Working-Class Women and Republicanism in the French Revolution of 1848

Following the February Revolution in 1848, working-class women as well as men attempted to hold the government to its promise of the right to work, through street demonstrations, individual and collective demands for work, and participation in the national workshops that had been established in an attempt to address the problem of unemployment in the capital. In the process, these activists articulated what scholars have labelled as a democratic socialist vision of republicanism. In June of 1848, women participated in the insurrection that sought to defend the vision of a social republic. While the republicanism of working-class men and bourgeois women such as George Sand has been examined, studies of working-class women in the first half of the nineteenth century have to this point focused on the romantic socialist influences that shaped their activities, in particular the Saint-Simonian movement. Drawing primarily on individual letters, police interrogations and newspaper reports, a vision of republicanism emerges that includes the ability for women to sustain their families through waged as well as household labour. This concept of republican virtue based itself not in suffrage but in women's capacity to act as both producers and consumers under just and equitable conditions. I would like to thank in particular the editor of this issue, Rachel Hammersley, for her intellectual generosity and support. The Vilas Research Fund in History and the Dean's Travel Fund, both of St. Lawrence University, made this work possible, for which I am very grateful. Notes 1Julia Jacquier to the Provisional Governement, Archives de la Seine, France: Series V.D/6 619 (1848), number 7. All translations are my own. 2Jean-Claude Caron, La nation, l’État et la démocratie en France de 1789 à 1914 (Paris, 1995), 224–27; Pamela M. Pilbeam, Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century France, 1814-1871 (New York, 1995). 3As many note, women were not counted among workers or as socialists and the working class was not feminine. See for example Michèle Riot-Sarcey, La démocratie à l’épreuve des femmes. Trois figures critiques du pouvoir, 1830-1848 (Paris, 1994); Jill Harsin, Barricades: The War of the Streets in Revolutionary Paris, 1830-1848 (New York, 2002), 279. 4Whitney Walton, Eve's Proud Descendants: Four Women Writers and Republican Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford, CA, 2000), 14, 249. For a discussion of the relationship between women and republicanism during the revolution of 1789, see Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton, NJ, 2001). 5Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Albany, NY, 1984). 6Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Parent-Duchâtelet, De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris, 2 vols (Paris, 1836–1838), I, 61. See also Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 134–37. 7Honoré Frégier, Des classes dangereuses de la population dans les grandes villes et des moyens de les rendre meilleures, 2 vols (Paris, 1840), I, 35–36, 91–102, 329; César Fichet, Mémoire sur l'apprentissage et sur l’éducation industrielle (Paris, 1847), 11; Chambre de commerce de Paris, Statistique de l'industrie á Paris résultant de l'enquête faite par la Chambre de commerce pour les années 1847-1848, 2 vols (Paris, 1851), I, 59. 8François Vidal, Vivre en travaillant! Projets, voies et moyens de réformes sociales (Paris, 1848), 55–57; Louis Blanc, L'organisation du travail, fifth edition (Brussels, 1852), 28, 71. 9Anonymous, ‘Le paye de l'ouvrier’, L'Atelier, 01 October 1843. The journal published articles throughout the 1840s identifying female wages as the source of male unemployment, even as they condemned the social risk of those earnings. 10Dominique Godineau, Citoyennes tricoteuses. Les femmes du peuple à Paris pendant la Révolution française (Paris, 1988), 70–81. 11Chambre de commerce de Paris, ‘Appendices’, in Statistique de l'industrie á Paris 1847-1848 ; Judith DeGroat, ‘Virtue, Vice and Revolution: Representations of Parisian Needlewomen in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, in Famine and Fashion: Needlewomen in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Beth Harris (Aldershot, 2005). 16Jeanne Pierre Goursault to M. le Maire, [1848], in Archives de la Seine: Series V.D/6 619, n. 7. 12Jeanne Deroin, ‘Le travail des femmes’, number 1, Almanach des femmes, (1852), 75. 13Cheryl Lynne Danieri, ‘Credit Where Credit is Due: The Mont-de-Piété of Paris, 1777-1851’ (University of California, Irvine, Ph.D. dissertation, 1987). 14Socialisation also took place in the streets. The work of Arlette Farge for the eighteenth century needs to be extended to the nineteenth in this area of gender and socialisation. See Arlette Farge, La vie fragile. Violences, pouvoirs et solidarités à Paris au XVIIIe siécle (Paris, 1986). 15[Anonymous], De la condition des ouvriers de Paris de 1789 jusqu'à 1841, avec quelques idées sur la possibilités de l'améliorer (Paris, 1841), 135. 17Procès verbal, Augustine Jazet, femme LeBlanc Porte Saint Martin, 24 July 1848, in Service historique de l'armée de terre, France (hereafter SH): Series Justice militaire, 12261. 18Coupeuses de poil de lapin aux Messieurs les membres du Gouvernement provisoire, Paris, 13 March 1848, in Archives Nationales de France, France: F/12 4898. 19A comprehensive history of working women's participation in the Revolution of 1848 remains to be written. 20Maurice Agulhon, 1848 ou l'apprentissage de la république, 1848-1852 (Paris, 1973), 39–46; William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980), 250–55. 21 La République, 26 February 1848. 22Liste des délégués de la commission du Luxembourg, [1848], in Archives Nationales de France: C 942, 2; Relevé des pétitions adressées à la Commission de gouvernement pour l'organisation du travail par les ouvriers de toutes les industries de France, [1848], in Archives Nationales de France: C 934, number 8. 23 La Voix des femmes, number 2 (1848). 24Femme Deselves à M. le Maire, Paris, 28 February 1848, in Archives de la Seine: Series V.D/6 619, n. 7. 25Jacquier to Provisional Government, Archives de la Seine (France: Series V.D/6, number 7, 1848). 26Judith DeGroat, ‘Gender, Labour and Revolution in the Ateliers des femmes: Paris, 1848’, in 1848: The Year the World Turned?, edited by Kay Boardman and Christine Kinealy (Newcastle, 2007), 152. 27Veuve Verrot, Alexandrine Joindot, Tribunal de 1ere Instance, 07 July 1848, in SH: Series Justice militaire, 7754. 28Interrogatoire de Hélène Bertonnier, ouvrière polisseuse, Paris, 26 August 1848, in SH: Series Justice militaire, 8358. 29Interrogatoire de fille Maria Berton, lingère, Paris, 13 July 1848, in SH: Series Justice militaire, 10017; Interrogatoire de Marie Gossiot, femme Leguède., Paris, 21 July 1848, in SH: Series Justice militaire, 11854. 30Interrogatoire de Marie Louise Chauvin, femme de Chauvin, menuisier, Paris, 05 July 1848, in SH: Series Justice Militaire, 12140; Renard, Peintre-Doreur sur porcelaine, Paris, 04 July 1848, in SH: Series Justice Militaire, 12140. 31 L'Atelier, 20 (1848). La République, 3 July 1848 and 25 July 1848, published evidence to the contrary of their original accounts. 32Interrogatoire de Henriette Collaen, cordonnier, Paris, 28 June 1848, in SH: Series Justice Militaire, 2042. 33Interrogatoire de Veuve Hoss, née Caroline Kauffman, canintière, Paris, 06 July 1848, in SH: Series Justice Militaire, 7745. For another account of a woman selling brandy who was forced to drink it, see La République, 1 July 1848. 34See for example, Helen Harden Chenut, The Fabric of Gender: Working-Class Culture in Third Republic France (University Park, PA, 2005

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