vega 1982 feminist republicanism etta-aelders on justice virtue and men

8/21/2019 Vega 1982 Feminist Republicanism Etta-Aelders on Justice Virtue and Men

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History of European Ideas, Vol. IO, No. 3, pp. 333-351, 1989

Printed in Great Britam

0191-6599/89 3.00 + 0.00

Q 1989 Pergamon Press pk.

FEMINIST REPUBLICANISM. ETTA PALM-AELDERS

ON JUSTICE VIRTUE AND MEN

JUDITH VEGA*

One of the best known contributors to and even founders of early feminism dur-

ing the French Revolution is a Dutch woman. Living on her own in Paris since

1773 and financially well-off due to gifts and her own labour, Etta Palm-Aelders

has been noted by historians. She is mentioned conscientiously in studies of femi-

nism as well as of general Dutch politics or diplomacy during the democratic

revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century.2 Meanwhile, the few

interpretations of her convictions and way of life are highly anachronistic.

Except for an adventurous life and several energetic actions in the field of

womens rights, little seems to be known about her.

It is my purpose to make available the known information on her life history. I

also want to write a biography that aims to establish a more integrated

knowledge of her attitudes towards sexual as well as state politics.3

In the twentieth century two biographies were published by Dutch historians,

in addition to some shorter references by historians. These two reconstructions

of her life, character and opinions still are the only ones available. They are rather

diverse in extensiveness and thoroughness, but even more tiresome to evaluation

are their diverging contents. Nevertheless, both are instructive on the object of

study, perhaps most of all because of their diverging interpretations. The titles of

the studies are most revealing: the study published in 1929 is titledEttaPaIm. The

Netherlands FirstFeminist, the one that followed in 1962 was namedEttaPalm A

Dutch Parisienne 4

Even without the traditional desire for a clear picture these titles offer a

troubling one. The epithets suggest rather competing images: from one of them

emerges a serious feminist and from the other a political intriguante who uses

lovers to collect information and who plays around a bit, morally as well as

politically. They leave us badly guided in the complex field of historically

changing meanings of female virtue and female vice and of the equally changing

acceptance of feminism as a political discourse in its own right.

The first biographical study, by W.J. Koppius, is much more dedicated to a

serious consideration of her feminist attitude and opinions than the study of the

sixties. This one, by H. Hardenberg, more amply treats her political role as a

diplomat for the Dutch government. Given Hardenbergs more thorough

research this study could have been more extensive. The biographies live up to

the images suggested by the ominous titles. The authors respective attitudes

towards Ettas later cause, richly colour the scarce historical evidence on her

youth.

*Department of Social Philosophy, University of Groningen, Westersingel19,97 18 CA

Groningen, The Netherlands.

333


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Judith Vega

In an attempt to make intelligible the scattered views on Etta Aelders, I want to

combine the rather outdated but useful biographical reconstructions with a

rereading of her own work, using insights from the modern feminist history of

ideas of the late eighteenth century. Because she was as much a part of Dutch

history as of French history, I also want to add the perspective of Dutch political

history to understand her political convictions and her personal biography. The

lack of this perspective has been partly responsible for the rather contradictory

judgements on her personality.

Etta Lubina Johanna Aelders was born April 1743 in Groningen. Her father,

Johan Aelders, owned a papermill and ran the local pawnshop. Her mother,

Agatha Pieternella de Sitter, took over the management of the pawnshop after

his death in 1749 under protest from her family, who did not think it an

appropriate occupation, her being of higher social standing than her husband.

The De Sitter family is politically characterised as having strong Orangist

sympathies and interests, Both authors take it for granted that Etta has been an

active little girl, quick of mind. Because her father died when she was a six-year-

old girl, the role of her mother is thought important. Koppius describes the

mother rather sympathetically. The mothers father had been a merchant in silk

cloth and the woman inherited his sense of business. Agatha de Sitter was a

strong, independent woman who had repeated setbacks in business matters,

perhaps due to prevailing antisemitism for she was in partnership with a Jew.

Typically, Hardenbergs less charitable description runs that she faced

bankruptcy because she had repeated quarrels with business partners as well as

with the customers of the pawnshop and therefore the city council deprived her of

the management.

Her mother gave Etta a good education including French lessons. Possibly

Etta even knew some English and Italian. Though disagreeing on the matter of

her physical beauty (Koppius being much more positive than Hardenberg), both

authors characterise Etta as a frivolous coquette in her teens. She had several

admirers and proposals of marriage; according to Koppius one admirer was a

married man, according to Hardenberg she was popular with the students in

Groningen. In 1762 she married a student in the humanities, Christiaan

Ferdinand Lodewijk Palm. The marriage did not last long. Etta is said to have

been unfaithful and Palm divorced her, set off for the Dutch colony in the East

and left Etta pregnant. In 1763 a daughter was born and named after Palms

mother but died within months. This event did not get her to repent,

Hardenberg sadly states.

Anyway, from then on Ettas already unconventional ways proceeded into a

truly adventurous life. She met a young lawyer, Jan Munniksj He is described as

having had an unresponsible and weak character and a bad moral reputation and

as having forced a divorce upon his wife by treating her very badly. In 1768

Munniks was appointed as consul in Messina and Etta left with him for Italy. The

historians are not clear on whether Etta ever reached Italy. According to

Koppius, Munniks left her during the trip, indifferent to her illness. He found the

post in Sicily disappointing and returned to Holland. According to Hardenberg,

the spoiled, greedy and lighthearted Etta was not satisfied with Munniks

revenues and returned with him to Holland. In Brussels, however, she met a new

admirer, a military man with close contacts with the Dutch court.


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Using her new contacts,, she left for Paris in 1773, with letters of

recommendation to Diderot and DAlembert and settled in worldly Paris. In a

short time, Etta was secured of a rather large income by powerful friends,

consisting of the profits on shares on military necessities (gunpowder and

saltpetre). She lived in a luxurious dwelling. Her house functioned as a salon for

young intellectuals.

In 1778 her diplomatic activities began. They would continue till 1792. In the

course of events, she developed a lively correspondence with the Dutch Grand

Pensionary Van de Spiegel and the French minister Lebrun, among others. Part

of the correspondence has been preserved.7 It is possible she also did some work

for the Prussian government.* Despite deficient evidence, Hardenberg assumes

that her road to diplomatic success was paved with several intimate affairs with

men. He could very well be right, though his insinuating tone does not strengthen

his argument.

She was regularly praised on the quality of her work and got well-paid for it.

Though in the course of events there are signs of embarrassment from Van de

Spiegel on account of her behaviour and growing democratic radicalism, he was

taking her very seriously as his correspondent. In a long letter dated January 18,

1790 he expounded to her his views on the motives of Dutch politics and on the

principles of the Dutch constitution.

The correspondence mentions that she wrote two books concerning

constitutional and historical subjects. The first one will have been her pamphlet

against Mirabeau. The second one has as yet not been found; perhaps it was not

printed.9 We know she also wrote a third publication on a separate subject: a

collection of her lectures on the position of women, published July 1791.i

By 1790, when her feminist activities took a start, she was an already well

known political figure. From the beginnings of the French Revolution in 1789

she furthermore was a loyal defender of its cause. Among her acquaintances

were, for example, Robespierre and Condorcet.

