“One injustice can never become a legitimate reason to commit another”: Condorcet, women’s political rights, and social reform during the French Revolution (1789–1795)

ABSTRACT

Writing around the time of the French Revolution, Condorcet was a very early advocate of women’s suffrage. To fully appreciate the importance and originality of his contribution to the cause of women’s political rights, it is necessary to situate his ideas within the broad context of revolutionary feminist activism in general, its goals, modes of expression, successes or failures, as well as the nature of the opposition it faced. Such contextualization confirms that Condorcet, whose affirmation of women’s voting rights was grounded in the theory of natural rights, was the most articulate and consistent feminist voice during the Revolution. My analysis of the Convention’s decision to ban all women’s political clubs in the fall of 1793 also calls into question a common and influential assessment of the Revolution. In contrast to the anti-feminist arguments of the Montagnards who wielded power at the time, arguments predicated on a restrictive understanding of natural law, Condorcet’s earlier feminist reasoning based on natural rights, one of the central political concepts of the Enlightenment, casts doubt on the claim that the Revolution was inherently misogynist and that the bourgeois public sphere to which it gave rise was founded on the exclusion of women.

KEYWORDS:

• Condorcet
• French Revolution
• feminism
• women’s rights
• voting rights

Notes

1 The literature on women’s rights and feminism during the French Revolution is vast, to say the least. A comprehensive recent bibliography, including references to other bibliographies, can be found in Jarvis, Politics in the Marketplace, 301–23. This article will only refer to a small number of seminal studies or studies directly relevant to its specific topic.

2 Condorcet, “Letters from New Haven,” 297. I have sometimes slightly amended McLean and Hewitt’s translations.

3 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 335. For detailed analyses of this pioneering text, see notably: Brookes, “Feminism of Condorcet,” 300, 333–8; Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 112–17.

4 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 338.

5 Condorcet, “Letters from New Haven,” 297.

6 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 337.

7 Condorcet, “Letters from New Haven,” 298.

8 Condorcet, “Declaration of Rights,” 261.

9 See Condorcet, “Public Instruction,” 134–40.

10 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 337.

11 De Gouges, “Déclaration des droits,” 8 (translation mine).

12 Wollstonecraft, Rights of Woman, 155.

13 Williams, Observations, 16–17.

14 Garaud, Égalité civile, 173, 178.

15 Racz, “Women’s Rights Movement,” 153.

16 Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 47.

17 Ibid., 59.

18 Racz, “Women’s Rights Movement,” 167–71; Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 51–2; Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 140–2; Jarvis, Politics in the Marketplace, 142–5, 147–51, 155–6, 164–6.

19 On divorce legislation during the Revolution, see: Sagnac, Législation civile, 282–93; Godechot, Institutions de la France, 245–7, 434–5.

20 Talamante, “Creating the Republican Family,” 156.

21 Sagnac, Législation civile, 1. In addition to the local civil codes, civil law was also regulated by feudal law, canon law and royal edicts (ibid., 2).

22 Ibid., 294–5.

23 Pothier, “Puissance du mari,” 655. Cited in Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 44. Pothier gives the example of the coutume d’Orléans: “A married woman may not bestow, alienate, or have control over property, nor enter into any contract with living persons, without the authorization and consent of her husband” (“Puissance du mari,” 655; translation mine).

24 Sagnac, Législation civile, 296–301; Godechot, Institutions de la France, 247, 434.

25 On Condorcet’s writings on education, see: Kintzler, Condorcet; Badinter, Condorcet, 407–12.

26 Condorcet, “Plan for a Declaration of Rights,” Clause 23, 282.

27 Condorcet, “Public Instruction,” 105 (translation slightly amended).

28 Condorcet, “Rapport et projet de décret,” 449 (translation mine).

29 Condorcet, “Public Instruction,” 119.

30 Ibid., 106.

31 Ibid., 137.

32 See note 10.

33 On education reform during the Revolution, see Godechot, Institutions de la France, 444–53.

34 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 339.

35 Cited in Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 54.

36 Ansart, “Invention of State Terrorism,” 158.

37 Archives parlementaires, 49–50. A detailed account of this incident can be found in Jarvis, Politics in the Marketplace, 156–60.

38 Jarvis goes so far as to argue that “Montagnard deputies harnessed the conflict among the women to blame the disturbances on the free-market supporting Girondins to their right and to silence the proconsumer women’s club that supported the increasingly radical Enragés to the Montagnards’ left. The gendered debates on women’s political clubs in 1793 thus became a convenient screen for factional clashes over inscribing the social contract in everyday trade” (Politics in the Marketplace, 137).

