University of Tulsa

French Women's Revolutionary Writings: Madame Roland or the Pleasure of the Mask
Author(s): Brigitte Szymanek
Source: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 99-122
Published by: University of Tulsa
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463976
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French
Madame

Women's
Roland

Revolutionary
or the

Brigitte

Pleasure

Writings:
of the

Mask

Szymanek

Quoi! ce heros futdone vraimentune femme?"

(What! This hero was really a woman then?)1
On November 8, 1793, the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal or?
dered the execution of Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland, the wife of former
Girondist Minister of the Interior, Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere. She
was accused of conspiring with her husband to propagate "antirevolutionary" ideas through a so-called "Office of Public Opinion," a patriotic edu?
cational program initiated by Roland and the Girondists while he was in
power.2 Madame Roland's execution furthered the effortby the Mountain,
the more radical revolutionary faction, to annihilate the more moderate
Gironde. It was also part of a sudden upsurge of violence against women
who dared to participate in politics at a time when they were officially
banned from public life.3 She died on the same day.
Throughout her trial, Roland contested her judges' accusations, and, till
the end, she denied ever interfering in political matters. Such interfer?
ence, she told her accusers, would have been improper for a woman: "J'ai
suivi les progres de la Revolution avec interet, je m'entretenais de la chose
publique avec chaleur, mais je n'ai point depasse les bornes qui m'etaient
imposees par mon sexe" ('I followed the progress of the Revolution with
interest, I spoke of public matters with enthusiasm, but I did not overstep
the limits imposed upon me by my sex').4 Moreover, Madame Roland
could offerstrong support for her denial. Unlike some of her female con?
temporaries, she had never openly written a political pamphlet or spoken
publicly: "Je ne me suis jamais melee de rien, bien mo ins encore ai-je rien
dirige; je defie de le prouver" (Memoires, p. 355; 'I never interfered in
anything, even less did I direct anything; I dare anyone to prove it'). She
admitted serving as her husband's secretary, but she claimed in this role to
have lent only her hand: "[Je repondis] que je n'avais jamais prete mes
pensees a mon mari mais qu'il pouvait avoir quelquefois employe ma main"
(Memoires, p. 367); '[I replied] that I had never lent my thoughts to my
husband but that he might have sometimes borrowed my hand').
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Roland's disclaimers were disingenuous. Her correspondence and the

memoirs she wrote in prison, in the three months that preceded her death,
reveal that she consistently tried to exert influence. From the early days of
her marriage, Madame Roland had personally handled her husband's busi?
ness and private correspondence, and she continued to do so even as her
husband engaged in revolutionary politics. Besides attending to his regular

correspondence, she later confessed in her memoirs that she had also au?
thored a number of his official letters and speeches, most of which he had
sent, or delivered, without a change (Memoires, pp. 304-05).
Roland's denials of political involvement have drawn criticism from
some feminist historians and critics: "Madame Roland parle des femmes
comme d'une race qui lui est etrangere," writes Marie-Paule Duhet ('Ma?
dame Roland speaks of women as of a race foreign to her').5 Candice E.
Proctor suggests that Roland simply "lacked courage" to challenge the
revolutionary conception of femininity.6These critics observe that, unlike
her contemporaries Olympe de Gouges, Theroigne de Mericourt, and Etta
Palm d'Aelders, who publicly claimed equal political rights for women,

Madame Roland never sought to advance women's cause. Upon learning

about her imminent decapitation, Roland even implicitly disassociated
herself from the other women who had preceded her on the scaffold, as she
invoked only the courage of the men who had been executed before her:
"Vous me jugez digne de partager le sort des grands hommes que vous avez
assassines. Je tacherai de porter a l'echafaud le courage qu'ils y ont montre"
('You deem me worthy to share in the fate of the great men whom you
have murdered. I shall seek to emulate the courage they demonstrated on

the scaffold').7
Other more sympathetic critics have recognized in Roland's political
disclaimers the "gender shackles" of her time. Roland "struggle[d] to com?
ply with eighteenth-century mores and to fulfill her unique potential,"
explains Marilyn Yalom.8 Chantal Thomas accounts for Roland's retreat to
her husband's shadow, and for her declared intent to emulate only the men
who had died before her, by the absence of an alternative model for
women. She argues that revolutionary women, who were both spatially
and linguistically removed from the political sphere, could only "desire"
the revolution by transgressing the norms imposed on them by men and by
"adhering to virile models."9
While there is much truth in these critics' interpretations of Roland,
they generally read her political transgression as a contradiction of her
prior allegiance to Rousseau's model of femininity. For Gita May, Roland
momentarily "violated" her belief in women's domestic role, out of com?
mitment for the Revolution.10 In a similar vein, Mary Trouille attributes
this rupture to "the pressure of external events" and to Roland's "evolving
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aspirations," which, she argues, led her to "question" and to "subvert"

Rousseau's limited ideal, an ideal she had formerlyembraced "as a confir?
mation of her deepest convictions and longings as a youth."11 By reading
Roland's pledges of allegiance to the prevailing feminine views, and her
lack of support for other women activists, as inconsistent with Roland's
own political activities, the critics (whether hostile or sympathetic) have
essentially viewed Roland as a hypocrite.12
The critics, however, overlook Roland's lifelong ambivalence toward
Rousseau's limited view of women. This essay demonstrates that from an
early age, Roland acutely resented the limits imposed on women's lives.