Before discussing Etta Aelderss early-feminist ideas I will first enumerate the

known facts of her political career which she pursued in actions, words and with

the pen.

She had her first assignment when she was asked by first minister De Maurepas

to make inquiries into the public mood in the Dutch Republic about the English-

American war. France was interested in winning Dutch support for its pact with

America as announced to England in 1778. From then on she was involved in

various activities relating to state affairs. Thanks to her influence on De

Maurepas she also had contacts with Goltz, the Prussian envoy in Paris.

She personally contributed to the averting of a conspiracy in 1784 against Van

Brunswijk, the personal counselor of the stadholder.

In 1787 the arrest by revolting patriots of the wife of the stadholder, the Prussian

Princess Wilhelmina, led to the intervention of the Prussian army. The defeat of

the patriot party followed and some 6000 patriots fled to France. Confronted

with the possibility that a civil war would deliver the Netherlands to foreign

powers and threaten its autonomy, Etta mediated on her own initiative and

succeeded in stopping France from intervening in the conflict as planned by

minister Breteuil in 1787.


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Judith ega

In 1790 she succeeded in reassuring the French gov~rnmeRt with respect to

stories in the press about involvement of the Dutch government in a counter-

revolutiona~ plot in France. A Dutch general, Maillebois, played a pro~ni~~ent

role in the scheme.?.

She violently opposed Dutch patriotic pamphlets spread in Paris. She

defended the Dutch constitution several times against attacks from Dutch

patriots in the French press, sometimes

o

her own initiative, sometimes on

request from Van de Spiegel. In 1788 she wrote her pamflet against Mirabeaui-? in

which she firmly defended the historical institution of the stadhofder against his

attacks on it.

Later on these actions would be the ground for personal attacks, and not just

by the hostile journalist Cerisier of the Gazette ~~jve~~e~le n a discourse for the

Socittt fraternelle on 12 June 1791, she felt compelled to take a stand against

the accusations of disloyalty to the revolutionary cause by Louise Robert-

Keralio, wife of the president of the Soci& fraternelle des patriottes de lun et

lautre sexe, who tried to prevent Etta Aelderss membership.i4 She was also

confronted with Dutch patriots who tried ta make her appear suspicious in the

French press.ls

In December 1789 however, in her enthusiasm for the French revolution, she

urged her correspondent Van de Spiegei to make reforms in the Dutch

Constitution in order to give the people more in~uen~e.~6

From then on her politicai sympathy for the revoiutionaries was not kept

secret. She became an active member of the SociCtt des Amis de la Verite that

issued from the Cercle Social. Her revolutionary sympathies were also

expressed in her correspondence with Van de Spiegel.

A number of historians describe Ettas work for both the Dutch government

and the French Revolution as politically ambiguous. They agree that there was a

swift and whimsical development in her political thinking. The reproach made to

her by Cerisier that she favoured monarchy in the Netherlands and the republic in

France, has in fact assumed the status of a historiographic interpretation in the

work of her twentieth-century biographer Hardenberg and of other historians. I

want to contend that this interpretation is caused partly by a debatable view of

Dutch political controversy at the time and partly by thed~cul~ of acomparative

history ofei~hteenth century revolutions, in this case in France and Holland. The

accusation that Etta Aelders suffered from political schizophrenia or intelIe~t~a1

feebleness can be refuted on the basis of her own texts. Her correspondence is

an especially instructive source for contemporary eighteenth century views on

the political power relations in Holland and the political position of the Dutch

refugees in France.

A biographical sketch that ignores her involvement in Dutch politics would

forfeit valuable information in two respects. In the first place, it would miss an

opportunity to contribute to the historiographic debate about Dutch political

controversy of the time, in which the issue of the possibility of combining the

potiticaf idiom of democratic rights and peoples sovereignty with sympathy for

the position of the stadholder has become central. In the second place, it would

miss out on a further understanding of the several ways in which feminism cauid

associate with other political positions. Ettas points of view may, for example,

remind us of the well known combination of feminism and monarchism of


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Feminist Republicanism

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Olympe de Gouges but, being an active member of several revolutionary clubs,

she does not present a Dutch version of non-leftist or autonomous feminism.i8

Her activities do show that Etta Aelders in her political views combines loyal

adherence to the House of Orange with democratic republican ideals and

feminist zeal. This assumed inconsistency of views must, however, be revalued as

consistency after having paid some attention to the structure of Dutch political

debate at the time.

For a long time Dutch historiography viewed the political conflict of the

period 1780-1800 as a continuation of the old sixteenth century conflict on the

status of the stadhouder. More recent stories have disproved this consensus by

asserting a central conflict between democracy and aristocracy, not between

stadholder and aristocratic patriots.

I9 This implied a recognition of the

development in the Dutch Republic of new ideas on rights and of the gradual

replacement of the old conception of rights by a modern idea of rights. A

political landscape emerged with on the one side a party of regents fighting the

stadholder but holding on to feudal rights and on the other side genuine

democrats, striving towards a democratic monarchy and the only party to defend

the modern conception of rights.

After the first revolution in 1787 that led to the exile of several revolutionaries,

the restoration of the position of the stadholder and the converting of several of

the regents again to the Orangist party, we find in fact four social groups:

democrats and aristocrats both in France and in the Dutch Republic. Orangist

regents had achieved a temporary victory over their anti-Orangist counterparts.

After the French intervention in 1795 the stadholder fled and anti-Orangist

regents temporarily allied with democrats took over, to separate again in 1801 in

favour of a coalition of regents. It is in 1795, at the proclamation of the Batavian

Republic, that Etta Aelders, having lived in Holland again for two years, is

arrested for being an Orangist.

Aelders political position is very much part of the complicated Dutch political

setting. When we consider her earliest actions there is no convincing sign

whatsoever of aristocratic or anti-democratic sympathies, only of loyalty to the

stadholder. Her very first assignment was related to the French-American

cooperation-pact and can be considered as evidence of her interest in the

American revolutionary principles.

Her attack on Mirabeau could be considered as expressing anti-democratic

ideas. She does severely attack the patriot revolutionaries of 1787 and reproaches

them for disturbing the order, lacking plans for reform and of displaying a

senseless revolutionary zeal for liberty. It certainly is an Orangist pamphlet: in

passing she ridicules the patriots for having feared the activities of the female

Orangist Kaatje Mossel. Still, in this pamphlet the central object for attacking the

revolt is not some ideology of equality but its anti-Orangism and her answer is

relegating the political responsibility to the Estates General. She attacks

Mirabeau for neglecting the role of the Estates General in the disorderly

government politics he had blamed on the stadholder and for describing the

Republic as allowing herself to become a tool of a female wrath-that is of the

Princess Wilhelmina, wife of the stadholder.20

She is very clear on the grounds for her dislike of the Dutch patriots in Paris.