Under pressure from the far left (the Enragés, the citoyennes républicaines, the sections of the Paris Commune and the sans-culottes in general, all clamoring for legislation to protect consumer interests), the Montagnards had approved price controls, first on grain in May 1793, then on all essential foods and goods in September. In their implementation of price controls, however, the Montagnards attempted to strike a difficult balance between economic measures benefitting the poor on one hand and free-market principles on the other, as well as between the interests of consumers, producers and merchants. Nevertheless, the Maximum, as the price controls were known, was fraught with serious miscalculations which caused severe economic problems and popular discontent. Furthermore, the Montagnards increasingly perceived the kind of direct democracy embraced by the Enragés, a government by popular insurrection or pressure from radical political clubs and the Parisian sections, as a threat to the authority of the Convention. In this context, Jarvis maintains, the gendered, anti-feminist language used by the Montagnards in their attacks against the citoyennes républicaines and all women’s clubs must be viewed as a strategic move meant to deflect attention away from their real and more pressing objective: to neutralize the Enragés and their populist political and economic agenda. See ibid., 159–63.

39 Archives parlementaires, 50 (translation mine).

40 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 335.

41 Condorcet, “Letters from New Haven,” 299.

42 Ibid.

43 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 335.

44 Ibid., 336–7.

45 Archives parlementaires, 50 (translation mine).

46 Ibid., 51 (translation mine). Cited in Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 57; and Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 144.

47 Archives parlementaires, 50–1 (translation mine). Cited in Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 56–7; and Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 144.

48 See note 6.

49 Archives parlementaires, 50 (translation mine). Cited in Hunt, Family Romance, 119.

50 See note 4.

51 Condorcet, “Right of Citizenship,” 338.

52 Archives parlementaires, 51 (translation mine).

53 Ibid., 49 (translation mine).

54 “Aux Républicaines,” 3 (translation mine). Cited in Racz, “Women’s Rights Movement,” 172; Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 57; and Brookes, “Feminism of Condorcet,” 351.

55 Convention nationale, 67 (translation mine). Cited in Abray, “Feminism in the French Revolution,” 58.

56 Archives parlementaires, 50 (translation mine). Cited in Hunt, Family Romance, 119; and Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer, 48.

57 Edelstein, Terror of Natural Right, 21.

58 Condorcet, “Fragment sur l’Atlantide,” 325 (translation mine).

59 Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 171, 7.

60 Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer, 8.

61 Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 148.

62 Hunt, Family Romance, 198; see also 1–16, 53–88.

63 Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 129–38, 146–51, 158–73; Hunt, Family Romance, 122–3, 151–60.

64 Archives parlementaires, 50 (translation mine).

65 Hunt, Family Romance, 203.

66 Ibid., 204.

67 From quite a different perspective, Jarvis reaches a similar conclusion in Politics in the Marketplace. Her study shows how the market women of Paris acted out or embodied a conception of citizenship which is not purely political but also economic. For the Dames des Halles, citizenship did not primarily mean the recognition of universal natural rights but rather the validation of one’s social role as useful economic agent. As purveyors of essential foods, the Dames des Halles could claim to play a central role in the socio-economic life of the nation and consequently could assert their right to participate in the political sphere. Indeed, the Dames, who formed a group of over a thousand women, were actively involved in public affairs throughout the Revolution, even after the ban on women’s clubs. Most notably, they led the march on Versailles which forced the royal family to return to Paris (5–6 October 1789). They often engaged in street protests and frequently addressed the revolutionary assemblies (National and Legislative Assemblies, the Convention and the Paris Commune). Celebrated by the authorities on many occasions, the Dames’ political activism during the Revolution, therefore, also calls into question the notion that a strict exclusion of women was a foundational feature of the bourgeois public sphere. Moreover, the idea of an economic citizenship rooted in socially beneficial labor, which became more relevant as women increasingly joined the workforce and thus grew more independent, could be and in fact was used later as a powerful argument in favor of granting women more formal political rights, such as voting.

68 Condorcet, “Draft Constitution,” 213.

69 Cf. notes 2 and 3.

70 Condorcet’s jury theorem can be formulated more precisely in this way: suppose N voters choosing between two alternatives and voting independently – that is, using their own independent judgment – suppose also that the average competence of these voters is p, with p > ½ (p is the average probability that voters will make the correct choice individually, assumed to be superior to ½, that is to say the average voter is simply assumed more likely to be right than wrong); then, the competence of the jury (the probability that the jury will render a correct majority decision) will be superior to p and will tend toward 1 (certainty) as N grows larger. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true: if p < ½, jury competence will be inferior to p and will tend toward 0 as N grows larger. See Condorcet, Essay, 48–50; Ansart, “Condorcet,” 354–6.

71 Condorcet, Essay, 49.

72 Ibid., 50 (translation slightly amended).

73 Condorcet, “Letters from New Haven,” 298–9 (emphasis mine).

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Guillaume Ansart

Guillaume Ansart received his PhD in French from Princeton University in 1995 and is Professor of French literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. His research focuses on the French novel in the eighteenth century and on the political culture of late eighteenth-century France. He has edited and translated Condorcet’s writings on the American Revolution and the United States (Écrits sur les États-Unis. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012; Writings on the United States. Penn State University Press, 2012).