full political rights during the Revolution—they could neither vote nor hold office—women did gain quite a number of rights in its early, between 1789 and 1793. Revolutionary legislators granted them a proper civil status: they were no longer underage individuals by law.

This period of the Revolution also saw the birth of women’s political societies: 56 women’s clubs emerged in Paris and across the country between 1789 and 1793. Simultaneously, women were increasingly participating in popular general political clubs where they were not ashamed to speak up and participate in discussions. Many of these advances for women’s rights, however, were reversed as the Revolution became increasingly violent.

This collection of four revolutionary decrees, stretching from June of 1793 to March of 1794, documents Jacobin efforts to control women in several different important spheres of social and political life: in military, in government, in the church, and in matrimony. Each of the decrees was issued from the National Convention in Paris by the Minister for Justice Louis-Jérôme Gohier and disseminated to the provinces: three of the pieces in this collection were printed in the department of Haute-Marne, in the northeast of France, and the other in Rennes, Brittany.