According to her own analysis most of them were aristocrat patriots, regenten


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Judith Vega

who fought the monarchical position of the stadholder.2 Writing on 24 May

1790 to Van de Spiegel about the attempts of Dutch patriots in Paris to make her

politically suspicious, she contends firmly: il me serait tgal si un papier

aristocrate me dtnigre. She sends a letter to the editor of

Revol ut i ons de Pari s,

Loustelot, to correct his views on the Dutch situation and the patriot refugees.

The intention of the discontented

was not to establish in Holland a popular government, but to overturn the

stadholdership, demolish the provincial statutes made by the people in 1747 in

order to curb the most unbearable of all tyrannies that is the aristocratic senate and

thus to govern the Republic by way of an intrigue in their service.22

Loustelot accepts her point of view gratefully. She sends a copy of her letter to

Van de Spiegel along with a copy of an article by Marat. While her accompanying

comment to Van de Spiegel runs that it is clear that someone more hot-headed

and less able than herself has written the article, it supports her own views. Also

directed against Loustelots views in Rtv olut i ons de Paris it amply defends the

view that not the stadholder should be considered the real despot.

(T)his party is composed of nothing but the genuine Dutch aristocracy, aldermen,

mayors, (. .) that is to say, the whole of the heridetary magistrates always from

powerful families (. . .) The people has always been attached to the House of Orange

(.

.)

The so called patriots are the real aristocrats, the masters of the Republic, the

suppressors of the state. . . 23

Her general political standpoint is repeated in some of her writings on feminism,

read to the Amis de la Vtritit.

Ettas position can only be made intelligible by accepting that the course of

events suggests a distinction between revolutionaries simply fighting monarchy

and others fighting old European feudal right. The way she viewed Dutch politics

offers an interesting and new confirmation of the historiographic position that

makes aristocracy instead of the House of Orange the focus of a democratic-

patriot opposition.

It nevertheless is plausible that the French revolution functioned to sort out

her political ideas that had been fragmented or articulated without clear political

references in the confused Dutch context. In her political correspondence she

seems to be insecure herself of the content of her persisting nationalism and the

role of the stadholder, expressing on the one hand her loyalty to the stadholder

and her admiration for his wife and on the other hand urging Van de Spiegel to

give her clearer information on the Dutch constitutional principles. She

furthermore allows herself, as late as 1791, to admit that she has not become

overnight the unwavering, purposive revolutionary she is by then paid tribute

for.

I confess meanwhile, gentlemen, that the prejudices with which I was surrounded

have often struggled in my heart with the pure and true principles your honored

legislators have developed with such energy and success.24

Anyway there is no evidence of a sudden turning point in convictions and her

own words that,


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339

born and raised in a republic that for eighty years fought to establish the principles

of liberty and equality, these principles are rooted in my heart anddo not

d te from

the time of the revolution and are not dependent on circumstances.25

are not to be discounted.

Aelders statements of her political views show that they stem from the ideas of

the Enlightenment on equal rights and citizenship-and not from the

conservative ideas of society as structured by tradition, privilege and hierarchy.

Then again, while this may position her more accurately within contemporary

discourse, it is not meant to simplify existing political idiom. The Dutch

situation, in which arguments stemming from Enlightenment traditions did not

belong to one or the other political faction in the clear cut manner which was

typical elsewhere has to be taken into account. Political conflict was often a

struggle about the true meaning of concepts (such as popular sovereignty,

representation, tradition) used by both sides of the political spectrum.26 This

circumstance is surely responsible for the specific entanglement of Etta Aelderss

political notions and indeed complicated her survival in the context of both the

French and the Batavian revolution.

It is furthermore interesting to consider whether the conservatism to which she

clung in regard to the historical position of the stadholder did not allow more

space for political identification for a women of her background and ambition,

than did anti-Orangist patriotism. Her politics ought to provoke research on this

point, instead of depreciation.

I want to proceed by taking a closer look at her feminism.

Establishing relations between Enlightenment political theory and eighteenth

century early-feminist theory is a complex matter. It has been ascertained by

several feminist historians studying the eighteenth century democratic

revolutions in Western Europe and America, that the development of ideas on

gender-equality draws on diverging Enlightenment philosophies of citizenship:

natural rights theories and several traditions of interpretations of the notion of

civic virtue. The dominant line of thought emerging from these studies is that

neither the natural rights principle nor the republican image of public virtue

were able to serve the feminist cause in an umediated way.

The fact that the public and private realms of the modern state were gendered

over the short term is thought to be due both to male opposition to full female

participation in public life and to active female acceptance and promotion of a

female domestic sphere. The studies of Linda Kerber and Jane Rendall contend

that feminists applied republican values to the domestic sphere, actively

constructing a separate domestic sphere of republican motherhood in which the

role of women was defined as a positive contribution to public and social life.27

In a recent article Ruth Bloch sketched the Christian and classic republican

backgrounds of the meanings of virtue and the way in which private and public

meanings of virtue and their associations with masculinity and femininity

developed during the revolutionary era in America. The ancient classic

connotations with masculine public virtue as military courage and civic glory

were slowly displaced by protestant, Scottish and sentimentalist meanings of

virtue applied to a social and domestic instead of a political realm. In the course

of the revolutionary period the institutional base for the promotion of virtue and


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Judith Vega

civic fulfilment became not the state but families, schools and churches. The

political realm became governed by the development of more instrumentalist

theories of government. Virtue was, in short, relegated to women. This feminised

and socialised or domesticated virtue lost its political meaning in the theory of

government to a masculine utilitarianism.28

Blochs findings can be taken to complement the assumption of J.G.A. Pocock

that the eighteenth century turn towards ideals of politeness, constituting a moral

instead of political theory of society, could have meant an opening towards self-

assertments of women.2g The culture of politeness may have opened up social

intercourse to women, but ensuing political assertions by women were not at all

implied.

It is interesting to see whether Etta Aelders fits this general picture of early

feminism during the democratic revolutions.

Her feminism presents another case where inclinations uncomfortable with

each other try to converge. Barbara Pope has construed within the feminism of

the French revolution a struggle between sociability and republican motherhood,

describing it as a struggle between social classes.30 The combination of Etta

Palms biography and her feminist pamphlets does not follow the social analysis

of this picture. Though she earned her living independently and partly by her own

labour she certainly was no working-class woman. Neither do the accounts of

her youth testify to an elite background. She is perhaps best characterised as a

bourgeoise, wandering through social stratification with relative ease. But the

tension noted by Pope does figure in Aelderss feminist attitudes.

The conceptual struggle between eighteenth century sociability and republi-

canism was re-enacted as a struggle within her own life and within her written

work. When polite culture functioned as a public ideal for women, it did so in a

natural state of animosity with the classic-republican public ideal. Its

simultaneous association with aristocracy and femininity defied the classic-

republican aversion to female public roles and the supposed female inclination to

luxury and corruption. An aversion echoed in Rousseaus critique of salon-life as

cultivated unnaturalness and in the Christian celebration of sober domesticity.

