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Cornell University Press

Chapter Title: Embodiments of Female Virtue

Book Title: Visualizing the Nation

Book Subtitle: Gender, Representation, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France
Book Author(s): Joan B. Landes
Published by: Cornell University Press. (2001)
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3

Embodiments of Female Virtue

I N REGARD to revolutionary culture, it is useful to remember Edmund

Burke's observation that "abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is
not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object." 1 As I have ar-
gued earlier, however, the female goddess Liberty, who anchored the new na-
tion's legitimacy, operated as a metaphor. She transferred legitimacy not to
women, ostensibly Liberty's "sensible objects," but rather by analogy to the
people: in reality, the men who contracted together to form the new republi-
can body politic. Speaking of"the people" as a metaphor for the social referent
itself, however, Linda Orr observes that "the people" still exists: "Everything in
which it circulates, contradictory and warring, gives it back the effect of a most
physical shape, something thick and consistent, with adamant desires and a
will." 2 Similarly, by publicly expressing their own "warring," conflicting, and
particular desires, women threatened to give back to Liberty a physical shape
or "social referent" wholly at odds with the nation's juridical body.
In this chapter, I examine the metaphors of female virtue in the Revolu-
tion's print culture in the context of revolutionary political culture and in re-
lation to the paradoxical nature of democratic representation. 3 I reconsider
how the impulse to give shape, substance, and will to an abstraction called "the
people" resulted in the contradictory circulation of metaphorical shapes but
potentially real female bodies possessing willful, warring desires. Certainly, the
figuration of the nation as a female muse was paradoxical in the sense of mak-
ing present an absence (the actual members of the political community who
were being represented) , which is at the core of all forms of representation. In

addition, however, Liberty as a political metaphor obscured the stunning mas-

querade by which the masculine republic represented itself as the unified body
of the people.4
Liberty and her alter ego, Republic, were not isolated cases. Accompany-
ing them was a party of female goddesses who reflected the virtue and politi-
cal rectitude expected of republican women. In this manner, anonymous
females had the privilege of becoming allegories of a host of eternal values and
of purging the old body politic of its tainted feminine matter. In contrast, fe-
male grotesques materialized the perceived threat of corrupt and disorderly
women to the reformed political order, as well as personal life. The mute,
chaste, classically proportioned allegories of virtue that stood in the place of
the despised women of the Old Regime signaled that public and private ex-
cesses were incompatible with maternal duty and republican female morality.
In addition, women's lofty place in the order of representation offered women
compensation for their real social and political inequality; while the female
face worn by republican and democratic values of liberty, equality, universal-
ity, and reason was a critical device for ensuring the continued legitimacy of
the Republic.

Allegory, Narrative, and Action

It is useful to distinguish, as Philippe Bordes suggests, between emblem-
atic and narrative allegory. The latter was of long-standing importance, and as
recently as the reign of Louis XV and Louis XVI, painters applied narrative al-
legories to raise contemporary themes to a more exalted historical dimension.
During the Revolution, too, such allegories remained the most efficacious
means of translating into images new ideas and situations. Often allegorical
figures simply appeared as a minor element of a historical scene, or they could
play a major role alongside real people. Ordinarily expressing the sense of his-
tory, allegory might serve equally to deprive events of their much too present
historicity, thereby raising the overly specific from the mundane sphere of con-
tested politics to a more general plane of universal significance.s Still, it is sig-
nificant that reference to the universal was embodied in a female allegory.
The anonymous colored engraving The French Nation Assisted by Monsieur
de Lafayette Stamps Out Despotism and the Abuses of Feudalism Which Had
Crushed the French People (Figure p) depicts Lafayette at the peak of his pop-
ularity during the Festival of the Federation in July 1790, when he swore an
oath to the nation on behalf of all the national guard units of France. The print
is an excellent illustration of how a recorded event and an illustrious person

might be raised to historical stature by the addition of allegory. The French na-
tion appears in the shape of a female figure. She is garbed in a fleur-de-lis-pat-
terned cloak, registering France's still monarchical constitution. Wearing
Minerva's helmet and carrying bolts of lightening in her hand, she is shown
stomping out despotism and the abuses of feudalism. One vanquished figure
of Despotism, entwined with a serpent, may be masculine, though his
crouched posture conceals his visage and his gender. The second figure of
abuse, who is being stomped on by France, is unmistakably a winged figure of
Discord and coded female within revolutionary iconography, as it was tradi-
tionally. Discord possesses the traits of a female fury-the drooping breasts of
an old hag, medusan hair, serpents flying, fingers in a clawed posture, and a
muscular upper body. 6 The figure's androgyny-especially the powerful mus-
culature-only makes "her" femininity that much more terrifying. It is of
some importance that Despotism/Discord is being crushed by her virtuous op-
posite, the French nation: as in the whole repertoire of revolutionary iconog-
raphy, figures of female good and evil are juxtaposed here.? Nevertheless, the
central gender contrast in this image revolves around the live person(ality) of
the man Lafayette and the female allegory of France. The national guardsmen
under his command appear in the rear and echo Lafayette. As is often the case,
the combined efforts of such a real/ideal couple work to defeat the nation's en-
emies and to inaugurate the reign ofliberty.
Certainly, allegory was not the only vehicle for presenting women in revo-
lutionary prints. Copious illustrations of elite and popular provenance serve to
document the actual presence of women in the new public sphere created by
the events of 1789. A£ one example, the topic of aristocratic women's partici-
pation in the Festival of the Federation is registered in many prints celebrating
the events marking the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. 8 Similarly,
numerous prints record Lafayette's involvement alongside Parisian women in
the celebrated events of October 1789. In comparison, the engraving The
French Nation Assisted by Monsieur de Lafayette operates to effect a substitution.
Not only does the great man Lafayette supplant historical individuals of both
sexes who also participated in these events, but tellingly, insofar as women are
represented, it is only as "Woman''-in an ideal, abstract, and suprahuman
form. "Woman"-that is, the Nation-underscores the meaning of these
events; she abets and secures for posterity the efforts of this great man.
The documentary engraving by Louis Le Coeur after Jacques-Frans;ois
Swebach-Desfontaines commemorating the Civic Oath of 1790, View of the
Altar ofthe Fatherland [La Patrie] and ofa Part ofthe Champs-de-Mars at the
Moment when Monsieur de Lafayette, in the Name ofAll the National Guards of

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Ln. H•~n ~-r•u;,,. p/3utr,: ,,r,. J1J' .11~ Ia F.w..ttr kr"J_t/J, k I>.:rpoll.r!'lt d f.,
di:IJ" tiM ]J:·9~t· ..F',."J',·/ 'I'll. t.,.,.rp/j,,;,t k J'.w1'k •

Figure 3.1. The French Nation Assisted by Momieur de Lafayette Stamps Out
Despotism and the Abuses of Feudalism Which Had Crushed the French People.
1790. Courtesy Rare and Manuscript Division, Cornell University Library.

France, Swore an Oath to Be Ever Faithfol to the Nation, the Law and the King
(Figure 3.2), offers another valuable corrective to the allegorical viewpoint of
Figure 3.1. By foregrounding the people of both sexes and all three estates,
adults and children, it places Lafayette himself and the altar in the far distance.
The print's accompanying text states that the artistic perspective was intended
to capture the patriotic scene in its full magnitude. As a result, Lafayette, to
whom the print is dedicated, is barely visible, registering the fact that he would
not have been seen by some three-fourths of the crowd who gathered that day
on the Champ-de-Mars.9
The text operates, to some extent, to recuperate what is lost, for the prin-
cipal males appear in the print's dedication and within its textual explication.
In that sense, the text interprets the wider scene, including the presence of a
broader populace, for the more literate audience for whom this print was most
likely intended. On the other hand, the print stands in marked contrast to var-
ious other commemorative engravings of this occasion. In these other panora-
mas, the crowd is presented from the rear, and the assembled nation of
guardsmen and citizens, men and women, are presented facing forward with
their full attention directed toward the altar, often with their arms raised in the
act of oath-taking. 10 In View ofthe Alter, however, only the uniformed guards-
men and soldiers in the print's distant and middle planes are depicted from the
back, with their complete attention focused on the altar and their arms raised
in unison. In the foreground, we see a relaxed, mixed crowd of bourgeoisie,
clergymen, aristocrats, respectable mothers and their children-a good many
of whom are not even attending to the events on the stage but chatting or
minding distracted children. A woman of the popular classes twists backward
toward two adjacent couples, while her arm directs the attention of these more
casual participants toward the altar and the day's solemn events. Nevertheless,
the print lacks the didactic intent of many others produced for this occasion,
and it even hints at a less than patriotic face of the crowd. Some people might
have attended the event because of festive, not political, motives.
Still, the issue remains of how female allegories were deployed within the
larger print culture. In marked contrast to female abstractions, real men who
achieved publicity could serve as moral examples. They were revered as friends
of humanity (Benjamin Franklin, Gabriel Bonnot de Mably), heroic defend-
ers ofliberty (Brutus, William Tell), incorruptible leaders during their lifetimes
(Robespierre), martyrs after their deaths (Louis-Michel Lepeletier, Jean-Paul
Marat), and hallowed philosophes (Voltaire, Rousseau). The early public accla-
mations on behalf of]acques Necker in the late 178os; the decision on his death
in April 1791 to bury Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau in the newly

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Figure 3.2. Louis Le Coeur after Jacques-Frano;:ois Swebach-Desfontaines, View oftheAlter
of the Fatherland and ofa Part ofthe Champs-de-Mars at the Moment when Monsieur de
Lafayette, in the Name ofAll the National Guards of France, Swore an Oath to Be Ever
Faithful to the Nation, the Law and the King. 1790. Courtesy of the Uppsala University
Library.

