Feminism in France - From The Restoration To The Second Republic

From The Restoration To The Second Republic

The feminist movement expanded again in Socialist movements of the Romantic generation, in particular among Parisian Saint Simonians. Women freely adopted new lifestyles, inciting indignation in public opinion. They claimed equality of rights and participated in the abundant literary activity, such as Claire Démar's Appel au peuple sur l'affranchissement de la femme (1833), a feminist pamphlet. On the other hand, Charles Fourier's Utopian Socialist theory of passions advocated "free love." His architectural model of the phalanstery community explicitly took into account women's emancipation.

The Bourbon Restoration re-established the prohibition of divorce in 1816. When the July Monarchy restricted the political rights of the majority of the population, the feminist struggle rejoined the Republican and Socialist struggle for a "Democratic and Social Republic," leading to the 1848 Revolution and the proclamation of the Second Republic.

The 1848 Revolution became the occasion of a public expression of the feminist movement, who organized itself in various associations. Women's political activities led several of them to be proscribed as the other Forty-Eighters.

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Famous quotes containing the words from the, restoration and/or republic:

    How did they meet? By chance, like everybody.... Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?
    Denis Diderot (1713–1784)

    The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Jean Jacques Rousseau ... is nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.
    Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)