Having lived herself according to the requirements of sociability and apt in the

more public virtues of wit, generosity, magnanimity, grace and taste,3 Etta

Aelders formulates in her written work her public ideal of womens life from a

republican vantage point. She repudiates the domestic propensities of the elite

womans life and denounces its ornamental characteristics. She harshly criticises

the form of feminine power that derives from coquetterie, manipulation and

feminine empty-headedness. Female idleness and frivolity are recurring themes

in her work.

(1)t has to be said, gentlemen, most often it is the affectations, the little nothings,

the display of dressing, I had almost said, the vices themselves, that make us win your

favours and the preference of an educated souL3*

So the virtuous citoyennes ought to call back, by means of their example, (.

. .)

they who, still bathing in a unbridled luxury, pass their days in a languid enervation

and in a wearying insignificance; (. . .) to tear away these victims from the midst of

this alluring frivolity that makes the distinct character of the French ladies; a

character necessary perhaps to soften the captivity that weighed them down.


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With this she vocalises a notion of womens subordination but at the same time

a criticism of feminine style foreign in nature to republicanism. The criticism of

ornamental refinement easily associates with the republican criticism of an

effeminate polite culture, of sociability as the expression of a non-masculine style

that is hindering the classic republican ideal of virtuous and self-contained public

functioning.34

Her republican vantage point led her to deny the supposed necessity of female

vice, but on the other end of the spectrum it compels her to restore a difference,

She sometimes feels forced to point out a specific character of female virtues in

order to defend a female civic existence.

Yes,gentlemen, nature has created us to be your companions in your works and in

your glory. If she gave you a better-muscled arm, she made us your equals in moral

force, and perhaps your superiors in vivacity of imagination, by the delicacy of the

sentiments, by the resignation in misfortunes, by the fortitude in sorrows, the

patience in sufferings, finally in generosity of soul and patriotic zeals

Virtues still magnified by the knowledge that it is the women who are the

supports of your infancy and the consolation of your old age.

To understand ambivalences within the work of a feminist individual as Etta

Aelders, we must accentuate different legacies and a struggle between these

within feminist thought itself.

The opinions of Condorcet on the political existence of women, already

published in 1788, and probably other feminist petitions must have been

discussed earlier in the Cercle Social. Still, Etta Aelders is known to have been

the first woman who appeared on the tribune of the Cercle Social in defense of

feminist notions. Furthermore, while it was preceded by Amazones companies

in other French cities like Creil, Caen and Bordeaux, she is the initiator in 1791 of

the first womens club in Paris.

In November 26, 1790 she rescues a male orator who-unfortunately in a too

clumsy way-tries to defend the cause of women by discussing whether women

should have influence in the government, what kind of civic influence they should

be accorded, and the creation of a magistrature administered by women only.

When the irritated male audience in the Cercle Social obstructs his speech Etta

intervenes by climbing on the platform and asking them:

Gentleman, can it be that the holy revolution, that gives men their rights, has made

the French unjust and dishonest towards the women You have listened with

patience to the other speakers, why interrupt the one who speaks in favor of

women?36

Notwithstanding the following applause the session closes, but Etta finds herself

surrounded by women. She tells them:

now that the French have become like the Romans, let us imitate the virtues and the

patriotism of the Roman Iadies.37

This clear assertion of a female republicanism is the starting point of a series of

feminist activities on her part. One month later, on 30 December her first


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Judith Vega

discourse on the political existence of women is read at the Assemblee Federative

des Amis de la V&rite. It is printed in an edition of 1000 copies at the expense of

the SocietC des Amis de la Constitution in Caen to be distributed among the

women at the next public session in the hope to strengthen some in their

determination and to bring others to the genuine cause.38 It is reprinted in the

compilation of her main written feminist work Appel aux Francoises under the title

Sur Pi nj ust i ce des Loi x en aveur des Hommes, au dkpend des Femmes together with

her lectures of February and March 1791, the womens petition to the Assemblee

Nationale of June 1791, and a declaration of the Socittt patriotique et de

bienfaisance des Amies de la V&rite aux quarante-huit Section, which she

founded.

Etta Palm uses the vocabularies of right alongside those of public virtue and of

private virtue, in a way however that does not completely parallel the dominant

lines of conclusion in feminist historiography. She does try to apply these idioms

in an unmediated way to women.

Justice should be the first virtue of free men, and justice demands that the laws be

communal to all beings, like the air and the sun; and meanwhile, the laws are in

favor of men, at the expense of women, because everywhere power is in your

hands.39

Some months later she puts to the test the most radical interpretations of the

Enliehtenments natural rights theory, radical in the sense of consistent

appliance to women and to the private sphere. Attacking the regulations on

adultery, that allow men to have their adulterous wives sent to jail for two years

and that explicitly allow just the husband, not the wife to file a charge for

adultery, she draws expressly on the constitutional principles of natural right

theory, not prepared to differ between marriage and government, private and

public spheres, when it comes to applying these principles.

It is a question of your duty, your honor, your interest, to destroy down to their

roots these gothic laws which abandon the weakest though most worthy half of

humanity to a humiliating existence, to an eternal slavery. You have restored to

man the dignity of his being in recognizing his rights; you will no longer allow women

to groan beneath an arbitrary authority; that would be to overturn the fundamental

principles on which rests the stately edifice you are raising by your untiring labors

for the happiness of the French. It is too late to equivocate. Philosophy has drawn

truth from the darkness; time has come; justice, sister of liberty, calls all individuals,

without differentation for sex, to the equality of rights. (. . .) this is a refinement

of despotism rendering the constitution odious to the female sex and by degrading

our lives while flattering your conceit, lulling you to sleep in the arms of a slave

(. . .) Conjugal authority should be only the consequence of the social pact. It is

wisdom in legislation, it is in the general interest to establish a balance between

despotism and license, but the powers of husband and wife must be equal and

separate. The laws cannot establish any difference between these two authorities;

they must give equal protection and maintain a perpetual balance between the two

married people.40

Her original republican call is worked out in several ways in her later writings.


11/19

The first sentences of her Di scours SW ~i ~j us~ice are set in the tone of militant

female activity in the years after 1789 when several associations of Amazones

were established.

You have admitted my sex to this patriot association of the Amis de la Veriti; this is

a first step in the direction ofjustice. The honored representives of this happy nation

just applauded at the undaunted courage of the Amazones in one of your

departments, and allowed them to found a corps for thedefense of the fatherland.4

After having cited such diverse examples of classic female heroism as the

daughter of Cato, the mother of Coriolanus, the warriors at Salamis, the mother

of Gracchs Cornelia, the wife of Petus, the virgin of Orleans and the reigns of

Elisabeth in Engiand and of Catherine in Russia, she continues:

But why search so far, when we have examples in our midst? The French citoyennes,

your wives, your sisters and your mothers, gentlemen, did not they give to the

universe a sublime example of patriotism, courage and civic virtues? Did not they

promptly sacrifice their jewelry for their fatherland?