created Pantheon or Temple of Immortality; the subsequent transferral of the

remains ofVoltaire (in July 1791), Marat (in September 1794), and (afterTher-
midor) Rousseau to the Pantheon in imitation of classical apotheoses 11 ; the
proliferation of busts of esteemed men in public squares, societies, and assem-
blies; and the wax cabinet of Philippe Curtius (founder of the Paris waxworks
and uncle of Madame Tussaud) 12 were all manifestations of the revolutionary
public's impulse to throw up heroes and the revolutionary leadership's desire
to instruct citizens in lessons drawn from the lives and deeds of illustrious men. 13
Even prints of a more caricatural or scatological cast managed to deploy fe-
male allegories to glorify the immortalizing accomplishments of an illustrious
man. In the radical print june 21 [The Triumph ofVoltaire n]uly 1791] (Figure
3.3), the philosopher is exalted while the king and the institution of monarchy
are desecrated. A cortege with Voltaire's ashes moves toward the Pantheon, cre-
ated on the site of the former church of Saint-Genevieve in Paris. An irrever-
ent, bare-bottomed Fame trumpets the accomplishments of Voltaire, whose
crowned bust app_ears on a pedestal, as it did on the occasion of the first per-
formance of his play Brutus in Paris shortly before his death. 14 Its inscription
reminds the audience that Ia patrie recognizes great men. 15 From Fame's rear,
another trumpet rings out, its banner reading '']ournee du 21 ]uin," registering
the treasonous flight and ignominious capture of the king at Varennes. The
transfer of Voltaire's ashes took place on 11 July 1791-decreed the anniversary
of Voltaire's death by the Constituent Assembly on 30 May 1791-just days
after the return from Varennes. Thus the two dates of the print highlight the
difference between the king and the philosopher. Fame's other banner reads
"Un Roi n'est plus qu'un homme avec un titre auguste. Premier sujet des loix est
force d'etre juste'' (''A king is nothing but a man with an august title. The first
subject of the law is forced to be just"). As the events of the king's trial and ex-
ecution would subsequently affirm, the king had been made to submit to jus-
tice like any ordinary citizen. 16 Fame kicks the king's bust from the other
pedestal, which reads "le faux pas" (the "misstep")-reducing the centuries-
long monarchy to a mistake made by the people. The print's inscription reit-
erates these themes even more caustically, addressing the enemies of the
Republic: "Ce Monstre votre idole horreur du genre humain, Que votre orgueil
trompe veut retablir en vain. Tous les vrais Citoyens ont enftn rappelle Ia liberte
publique. Nous ne redoubtons plus le pouvoir tirannique" ("This monster, your
idol, horror of human kind, that your mistaken pride wants in vain to restore.
All true citizens have finally restored public liberty. We no longer fear tyranni-
cal power").
Thus, it could be said that great men, in conjunction with female allegories,

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..Mm., nr rr,l.mii.;.N plw
lr J"f''lf'flir ltrnAn'f'"" .

Figure 3·3· june 21 [The Triumph of Voltaire, n july 1791]. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet.
Copyright Phototheque des musees de Ia ville de Paris.

helped to fill the void left by the destruction of the sacred body of the king, but
with an important difference. To divinity, heretofore the privileged realm of
kings and saints, the lay cult of great men counterposed a human and implic-
itly democratic dimension. By venerating and glorifying mere mortals, the cult
promised the rehabilitation of all humans. Freed from their submission to the
divine, each individual was confirmed to participate in "the excellence of
human nature." Men of letters and legislators, and later heroes and martyrs in
military operations, were deemed to be forging the image of a new France and
contributing to the foundations of the Republic. 17 As the Marquis de Sade
(signing himself" le citoyen Sade de La section des Piques") eloquently proclaimed
following the deaths of Marat and Lepeletier, "The dearest duty of truly re-
publican hearts is the recognition granted to great men. From the outpouring
of this sacred act comes all the virtues necessary to the maintenance and glory
of the state." 18 The somber engraving from the 19-26 January 1793 edition of

J"dY. ~ J,_;,.r '1!1 .5. !I' tl,r;v r}, 7/tnryr .il-lr J..J,rt, 1 Jor//d.· h
.Jnh /1~0, 1Jorl, f,tlrrrptV•'J/trJ. pJ,.eJ..'Jiu/f},/,JA//II'V.7JHNII:f .XJ1?; nm.. d<\Frt<,nU

Figure 3+ Honors Rendered to the Memory ofLepeletier. From Revolutions de Paris, no. 185, 19-26
January 1793. Courtesy of the Maclure Collection, Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, University of Pennsylvania.

the journal Revolutions de Paris, Honors Rendered to the Memory of Lepeletier

(Figure 3.4), documents the grave ceremony that occurred at the bier of Michel
Lepeletier, as men filed past ("le corps du martyr de Ia Liberti') to pay homage
to one of the nation's fallen martyrs. In effect, greatness came to reside in the
stature achieved by men who could then serve as dignified representatives of
the nation.
By their accomplishments, not their birth, men achieved honors. 19 How-
ever, these men were not slated to be substitute fathers. AI; is well recognized,
the French arrived at a different resolution to the problem posed by the polit-
ical and symbolic transferal of power from a monarchical to a republican form
of government than did the Americans who conceived of their first president
as a new father figure and developed a myth of the nation's "founding fa-
thers."20 In contrast, French republicans stressed fraternity and equality. 21 In
any event, the vagaries of political change, intense political factionalization,
and the striking rapidity with which personal reputations rose and fell made
any pretensions to real or assumed kingship difficult to achieve in practice.
From our perspective, it is significant that patriotism and the fashioning of

a new nation allowed men spaces for the making of a public reputation and af-
forded them opportunities for public actions in the very arenas in which
women's presence was generally becoming less accepted and, in some instances,
proscribed-the literary public sphere, the state or political public sphere, and
the militias and the army. 22 Because men had the opportunity to act in public
and aspire to excellence through their deeds, unlike women they were able to
achieve the kind of greatness that public memory celebrates. 23 The Pantheon,
created by the new legislators of France to celebrate human (implicitly, mas-
culine) immortality, was intended as a "sanctuary of collective memory, a sanc-
tuary to the nation (Ia Patrie)," 24 and appropriately it was populated by
deceased men whose actions and words had won them their place of honor. In
sharp contrast, women who acted in public risked achieving not greatness but
personal notoriety (Mericourt, Gouges, Roland, du Barry). They came to ex-
emplify the dangers unleashed once women entered the public realm. 25 As for
the posthumous heroines of counterrevolutionary myths (Charlotte Corday
and Marie-Antoinette), to republicans they symbolized the most appalling
consequences of women's participation in the political realm. The paradox was
reflected on the level of imagery itsel£ Just as virtue had its counterpart in cor-
ruption within republican thought, the iconography of the female body within
revolutionary imagery vacillated between goddesses and grotesques. 26

Instilling Virtue
The word virtue comes from strength. Strength is the foundation of all
virtue. Virtue belongs only to a being that is weak by nature and strong
by will. ... Who, then, is the virtuous man? It is he who knows how
to conquer his affections; for then he follows his reason and his con-
science; he does his duty; he keeps himself in order, and nothing can
make him deviate from it.27

Etymologically, from its Latin root vir, meaning "man," the word virtue lit-
erally denotes manliness and is associated with valor, worth, strength, force,
and energy, as well as, according to Rousseau, self-control and duty. For fe-
males, virtue also requires duty and self-control, but it hardly results in the
kind of independence, valor, or strength that is masculine by definition. In-
deed, the manlike woman or virago from the Latin means both a female war-
rior and, pejoratively, a noisy, scolding, or domineering woman. As for the
virtuous man, he is not expected to be entirely self-sufficient. For republicans,
male public virtue required the participation and support not of viragos but of

chaste, virtuous women, whose duty was circumscribed by their roles in the
private sphere of the household. It is worth recalling that for women and men,
virtue meant very different things: chastity, sexual purity, and physical intact-
ness, not moral excellence, goodness, and manly courage. Neither the role of
republican mother nor the imagery of female goddess was meant to elicit the
kind of public action, including visible displays of physicality, available to
men. 28
Nevertheless, woman's role during the Revolution did not lack public sig-
nificance, for republican mothers were entrusted with the critical duty of
preparing citizens for their part within a virtuous Republic. 29 According to
Elke and Hans-Christian Harten, "The natural role of mother widened and
made of woman a mother of society" within specially assigned domains of ac-
tivity: the education of small children, the instruction of daughters, and the or-
ganization of charitable activities. 30 The good mother who loved and
nourished others became a symbol of the natural order ofliberty, equality, and
fraternity. Her powers derived from her place in the republican community;
her citizenship was anchored in her familial role, and she was offered a central
position in the national project of social regeneration. In this respect, family
life and public life were very much intertwined.
Moreover, women were afforded the opportunities to play a role on the
civic stage of revolutionary public culture. From the earliest days of the Revo-
lution, mothers and wives were celebrated for their contributions to the na-
tion, as when the wives and daughters of artists came forward to contribute
their jewels at the bar of the National Assembly (" l'autel de Ia patrie"). The Rev-
olutiom de Paris engraving The Beginning ofPatriotic Donatiom, Given to the
Nation (Figure 3.5) documents this event and goes on to praise the women's ac-
tion for emulating the virtues of ancient Greece and Rome. 31 The popular
artists the brothers Lesueur present the theme of women's donation in Patri-
otic Club ofWomen (Figure 3.6). One woman reads from the Moniteur, while
another contributes to the patriotic cause. Although the setting is political-a
public space in which news is shared and discussed-propriety is the distin-
guishing mark of these patriotic clubwomen. The artists carefully render these
women in a manner that distinguishes them from those Amazonian females
who would take to the streets in acts of popular disturbance or perhaps dare to
render independent judgments on political affairs.
Although they remained terms of approbation especially among activist
women, female Amazon and Amazonianism were already being widely used
during the first year of the Revolution. Like the word virago, Amazon in word
and deed carried a double charge. In its issue of 1o-17 October 1789, just after

the celebrated march on Versailles by market women, the heroic "female Ama-
zons," Louis Prudhomme's Revolutions de Paris nonetheless chastised the fe-
male journalist and printer Louise de Keralio for Amazonianism. 32 The
context was a dispute over free speech, or the right of a journalist to slander
public officials, and was dubbed by Revolutions de Paris "!'affaire de M. Marai'
(referring to the public order against Marat for slandering Jacques Necker).
Disagreeing with the presentation of the dispute offered by Keralio in her jour-
nal of public affairs and charging her with misunderstanding public opinion,
Revolutions de Paris calls her a "political Amazon" (" l'amazone politique") and a
"faulty reasoner." Women are said to lack the capacity for abstract thought, es-
pecially of a political sort: "The Marat affair has given us the opportunity to
know a true political phenomenon: a political journal written by a woman.
Until now it was said that women understood no other metaphysics than that
oflove; but Mme de Keralio has proved by the title of her journal that the most

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Figure 3·5· The Beginning ofPatriotic Donations, Given to the Nation. 1789. Paris: Imprimerie
des Revolutions de Paris, no. 9· Courtesy of the Uppsala University Library.

difficult abstractions do not frighten her. Her title is of that sort of metaphysics
that borders on obscurity: it is le journal d'etat et du citoyen [The Journal of the
State and the Citizen]."33
In the context of a heightening anxiety about women's political involve-
ment, the two prints under discussion present a tame and judicious image of
early female citizenship. They accentuate the virtues of female self-restraint
and sacrifice for the national cause. Yet another print, Patriotic Donations by the
Ladies (Figure 3.7), is even more direct in defining women's patriotic duties,
stating, "Oh, bravo, Mesdames, it's now your turn." The man and old woman
to the left seem intent on seeing that these women of good birth also carry out
their responsibilities to the nation. Even if the benefits of citizenship were not
evenly distributed, women were never intended to be exempt from its duties.