Although she genuinely subscribed to the prevailing domestic definition of

their role, she never ceased to envision a far greater sphere of influence for
women than Rousseau permitted. Roland's life and writings read as a con?
stant effort to redefine that role while never questioning its domestic
boundaries. The increasing politicization of French society provided Ro?
land with an opportunity to expand those limits. Although she could
never bring herself to embrace the political women of her time, Roland did
carve out a deeply influential role for herself, one that she believed to be
more in accordance with a woman's natural destiny.13

Madame Roland, although self-taught, was exceptionally well read. Like

most men of her generation and class, she had been heavily influenced as a
child by the writers of ancient Rome, like Tacitus and Plutarch, and later

by Rousseau. These readings did not provide Roland, as they did her male
counterparts, with models of public virtue to emulate. Neither did they
nourish at the time a desire for social and political reform.14 Rather, they
fostered a hearty embrace of the fundamentally domestic role these authors
envisioned for women. Commenting on Plutarch's Parallel Lives, nineteenmaiden name?confessed
her
year-old Marie-Jeanne Phlipon?Roland's
desire to emulate the private virtues of Spartan women, not the republican
heroes of ancient Rome:
Ou sont ces femmesqui mettaientleurgloiredans le bonheurde leursepoux,
le soin de leur maison et de leurs enfants?Douces et fideles,elles etaient le
bien et le charme des families;retireeset sedentaires,elles faisaientregner
dans Pinterieurle bon ordre et la paix.15
Where are those women whose gloryrested on the happiness of their hus?
bands, the care of theirhomes and children?Sweet and loyal, theybrought
well-being and charm to familylife; withdrawnand sedentary,they main?
tained internal peace and order.
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Not surprisingly,when Roland later discovered Rousseau, she received

his ideas warmly. Like Plutarch, Rousseau endorsed a world in which men,
who were naturally strong and rational, dominated the world of thought
and politics. Women, whose essential quality, Rousseau argued in Emile,
was their sensitivity, could only play a derivative public role by serving as
examples of virtue for their husbands and sons.16 Rousseau's revitalization
of marriage, in Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise, and his glorification of woman's

private virtues as a cornerstone of a new and beneficent social order, pro?

vided women of Roland's generation an attractive role that also secured
their unconditional allegiance to his philosophical theories. Writing to her

friend and confidante Sophie Cannet upon reading La Nouvelle Heloise,

Roland observed: "Concois-tu de jouissance plus delicate que celle de s'immoler entierement au bonheur d'un homme sensible?" (17 February 1778,

Lettres: Nouvelle Serie, II, 200; 'Can you conceive of a sweeter joy than to
sacrifice yourself entirely to the happiness of a sensitive man?'). Roland's
memoirs demonstrate that even after half a decade of political turmoil and
a close encounter with power, she could still express reverence for Rous?
seau's model of femininity: "Rousseau me montra le bonheur domestique

auquel je pouvais pretendre, et les ineffables delices que j'etais capable de

gouter" (Memoires, p. 302; 'Rousseau revealed to me the domestic happi?
ness to which I could aspire, and the ineffable delights that I could enjoy').
But while Roland embraced the prevailing domestic definition of

women's role, she resisted some of Rousseau's fundamental precepts. Ro?

land's early writings reveal that even as she professed allegiance to Rous?
seau's Julie de Wolmar as a model, she continued to chafe against her own
limited opportunities. After reading La Nouvelle Heloise, Roland wrote to
Sophie Cannet that she found it difficultto cope with society's prejudices
against talented women. Roland stated that she was "bien ennuyee d'etre
femme" ('annoyed to be a woman') in her century because she lacked the
required inclinations as well as the gender attributes to act like one. She
should rather have been born a woman in Rome or in Sparta, she ex?
plained, where she could presumably have enjoyed, as a virtuous wife and
mother, greater influence on public matters.17 But in her century, Roland
continued, she should have been born a French man. For as a man, she
could have chosen "pour patrie la republique des lettres" ('the republic of
letters for a nation') or lived in a republic "ou Ton peut etre homme et
n'obeir qu'aux lois" (5 February 1776, Lettres: Nouvelle Serie, I, 374-75;
'where one can be a man ruled only by laws').
Roland viewed the prejudices against women writers and other excep?
tional women as fundamentally unjust. A woman, she later explained in
her memoirs, never gained by becoming a writer,for if she were good, men
took away her works, and if she lacked talent, she was held in ridicule by
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both men and women. In either case, a woman's books were never judged
on the basis of her intellect but on her moral reputation. Roland argued for
a single standard of judgment for both sexes, but she spurned all encour?
agements to publish: "Ce sera done sous le nom d'autrui," she stated on
one occasion, "car je me mangerais les doigts avant de me faire auteur"

(Memoires, p. 321; 'Then it will be under somebody else's name for I would
rather chew off my fingers than become a writer').
From the start, Roland clearly opposed a domestic role for women that
failed to provide them an intellectual influence on men. Such an influence
also presupposed a level of education denied to most women at the time.
Roland recounted in her memoirs how she and her mother had separately
resorted to stealing books out of Roland's father's library to provide them
the education and intellectual stimulation they sought (Memoires, p. 212).
Roland's views on the subject of women's education are reflected in an

anonymous and still largely ignored essay that she wrote at the age of
twenty in response to the topic proposed by the Academie de Besancon,
"Comment l'education des femmes pourrait contribuer a rendre les
hommes meilleurs" ('How Could Women's Education Contribute to Mak?
ing Men Better').18 Roland's essay dutifully reaffirmedRousseau's precept
that women should exert a moral influence on men, provided that it re?
main within the confines of the domestic realm. However, Roland took
this precept further in her essay. Women's roles as exemplars, she ex?