(T)hat civic crowns may replace on these important heads those miserable

pompons, symbols of frivolity and disgraceful signs of our servitude.42

Having earlier encouraged the Amazone associations in several French cities,

on 1 April 1792 she appears in parliament to claim the admission of women to

civilian and military positions.

After a long eulogy of feminine virtues, after

having maintained that women equal men in courage and talent, and almost

always surpass them in imagination she again claims political equality for

women who should be accorded a moral and national education and equal

political liberty and rights, be declared of age at twenty-one and be able to file for

divorce.43.

Public spirit and private virtue have not in her work already been unraveled

into masculine and feminine attributes, though there does exist the awareness of

necessarily distinct, gendered forms of virtue. While the idiom of armed civic

virtue is considered equaly important for women and men, she does claim a

difference.

You have taken up the arms, gentlemen, and immediately the hydra of disgusting

tyranny retired in the heart of its cave, where it waits for only one more blow to

expire. We do not believe compared with you, gentlemen, to break the chains that

hold us, to have need of more than the arms that nature gave us, talents, worth,

virtue, and even that weakness that is our force and that made us triumph so often

over our proud superiors.44

It should also be noticed that when addressing herself to women, she

consequently calls them citoyennes or concitoyennes; when addressing herself

to men, asking their attention for her grievances, she refers to women in their

familial roles as daughters, sisters and mothers.

While according to her, women by nature possess virtues that are not that

different from those of men and sometimes even surpass the latter, the eighteenth