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Figure 3.6. Lesueur brothers, Patriotic Club ofWomen. ca. 1791. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet.
Copyright Phototheque des m usees de Ia ville de Paris.

As this print underscores, women were expected to sacrifice for the national
cause. 34 Certainly, donation reiterates the familiar Catholic custom of good
works, whether contributing to the collection plate or giving alms on behalf of
the poor. In contrast to involvement in the universal Church or within the
local community, however, patriotic donation was predicated on participation
in the highly esteemed work of national regeneration. 35 Donation as a practice
of female citizenship-a private act (generosity) endowed with public signifi-
cance-accorded well with the institution of republican motherhood. Noth-
ing about donation, or so it appeared, threatened to disturb women's primary
responsibilities as mothers and wives.
Yet women did interpret the call to act on the public's behalf in broader,
sometimes even violent ways, and the figure of the heroic Amazon threatened
to upset men's efforts to restrain women's conduct. As Dominique Godineau
affirms, "Women wanted to be female citizens: the word citoyenne recurs con-
stantly in pamphlets by women. In these revolutionary times, the word was not

Figure 3·7· Patriotic Donatiom by the Ladies. ca. 1791. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet.
Copyright Phototheque des musees de Ia ville de Paris.

restricted to the neutral meaning of the inhabitant of a country. Under

women's pens, it resounded with civic sentiments, sometimes as the demand
for rights, but more often, it was primarily when stating the duties of citizens
that women, timid and prudent, tried to insert in the political space opened
by the Revolution that strange individual, a female citizen without citizen-
ship."36 Between 1789 and the repression against women that occurred in the
fall of 1793, women sought on many occasions to enact a broader definition of
civic virtue and to expand the meaning of female citizenship.37 In a series of
proposals to the Confederation des Amis de la Verite, Etta Palm d'Aelders ad-
vocated for women's rights (the elimination of primogeniture, protection
against wife beating, the passage of a comprehensive divorce bill, and political
equality for women); a system of clubs to care for and educate children, espe-
cially the offspring of destitute women; and free clinics and work for indigent
women. Palm d'Aelders used the rhetoric of bourgeois propriety, including
fears of moral disorder, on behalf of women's enlarged civic involvement, es-
pecially in welfare work.3B
Even more destabilizing were women's proposals to arm themselves. In July
1791, according to Revolutions de France et de Brabant, "at Bordeaux, four thou-
sand citoyennes, mothers of families, having at their head a Madame Courpon,
wife of a major in the national guard, met on the champ-de-Mars; and there,
reunited with Ia patrie, they vowed to die for the defense of the nation and the
law." 39 In Paris and elsewhere in the nation, women's demands escalated in the
period of growing political radicalization between autumn of 1791 and the
overthrow of monarchy on 10 August 1792. 40 On 6 March 1792, the activist
Pauline Leon proposed organizing a women's militia for defense of their homes
against aristocrats, and presented a petition to the Legislative Assembly with
more than three hundred signatures to that effect. 41 A report by the journal de
Perlet about a request by citoyennes to carry arms with pikes and perform exer-
cises on the Champ de la Federation suggests that the women had a clear and
gendered notion of domestic and external space: "While external enemies
meet their death under the fire of their husbands, they will save the interior of
the empire from the blows that are delivered, with much skill, by instigators of
troubles who throw mistrust and disorder into the midst of the citizens that
such a cause has reunited." 42 Theroigne de Mericourt followed up these de-
mands with a call to female citizens to organize themselves in army corps, and
four months later eighty female citizens of the H&tel de Ville section again de-
manded that the Legislative Assembly decree that "true female citizens" be
armed. 43 In April, a group of female petitioners demanded for their sex the full

enjoyment of natural rights, denied by long oppression, and asked that women
be admitted to civic employment and the military and requested the granting
of the right to divorce, in compensation for their long and amiable suffering
under conjugal tyranny. 44 In festivals held during the spring 1792, pike-bear-
ing citoyennes, often also carrying children, marched alongside men as patriotic
mothers, daughters, and wives.
Moreover, in the critical juncture of revolution and national mobilization
for war through the spring and summer of 1792, women were active partici-
pants in popular uprisings, including the journees of 20 June and 10 August,
which culminated in the fall of the monarchy. In the spring of 1793, Pauline
Leon and Claire Lacombe founded the Society for Revolutionary Republican
Women, a political club for women, with the aim of forming an armed body
of women. The society took an active role in the insurrection of 31 May to 2
June that led to the ousting of the Girondins from the National Convention.
Although women's active involvement in political affairs was suppressed in the
fall of 1793, they were present in dramatic crises over food shortages and polit-
ical turmoil at least as late as the uprisings of Germinal and Prairial Year III.
The engraving French WOmen [Who} Have Become Free (Figure 3.8) captures the
attitude of these politically assertive women. The woman's cap bears the tri-
color cockade, and she carries a pike inscribed with the motto "Liberty or
Death." A medal on her tricolor waistband is inscribed with the motto "Lib-
ertas Hastata Victrix! 14 Juillet" ("Liberty [when she is] armed with her pike
[is] victorious! 14July''). As Darline Gay Levy and Harriet B. Applewhite spec-
ulate, regarding another version of this image, "Contemporaries may have as-
sociated this figure either with Pauline Leon who had publicly expressed her
determination to fight, pike in hand, during the journee of August 10, or with
her equally militant friend, Claire Lacombe, whom the federes decorated with
a tricolor sash for her role during thisjournee." 45
There is also evidence that among militant women, a woman's political ac-
tions could earn her public acclaim. At a session of the Society of Revolution-
ary Republican Women, a male observer reports that "femme Monic" spoke of
biblical, ancient, and contemporary examples of women in arms. They in-
cluded "the colony of Amazons whose existence has been cast into doubt be-
cause of people's jealousy of women" and the "citoyennes of Lille who, at this
moment, are braving the rage of assailants, and while laughing, are defusing
the bombs being cast into the city." Monic applauded women's involvement in
the storming of the Bastille, the October Days, and the second revolution of
10 August, stating,

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Figure 3.8. French WOmen [Who] Have Become Free. 1792. Courtesy of the Musee
Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque des musees de Ia ville de Paris.

In 1788, during the siege of the Palais, women exposed themselves to

the brutality of soldiers hired by the court, in order to hail stones down
upon them. At the storming of the Bastille, women familiar only with
fireworks exposed themselves to cannon and musket fire on the ram-
parts to bring ammunition to the assailants. It was a battalion of
women, commanded by the brave Reine Audu, who went to seek the
despot at Versailles and led him triumphantly back to Paris, after hav-
ing battled the arms of the gardes-du-corps and made them put them
down. In spite of the modesty of our president [Claire Lacombe, the
day's presiding officer], she marched valiantly against the chateau, at
the head of a corps ofFederes; she still bears the marks of that day. 46

Yet the male observers attending this session do not so much dispute the
women's heroism as ridicule it. Pierre Alexis Roussel reports that he and his
companion, the English Lord Bedford, found the proceedings, as well as the
women's demands to be full political subjects, to be both grotesque and hilar-
ious. He speaks of having to suppress his laughter. As Roussel's response dis-
plays, ridicule was one of the most important tactics that revolutionary
authorities used to defuse and finally repress women's claims to political power
and citizenship.
Ultimately, it was not the figure of the armed woman but rather a more
modest domestic role that won the day in republican circles. In 1791, the
women citizens ofClermont-Ferrand wrote to the French National Assembly,
"We see to it that our children drink an incorruptible milk and we clarify it for
that purpose with the natural and agreeable spirit of liberty." 47 The maternal
role was featured in revolutionary festivals. Thus, in the Festival of the
Supreme Being designed by Jacques-Louis David, participating women were
presented as chaste mothers. In Year II a law regarding national festivals was
proposed to the Convention; in this proposal, nursing mothers would occupy
first place behind the officials. When they had enough children, they would be
awarded a medal bearing the inscription "I have nurtured them for the father-
land-the fatherland gives thanks to fertile mothers". 48 The Convention took
seriously the need to legislate on the issue of maternal duty, decreeing on 28
June 1793 that if a mother did not nurse her child, she and the child would not
be eligible for the state support offered to indigent families. As for unmarried
mothers, it was decided that "every girl who declares that she wants to nurse
the child she is carrying, and who has need of the help of the nation, will have
the right to claim it." 49 Carrying on the theme, in his 1793 utopia La Constitu-
tion de Ia lune. Reve politique et moral, the author Louis Abel Beffroy de Reigny

imagined a "register of honor" for women who had nursed their own babies;
after four children, they could receive a "certificate of honor." Similarly, in the
utopia of a "natural" republic imagined by Guillaume Rene Le Febure, women
obtained, for each child that they had breastfed themselves, an insignia in the
form of a pineapple (but without a leaf if the child, despite everything, had not
survived to its first year).5° As Marilyn Yalom states, "Nursing was no longer a
private matter with ramifications only for the infant and its family. It had be-
come, as Rousseau had hopefully envisioned, a collective manifestation of civic
duty."5I
The theme of motherhood is also presented iconographically as a politi-
cally salient symbol of reformed manners and family life in the new political
order. Numerous instances of mothers are to be found in revolutionary prints,
either in small domestic tableaux-most typically, nursing small babies, but
also minding children-or incorporated into crowd scenes, especially the cel-
ebrations of various festivals. The colored etching Festival Celebrated in Honor
of the Supreme Being, 20 Prairial Year 2 of the Republic: The True Priest of the
Supreme Being Is Nature (Figure 3.9) is an allegory of the people in relation to
the values of the Republic. The people are represented not by one figure-as
in the early revolutionary imagery where, as we saw in Chapter 2, a sansculotte
might embody the third estate or the people-but by a family group (man,
woman, and three children) depicted paying homage to the figures of Nature
and Republic. Under the auspices of the Supreme Being in the shape of the
level of equality surrounding an all-seeing eye, the beneficent goddesses bestow
their favor on present and future generations of the French citizenry. 52 Both
women and men are shown in relation to their duty to the family, but only
women were expected to devote themselves entirely to the latter. While her
husband gazes at Nature and Republic, his wife attends to her children.
Revolutionaries dreamed of a republican mother, capable of banishing her
own vanity, passions, and self-interests in the name of her children and the na-
tion. However, the very doctrine of republican motherhood, which celebrated
female goodness, cannot be understood apart from republicans' suspicions of
women and female nature and their anxiety about female independence in
both the public and private spheres, including the possibility that the latter
would result in women's sacrifice of family interest. These attitudes owe much
to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's vision of a reformed society. In Rousseau's estima-
tion, the "good" man acts spontaneously, not through strength or self-control.
However, he opined that only outside society were goodness, sincerity, and
spontaneity truly possible; civilization corrupted man's natural goodness and
undermined the possibility for solidarity. 53 As a substitute for natural goodness,