plained, permitted a strong, if oblique, form of power. She perceived

women's natural sensitivity as a superior asset that allowed them to exert
greater control over public matters than men might suspect: for if "les
hommes regissent les empires," she wrote, "les femmes gouvernent les
coeurs" (p. 348; 'if men rule empires, women govern hearts'). Women's
sensitivity was thus a natural weapon designed to subjugate hearts and
subvert the existing political structure: "Tandis que le legislateur et maftre
croit agir d'apres lui, un pouvoir secret le modifie et le dirige par les impres?
sions de plaisir et les charmes du sentiment" (p. 348; 'Whereas the legisla?
tor and master fancies himself as the sole force behind his actions, a secret
power modifies and guides him through sensations of pleasure and roman?
tic impressions').
While Roland borrowed her idea of women governing men through
pleasure and sensitivity directly from Rousseau's Emile, she placed new
emphasis on the secrecy of woman's modifying power. In doing so, she thus
conferred a subversive quality to what Rousseau had defined as a necessary
complement to man's natural ability to reason and govern. In Emile,
Rousseau precluded other forms of influence for women, besides morality,
by limiting their education to "practical notions" (p. 437). Without nam?
ing Rousseau, Roland took issue with his recommendation in her essay:
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"Un grand homme a dit avant moi qu'une femme bel esprit etait le fleau de
son mari et de sa maison; je crois ajouter qu'une ignorante, sotte ou frivole,
n'est pas un moindre fleau" (p. 354; 'A great man said before me that a
spirited woman was the bane of her husband's existence and of her home; I
might add that an ignorant, stupid, or frivolous woman is no lesser bane').
As these early writings demonstrate, Roland's subscription to Rousseau's
domestic definition of women's role falls short of the wholehearted em?
brace critics have generally ascribed to her.19 Madelyn Gutwirth perhaps

more aptly describes Roland's subscription to Rousseau as selective. She

observes that Roland more likely espoused "Rousseau's construct of Julie"
in La Nouvelle Heloise rather than Emile or the Lettre a d'Alembert. Even
then Gutwirth observes, Roland could only have espoused such a model
"by default" since "it lent women self-respect in housewifery and helpmeetery as well as domestic sexuality where nothing else was offered."20 Ro?

land's writings clearly reveal that she never settled for such a limited fate
and that she resented her inferior status. She strived for that reason to
combine her acceptance of a domestic role for women with an expansive

view of such a role that allowed women to vent their personal voice.

Roland's realization that she could influence public affairs through her
husband during the Revolution can be fairly described as symptomatic of
her early ambivalence about the prescribed model of femininity. This am?
bivalence triggered a pattern in which the author would seek to transcend
feminine power from within the confines of her own limited role. Roland
married in a way that allowed her to put her ideas into practice. Acutely
aware of her intellectual superiority, she was determined to marry only a
man who could appreciate her mind. In 1776, after she had rejected sev?
eral marriage proposals, she met Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere. He was
twenty years older than she, yet he was from a superior class and a "philos?
opher."21 They were married four years later, and from the earliest days of
her marriage, Madame Roland assisted her husband in both his scholarly
and administrative pursuits. She assisted in the writing of a Dictionnaire des
Manufactures, Arts et Metiers, a contribution to Panckoucke's Encycbpedie
Methodique. From the beginning, Roland also handled her husband's daily
correspondence. Among the couple's most frequent correspondents were
Bosc, a scientist and personal friend of Ro?
Louis-Augustin-Guillaume
land's husband; L.-A. de Champagneux, founder of the Courrier de Lyon;
and Jacques Pierre Brissot, future Girondist leader and a founder of the
revolutionary newspaper Le patriote francais.22 Although Roland wrote
these letters largely on behalf of her husband and signed them in her own
name, she made an effortto respect a limited domestic role. She almost
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systematically distinguished herself from the literary or philosophical con?

tent of these letters by adding personal comments in her own voice on the
delights of the couple's provincial domestic life and through reports of her
husband's health.
The advent of the Revolution did not signal the end of Roland's control
over her husband's correspondence. This luckily provided her with an
early opportunity for political involvement:
Chargee ordinairementde la correspondance,je trouvais cette tache d'autant plus agreable dans les circonstances; mes lettres,faites avec feu, plaisaient assez a Brissotqui souvent en composaient quelques morceaux de son
journal, ou je les retrouvaisavec surpriseet plaisir. (Memoires,p. 127)
I was ordinarilyin charge of the correspondence,and foundthat task all the
more enjoyable given the circumstances;my letters,writtenwith passion,
ratherappealed to Brissotwho often included parts of them in his newspa?
per, where I was surprisedand delighted to read them.
These initial political opportunities increased in December 1791 when the
Jacobin Society appointed Jean-Marie Roland as its official secretary:
Jevoyais ces lettres;je prenais souvent pour moi le soin de faireles reponses.
... [T]ouchee du bien qu'il etait possible de faireen s'emparantdes imagina?
tions pour les dirigeret les enflammerau profitde la vertu,je m'occupais de
cette correspondance avec plaisir,et le comite trouvaitRoland travailleur.
(Memoires,p. 147)
I saw his letters;I oftentook upon myselfto writethe answers... . Moved by
the good that one could accomplish by takinghold of men's imaginationto
guide them and to instill in them a love of virtue,I took care of that corre?
spondence with pleasure, and the committee thought Roland industrious.
Roland's effortto distance herself personally from the political content
of these letters declined considerably. Roland's personal considerations sur?

reptitiously merged with political preoccupations: "Nous faisons des confi?

tures," she wrote Bosc in late 1788, "et tu n'es pas la pour les gouter. . . .
Que devient Monsieur Necker? Et le grand diable d'archeveque [Brienne]?
On le disait parti pour Rome; maintenant on debite qu'il est garde a vue"
('We are making jams . . . and you are not here to taste them. . . . What is
becoming of Mr Necker? And of the devilish archbishop [Brienne]? People
said he had left for Rome; now we are told that he is under arrest').23 In a
subsequent letter to Bosc, Roland herself justified this infringement on
patriotic grounds: "II est vrai que je ne vous entretiens plus guere de nos
affaires personnelles: quel est le traitre qui en a d'autres aujourd'hui que
celles de la nation?" (26 July 1789, Lettres, II, 53; 'It is true that I do not
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inform you as much of our personal affairs;who is the traitor who has other
interests today than those of the nation?'). As Roland no longer attempted
to separate her views from the political content of the letters, she drasti?
cally modified her epistolary style. Her letter to Bosc illustrates that the