12/19

44

~~~ig~Vep

century theme of female unfitness for the republican values(the result from their

inclination to luxury), is mirrored in her awareness that many women do not

already answer the republican image. In several instances she stresses that virtue

is something one can achieve and be educated in. Beside her demand for equal

education for women, this does imply the ensuing responsibility of women in

educating themselves, their husbands and children in the true republican values.

StiIl, it is not just women who are educators. Just as often, she summons men to

take responsibility for their own virtues, with respect to their public as well as to

their private lives and for the virtues of others, public and private.

In several instances it is male virtue that constitutes a problem.

(Y)ou kept for yourselves all the conveniences of vice, whereas we, who have such a

fragile existence of which the sum of nuisances is enormous, you have given us all

the difficulty of virtue as our share; and this fragile institution by nature engraves

even deeper your injustice, because instead of supplementing it by education and by

laws in our favour, it seems that we are formed uniquely for your pleasures, while it

would be so sweet, so easy to include us in your glory The prejudices with which

aur sex has been surrounded are founded on unjust laws that accord to us a

secondary existence in society and often forces us into the humiliating necessity of

conquering the ill-tempered or cruel character of a man, who because of the greed of

our kin has become our master. f..

.>

Ah some other injustice our life, our

freedom, our fortune are not ours; from infancy delivered to a despot who often

revohs the heart, the beautiful days of our life drain away in groans and tears while

our fortune falls prey to fraud and debauchery. Ah dont we see daiiy honest

citoyens, family fathers, involved in the infected shambles with which the capital

abounds, drunk with wine and debauchery, forget that they are husbands and

fathers, and sacrificing on the altar of disgrace, the tears of a virtuous wife, the

fortune and existence of their parents 45

It is not just in her public writings that she attacks male conduct as such. In a

personal letter to a (male) friend she exclaims:

Many a person desires the liberation of the slaves in America and uphotds the

despotism ofthe husband. f.. .) You want us to penetrate the deepest ofyourheart.

Oh How much you thereby in general lose How often do you not display feelings

you do not possess, while more stringent etiquette obliges us to hide the ones that

consume us. Well? What do your homages mean to us, when they are only the fruits

of a heated imagination? You court US?Yes, but for your own sake; where is the man

who knows to love tenderly when he does not hope to submit to his wit1 the object of

his desire? Ah, sir, there are oniy few people, who know Iove.46

By emphasising their republican responsibilities she tries to induce men to

establish female participation in politics. She does not address herself exclusively

to men or women when it comes to virtue in either sphere, public and private,

My fellow citizens, my brothers, if my feeble voice could reach your heart, if

y zeal

for the happiness of Frenchmen could inspire you to some extent, then listen to me.

(.

. .f Go,

abjure on the aftar of the fatherland ah hatred and partial enmity,

all

personal jealousies. Relegate to contempt, to anathema, whoever dares malign his

brother; may love of the fatherland, of liberty, of fraternity, be in your hearts as on


13/19


345

your lips; let us all seek out ways of supporting one another, of succoring the

unfortunate, of regenerating morals, of cherishing virtue, and of contributing, each

of us, individually and in general, to make the French people the happiest people in

the world.47

Stressing the generality of republican responsibility is used as an argument to

establish civic associations exclusively run by women. She seems to think it will

strengthen the case for womens civic existence when it can be shown that they

have a public task of their own. On 23 March 1791 she introduces to the

Assemblte federative des amis de la vtriti an ambitious project launching a

structure of womens organisations with their own public tasks of securing the

republic.

In the 83 departments armed citizens have united to defend the constitution; do you

not believe, gentlemen, that their wives and the mothers of families could join

together, following their example, to make it loved The society of the Amis de la

v&rite is the first that has admitted us to the patriotic sessions; Creil, Alais,

Bordeaux, and several others havefollowedyour example. Would it not be useful to

form in each section of the capital a patriotic society of citoyennes, female friends of

the truth, the central and federative circle of which would be supervised by you,

gentlemen, and which would invite all the fraternal societies in the 83 departments

to contact with them. Each circle of citoyennes would meet in each section as

frequently as they think fit for the public good and following their particular

conventions. (. . .) It would thus be capable of supervising efficiently the enemies of

liberty the capital keeps in its midst, of differentiating the genuine destitute who

needs the help of his brothers from the scoundrel called by the enemies, And the

directorate of the central circle, in contact with the patriotic societies of the

departments, would propogate the enlightenment and would be able to break more

easily the webs woven by malevolent persons.*

She continues by expounding in some detail the concrete tasks of these

womens societies:

These circles of women could be charged with overseeing the establishment of wet

nurses. Ah How urgent it is that a maternal eye is introduced in this administration

where a culpable negligence makes nature tremble. Yes, young women from the

country arriving in this huge capital without friends, without acquaintances,

abandoned to themselves, without work and wandering around, prey to all kinds of

seduction, often return home, their souls debased, their blood vitiated. (. . .) These

societies of citoyennes could be charged in addition with supervising public

education. Wouldnt it be natural that charity schools, for the most part confided to

ignorant beings brought up with all sorts of prejudices, be under the immediate

administration of enlightened and virtuous citoyennes? Zealous women patriots

would take care to teach children the rights of men, the respect and obedience for

the law, the duty of citizens, the decrees of the assemblee nationale, and finally the

revered names of the regenerators of France instead of the legends of saints and the

almanac of miracles. These womens clubs could be charged in addition with

investigating the conduct and the need of the unfortunate people who request the

help of the section, which would be easy using the central circle where the

citoyennes of all sections would gather.4g


14/19

Judith Vega

Continuing, she pleads for a sisterly solidarity with needy or unwed mothers,

expressed in moral aid but also in the form of a mutual financial fund.

Two days later the newborn Societi: patriotique et de bienfaisance des Amies

de la V&it& gathered in the office of the journal Douche de Fer for the first time.

The meeting voted to send a letter of thanks to the Assemblie Nationale

concerning its decree on equal sharing of inheritance, that at the same time

included the womens protest against article 13 on female infidelity of the Code

police. Etta was chosen president for a period of three months.50 Letters to the

other sections asking for cooperation seem not to have been successful.

Public civic virtue is claimed for women partly in its own right, partly in the

form of republican motherhood ethos. Etta did not anticipate the future

conflict between public civic virtue and republican motherhood which has been

sketched by several feminist historians.

Joan Hoff Wilson conciuded for the American Revolution that the ideology of

republican motherhood never led up to something equal to modern feminism

for its lack of public content. Still, Ettas version is no domestic ideal. It is not

confined to the private sphere but is lived out in the public sphere and constantly

refers to citoyennes-not to mothers.

In her thought, motherhood is at its most a reason for respect and rights, not a

moral destiny or vocation: when it counts at all, it makes women citizen not non-

citizen. There is no conflation of femininity and private virtue elsewhere noted by

Ruth Bloch, and we do see classic civic virtue and heroism-supposed masculine

qualities-being claimed on the behalf of women.

So first, she offers a public image of female citizenship appealing to heroism as

well as to political aptness. She locates it on state level by demanding full access

to all public functions and equal juridic citizenship; she also points out a new

moral organisation of the social-more than the political. In this sense we may

associate her again with sociability, understood as the historical redefinition of

society that searches an institutional basis in society more than in government,

for civic more than militant conceptions of virtue. These social expressions of

virtue were quickly relegated predominantly to women but the development had

roots within feminist discourse commenting on dominant blueprints for society.

Secondly, she does have a domestic ideal: the sober republican concept of

social bonding is applied to the male-female relationship as one of friendship,

equality, mutual responsibility and of aversion to cruelty and corruption. Where

she speaks of the private relations between men and women, she stresses elements

of republicanism that were seldom valued for their possible worth in private