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I 11/o,.l If
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Figure 3·9· Festival Celebrated in Honor ofthe Supreme Being, 20 Prairial Year 2 of
the Republic: The True Priest ofthe Supreme Being Is Nature. I794· Courtesy of the
Bibliocheque nacionale de France.

he advocated for the rule oflaw, justice, and morality. Yet even inside civiliza-
tion, Rousseau held out considerably more hope for the goodness of common
folk, isolated men, savages, and free peasants; he placed women, along with
aristocrats and city dwellers, among the worst examples that corrupt, civilized
existence had to offer. 54
As Rousseau taught his followers, without women's participation and sup-
port, the prospect for a democratic, virtuous community was dim indeed; at
the same time, however, he doubted woman's loyalty and morality. Of the two
sexes, Rousseau deemed women to be the more desiring, men the more pas-
sionate. Only in men does reason operate as the true governor of the passions.
The case of women is considerably more complex, perhaps even contradictory.
On the one hand, Rousseau proposed that in women modesty and shame
rather than reason operate to brake unlimited desires. 55 On the other hand, he
deemed women's sexuality to be a rudimentary source of rational control and
judgment. In his estimation, "Women's judgment is formed earlier than men's.
Since almost from infancy women are on the defensive and entrusted with a
treasure that is difficult to protect, good and evil are necessarily known to them
sooner." 56
Alluding to women's empire in the family, Rousseau attributed to nature
the role of arming the weak with modesty and shame "in order to enslave the
strong." Dictating that men "ought to be active and strong," women "passive
and weak," he nonetheless feared that women would fall easily into dissipa-
tion, frivolity, inconstancy, and all manner of corruption.57 The unfaithful
woman is more than a weak member of the social community; she threatens
its continued existence. According to Rousseau, "She dissolves the family and
breaks all the bonds of nature. In giving the man children which are not his,
she betrays both. She joins perfidy to infidelity." 58 Therefore, Rousseau pro-
posed a different, more severe course for women's education from men's. He
advocated subjecting girls early on to strict discipline and constraint, because
they (unlike men) would have to learn to live for reputation and opinion. He
prescribed rules of decorum and propriety for everything from appearance to
conduct. Woman's duty is to be tied to the family, her purpose to the tasks of
reproducing and nurturing children.
Accordingly, Rousseau believed that a girl must be taught vigilance and in-
dustry in the service of passivity and malleability. He surmised that "from this
habitual constraint comes a docility which women need all their lives, since
they never cease to be subjected either to a man or to the judgments of men." 59
Through discipline-above all, a kind of bodily discipline dictating her ap-
pearance as well as her behavior toward others, premised on her confinement

to certain appropriate social spaces-woman's (purportedly) ideal "nature" is

socially constructed. Starting from the premises of sexual difference, women's
greater desires and hence their sexual dependency, Rousseau aimed to lay the
groundwork for women's social dependence and their sexual captivity in the
family. By this avenue, women would come to achieve their highest virtues-
decency and chastity.

Virtue Embodied
In revolutionary iconography, the traits of proper, chaste, natural woman-
hood are transposed onto a larger canvas that is populated by a series of antique
goddesses representing woman's natural goodness rather than her social virtue
through motherhood. As a result, motherhood is magnified and glorified-
stripped of its mundane, ultimately conventional character-by its association
with the antique past and a future, regenerated Republic. Classical female bod-
ies bore the names of Liberty, Republic, Victory, Philosophy, Reason, Nature,
and Truth. They functioned to instruct all of the public on the cardinal virtues
of republican France: unity, fraternity, equality, and brotherly love. Occasion-
ally, however, they attested to the special virtues of women: modesty and
chastity.
The print Equality (Figure po) fuses several independent iconographical
symbols and syncretically joins concrete references to French political liberty
with universal motifs. A seated allegory of Equality holds her own emblem, a
carpenter's level, here suspended from a tricolored ribbon, the symbol of the
new French nation. She echoes Renaissance representations of]ustice holding
the scales. Equality is represented wearing a Phrygian cap embroidered with a
cockade, another emphatic reference to Liberty and Republic. She embraces a
tablet of the laws, engraved with the articles of the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and Citizen. A small figurine accompanies Equality, a multibreasted,
crowned Diana, whose pedestal is wrapped in oak leaves, grapes, and gourds-
evoking associations to fertility, the harvest, and social regeneration. 60
In the print Fraternity (Figure 3.n), the goddess Fraternity is represented as
the protector of two small children or cupids-one white, the other black-
whose mutual affection is sealed with a kiss. Fraternity is dressed in antique
robes with a tricolor sash; one breast is revealed, as in classical sculpture but
also as a reminder of the emphasis that revolutionaries following Rousseau
placed on the breast as an organ of maternal care, not female vanity. 61 Around
her head she wears a garland of oak leaves, the mark of rebirth and social virtue,
and holds a double heart in her hand, a borrowed reference to Christian love

Figure po. Chez Deny, Equality. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet.

and charity. The embracing, naked children step on a multiheaded serpent, a

reminder of the old despotic order, which they will supplant through their nat-
ural innocence and brotherly love.
The goddess in Nature (Figure 3.12) nurses an infant on each breast. These
two children of separate races represent the harmonious future of a republic in
peaceful union with the principles of nature, a republic wherein all subjects
will be equal. Nature wears a garland headdress of laurel leaves, flowers, and

___.,
0 Yfrrt lt/rt!t!C:' f.

Figure J.n. Antoine Carre, after Claude-Louis Desrais, Fraternity. ca. I794·
Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque des musees de
Ia ville de Paris.

vegetables. She is surrounded by other symbols of the harvest-fruits and veg-

etables abound. To her rear, a grapevine grows and a mountain rises-symbol
of the Montagnard faction in the Convention. Despite her repose, she is an
emblem of the radical revolution and its regenerative ambitions. In the context
of the struggle against slavery in French colonies, the incorporation of a black

Figure 3.12. Chez Basset, Nature. ca. 1794. Courtesy of the Musee
Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque des musees de Ia ville de Paris.

child in Figures 3.10 and J.II symbolizes the Republic's claims to nurse all her
children, black and white, and to stand for universal freedom.
Modesty (Figure 3-13) addresses directly the women subjects of the new
regime and evinces the revolutionaries' high regard for female chastity and pro-
priety. She sits in a reserved pose, demurely defending her honor. She is veiled
and fully garbed; her dress rises to the collarbone (no peeking breasts here!).
She holds up a branch of lilies, a further reference to her purity and her spiri-
tual transcendence, while stepping on a turtle, sign of material existence and

Figure 3.13. Chez Basset, Modesty. ca. 1794. Courtesy of the Musee
Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque des musees de Ia ville de Paris.

possibly also female sexuality. 62 Both her costume and her lily-an emblem of
purity and an attribute of the Virgin Mary in medieval Christian iconogra-
phy-attest to this anonymous artist's redeployment of Christian attitudes to-
ward female sexuality within a republican vocabulary.
Philosophy Uncovering Truth (Figure 3-14) exploits an allegorical trope that

is well established in eighteenth-century iconography. For example, an image

of the unveiling of truth by Reason with the help of Philosophy, all feminine
allegories, also appeared on the frontispiece to Denis Diderot and Jean Le
Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopedie, designed by the artist Charles Nicolas Cochin
(coauthor, with Hubert Frans:ois Gravelot, of the Iconologie that was so influ-
ential in the 1790s).63 Here Philosophy stands not just for a human attribute
or the cognitive process by which appearances are pierced but in particular for
the greatness of one man's, Rousseau's, unique contribution to the unveiling of
truth. Philosophy holds a torch and lifts the veil from Truth, who is depicted
naked to the waist. Truth stomps on a satyr's head, signifying the end to an era
of superstition and lies. She holds a mirror with her left hand, a reference to
the study of appearances, which leads to the knowledge of essences. Also, she
looks straight ahead, in a posture of pure transparency, refusing to look at her
own image in the glass, as would those vain women against whom Rousseau
railed. In her right hand, Truth supports a tablet engraved with the title of
Rousseau's major work of political philosophy, Du contrat social. Other explicit
references to Rousseau appear throughout the print. A bust of the esteemed
philosopher appears on the wall, and two books lie in the foreground, one
open to the title page of the Emile. Finally, on the floor is a multibreasted
Diana of the Ephesians-a reference to nature's bounty and beneficence and
to the generative power of republican virtue.
The print Victory to the Shades ofLepeletier and Marat (Figure 3-15) cele-
brates the immortal spirits of two martyred republican heroes, Louis-Michel
Lepeletier and Jean-Paul Marat-the former assassinated on the day after he
voted for the king's death, the latter the victim of the female assassin Charlotte
Corday in July 1793· Both men's bodies were placed in the Pantheon, the site
of those the Republic deemed worthy of immortality, although given the
quickly changing politics of the period, it was not easy to guarantee permanent
mortality for the Revolution's heroes. Lepeletier only resided there until the
overthrow ofRobespierre and his allies on 9 Thermidor Year II (July 27, 1794),
and Marat did not receive these honors until after the collapse of the Jacob in
dictatorship. At his death, Marat's corpse was wrapped in a wet sheet and
exposed before burial at the Cordelier courtyard, and his heart was interred at
the Luxembourg Gardens. As planner of these events, Jacques-Louis David
insisted that "his burial would have the simplicity appropriate for an incor-
ruptible republican." 64 This print is one of numerous republican images of
"manes"-a Roman term for the shades or spirits of dead ancestors and
godlike men-in which the realistically rendered portrait-heads of the new
immortals are placed in a cameo medallion, accompanied by revolutionary

Figure 3-14· Jean-Baptiste Gautier, after Boiseau, Philosophy Uncovering

Truth. ca. 1794. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque
des musees de Ia ville de Paris.

symbols and larger-than-life goddesses. Winged Victory alludes to their spiri-

tual worth. She carries her two attributes of fulfillment and exaltation, the
palm and a crown. The laurel leafed crown also signifies the dead martyrs' re-
birth and social virtue. Victory's palm grows out of a representation of the
mountain, the symbol of the Jacobin movement, which is further decorated
with laurel leaves and on which the medallion is perched.
The presence of the goddess Victory in this image affirms the revolution-

aries' faith in their cause despite the abhorrent deeds of the Republic's enemies.
The eye in Victory's necklace, an Egyptian-derived Masonic symbol, testifies
to her role in watching over these divine souls and guarding against the Re-
public's enemies. Ironically, the assassinations ofMarat and Lepeletier signified
their purity and innate goodness and further raised their stature among revo-
lutionary publics. Moreover, in the logic of war and the Terror, their deaths at-
tested to the presence of evil within the Republic, confirmed the need to purge

' ( ' , l' () ( l 11'

( 11ttl /J/((1/t'.f t),. JJ',!/!t·lt;·r d c ((..rlnl/.