inquisitive tone that characterized her initial interest in political events

grew authoritative, impatient, intimidating, and even vulgar as she ex?
horted her male correspondents to political action.24 Roland urged Bosc,
in her letter, to support an official trial for the monarchs: "II est vrai, que je
vous ai ecrit des choses plus vigoureuses que vous n'en avez faites.... Vous
n'etes que des enfants; votre enthousiasme est un feu de paille; et si l'Assemblee ne fait pas en regie le proces de deux tetes illustres . . . vous etes
tous/ . . ." (26 July 1789, Lettres, II, 53; 'It is true that the language I have

used in my letters to you has been more vigorous than your own ac?
tions. ... You are behaving as children; your enthusiasm is like a straw fire;
and if the National Assembly does not legally bring to trial two illustrious
heads . . . you will all be /. . .').
The letters from this period do not make clear whether Roland ex?
pressed her own ideas or her husband's. She no doubt relied on this confu?
sion as she experienced the need to voice her personal political views.
Letter writing provided Roland, in this instance, with a substitute as well
as a subversive form of political expression not only because she could
claim the views she expressed as her husband's but also because letter
writing had long been an accepted role for women.25 As Roland's later
memoirs reveal, she was fully aware of the safe cover the letter form pro?
vided. Acknowledging her role in handling her husband's correspondence,

she defined such a role as well within the limits of a woman's domestic
function: "II n'y a pourtant de singulier dans tout cela que la rarete; pourquoi une femme ne servirait-elle pas de secretaire a son mari sans qu'il en
eut mo ins de merite? On sait bien que les ministres ne peuvent tout faire
par eux-memes" (Memoires, p. 305; 'There is however nothing singular
about it, other than it happens only rarely; why should a woman not serve
as her husband's secretary without diminishing his own merit? We all know
that ministers cannot do everything themselves').26
While Roland may have conceived of her oblique political role as a
necessary extension of her domestic duties, it was not without risk either
to herself or to her husband. Not only were women prohibited to play an
active role in the public sphere, but as the Revolution progressed, they
became increasingly repressed and fully marginalized in the political pro?
cess. Women's exclusion was justified in part on the grounds that, through
the institution of sexual favoritism, they had contributed to the corruption
of monarchical power. As demonstrated by Dorinda Outram, women's
political inclusion threatened the legitimacy of the new order: "the pro106

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duction of male political embodiment cannot be understood as a selfstanding development; it also has to be read as a process of exclusion and
differentiation."27
Notwithstanding the increasingly bold manner in which Roland han?
dled her husband's correspondence, she therefore never openly took issue
with the revolutionaries' antifeminine agenda; nor during her husband's
political career did Roland infringe publicly upon the men's world. As his
involvement made him more conspicuous, she prudently retreated to the
backstage. In her Memoires, she described her involvement during the po?
litical meetings that took place at the couple's house as peripheral. During
such meetings, the author kept a strictlyfeminine profile as she silently sat

"hors du cercle et pres d'une table . . . travaill[ant] des mains, ou fais[ant]

des lettres, tandis que Ton deliberait" (p. 63; 'outside of the circle and near
a table . . . doing handwork, or writing letters, while they deliberated').
Not only did Roland refrain from open political involvement herself,
but she also criticized the more open involvement of other women. She
went so far as to close her door to all women, a rule she scrupulously never
broke (Memoires, p. 168). She even willingly invoked in her letters the
antifeminine rhetoric of male revolutionary discourse: "Adieu!," she once

Bosc. "Si vous vous desolez, je dirais que vous faites un role de
je ne voudrais pas prendre pour moi" (22 January 1791, Lettres,
'Adieu! If you despair, I will say that you are playing a woman's
would not want for myself). Roland was well aware of the
castrating effect this feminization could have on her correspondents:
"Faites-moi done relever ces indignites par vos ecrivains hommes, puisque
vous en avez, je ne connais ici que des eunuques," she later wrote Lanthenas (February 1791, Lettres, II, 259; 'Ask your men writers to challenge

challenged
femme que
II, 220-21;
role that I

those indignant things, I know only eunuchs around here').

Roland's conduct and writings support the inferences drawn by most
critics that she lacked solidarity with women's causes and that her political

conduct contradicted her allegiance to Rousseau's model. But Roland's

condemnation of openly political women and her antifeminine rhetoric
should be distinguished from her basic acceptance of woman's domestic
function. Roland's belief in woman's domestic function was sincere, but
letters at the time reveal that Roland's effortsto hide her own authorship
and her antifeminine rhetoric emanated from insincere, strategic consider?

ations that she believed ultimately would advance both the Revolution
and the cause of women.
At least one letter indicates that Roland did not indeed rule out a politi?
cal role for women. But unlike Olympe de Gouges,28 she did not think
that such new freedom for women could occur simultaneously with men's,
but rather that the Revolution would be a condition for the former: "[Les
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femmes] ne peuvent agir ouvertement que lorsque les Francais auront tous
merite d'etre libres," she wrote on 6 April 1791 to Bancal des Issarts (Let?
tres, II, 258-59; 'Women cannot act openly until all French people have
deserved to be free'). In addition, Roland firmly believed that women
needed to redeem the bad reputation they had earned during the Ancien
Regime. Until then, their direct participation in public affairsjeopardized

not only the success of the Revolution but a possibly more open influence
for women later: "jusque la notre legerete, nos mauvaises moeurs
rendraient au moins ridicules ce qu'elles tenteraient de faire, et par la
meme aneantiraient l'avantage qui, autrement, pourrait en resulter" (Let?

tres,II, 258-59; 'until now our frivolity,our poor moral standards would, in
the least, cover their attempted actions with ridicule, and would also jeop?
ardize any advantage that might otherwise result from them'). Until such a
time, Roland further argued, a woman who might seek political influence
could do so more successfully if she presented her ideas through men:
"Comme le nom d'une femme ne me semble pas la meilleure recommenda?
tion, je n'ai pas mis le mien a mon epitre mais Lanthenas s'est charge de la
remettre afin de donner a son contenu I'authenticitenecessaire" (Lettres, II,
258-59, my emphasis; 'Since the name of a woman does not seem to be
the best recommendation, I did not put mine in my letter but Lanthenas
agreed to deliver it so as to confer the necessary authorityto its content').29