contexts: ideals of fidelity, non-corruptness, trustworthiness and comradeship.53

She does not define these domestic virtues as feminine nor as natural but worthy

of a republican outlook on the world.

In attempting to apply classic republican values to both public and private

concerns at the same time as constructing a public sphere run exclusively by

citoyennes, she has drafted a feminist republicanism that cannot be subsumed

under the idiom of republican motherhood.

By now we are able to take a serious look at the opinions on character with

which the bibliographers have provided us. Hardenbergs amazement at Ettas

seemingly inexplicable movements in different instances lapses into severe


15/19


347

sexism-he obviously does not like Etta as a woman, nor her mother for that

matter. He tells us that her man-hatred is petty spitefulness. If she hadnt been

such a loose woman and adventurer herself, she wouldnt have had to complain

about men so much. We have to look beyond his contemptuous statements to see

what his approach does say about her history.

We may call it anachronism to interpret her lifestyle as loose and her mind as

ideologically inconsistent as Hardenberg did. But the anachronism has richer

dimensions than an eternal sexism on the part of historiographers. More

important than the issue of historians subjective sympathies is the issue of the

mstorical caveat these are ignoring. His judgement of Ettas life and opinions

witnesses the complicated growth of new notions of feminine civic virtue,

formulated initially as an opening towards gender-equality but already in her

own time becoming associated with the notions of private feminine virtues

Hardenberg still retains.54 It is, of course, precisely the tension her biography

produces between salon-life and bourgeois morality, between mundane

sociability and decent democratic convictions of rights, that generates his

intuitive hostility. In fact he sees it as corruption-of an honest, consistent

political ideology as well as of a proper and consistent behavior of women.

Read this way, his biography does put us on the track of the specificity of her

early feminism, and does perhaps more to gain understanding than Koppius

account of a predecessor whose ideas can be subsumed under the categories of

modem feminism. Ignoring the elements in her discourses and behavioral codes

which are unfamiliar to modern feminists, in order to render her recognisable is

equally anachronistic and may supply us with views on early feminism which are

equally as wrong as those found in sexist history. The choice between the

politician, the society-girl and the private-oriented, emotionally vulnerable

woman, so compelling to the modern mind, was forced upon us by history itself

and Ettas life-history is invaluable for this insight.

University

of

Groningen

The Net herl ands

Judith Vega

NOTES

1. I want to thank Marybeth Carbon and Rudolf Dekker. Their careful readings of the

article have contributed much to the form and content of the article.

2. See e.g.: Baron Marc de Villiers. Histoire es clubs defemmes et des Ikgions Amazones

1793-1848-1871 (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1910); Marie Cerati,

Le club des citoyennes

republicaines r evolutionnaires

(Paris: Editions sociales, 1966); Paule-Marie Duhet,

Les

femmes et la Revoluti on 1789-1794 (Paris: Collection Archives Julliard, 1971); Jane

Abray, Feminism in the French revolution, in:

Ameri can H istori calReview 80 1975),

43-62; Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, Mary Durham Johnson,

Women in revolut ionary Pari s 1789-I 795. Selected documents translated with notes

and commentary (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979); Jane Rendall, The

origins of modern emin ism: women in Br itain, F rance and the Uni ted States 1780-1860

(London: Macmillan, 1985); Gary Kates,

The Cercle Social, the Gir ondins, and the

french Revolution

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Joan B. Landes,

Women and the publ ic sphere i n the age of the French Revoluti on

(Ithaca: Cornell


16/19

Judith Vega

University Press, 1988); Dominique Godineau,

Ci t oyennes Tr i cot euses. Lesfemmes du

peupl e a Pari spendant l oRevol uti on Francaise(Ai x

en Provence: Alinea, 1988); Simon

Schama, Pat ri ot s andl i berat ors. Revol ut i on n heNet herl ands 1780-1813 (New York:

Knopf, 1977). Textbooks on Dutch womens history offer no exception in regard to

this lack of perspective on Etta Aelderss life.

3. While I employ the word feminism, we have to keep in mind that the historical

context is the late eighteenth century. This context further clouds the lack of

transparency the word already possesses. For one thing, feminist speech was not

provoked by the tension between the personal and the political that characterizes

the modern state. It is probably more accurate to state that early feminism was

articulated in a debate centering on the proper outlook of the public sphere. See for an

inspiring discussion: Landes,

Women and t he publ i c sphere, passim .

Of course the

debate did harbour the future dialectic between the political and the personal, where

moral philosophy and modernist subject-theory pervaded the terms ofthe debate and

orchestrated the limits of public society as well as its gendered content.

4. Dr W.J. Koppius,

Ett a Palm. Nederl and s eerst efemini ste t i j densdeFranscherevol ut i e

t e Part @

(Zeist: Ploegsma, 1929); Mr H. Hardenberg,

Ett a Palm, een Hol l andse

Parisienne 1743-1799

(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1962).

5. Hardenberg, Ett a Palm, p.12.

6.

Hardenberg lets us know that in 1785 Munniks published a work in which a

democratic signature is revealed. A third historian reports him as a spy for England

after a banishment from the Republic. See: Dr H.T. Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken

der al gemeene geschiedenis van Nederland van 1795 t ot 1840. Dee1 1. Nederl and en de

revol ut i e, 1789-1795 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1905), p. xlviii.

7. It is published in: Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken.

8.

Hardenberg,

Ett a Palm, e.g.

p. 44.

9. Letters from Van de Spiegel to Madam DAelders, 5 Dec. 1788; 18 Jan. 1790 and 12

Feb. 1790. In the first letter mentioned, the author writes about the printed reflexions

you were so kind to send me have done me great pleasure; the defense of a such good

cause could not be in better hands than yours. Madam, I dare to beseech you to

continue to give it your talents and your really patriotic zeal. In his letter dated 11

March 1790, Van de Spiegel mentions the planned printing of the second manuscript.

Aelders mentions the manuscript herself in letters of 15 April 1790 and 7 June 1790. She

wants to improve the book before having it printed. (Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken,

pp. 150, 156, 160, 162, 165 and 167.)

10.

Appel aux Francoi ses sur l a regenerat i on des moeurs, et nt cessi t e de l i nfl uence des

femmes dans un gouvernment l i bre. LImprimerie du Cercle Social. There is no year,

probably it has been printed July 179 1. (See: Villiers,

Hi stoi re des clubs desfemmes,

p.

26; Louis Devance, Le feminisme pendant la revolution francaise, in:

Annales

H i stor i ques de a Revol ut i on Francaise, 277(1977), 341-376,

p. 371.) A facsimile of the

publication appeared in: Les femmes dans l a revol ut i on Francaise, Tome 2 (Paris:

Edhis, 1982) text no. 33.

11. She translates into Dutch Condorcets Declar at i on de I AssembI ee aux pui ssances de

IEurope delivered to the National Assembly on 29 December 179 1. The translation is

dated 7 January 1792. (Hardenberg,

Ett a Palm,

p.

68;

Villiers,

H i stoi re des clubs de

femmes,

p. 38.)

12. See: Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken,

p. 164. Letter from Madam dAelders, dated 15

April 1790.

13. madame dAelders],

RPf7exi ons ur ouv rage nt i t uI eAuxBat aves sur e Stadhouderat ,

par I e Comte de M i rabeau

(Paris, 1788. Et en Hollande) 36 pp. Translated by herself

into Dutch under two titles; as

Aanmerk i ngen op een w erk bet yt el t : Ann de Bat avi eren

over het Stadhouderschap, van den Heere Graave de M i rabeau,

and as

De recht en van


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349

het Stadhouderschap verdeedigd, tegen de L isten en Laage van eeni ge gebanne en

gevluchte H ollanders, en byzonder tegen den heer U* * * * * voornaam Patri otjespeelder.

48

PP.

14. Louise Robert defended a domestic role for women. See: Villiers, H istoir e des clubs de

femmes, pp. 25-26 and ch. 3; Hardenberg, Etta Palm, p. 54.

15. Hardenberg,

Etta Palm;

Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken,

p. 166.

16. Letter of 18 January 1790 from Van de Spiegel to Madam dAelders. You raise the

question, Madam, whether it wouldnt be profitable for Holland if the Prince

Stadholder

in giving in fl uence to the people,

concluded a treaty af guarantee with

France and Brabant for then Holland would not have to fear any interior troubles nor

foreign hostility. Van de Spiegel goes on to inform haughtily what this influence

should consist of because the Dutch people is completely satisfied enjoying all the

advantages of a liberty controlled by law. In the provinces where the people do not

participate directly in government, they do so via representatives-an office open to

every citizen. He does not exclude the possibility of allowing for more popular

influence in case a new republic would have to be made, but adds that it is dangerous

to touch the foundations of a constitution, especially in a Republic. (Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken,

pp. 154-155) In January 1790 she again thinks it is desirable that the

Prince of Orange gives in a bit. (Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, p. 159).

17. See for example: Hardenberg,

Etta Palm,