Figure 3-15· Chez Basset, Victory, to the Shades ofLepeletier and Marat. ca.
1793. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque des
musees de Ia ville de Paris.

the republican body politic, and impressed on the people the necessity of re-
maining forever vigilant. 6 5 Revolutionaries distinguished the people, who were
closer to nature and less depraved, from their enemies. AI> Robespierre postu-
lated, "I tell you that I have understood this great moral and political truth an-
nounced by Jean-Jacques, that men never sincerely love anyone who does not
love them, that le peuple alone is good, just, and magnanimous and that cor-
ruption and tyranny are the exclusive appanage of those who disdain le peuple. "66
Victory, like her sister goddesses, is of course an abstraction. In contrast,
the immortals are dignified, committed, and honorable men, martyrs of lib-
erty. She is female; they are male. She is anonymous; they possess personalities.
She is eternal; they have earned their right to an apotheosis. Because of their
heroic and virtuous actions, their words and their deeds, Lepeletier and Marat
have been elevated to the (republican) heavens populated not by formerly liv-
ing women but by deities. The embodiments of virtue in republican visual im-
agery, like the public and private life to which republicans aspired, were
strongly differentiated on the basis of sex. Men achieved the public celebrity
and personal honors accorded to a person who had lived a just life. 67 Even a
male child of thirteen could be celebrated as a martyr-hero of the Republic
and, as shown in Bara Crowned by Liberty (Figure p6), be crowned by a fe-
male deity. 68 Women, too, were expected to be virtuous, but their virtue was
linked to their idealized role within the family, and the display of virtuous
womanhood required a posture of modesty, propriety, and respectable silence
in both the public and private domain. Consequently, the attention that a
woman drew to herself could be taken to be a sign of her immorality or im-
modesty, and a symptom of the menace posed to social order by the presence
of women acting (out) in public.
The presence of allegorical females in images praising real men raises yet
another issue concerning women's power to judge-and thereby affirm or cast
aspersions on-male honor. These goddesses all appear to be watching male
actions. In this regard, the allegorical female operates as a substitute or positive
reversal for women's gossip. 69 They are mute, but they signify, unlike the lo-
quacious Parisian women condemned by Rousseau for their "inexhaustible
gossiping." 70 Both the goddess and the gossip judge honor, but the force of one
is positive, the other negative. Moreover, the gossip is one who has free rein in
the community. Her words spread calumny. Her actions presume an ability to
violate the boundaries of respectability, to pass easily between-and pass judg-
ment on-public and private matters. Her knowledge is enhanced by an abil-
ity to see what is best not seen, to speak about what is best not spoken-
especially, if the reputations of men are to be preserved. Unlike the goddess,

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Figure p6. Andre Boissier, Bara Crowned by Liberty. ca. 1794. Courtesy of
the Uppsala University Library.

she is no guardian of manners: She lives to find out and disseminate the
hypocrisy of those who violate the codes they pronounce upon.
Manners, in effect, meant everything for the ongoing republican struggle
against corruption, and women's manners-their behavior and their appear-
ance-were a certain sign of either their pure or fallen (because "public" and
open) character. For this reason, no doubt, Rousseau had insisted, "It is im-
portant, then, not only that a woman be faithful, but that she be judged to be
faithful by her husband, by those near her, by everyone. It is important that she
be modest, attentive, reserved, and that she give evidence of her virtue to the
eyes of others as well as to her own conscience. If it is important that a father
love his children, it is important that he esteem their mother. These are the rea-
sons which put even appearances among the duties of women, and make
honor and reputation not less indispensable to them than chastity." 71
In the aftermath of the crisis provoked by Marat's assassination in July
1793, women suffered a definite setback in their efforts to become full citizens
of the Republic. In the summer and autumn months, Parisians witnessed the
public executions of Charlotte Corday, Olympe de Gouges, Marie-Antoinette,
Madame Roland, and Madame du Barry; women's clubs and societies were
banned; and thereafter women were barred from fully participating in the rev-
olutionary public sphere. Whereas women might continue to receive honors
in republican festivals as mothers of the nation en masse, their representation
as abstract beings within republican imagery affirmed the more indirect, pas-
sive role to which they were increasingly being assigned in the public sphere of
the democratic Republic. Paradoxically, the preferred private and confined role
for women was predicated on a new political definition of private life and on
disciplinary efforts devoted to making women virtuous. Not surprisingly,
doubts were raised about whether and how successfully women could be made
to conform to their ideal status. In the upheaval of revolutionary politics,
therefore, grotesque characterizations of women spoke to a deep-seated anxi-
ety about women's public role. They also expressed republicans' Manichaean
desires to expel all evil, to view their enemies as engaged in plots and conspir-
acies aimed at overturning the good Republic and its virtuous citizens. In
marked contrast to Patriotic Club ofWomen (Figure 3.6), Cherieux's [Club of
Women Patriots in a Church] (Figure 3-17) captures the repulsion felt by solemn
men when faced with the independent political action ofwomen.n The artist
portrays the women as overly excited, excessive in their postures, and doubtful
in their morality. Bearing shrewish faces and gestures, their breasts lewdly ex-
posed, these political women are shown immodestly stretching their hands
(even their bodies) to be recognized as speakers or to register their agreement

and disagreement with other speakers. They are reading, writing, and speaking
(in public), and one could even be a man dressed as a woman. In contrast to
the women's state of frenzied exposure, a series of men line the borders of the
church: All are well-robed and composed in their demeanor. The contrast is
obvious-women lose all their femininity, perhaps even their sex, while men
retain their gravity and disinterested posture in the political arena.

Virtue's Enemies
Never has a people perished from an excess of wine; all perish from the
disorder ofwomen.73

Womankind-the everlasting irony [in the life] of the community-

changes by intrigue the universal end of government into a private
end.74

Alongside the pure and chaste allegories of virtue, grotesque caricatures

abounded in the Revolution's satirical print culture and were certainly directed
as much, if not more often, against male as female enemies. Still, the female
grotesque or monster loomed large in the patriot imagination, compounded
by the links that were made between aristocracy, monstrosity, and femininity.
Monstrosity by definition blurred the lines between male and female, human
and animal. According to its bizarre logic, the excessive traits of the female
grotesque could be applied to any object of scorn and derision. In any event,
by focusing on female grotesques we may better understand how the polariza-
tion of female virtue and vice worked within the visual rhetoric of the period,
and how artists exploited the charged association between female sexuality and
the public display of femininity.
Female grotesques belonged to those groups that patriots deemed to be the
most likely enemies of the French Republic: aristocrats, members of the royal
family, the clergy, emigres and their foreign protectors. Yet women of the lower
classes were also liable to be depicted as grotesques, and not only by counter-
revolutionary artists and polemicists. 75 The Lesueur brothers' image of The fa-
cabin Knitters (Les Tricoteuses jacobines) (Figure p8) captures the growing
disease occasioned by revolutionary women's actions. Seen from the good pa-
triot's vantage point, the tricoteuse is a dissembler. These women are only pre-
tending to be involved in their proper domestic tasks. Tellingly, their eyes are
cast outside the frame-according to the emerging stereotype, toward the
violent spectacle of the guillotine. One woman (the most off-putting of the

Figure 3.17. Cherieux, [Club of Women Patriots in a Church]. ca. 1793. Courtesy of the
Bibliotheque nationale de France.

group) has abandoned her knitting altogether, and glares off into the distance.
Like the Old Regime theatrical spectators, so distrusted by Rousseau, these
shrews only appear to be good. Their "interest-ed" looks tell another story that
the truly virtuous citizen can read. Indeed, patriotic men (like their enemies)
looked on with horror when women violently cast themselves "outside their
sex" and defied the gendered boundaries separating public from private life.76
In that instance, lower-class women recapitulated many of the crimes associ-
ated with aristocratic femininity.77
As we have seen, popular artists of the revolutionary era drew upon the
classical repertoire of female allegories. The latter possessed well-proportioned
bodies and incorporated long-established ideals of female beauty. These god-
desses pointed to the spiritual, transcendent, and permanent aspects of human
existence. In contrast, grotesques embodied women's base, material, and
changeable attributes.78 Rather than using the female form to represent more
universal, nonsexual values, those who created images of the female grotesque
called attention to women's most immediate, physical characteristics. Hence,

the grotesque body was likely to be open and protruding (available for sexual
pleasure; focused on the mouth, nose, stomach, or sexual organs), debased
(monstrous and animal-like), subject to change (aged, pregnant, too large or
too thin), and transgressive (of heterosexual object choices and behaviors). The
female grotesque drew attention to the long-standing iconographic tradition
of representing all evil-including discord, enmity, license, vengeance, and

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Figure p8. Lesueur brothers, The jacobin Knitters. Courtesy of the Musee
Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque des Musees de Ia ville de Paris.

anarchy-in the figure of a hideous female body. An early revolutionary print

is illustrative of these multiple associations. The King with His Minister Break-
ing the Chains ofthe Third Estate. Discord Takes Flight (Figure 3-19) shows the
king and Jacques Necker lifting the burdens of the third estate, who curtsies in
gratitude, while Discord takes to flight. Accordingly, three men-two extraor-
dinary, one ordinary and emblematic, as the anonymous commoner is meant
to stand for all his countrymen whose freedom is being granted by his bene-
factors-are this image's visual focus. In contrast, the one female (an allegory)
is portrayed with medusan locks, a dagger in hand, wings, and pendulous
breasts. The image is characteristic of the way in which visual representations
of female grotesques exploited the strong ambivalence toward public women,
which was a persistent theme in republicanism. Such depictions disclosed at
the level of the body the very disorder and intrigue that sexually avaricious and
politically ambitious women of the Old Regime had been accused of promoting.
Trials and executions aside, no member of the royal family was subjected
to the same level of excoriating criticism as Marie Antoinette. The queen was
an early target of court satires circulated first among the nobility. Already by
the mid-178os, she began to appear in text and image as a female harpy, and
the scandalous pamphlet literature leading up to the Revolution circulated ru-
mors about her voracious sexual appetites, including her taste for women.
Rather than subsiding, attacks on the queen escalated dramatically in the first
years of the Revolution, as patriot journalists and engravers found new cause
for complaint-a cause well beyond the charges leveled against the queen by
noble critics of the royal family or pornographic satirists.79 A print from I789
attributed to Villeneuve, M.me *** Laspict (Figure 3.20), places the queen's
head on the body of a monstrous female harpy. 80 A description from the Petit
journal du Palais Royal from the summer of 1789 demonstrates, according to
Antoine de Baecque, how the various parts of the queen's body came to be
monstrously assembled to recompose the aristocratic statue in its morphologic
entirety: ''A magnificent bronze statue excites the liveliest admiration because
of its singular composition. It has the head of a woman, the body of a harpy,
the pudenda of a cat, the talons of an eagle, and the tail of a pig; it has been
noted that the facial features are very similar to those of Marie-Antoinette,
Queen ofFrance." 81 Additionally, in the same year, Marie-Antoinette began to
be cast as a "female monster" of Austrian origin named lscariot (an anagram
for aristocrat and a reference to the biblical figure Judas lscariot). lscariot's ser-
pent hair and red locks were meant to elicit a public protest against the ''An-
toinette-Meduse" or the "Rousse Royale." 82

Figure 3-19. Antoine Sergent, The King with His Minister Breaking the Chains ofthe
Third Estate. Discord Takes Flight. ca. 1789. Courtesy of the Bibliotheque nationale
de France.

