Original Scholarly Monograph

A feminist genealogy of the industrial revolution Parisian seamstress, exploring her agentic intervention in the socio-cultural and political formations of modernity.

Provocative assessment of how new ideas about motherhood and domesticity in pre-Revolutionary France helped women demand social and political equality later on

This book is organized around the personal struggles of ten extraordinary French women activists: Eugenie Niboyet, Eugenie Foa, Suzanne Voilquin, Josephine Bachellery, Pauline Roland, Jeanne Deroin, Elisa Lemonnier, Desiree Gay, Adele Esquiros, and Marie Noemie Constant. Ranging in age from 52 to 20 in 1848, coming from different economic backgrounds, these women share a common quest to be included in the economic and political rights won by the revolt against the July Monarchy. Banding together in the face of exclusion from the right to work guaranteed to all men in February 1848, they write petitions to the Provisional Government, and create the first daily feminist newspaper, “La Voix des femmes.” The newspaper is a forum for their demands: midwives who demand to be paid as civil servants, domestic workers who demand support while unemployed, teachers who demand opportunities for higher education and for higher wages. The right to vote and the right to divorce are debated in the newspaper. Seeking to widen their support, Niboyet and her cohort launch a political club, Le Club de femmes, which is ridiculed in the satiric press. The women activists of 1848 do not withdraw from the public sphere. They form workers’ associations. Deroin and Roland are imprisoned for their activism. All continue to work for women’s rights as teachers, writers, and artists. The women of 1848 inspire successive generations of women to continue their struggle.

Overlooked by historians for over half a century following her death, Ernestine L. Rose (1810−1892) was one of the foremost orators and social reformers of her era. A fearless human rights activist, she fought for racial equality, women’s rights, freethought and religious freedom, and she can be considered a forerunner of twentieth-century activists in civil rights and the women’s movement. Rose was a pioneer in many movements, articulating the notion that all Americans are endowed with natural rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and by the Constitution. Her passion was to see everyone―women and men, regardless of race, religion or ethnic origin―possessing the civil rights promised by American democracy. Unlike other nineteenth-century female reformers such as Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine Rose was the only non-Christian, foreign-born woman. For this reason, she did not entirely fit in and she felt tensions within the women’s rights and abolitionist circles, as nativism and anti-Semitism worsened in the United States. Rose’s outspoken opinions put her at odds with the religious zeal of the American public as well as that of many reformers. A visionary leader, she crisscrossed two continents to fight for change, seeking to raise public awareness of international issues and of social movements in Europe and in the United States. The topic of this book is highly relevant to current struggles for racial justice and for preserving and strengthening democracy in the United States. Rose’s words are as pertinent today as they were during her lifetime. This book offers a new understanding of Ernestine Rose’s important contributions to American democracy.

The origins and early years of the French women's press represent a pivotal period in the history of French women's self-expression and their feminist and cultural consciousness. Through a range of insightful textual analyses, this book highlights the political significance of this critically neglected literary medium.