In an earlier letter, Roland had expressed explicit disapproval of another

contemporary, Germaine de Stael. Yet again Roland criticized Stael's more
open political conduct because she feared it could only jeopardize revolu?
tionary progress:
On fait ici des contes de Madame de Staal [sic] qu'on dit fortexacte a
l'Assemblee, qu'on pretendy avoir des chevaliers auxquels de la tribuneelle
envoie des billetspour les encouragera soutenirles motionspatriotiques....
Vous ne pouvez vous representer1'importanceque nos aristocratesmettenta
ces betises nees peut-etredans leur cerveau; mais ils veulent montrerl'As?
semblee comme conduite par quelques etourdis excites, echauffespar une
dizaine de femmes.(To Brissot,2 November 1789, Lettres,II, 75, 83)
One hears stories about Madame de Staal [sic], who attends the National
Assembly with great regularity,who is reported to have suitors there, to
whom she sends messages,fromthe bench, to urgethem to supportpatriotic
motions.... You do not realize the importancethat aristocratsplace on such
silly things,born perhaps out of their own imagination; but they wish to
portraythe National Assemblyas led by a fewworked-upscatterbrains,fired
by a dozen women.
In addition to these contemporary accounts, Roland's later memoirs pro?
vide furtherevidence of a strategic, rather than an ideological, motivation
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behind such statements. In describing her silence and letter writing as she
sat in on Girondist meetings, she confessed in her memoirs: "Je preferais
ecrire, parce que cela me faisait paraitre plus etrangere a la chose et m'y
laissait presque aussi bien" (Memoires, p. 131, my emphasis; 'I preferred to
write because it allowed me to appear removed from it all while safely letting
me in').
While Roland's strategy may have proved frustrating at times, it pro?
vided her with a realm of influence unmatched by any other woman at the
time. This caused Roland great personal satisfaction. She related, in par?

ticular, the considerable pleasure she had derived from secretly writing a
letter to the Pope in the name of the Executive Government of France.
She confessed her amusement at the incongruity of her situation. But her
pleasure was contingent, Roland insisted, on the secrecy of her activities.

On one other occasion, Roland even confessed pleasure at the expense of

her husband:
Si Ton citait un morceau de ses ouvrages ou Ton trouvatplus de graces de
style . . . je jouissais de sa satisfaction . . . et il finissaitsouvent par se
persuaderque veritablementil avait ete dans une bonne veine lorsqu'il avait
ecrit tel passage qui sortaitde ma plume. (Memoires,p. 304).
If one quoted a passage from his writingsthat revealed a more gracious
style ... I reveled in his satisfaction. . . and in the end, he oftenconvinced
himselfthat he had been particularlyinspiredwhen he had writtensome?
thing that was indeed frommy own hand.
Roland's experience during the Revolution allowed her to live a version
of the domestic role that was generally consistent with, if on the outer
edge of, her understanding of an active domestic role for women. She

hoped ultimately for a more open role for herself and for other women, but
subordinated that goal to the priority she placed on the revolutionary
cause. So long as Roland remained able to communicate her voice through
the safe cover of her husband, women and women's causes seemed some?

how less urgent.

In 1793 when the Mountain attempted to consolidate power, the revo?

lutionary government sought to arrest Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere.
With his wife's assistance, he escaped, and the revolutionaries arrested and
incarcerated Madame Roland instead. During her incarceration Roland
continued to write. While her prison writings initially continued the re?
treating pattern of her letters, Roland's final confessions, Memoires particuliers, gradually reveal acknowledgment of her writing as an independent
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act. With the removal of Roland's mask also came unexpected confessions
of feminine pain and anger.
During the firstpart of her incarceration, Roland wrote some Notices

historiques. They were intended as a "moral and political testament," in

which Roland essentially proposed to set the Girondists' political record
straight (Memoires, p. 98). The account was reminiscent of the virile and
often accusatory tone of her earlier letters. Throughout the Notices, Ma?
dame Roland continued to present herself as a background figure. Al?

though written in the firstperson, these Notices contained a rather imper?

sonal account of her husband's actions while in power. To the extent that
the author referredto her own role in his affairsshe always carefully opted
for the collective subject "we." In describing her influence on Roland's
resignation letter, which she was rumored to have written herself, she care?
fully restricted her role to that of discussant: "il convenait a Pintegrite, au
courage de Roland de s'avancer seul, et nous arretames entre nous deux sa
fameuse lettre au roi" (Memoires, p. 69, my emphasis; 'It suited Roland's
integrityand courage to act alone, and we drafted between the two of us his
famous letter to the king').
Roland's continued denial of any prior active role stands in ironic con?
trast, however, to the pleasure she suddenly demonstrated in the political
significance of her new writings. She confessed an uncontrollable urge to
write and to denounce the tyranny of her persecutors from the moment of
her incarceration. With the collapse of her party, she now reveled in her

role as a Girondist memorialist, taking pride in her rapid writing and savor?
ing the devastating speech she planned to deliver at the Girondists' trial,
for which she had been officially cited as a witness: "Je desire meriter la
mort en allant leur rendre temoignage tandis qu'ils vivent. . . . Je suis sur
les epines, j'attends l'huissier comme une ame en peine attend son liberateur" (Memoires, p. 364; 'I wish to deserve to die by paying them [the
I am on edge, and I await the
Girondists] a tribute while they are alive....

bailiff as a desperate soul would her liberator').