The use of animal metaphors and monstrous imagery in the pamphlet lit-
erature directed against Marie-Antoinette reached a feverish pitch in the re-
publican campaign unleashed by the royal family's unsuccessful flight and
capture at Varennes in June 1791.83 As noted in Chapter 2, she was now por-
trayed as a panther or hell-cat, a pig or a hyena, most often identified by her
two visual trademarks: snaky medusan hair and ostrich feathers to mark her
Austrian heritage. 84 The Austrian She-Panther, in Her Most Distant Posterity,
Sworn to Contempt and Abomination for the French Nation (Figure 3.21), and its
accompanying text, says it best. The queen appears as a mixture of all of
the basest accusations in one hyperbolic fantasy of degradation and impurity

bordering on nineteenth-century racist doctrine: "this dreadful Messalina,

fruit of one of the most licentious and illicit couplings (concubinage), com-
posed of heterogeneous matter, fabricated from several races, part Lorraine,
German, Austrian, Bohemian." Her fiery tresses are also related to those of
Judas, her nose and cheek is said to be bloated and made purple by corrupt
blood and her mouth fetid and infected. From being a foreigner, suspected of
betraying the nation, she has become a foreign body-an impure mix of races,
the fruit of one of the century's most licentious and immoral unions. She is re-
duced to a sordid composition of heterogeneous material. Her royal stock is
entirely discredited; she is allied with base materiality. As the Moniteur uni-
verse! (the Revolution's most important journal of record) stated following her
execution, in a less hyperbolic but no less blunt fashion, "Marie-Antoinette ...
was a bad mother, a debauched wife, and she died under the curses of those she
wanted to destroy."ss

Figure 3.20 . Attributed to Villeneuve, M.me *** Laspict. ca. 1789. Courtesy of
the Bibliotheque nationale de France.

The attacks on the queen are striking examples of the vigorous assaults lev-
eled by republicans against all female aristocrats. Because in republican dis-
course hers was a corrupted, degenerate, and bestial female body, it is not
surprising that representations of aristocracy easily appropriated attributes of
monstrous femininity, and, of course, the queen herself was not the only fe-
male target of the prerevolutionary libels. As Robert Darnton has established,

Figure 3.21. Chez Villeneuve, The Austrian She-Panther, in Her Most

Distant Posterity, Sworn to Contempt and Abomination for the French
Nation. ca. 1792. Courtesy of the Uppsala University Library.

Anecdotes sur Mme Ia Comtesse du Barry (I775) was one of the "supreme best-
sellers" of the prerevolutionary era-and it is of no small consequence that its
subject, Louis XV's mistress, was a woman who, like Marie Antoinette after
her, had intimate access to the body of the king. 86 Low instead of high-born,
however, du Barry was tarred with having slept her way from the brothel to the
throne, and in the process she contributed heartily (or, should we say, "bod-
ily") to the desacralization of the monarchy. The author of Les Pastes de Louis
XV (1782), another scandalous pamphlet of Louis XV's monarchy, credits
Madame de Pompadour with reigning over "an abyss for innocence and sim-
plicity which swallowed up throngs of victims and then spat them back into
society, in which they carried corruption and the taste for debauchery and vices
that necessarily infected them in such a place." Under the influence of
Madame du Barry, writes Sarah Maza, "the king's sceptre, a plaything in turn
for love, ambition, and avarice became in the hands of the countess the rattle
wielded by folly." 87
Republican artists gleefully played upon the association between political
freedom and sexual liberty, between dress and undress in their attacks on the
aristocracy. Aristocratic Woman (Figure 1.6), depicting an old woman in a state
of disrobing ("thanks to the Constitution, we will soon go without our skirts
[sans-jupon]"), is an example of this visual and political wordplay. She lifts her
skirt, in grotesque mimicry of a sansculotte, but this debauchery makes an ar-
tificial, bewigged old woman even more ridiculous. The step was not far from
sexual to political vice. In one of many versions ofAristocratic Lady Cursing the
Revolution (Figure 3.22), the privileged class of Old Regime France is figured
in the shape of a fury, a familiar trope derived from classical allegory. But this
startling direct image of a female grotesque does not require of its viewers any
special knowledge of the classics. The old woman's sagging, shapeless breasts
are mimicked in the drooping plumed headdress she wears. In place of the
youthful, natural, and nurturing beauty that was so favored in republican rep-
resentations of female goddesses, this anonymous artist depicts a choleric old
hag with lined neck and bosom. Her ferocious stare, clenched hand, and
drawn dagger embody the aristocracy's vile opposition to revolutionary
change.
These images reveal that for republicans, aristocracy and femininity were
intimately related. This charge is wonderfully dramatized in a contribution to
the 22 November I790 issue ofjournal de Perlet, "Why Are Women More Aris-
tocratic than Men?" The contributor advances an empirical observation, "es-
pecially in the capital... the Revolution has more detractors among women
than among men." He calls on readers to judge, not flatter or blame women.

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Figure 3.22. Aristocratic Lady Cursing the Revolution. ca. 1789. Courtesy of
the Musee Carnavalet. Copyright Phototheque des musees de Ia ville de
Paris.

In a reprise of well-known enlightened arguments excusing women's back-

wardness because of their inferior education and their more limited experience
with principles of government and political economy, he judges their minds to
have been less prepared for the Revolution than were men's. Exempting
"women of the people from these charges," because he deems them closer to
nature and more patriotic, he speaks of the repugnance toward the Revolution
exhibited by a great number of women, especially those of the court and aris-
tocrats in general:

They saw that in a state where political liberty is total, there would be
a revolution in manners that would inevitably change the private lives
of women; that they might very well be obliged to substitute their
noisy and frivolous lack of occupation, and their scandalous inde-
pendence, for other duties of wife, mother, and citizen. The honor of
one day becoming Spartans did not at all console them for the loss of
the pleasures of Athens; and the apprehension of seeing divorce intro-
duced showed them in a detestable manner a revolution which would
impose on them the odious yoke of compliance and virtue, of moral-
ity and fidelity. 88

In fact, this particular contribution did not go uncontested. This itself is

an important indication of the extent to which the dramatically changed cir-
cumstances inevitably raised the question of women's liberty. Indeed, the mat-
ter was far from being settled during the earliest stages of the Revolution. On
3 December, 1790, journal de Perlet published a letter to the editor titled "On
the Aristocratic Spirit with which Women Are Reproached." 89 Rather than jus-
tifYing the denial of equal liberties to women on the basis of their greater edu-
cational and political inferiority, this author turns the Enlightenment trope
around. According to him, the denial of liberty to women is an outrage in an
enlightened century. He also defends women's suffrage, but interestingly he is
far less approving than was the initial contributor of the popular classes. The
first praised the bold actions of women in such events as the storming of the
Bastille, the march on Versailles, the Festival of the Federation, and virtually
every threat against "Ia chose publique." He called on all Frenchwomen in the
future to become like women of the people: "How many times has the monarch
received from these same women the testimony of love more flattering and
more true than the vain fawning of his courtesans, and, especially, more sincere
and instructive in their lessons. Let us hope that in the future all our wo-men
will honor themselves in becoming, in this sense, women of the people." 90

In contrast, the second writer is worried about the popular "fanaticism"

that is mistaken for patriotism, and more concerned to defend the women of
higher rank against unjust charges by patriots. This early exchange anticipates
a contrast that would later became more pronounced, as between popular mas-
culine Qacobin) radicalism and bourgeois or moderate (Girondin) feminism,
played out in late spring 1793 by the defeat of the Girondins by the Jacobins.
In the context of the charge of women's inclination toward aristocracy, how-
ever, it is revealing to notice how the more "feminist-inclined" (if we can fairly
use such labels) second author is more sympathetic to the educated women of
higher rank. In contrast, the more "populist" first author is profoundly suspi-
cious of such women. He posits a deep and disturbing connection between
aristocracy and femininity, one that was reprised often in both the rhetoric and
imagery of the revolutionary era.
Such is the case in The Nightmare ofthe Aristocracy (Figure 3.23), where a
writhing, disproportionately large female body is depicted twisting toward the
viewer in the throes of a bad dream of equality and liberty, symbolized by the
carpenter's level topped by a Phrygian bonnet. Aristocracy's open eyes and
clenched hands-one tearing at her hair, the other at her toga-underscore
that this is a waking dream. A new dreaded reality has swept away the litter of
the old order, which lies strewn across the floor in the shape of swords, crowns,
tiaras, and scepters. Her physicality and availability makes her less, not more,
appealing as a sexual object. As Madelyn Gutwirth observes, "The mood of
imminent rape is underscored by the figure of the satyr functioning as handle
of the ewer on the left, whose lip points between her legs." 91 Against this res-
olutely anticlassical nude, the printmaker exhibits the rational symbols of
equality and liberty derived from Roman antiquity and Freemasonry. Where
aristocracy is aggressively feminine, it appears to be even more effective to sym-
bolize liberty not as another woman but through the gender-neutral icon of
the Phrygian cap and equality as a triangular level.
The charge of aristocracy by patriots reduced a world of constantly shift-
ing complexities to a remarkably simple dichotomy, and this tendency bore a
marked resemblance to other dichotomies of modern bourgeois life, such as
that between men and women. Patrice Higonnet explains how this logic of ac-
cusatory language during the Revolution affected gender distinctions: "From
physicalization of aristocracy, the distance was short to its feminization as well:
women, imagined by the Enlightenment to be particularly susceptible to dis-
ease and "vapors," were thought fated to aristocratie, which iconographically
was often feminized." Other associations, like that to witchcraft, demonstrated
the special affinity of aristocracy for femininity: "Concealment and hypocrisy