pp. 32-33 and 68; Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken, p. 148, n. 1.

18. As De Gouges who dedicated her feminist appeal Declaration des droits de lafemme

et de la citoyenne to the queen, Aelders tries to be allowed to dedicate her manuscript

to the wife of the stadholder, princess Wilhelmina. She does not succeed and is bought

off with the choice between a jewel or an amount of money. Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken,

p. 162.

19. R.R. Palmer,

The Age of the Democratic Revolu tion. A politi cal history ofEu rope and

America, 1760-1800

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964); C.H.E. de Wit,

De

strud tussen ari stocrati c en democratic in Neder land 1780-1848. Kritisch onderzoek

van enn historisch beeld en herwaardering van een periode [Heerlen: Winants, 1965

(diss.)]; idem, Her ontstaan van het moderne Neder land 1780-1848 en zij n

geschiedschriiving,

Oirsbeek (L.) (1978); Schama,

Patriots and l iberators,

passim. See

for a recent discussion: N.C.F. van Sas, Tweedragt overal: het patriottisme en de

uitvinding van de moderne politiek, in: H. Bots en W.W. Mijnhardt (red.), Dedroom

van de revoluti e. Nieuwe benaderingen van het patri ottisme

(Amsterdam: De

Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988), pp. 18-31.

20. Also noteworthy in this context is her defense of the decision of the stadholder to

replace the radical professor of law Van der Marck. She takes it to be an attempt to

prevent clerical schisms as had disturbed the Republic in the last century. Meanwhile

her criticism on the patriots is not so foreign to his own position. Van der Marck

himself accentuated in 1783 patriots should be led by reason, instead of passion.

Popular sovereignty is not to be conceived as natural or military power but as moral

faculty or right. Patriotism should be armed with rights, not with force. F.A. van der

Marck, Redenvoer ing over de I iefde tot het vader land. te bestuuren overeenkomstig met

de redeli jke en gezell ige natuur der menschen. Of over den waaren aar d van bet

zogenaamde Patriotismus

(Deventer: G. Brouwer, 1783). Interestingly, Van der

Marck is known for having defended a rather feminist interpretation of natural rights

theory. See: Judith Vega, Het Beeld der Vryheid; Is het niet uwe Zuster?, in:

Social isties-Femini stiese Teksten 11

(Baarn: Ambo, 1989).

21. Compare: De Wit,

De strud tussen ari stocratic en democrati c,

pp. 36-46 and 79-103.

22. Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken,

p. 169.

23. Marat, Malheurs affreux qui rtsulteraient de la guerre ministtrielle avec


18/19

350

Judith Vega

IAngleterre, in:

L Am i du Peuple, 4-6

June 1790. See: Colenbrander,

Gedenkstukken,

pp

167-168.

24.

Appel aux Fr~~oi ses,

p. 12.

25. Etta Palm, n&e dAelders, Discours de reception prononce B la societi: fraternelle, et

justification sur la dtnonciation de Louise Robert, 21 June 1791, in: Appel aux

Francoises,

p.

35.

26.

W.R.E. Velema, Contemporaine reacties op het patriotse politieke vocabulaire, in:

H. Bots en W.W. Mijnhardt (red.), De

droom van de revo l ut i e. N i euw e benaderingen

van het Patri oit i sme

(Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988), pp. 32-48.

27. Linda Kerber,

Women of he~epub~~~. ntersect andrdeo~ogy nRevol ut i onary Ameri ca.

pew

York: Norton, 1986 (1980)]. Jane Rendall,

The ori gins

of modern

eminism,

passim. See also: Mary Beth Norton,

Li bert y s daught ers. The revol ut i onary experi ence

of Ameri can w omen, 17.50-1800 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1980).

28. Ruth Bloch, The gendered meanings of virtue in revolutionary America, in: Signs 13,

(1987) 37-58.

29. J.G.A. Pocock, Virtues, rights and manners, in:

Poli t i cal Theory 9

(August 1981),

pp. 353-368; idem, Machiavelli in the liberal cosmos, in: Polit ical Theory 13

(November 1985), 559-574.

30. Barbara Corrado Pope, Revolution and Retreat: Upper-class French women after

1789, in: CR. Berkin and C.M. iovett (eds),

Women, War andRevoZut ion(New

York:

Holmes and Meier, 1980), pp. 215-236.

31. Pope,

Revol uti on and Ret reat ,

p. 216.

32. Appel aux Francoises, p. 4.

33. A ppel aux Franqoi ses, p. 43.

34. See for discussions of the themes of ornamentalism, sociability and republicanism as

they relate to gender, besides the references in notes 28, 29 and 30, also: J. Wilson

James,

Changing i deas about w omen in t he Uni t ed St at es, 1776-1825 (New

York:

Garland, 1981, 1954); Abby R. Kleinbaum, Women in the Age of Light, in: R.

B~denthal and C. Koonz (eds), Becoming vi sibl e. Women i n European H i story

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 19?7), pp. 217-235; Ruth H. Bloch, American

feminine ideals in transition: the rise of the moral mother, 178%1815, in:

Feminist

Studies 4

(June 1978), 101-126; Inge Baxmann, Von der Egalite im Salon zur

Citoyenne-einige.Aspekte der Genese des Burgerlichen Frauenbildes, in: A. Kuhn

und J. R&en (hrsg.), Frauen i n der Geschi chte II I (Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1983);

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin,

Fortune i s a woman. Gender and Pol i t i cs i n the t hought of

Ni ccoli , M achiavelh

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Ursula Vogel,

Rationalism and romanticism: two strategies for womens liberation, in: Judith

Evans et al.,

Femi nism andpoli t i cal theory

(London: Sage, 1986); Landes,

Women and

t he publ i c sphere, passim

35. A ppel aux FranCoi ses, pp. 6-T .

36. L O rat eur du Peupl e, III, 360, cited in: Villiers, H i sto i re des clubs de emmes, p. 19.

37.

Idem,

in: Villiers,

Hi stoi re des clubs de emmes, p. 20.

38. A facsimile of the lecture is published in:

Les Femmes a s l a Revol ut i on Frarqai se,

passim, text 32.

39.

Appel aux Franqoi ses,

p.

2.

40. Adresse des citoyennes francoises a lassemblbe nationale, s.a. [12 June 17911, in:

Appei aux Francoi ses, pp. 37-39. For the translations into English of this citation and

the ones referred to in notes 47 and 48, I have largely copied the translations by:

Applewhite, Levy and Johnson teds), Women in revol uti onary Pari s, pp. 68-71 and

75-77.

41. Appel aux Franqoi ses, p. 2.

42.


p. 8 and 9.


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351

43. Archivesparlementaires 41,

(1 April 1792) 63-64. Cited and translated in: Applewhite,

Levy and Johnson (eds),

Women i n revoi ut i onary Pari s, passim,

p. 323.

44.

Appef aux Francokes,

p.

6.

45. Appd aux Franqoi ses, pp. 3-5.

46. Cited by: Hardenberg, Et ta Palm, p. 70.

47.

Appel aux Francoises,

p. 24.

48.


pp. 25-26.

49.

Appei aux Franqo i ses,

pp. 26-28

50. Villiers,

Hi stoi re des rl ubs de emmes,

p. 30. It is typical of Ettas embodiment of two

clashing political codes to invite (with result) the princesse de Bourbon to subscribe

her initiative for the Societt des Amies de la VCritt, appealing to her civic virtues and

benevolence.

51. Meanwhile her political works continue to stamp her life. She is arrested on the day

following the anti-royalist demonstration on the Champ de Mars on 17 July for

being a suspect foreigner and perhaps on suspicion of having contacts with another

foreigner, the Jewish banker Ephrdim who is in Paris by order of the Prussian king.

Both are released within three days for lack of proof. But Parisian political climate has

changed in a definite way. The same month the Cercle Socialcloses, the

Bouche defer

stops appearing and the Confederation des Amis de la VCritB has disappeared. The

womens society however seems to have hold out till autumn 1792.

In 1792 Etta fulfils a final diplomatic mission and returns to Holland to make

inquiries on behalf of Lebrun. It is possible she was again in Paris, in January 1793,

the month in which Louis XVI was sentenced to death, but she then leaves definitively

for Holland. After her arrest in 1795 she is held prisoner for three years, in the same

castle as Van de Spiegel. In March 1799, some months after her release, she died in the

Hague.

52. Joan Hoff Wilson, The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution,

in: Alfred F. Young (ed.),

The Ameri can revol uti on Explorat i ons in the Hi st ory of

Ameri can ~adicaZism Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1976), pp. 383-445.

A similar conclusion is found in Abray,

Femi ni sm in t he French Revol ut i on. passim.

53. There is, though, an ongoing debate on the character of the classical heritage on this,

point. A. MacIntyre, for example, suggests a singular model of friendship for all social

bonds, that is the identity of private and public moral imperatives, in the classical

narratives on heroic society. Alasdair MacIntyre, Aft er Vir tue. A study n morait heory

(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, 1981), especially chapter 10.

54. The report in January 1796 oftheDutch Comitee van Waakzaamheid (Commiteeof

Vigilance) that was to study her politica trustworthiness and that led to her arrest,

words its convictions in the following way: We are obliged to turn your attention

away

from more important matt ers

and to speak to you a while about

a w oman.

A

woman, who could have been a jewel of her sex. (.

. .)

Did not the deviation cost her

dearly from that enchanting gentleness, subservience and diffidence, that ought t o

typify the female character. Cited by: Dr H.E. van Gelder, Feministische Bataven,

in: De

Amsterdammer,

(weekly) (10 November 1907). Reprinted in: W. Fritschy,

Fragment en Vrouw engeschi edeni s, Part I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980),

Citation pp. 78-79 (The italics are Van Gelders). The words are strikingly similar to

those used in 1793 by the French Committee of Public Safety against Olympe de

Gouges and to forbid the womens clubs.

vega 1982 feminist republicanism etta-aelders on justice virtue and men

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