But Roland was never called as witness and had therefore no oppor?
tunity to deliver her speech. This disappointment met with another: a false
communication that her Notices had been destroyed. The news affected
her almost as a dismemberment: "j'ai senti toute l'amertume de cette perte
que je ne reparerai point" (Memoires, p. 202; 'This loss has made me so
bitter; it is a loss that I cannot repair'). Bitterness did not keep Roland
from writing, but it triggered two very differentadditional sets of writings.
The firstset, entitled Portraits et anecdotes, was a failed attempt to re?
write the Notices, a task that discouraged the author from its inception:
"Cela ne saurait remplacer ce que j'ai perdu, mais ce seront des lambeaux
qui serviront a me le rappeler, et a m'aider un jour a y suppleer, si la faculte
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m'en est laissee" (Memoires, p. 99; 'This cannot replace what I lost, but it
will be made of fragments that will make it possible for me to remember,
and will help me one day to replace this loss, if I am not deprived of the
faculty to do so'). There ensued a series of portraits of various Girondists
and key participants in Roland's two ministeries. Unlike the Notices, Por?
traitset anecdotes represented less an attempt to rehabilitate the Girondists
than to create a "pantheon of good revolutionaries."30
More importantly, in Portraitset anecdotes, Roland portrayed a more ac?
tive role in her husband's political writings. In these new political mem?
oirs, she described her role in her husband's resignation letter, which she
had earlier minimized, as: "Je fis la fameuse lettre" (Memoires, p. 154; 'I
wrote the famous letter'). In so doing, she also now claimed the better part
of her husband's political success:
je peignais mieux qu'il n'aurait dit ce qu'il avait execute ou pouvait promettre de faire.. . . avec moi il a produitplus de sensation,parce que je mettais
dans ses ecritsce melange de forceet de douceur,d'autoritede la raison et de
charmes du sentimentqui n'appartiennentpeut-etrequ'a une femmesensi?
ble douee d'une tete saine. (Memoires,p. 155)31
I painted better than he could have said what he had accomplished and
could promise to do. . . . thanks to me he created more sensation because I
infusedin his writingsthismixtureof strengthand tenderness,authorityand
reason, and sensitivitywhich perhaps only exist in a sensitive woman en?
dowed with a sound mind.
Interestingly,despite Roland's new desire to reclaim her own political role,
this statement indicates that she still wished to portray her active role in a
manner consistent with its fundamentally domestic focus. Throughout this
work, Roland remained the helper of her husband.
In addition to triggering a differentdescription of the author's political

responsibilities in Portraitset anecdotes, the loss of her Notices encouraged a

second more personal set of writings, Memoires particuliers.32Unlike Por?
traits et anecdotes, written simultaneously, and unlike her earlier Notices,
these new personal memoirs hardly mentioned the Revolution, and when
they did, it merely functioned as a backdrop for this new autobiographical
enterprise. As impersonal as Roland's political writings had been, Memoires
particulierswere by contrast extremely personal and broke all accepted fem?
inine conventions by revealing deeply intimate details.
By contrast to Roland's earlier writings, which focused exclusively on
men, she reserved Memoires particuliersfor herself and for the other women
who had played an important role in her life. Throughout these confes?
sions, Roland expressed extraordinary compassion for her mother whose
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love and devotion to her she recounted in numerous details. She recalled
warmly her paternal grandmother and great aunt with whom she had spent

many delightful hours as a child. Most interestingly, Roland held special

feelings for two saintly figures: her wetnurse and a young novice from the
convent school she had briefly attended. Roland's admiration for them
stemmed as much from their devotion to her as from the terrible sufferings
they had endured. One had resisted "la brutalite de son mari [qui] la
rendait malheureuse, sans alterer son caractere ni changer sa conduite"
(Memoires, p. 204; 'the brutality of her husband [that] made her unhappy
but failed to spoil her character and her conduct'); the other had taken her

vows, for lack of a fortune, and had been subjected to abuse by her commu?
nity (Memoires, p. 230).
Roland's compassionate evocations of women stand in striking contrast
to her generally unflattering portraits of men. Roland depicted her father
as a man inferior to his wife, with little instruction or virtue, who had
shown little interest in his daughter's upbringing and education. Roland's
accounts of her dutiful submission to her mother sharply contrast with
recollections of Roland's defiance of her father's authority: "Mon pere,
assez brusque, ordonnait en maitre et Pobeissance etait tardive ou nulle; ou
s'il tentait de me punir en despote, sa douce petite fille devenait un lion. II
me donna le fouet en deux ou trois circonstances; je lui mordais la cuisse
sur laquelle il m'avait couchee, et je protestais contre sa volonte" (Me?
moires, p. 209; 'My father, who was a rather harsh man, commanded as a
master and obedience was delayed or worthless; or if he tried to punish me
as a despot, his sweet little girl would turn into a lion. He whipped me two
or three times; I bit the leg on which he held me, and I protested against

his will').
Roland also engaged in lengthy physical descriptions of herself, and she
provocatively recounted her sexual history, a subject traditionally kept be?
yond the realm of female expression. Roland recalled, for example, experi?
encing her firstmenses at age fourteen. Besides recounting the episode in
celebratory fashion, the author also described the mysterious, sensuous
pleasure that had signaled nature's progress. Roland, who believed that one
should derive no pleasure from one's body except in situations of legiti?
mate matrimony, had firstbeen stricken by guilt and for her repentance
had adopted a strict regimen of bread and ash. Roland now complacently
recalled her diet's failure to contain the pleasure that she continued to
experience: "ces dejeuners ne me faisaient pas plus de mal que les acci?
dents nocturnes pour la reparation desquels je me mettais a cet extrava?
gant regime" (Memoires, p. 252; 'These breakfasts were as harmless to me
as the nightly accidents that I intended to correct through that extraordi?
nary diet').
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Roland's sexual revelations not only served to recapture and celebrate a

femininity she had long repressed in her earlier writings, but also expressed
a surprising, yet obviously long-harbored antimasculine sentiment. The
sexual revelations contained a substantial, rather graphic description of
her attempted rape, at age eleven, by one of her father's apprentices. In
recounting the incident, Roland also released her long-repressed outrage at
the potentially traumatic effect of man's instinctual behavior on women.
Launching into a moralizing diatribe and expressing her solidarity with all
mothers, she warned women against the other sex "impetueux et toujours
brutal" ('impetuous and always brutal') whose "ardeur inconsideree" ('in?
considerate ardor') and "corruption si commune" ('common corruption')

posed a constant threat to innocent girls (Memoires, p. 222). Emboldened

by these declarations, Roland then frankly recounted her personal disgust
with her husband's lovemaking on their wedding night. Roland's new con?
fidence led her, as she neared the end of her confessions, to admit her
consuming passion for another man, whom she carefully did not name.33
In Memoires particuliers,Roland for the firsttime revealed a woman's voice.
Critics have paid little attention to this dramatic shift in subject matter
and style or to the solidarity the Memoires particuliers revealed toward
women. These deeply personal accounts of a woman's life were unprece?
dented. They also mark a profound shift in her lifelong attitude toward
femininity. As a young girl, Roland had expressed only regret about her
gender. As a wife and as a revolutionary, she had obtained political valida?