Figure 3.23. Sebastian Desmarest, The Nightmare ofthe Aristocracy. ca. 1793.
Courtesy of the Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of
Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and
Tilden Foundations.

likened the aristocrat to the witches of former times: like these demonic
women, 'la tourbe impure de l'aristocratie' preferred to work in the 'tenebres.'
Aristocracy wears a mask. It was 'dissimulee,' and often concocted 'un plan
atroce et habilement combine."' 92
However, as Figures 3-17 and 3-18 demonstrate, it would be wrong to insist
that only aristocracy bore the taint of femininity. Rather, the gender/woman
trope's ability to register a simplistic opposition between good and evil or ap-
probation and discrimination derived in good measure from its mobility- its
capacity, according to Rico Franses, "to fly off at a moment's notice, to take up
residence in whatever situation needs radical simplification, and clear messages
of good and evil."93 Opponents of the Revolution applied these lessons in their
critiques, figuring the Revolution as a grotesque woman, typically of the lower
classes; but even revolutionaries put these tropes to good use. Some examples

will illustrate this point. The Contrast (Figure 3.24), the 1792 colored etching
by the British artist Thomas Rowlandson after Lord George Murray, shows
two images in medallion form and represents the British public's shift away
from its initially positive view of the Revolution. 94 On one side, under the
heading "British Liberty," Rowlandson depicts a youthful Britannia holding
the scales of justice, a lion resting at her feet as she watches a galleon sail off
into the distance. On the other side, under the heading "French Liberty," is a
frightening old crone with snaky hair, a scantily clad body, bare feet, and mus-
cular arms; she carries a sword in one hand and a trident in the other. On the
trident is a gruesomely impaled head, and to Liberty's rear the body of a well-
attired man swings from a lamppost. The text drives home the message: French
liberty amounts to "atheism ... rebellion ... anarchy, murder ... madness,
cruelty, injustice ... idleness," "misery," and, above all, "equality"!
In a similar inversion, the Moniteur universe/linked the execution of the
revolutionary supporter Madame Roland to the executions of the queen and

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Figure 3.24. Thomas Rowlandson, after a design by Lord George Murray, The Contrast
17921Which Is Best. Published on behalf of the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and
Property against Republicans and Levellers, 1792. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis
Walpole Library, Yale University.

the feminist agitator Olympe de Gouges: "The Roland woman, a fine mind for
great plans, a philosopher on note paper, the queen of the moment ... was a
monster however you look at her.... Even though she was a mother, she had
sacrificed nature by trying to raise herself above it; the desire to be learned led
her to forget the virtues of her sex." 95 The judgment of the Moniteur universe!
is especially harsh given how hard Madame Roland had fought to fashion her-
self as a modest, chaste, and dutiful wife. Unlike the salonnieres of earlier
decades, she foreswore any participation in the regular meetings of the
Girondins, which took place in her home between 1791 and 1793. She sat apart,
preoccupied with sewing or writing letters but nonetheless alert to all that was
said. By remaining silent, she offered these men a forum in which to speak
without the intrusions of a female voice. She also refused the label of writer,
despite the fact that she became known for her writings.96 Even before the
events leading to her arrest and execution, however, she had become the spe-
cial object of abuse by members of the increasingly influential Montagnard
faction. "The court of Roland and his wife" were likened to that of the king
and Marie-Antoinette. 97 In his L'Ami du Peuple Jean-Paul Marat compared her
to Lucrezia Borgia, the female poisoners Brinvilliers and Voisin, and the hated
Marie-Antoinette hersel£9 8
Other examples of the reversibility of the gender trope come to mind.
French royalists and post-Thermidorean artists were equally adept at mobiliz-
ing grotesque figures of discord and revolutionary terror. An anonymous Ther-
midorean image, The Triumph of Marat in Hell (Figure 3.25), shows Marat
greeted by Death, while a bevy of female harridans dance round in glee.99This
portrait depicts the Terror as the corridors of hell, and with the exception of
Marat and the ungendered Death, hell is populated almost entirely by mon-
strous women, all of whom possess familiar attributes-serpentine, medusan
hair; postnurturing breasts; frozen, murderous glares; swords and daggers. On
the far left, a particularly hideous woman holds the amputated leg of a small
child as her mask is pulled away by another-revealing that behind the face of
(what appeared to be) a man rests another monstrous female.
Thus, the female body offered a symbolic repertoire that could be claimed
by any party of warring men for different causes. It might function as a gener-
alized symbol not only of a positive sense of liberty but also, negatively, as a
symbol of the enemy: the ancien regime as old crone, the democratic Repub-
lic as frightful figure of discord. Indeed, the political circumstances that fol-
lowed from women's imposed banishment from public life at the height of the
radical Revolution, along with subsequent legislative efforts to contain women's
civic and political rights, may have helped to grant artists greater license to use

Figure 3.25. The Triumph ofMarat in Hell. ca. 1795. Courtesy of the Bibliotheque nationale
de France.

the female body as a metaphor for a whole series of constantly contested

political meanings. That is, the more women were deprived of an individual
presence in the public arena, the more likely those faceless women could stand
in for a range of political values or positions. At the same time, the visual pres-
ence of women-that is, female figures-in these images served to remind
men of the horrors associated with women's too active involvement in public
life.
In this context, the decidedly unflattering portrait in the anonymous print
Citizens Born Free (Figure 3.26) is an example of how the republican discourse
on freedom might be leveled against female propriety as well as female nature.
The visual pun derives from the portrayal of a "female" citizen caught in the

solitary act of an (unlikely) birth. The printmaker bitterly mocks the opening
line of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, "Men are born and
remain free and equal in rights," by inscribing these words in the print's title. 100
The baby is captured standing, about to walk or run from beneath its mother's
skirts, in little need of maternal succor. The baby's freedom is exaggerated,
more suited to the animal than the human world. Taken to its limits, freedom
is shown to be less natural than unnatural, capable even of destroying the most
fundamental bonds between mother and child. The mean, grimacing mother
is anything but a sentimental portrait of female nurturance. Her lifted skirt
also points the viewer's attention to her sexuality. Even the baby is unattractive.
In jest, the printmaker seems to be asking whether this is the true offspring of
the Revolution-neither chaste nor uplifting but common and gross? Here the
female citizen is less an icon ofliberty than a caution against freedom's fright-
ful consequences.

The Republic and Its Subjects

In short, the imagined implications of women's public activities were dis-
turbing. It was precisely when women acted on the possibilities of republican
citizenship that they were accused most vehemently of bringing disorder to the
Republic. Nor was it easy to predict which group of male politicians might
turn against women at any given moment. Thus, although Girondins were
generally friendly to women and their cause, the Girondin deputy and jour-
nalist A.-J. Gorsas spoke of armed militant women as "furies ... armed with
pistols and daggers; they make public declarations and rush to all the public
places of the city, bearing before them the standard of license. . . . These
drunken bacchanalians .... What do they want? What do they demand? They
want to 'put an end to it'; they want to purge the Convention, to make heads
roll, and to get themselves drunk with blood." 101 The context for Gorsas's re-
marks are understandable-the insurrection of 31 May to 2 June 1793, leading
to the ouster of the Girondin moderates from the National Convention, which
the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women had helped to bring about. 102
But the violence of his rhetoric is notable, and the particular associations Gor-
sas makes between political women and monstrosity or cannibalism recurred
in the words of men of differing political persuasions. With some rare omis-
sions, even the most forward-looking men of the first French Republic ob-
jected to the participation of women in the democratic public sphere. 103
An especially startling case is that of Sylvan Marechal, a man of the Left,
revolutionary playwright, editor ofBabeuf's Manifesto ofEquals, anticipator of

Figure 3.26. Citizens Born Free. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet.

the revolutionary calendar, and author of the 1801 brochure Project for a Law
against Teaching Women to Read. 104 Man!chal justified his arguments on the
basis of nature and reason. In Article 3 of his Project, he declared, "Reason
wants each sex to be in its place and to stay there." In Article 26, he revealed
his real purpose, stating, "How contagious reading is: as soon as a woman
opens a book, she thinks she's good enough to produce one." In Article 4, he

insisted, "Reason doesn't want, any more than the French language, that a
woman be an author." 10 5
Despite Marechal's assertion of the guarantees of reason and nature in
keeping each sex in its proper place, he is clearly anxious that women have not
and will not always abide by nature's dictates. Like salonnieres, they might un-
dertake a program of reading, writing, and the forming of opinion. Like mar-
ket women, members of the revolutionary crowds, spectators at the assemblies,
and participants in mixed and single-sex societies, they might occupy public
space. It is of some importance that at the height of the Terror, Peter Brooks
observes, "political women, scribbling women, debauched women'' (referring,
respectively, to Olympe de Gouges, Mme Roland, and Marie Antoinette) were
drawn together "as examples of 'the sex' out of control, needing the ultimate
correction in order to conform to what [Louis Antoine de] Saint-Just called the
'male energie' of the Republic." 106
Marchechal's proposals, like Rousseau's writings on women, reveal the ex-
tent to which the so-called dictates of nature and reason required buttressing
through a disciplinary program. Republican men were especially alert to the
potential for women's errancy, their dangerous capacity to undermine the col-
lective spirit. If women's reading and writing were deemed to be troublesome,
visual spectacles offered an ideal didactic vehicle for the remaking of corrupt
and corruptible female nature. However, this required that bodies be made to
carry simple, unadulterated meanings of good and evil. In addition, a case
could be made that women were particularly well suited to receive instruction
in visual messages. As Rousseau proposed in Emile, "Almost all little girls learn
to read and write with repugnance." 107
In this context, the representation of women as goddesses symbolized the
regeneration of the tainted female body associated with the repudiated old
order. Conversely, female grotesques made palpable the continuing threat
posed by corrupt female nature and disorderly public women to the virtuous
body politic. Both characterizations of the female body worked to construct a
new female subject. In the terms established by a sensationalist psychology, the
case for a female goddess satisfied the power of signs to impress upon the senses
the new knowledge required by a regenerated citizenry. Antique goddesses
were emblematic of the revolutionaries' desire to bypass their own national his-
tory by instituting an ideal, nondespotic Republic. They instructed the popu-
lace-and especially women, who were deemed most susceptible to selfishness
and vanity-on how to banish selfish private desire in order to serve the whole.
They had the added advantage of transmogrifYing the despised women of
Old Regime society. Instead of chatty hostesses or sensual seducers, women

reemerged as mute, chaste allegories for an indefinite present and a future

world, as signs of the politically passive but still politically charged subjectiv-
ity entailed by republican motherhood.
On the other hand, the grotesque belonged to the world of revolutionary
caricature, a universe populated by abusive, ridiculous, and highly partisan
images. They were the pure expression of a logic of political Manichaeanism
by which people were first stylized and then distributed according to two es-
sential types favored by revolutionary political minds: aristocrat or patriot.
Moreover, the grotesque participated in a sacrilegious movement that helped
to fashion the secular society of modern France. 108 She derived her force from
her ability to give a body to the Revolution's political enemies. By portraying
the aristocracy or the clergy as a grotesque-and not least a female grotesque
(animalistic, degenerate, too thin, too large, or too old)-the revolutionaries
made their political opposition more palpable, more real. Furthermore, be-
cause the figure of the grotesque associated bodily monstrosity with political
deviance, it promised to deny the opposition a place in the reformed, regener-
ated body politic.
The polarization of female goddesses and grotesques in revolutionary pop-
ular imagery typifies the melodramatic structure of revolutionary moralism. As
Peter Brooks explains, melodrama is "a hyberbolic mode, of course, and pre-
eminently the mode of the excluded middle, which one finds in Saint-Just's
speeches and in all Jacob in rhetoric: those who are not with us are against us,
there is no compromise possible between polarized moral positions, the world
is defined by a vast Manichaean struggle oflight and darkness." 109 Whether in
rhetoric, drama, or imagery, melodrama relied on an aesthetics of embodiment
and the special power of gesturing speech. Gesture permitted "the creation of
visual messages, pure signs that cannot lie, the most undissimulated speech,
that of the body." 110 Thus, what looks to us as gross simplifications or ridicu-
lous exaggerations in the postures and grimaces of grotesques are best viewed
as expressions of the performative urge to imbue the body with meaning. This
urge was made all the more imperative in the undecided space of the demo-
cratic sovereign, as a consequence of the evacuation of sacred meaning from
the traditional center of the absolutist body politic. With the collapse of a "sys-
tem of assigned meanings," individuals faced an intense requirement to be ac-
countable for their bodies, to convey and achieve meaning with their
(otherwise sense-less) bodies.U 1
Whereas during the Revolution male virtue required a certain stoical, public
self-exhibition, the normalized, virtuous female body possessed its own forms
of self-control. For women as for men, the discipline of the body was

self-discipline. 112 Paradoxically, a comportment of unassuming modesty, pri-

vacy, prudence, and silence demanded of women a strongly willed self-
composure, as was ideally represented in the enclosed body of the classical god-
dess and betrayed by the open and exaggerated bodily form of the grotesque.
As Rousseau intuited, women's shame and modesty-not their reason-
guaranteed their chastity. Like the goddess, then, the female grotesque was not
just outside the self or the community; she was potentially inside as well. She
served as a warning to women of the urgency for safeguarding their carefully
constructed political/moral identities as virtuous, republican mothers.
Finally, there remains the question of the masquerade of equality within
the masculine Republic. By incorporating the very symbol of the Revolution
as a female figure, compensation was made for the exclusion of women from
the Revolution's political practice. Stated otherwise, women were included,
but only in representation. To say that, however, is not to concede that their
presence is meaningless. As I have indicated, no representation can escape its
own multiple readings; and the evidence suggests that, under certain condi-
tions, politically active women did appropriate the gendered symbols of Lib-
erty, Republic, or the female Amazon for their own cause. Still, the power of
the feminine symbols of liberty, equality, or fraternity, even for women, rests
in their ability to encompass the whole populace, not just one of its parts. Para-
doxically, the myth of full equality may have helped make the denial of full
rights to women more palatable for the vast majority of men and women. For
the discontented minority, it took the additional threat of force to expel such
women from public affairs. Legal and political mechanisms, as well as police
power, would continue to be required during the next century and a half in
order to maintain the fiction of universal sovereignty and equality in the face
of demands by women and others for equal rights.
Still, the symbolic universe that republicanism achieved cannot be dis-
counted. Although Liberty and her sister goddesses may have resembled the
goddesses who adorned the visual landscape of the ancien regime, after the
Revolution they no longer signified the partiality and privileges of Old Regime
authority. Indeed, the representation of liberty as a woman was instrumental
in the constitution of the myth of universal equality that marked the shift to a
new social order. Had liberty been represented as a man-and not just occa-
sionally, as was sometimes the case, but insistently-it might have revealed too
much about the foundation of the new regime's political ideology and thereby
threatened the universalizing claims on which the new regime's legitimacy was
based.

The Revolution unleashed a flood of male anxiety, not least because of all
of the repeated references to freedom and equality in republican discourse and
imagery. While the concepts of freedom were constrained, we have also seen
how, from the outset, gender interfered with liberty. I agree wholeheartedly,
then, with those critics who insist that representation both takes and gives si-
multaneously. Real, troublesome, meddlesome women could be banished to
the home, but the representation of Liberty (and her party) undid or disturbed
some of that banishing, took some of it back. Real women were never fully
obliterated from the public map; nor were their roles in the private sphere ever
entirely out of public view. However, their presence was registered within the
public sphere in a manageable way-trapped within a picture. Women them-
selves were hardly free of the discipline of the image-every woman (includ-
ing those who would be counted as good and virtuous) risked "making a
spectacle of herself" by appearing in public. The double image The Female
Aristocrat: Cursed Revolution, The Female Democrat (Figure 3.27), attributed to
the radical republican artist Villeneuve, calls attention to the dramatic way in
which opposition to public women of all stripes easily congealed. A version of
the image discussed previously, Aristocratic WOman Cursing the Revolution, is
here coupled with a scatological image, usually subtided "Oh the Good Decree,"
which was also published separately in several versions. The Female Democrat
grasps in one hand a rolled parchment scroll inscribed with the words "decla-
ration of the right [sic] of man." The most sanctified political object of the Rev-
olution makes its appearance here as a (displaced) male organ in the hand of a
ferocious woman of the popular classes. The joke is vicious, on men's behalf
but also at their expense: At least in this artist's conception, man's virility and
man's political rights are one, and both are placed at risk by women's power.
Moreover, the joining of these two women from seemingly opposite ends of
the political spectrum says a great deal about the fear and contempt men felt
for public women.
By making a public display of even the most modest kind, a woman risked
losing her honor, and feminine honor was not an easily repurchasable com-
modity. Just as female virtue was internalized, goodness was domesticated
within the private sphere. Good women were appointed to be their own
guardians. They needed to control their gestures, to scrutinize their own bod-
ies for telltale marks of impropriety, lest any man should see something unto-
ward. Women's plight, their self-policed image-making, was the consequence
of the necessary force that Rousseau posited as being at the root of virtue. Men
were not immune from the force of virtue. However, reason offered them a

1..\1\IS IUCI\ \ll. I.\ Dl \10< It\1 ~.

\II 1'110'\ nn IU' I'

Figure 3.27. Attributed to Villeneuve, The Female Aristocrat: Cursed Revolution. The Female
Democrat. ca. 1789. Courtesy of the Bibliotheque nationale de France.

route to freedom in the public sphere that was denied to women. And, in good
measure, man's relationship to woman was guided in the first instance by the
sense of sight; by "reading" woman's bodily signs, he could discern in what cat-
egory of womanhood she belonged.
In Chapter 4, I return to the female image of the nation presented in Chap-
ter 2 as the consequence of the legitimization and representation of the anony-
mous popular sovereign of the new Republic. And I examine the consequence
of the nation's figuration as a female in the context of the erotic dimension of
modern patriotism.

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Cornell University Press Visualizing The Nation

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Chapter Title: Embodiments of Female Virtue

Book Title: Visualizing the Nation

Embodiments of Female Virtue

I N REGARD to revolutionary culture, it is useful to remember Edmund

addition, however, Liberty as a political metaphor obscured the stunning mas-

Allegory, Narrative, and Action

created Pantheon or Temple of Immortality; the subsequent transferral of the

7MU W rrmtJ til~ ttnt"!'fi'A 7\lj'fV&' 6t ltlrrte'l'uJ6fu~

the journal Revolutions de Paris, Honors Rendered to the Memory of Lepeletier

L 11,~ t·rzr;,diq., ~), . ~ ,,,,,._, .

~.Jita..t..• ~ ~ ......, r.J:ttJ.'.•A. 'l"i.-nt ,;.J,•i,, ·>4' ,, ' •l.-t. lo

restricted to the neutral meaning of the inhabitant of a country. Under

In 1788, during the siege of the Palais, women exposed themselves to

to certain appropriate social spaces-woman's (purportedly) ideal "nature" is

Figure po. Chez Deny, Equality. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet.

and charity. The embracing, naked children step on a multiheaded serpent, a

vegetables. She is surrounded by other symbols of the harvest-fruits and veg-

is well established in eighteenth-century iconography. For example, an image

Figure 3-14· Jean-Baptiste Gautier, after Boiseau, Philosophy Uncovering

symbols and larger-than-life goddesses. Winged Victory alludes to their spiri-

' ( ' , l' () ( l 11'

Womankind-the everlasting irony [in the life] of the community-

Alongside the pure and chaste allegories of virtue, grotesque caricatures

Les1hcoteusl?'s Jncol•in<-. u de Robl'1piPJ"I"l! .

t 1/r.f t"n'lllll IIII.!JI"OIIt llt1111flU•• a

....,,, • '"/.,f•~r.f'urf'""" ollcr t70/fJ k /ubt. •t , c>~J .J,c.>btit.c

anarchy-in the figure of a hideous female body. An early revolutionary print

bordering on nineteenth-century racist doctrine: "this dreadful Messalina,

Figure 3.21. Chez Villeneuve, The Austrian She-Panther, in Her Most

In a reprise of well-known enlightened arguments excusing women's back-

In fact, this particular contribution did not go uncontested. This itself is

In contrast, the second writer is worried about the popular "fanaticism"

RLUCJO.V. MO/ULITY. A71fl:f. M PFRF 1RY

the female body as a metaphor for a whole series of constantly contested

The Republic and Its Subjects

Figure 3.26. Citizens Born Free. Courtesy of the Musee Carnavalet.

reemerged as mute, chaste allegories for an indefinite present and a future

self-discipline. 112 Paradoxically, a comportment of unassuming modesty, pri-

1..\1\IS IUCI\ \ll. I.\ Dl \10< It\1 ~.

\II 1'110'\ nn IU' I'

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