tion by retreating into men's shadow. But as a prisoner awaiting death,

Roland felt suddenly inspired to recuperate the femininity she had re?
pressed and to celebrate her womanhood in prohibited fashion. As she
turned toward herself, she also turned toward the virtuous women who had
surrounded her throughout her life and against the men whose public des?
tiny she had recently glorified.
Madame Roland's new expression of antagonism to men was not with?
out political content as well. Read in its historical context, Roland's anger

plausibly refers to her present male persecutors, the Mountain, who by

instigating the Terror and leading the Revolution astray had regressed to
animalistic behavior. To some extent, these memoirs therefore echoed sim?
ilar, contemporary remarks, contained in Roland's undelivered "Projet de
defense."34 And through her depiction of man's dangerous instinctual
behavior, Madame Roland countered the view of women's uncontrol?
lable emotional nature generally used by men to justify their political
exclusion.35
What explains the transition from Roland's firstset of memoirs to her
second and third? In part, facing death, Roland simply lacked a reason to
continue to hide her own earlier political involvement. But this purely
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practical rationale does not satisfactorily explain the passion and new fem?
inine focus of the Memoires particuliers.The revealing fact is that Roland's
expressions of identification with, and sympathy for, the members of her
sex came only when she had finally been denied all authorized forms of

speech. Before and during the Revolution, she could communicate

through letters and through her husband's voice. Once imprisoned, she
hoped to express herself as a witness and every day gave her political
thoughts to her writings. But after the loss of these authorized avenues of

speech, Madame Roland was no longer able to circumvent women's lim?

ited role through oblique forms of expression. For the firsttime, Roland
could not satisfactorily reconcile her desires for speech with a purely do?
mestic role for women. The result was an awakening of feminine resent?

ment and frustrations, of feminine pain and desires.

But as different as Roland's Memoires particulierswere from her earlier
writings, she continued to feel the need to portray herself as a reluctant
memorialist?a woman forced out of the conventional domestic sphere to
redeem her moral reputation:
Si ceux qui m'ont penetree eussent juge les faitsce qu'ils etaient, ils m'auraient epargne une sorte de celebrite que je n'ai point enviee; au lieu de
passeraujourd'hui mon tempsa detruirele mensonge,je liraisun chapitrede
Montaigne, je dessineraisune fleurou jouerais une ariette,et j'adoucirais la
solitude de ma prison, sans m'appliquer a faire ma confession. (Memoires,
p. 305)
If those who penetrated me had judged the facts such as they were, they
would have spared me a formof celebritythat I did not seek; instead of
devoting my life today to destroyinglies, I mightbe readinga chapter from
Montaigne, drawinga floweror performingan arietta,and I mightalleviate
the solitude of my cell, without applyingmyselfto my confession.

Furthermore, in a pattern reminiscent of her letters, Roland felt the need

to contain her latest transgression within a male framework, namely the
model of Rousseau's Confessions.36 Like Rousseau, Roland promised her
readers the complete truth about herself. In her case, however, this truth
served essentially as a pretext for telling the harsh truth about others, in
large part the men who had surrounded her: "Avec cette franchise pour
mon propre compte, je ne me generai pas sur celui d'autrui" (p. 202; 'With
this sincerity for my own account, I will not feel inhibited to tell the truth
about others').
While confessing guilt about recounting her attempted rape, Roland
justified these personal revelations too with Rousseau's precedent: "il m'a
fallu faire dans ce moment encore, autant d'effortspour l'ecrire que Rous?
seau en fitpour consigner l'histoire de son ruban vole" (Memoires, p. 221;
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'it has taken me, even after all this time, as much effortas it took Rousseau
when he related the story of his stolen ribbon'). Here, however, what is
perhaps most revealing is not what Madame Roland directly attributed to

Rousseau but what she did not. By comparing her attempted rape to Rous?
seau's ribbon-stealing episode, Roland ignored the far closer parallel in
Rousseau's Confessions of his own near rape by a novice at a monastery.37
Like Roland's account, Rousseau's depiction of the incident was highly
graphic and revealed his disgust with male bestial sexuality. Like Roland,
Rousseau also sympathized, in his account, with women's endangered con?
dition: "si nous sommes ainsi dans nos transports pres des femmes, il faut
qu'elles aient les yeux bien fascines pour ne pas nous prendre en horreur"
(p. 73; 'if this is the way we behave in our rapturous delight toward
women, their eyes must be truly fascinated for them not to take an imme?
diate disgust for us'). Madame Roland's failure to cite Rousseau's rape ac?
count is puzzling, for in the ribbon episode Rousseau had perpetrated the
crime, while in the seduction episode Rousseau, like Roland, was a victim.

Perhaps Roland's choice of comparison points to her continued reticence.

By comparing her experience to Rousseau's ribbon episode, she could
present it in a manner that emphasized her guilt, an appropriate attitude
for a woman in recounting such details. Had Roland instead compared her

story to Rousseau's seduction, she would have conveyed only a sense of

outrage. Rousseau's confession conveyed such outrage at the other men of
the monastery, who had encouraged him to conceal the incident. Roland's
decision to emphasize guilt instead may be an indication of her difficultyin
coming to terms with her own prior restraints. Guilt allowed Roland to
maintain a traditional feminine posture while subliminally longing for
Rousseau's free denunciation.

There is a revealing irony in the history of the posthumous publication

of Madame Roland's written legacy. For nearly one century, she exerted a
fascination for people, unparallelled by any other woman of her time. The

Romantics praised her rare political leadership. In his History of Girondists,

Lamartine idealized Roland as the "soul" of Girondist politics. Summing
up her brief political career, he portrayed her as a "party leader," who had
"founded the republic, ruled for a while and died."38 Literary critic SainteBeuve praised her genius and demonstrated courage in five consecutive
essays.39 The woman Roland's romantic admirers so revered was, rather
uncharacteristically, the "femme virile." For Sainte-Beuve, it was the
"rigor" of her "male intelligence," which alone could account for Roland's
control over the men of her party (Portraits de femmes, pp. 1145-47). For
Jules Michelet also, Roland's "male esprit, son coeur stoique, etaient d'un
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homme" (p. 419; '[her] male spirit, her stoic heart, were those of a man').
And a virile man she was, the historian insisted, so virile that none of her
friends could match her: "On dirait plutot, a regarder ses amis, que, pres
d'elle, ce sont eux qui sont femmes" (pp. 422-23; 'When one looks at her
friends, it looks as if it is they who are women'). If Roland's romantic
chroniclers could admire her virility so openly, it was by no means out of a
general sympathy for women's revolutionary claims. Sainte-Beuve indeed
warned the women of his generation not to emulate Roland. Women like
Madame Roland, he argued, remained an exception: "ce genie qui percait
malgre tout et s'imposait souvent, n'appartenant qu'a elle seule, ne saurait
sans une etrange illusion, faire autorite pour d'autres" (Portraits de femmes,

p. 1158; 'this brilliance that surfaced against all odds and often imposed
itself was unique to her, and women who might arrogate such authority to
themselves would be strangely deluded').
What made Roland's "unique" virility so acceptable to these critics was
her propensity for self-effacement and her ability to maintain a feminine
profile while she engaged in manly matters: "Madame Roland, malgre les

qualites viriles dont elle a fait preuve, n'avait rien de masculin dans tout
son aspect, ni dans son ensemble; elle etait femme et tres femme," ex?
claimed Sainte-Beuve (Nouveaux lundis, p. 221; 'In spite of Madame Ro?
land's proven virile qualities, there was nothing masculine about her ap?
pearance, nor in her personality as a whole; she was a woman and a very
womanly one'). While lauding Roland for the temerity she had demon?
strated in her letters and on the scaffold, the critic admitted being moved
also by confessions of her domestic bliss, her maternal calling, and her

ability to comprehend nature. Similarly, Michelet admired Roland for the

way she softened, in her writings, her virile authorial style with an occa?
sional feminine touch. If Roland's Memoires seemed as if they were "moins
ecrits d'une plume de femme que du poignard de Caton" ('less written by
women's pen than by Cato's dagger'), Michelet remarked that occasional
confessions of a mother's concern for her young daughter revealed "que ce
grand homme etait une femme, que cette ame, pour etre si forte, helas!
n'en etait pas moins tendre" (p. 425; 'that this great man was a woman,
and that this soul, which was so strong, alas! was no less tender').
This admiration for Roland, however, was not based on the deeply per?
sonal qualities of her final memoirs. Michelet and Sainte-Beuve based
their judgments indeed on incomplete versions of Roland's works that
omitted the intimate details she revealed in Memoires particuliers.Not until
1864 was a complete edition of Roland's writings published.40 Prior to that
edition, Roland's private life had been a subject of controversy, as rumors
of her passion for another man had tarnished her revolutionary image.
Intent upon preserving that image, Michelet had sought to minimize the
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issue. Only after celebrating Roland's virile qualities had he reluctantly

conceded: "Quoi! ce heros fut done vraiment une femme? Voila done un
moment (l'unique) ou ce grand courage a flechi. La cuirasse du guerrier
s'entrouvre, et c'est une femme qu'on voit, le sein blesse de Clorinde" (pp.
419-20; 'What! this hero was really a woman then? This represents the
unique moment in which her great courage weakened. The warrior's ar?
mour half-opened, revealing a woman, Clorinda's wounded breast').
As Roland had herself suspected, her personal, feminine writings ex?

posed her to criticism. The sudden discovery of Roland's "feminine" pas?

sages sullied forever the image of the great writer. In particular, Roland's
account of her attempted seduction prompted angry comments from
Sainte-Beuve. For this former admirer, truth, Madame Roland's excuse for
confiding to her readers, was not meant for women. Referring to her use of
Rousseau's precedent in the Confessions, he exclaimed:
Nous y avons tous cede plus ou moins, dans nos propresconfessionsaussi, en
vers ou en prose; mais elle, elle etait femme et devait s'en souvenir, elle
pouvait, si elle le voulait absolument,indiquer le faiten glissantun peu; il y
a maniere de tout faire comprendreet de tout dire. (Nouveaux lundis,pp.
199-20)
We all have more or less succumbed to the temptation,in our own confes?
sions, in verse or prose; but she was a woman and should have remembered
that; she could, if she absolutely needed to, have referredto the incident
obliquely; there is a way to make oneself understood and to say it all.
As a politician, Roland had thrived by communicating her commitment
through her husband and the other members of the Gironde, thereby cele?
brating masculine virtues over feminine ones. Like Roland herself, the
nineteenth-century critics did not see an inconsistency in this double role.
Their admiration for this woman writer was thus primarily a projection of
their narcissistic delight in their own virile style. The judgment of nine?

teenth-century critics vindicated Roland's belief that she needed to forget

herself if she hoped to be remembered.

If Roland

failed her nineteenth-century admirers by becoming too

"womanly" in her writings, she is paradoxically perceived today by some
critics as not "womanly" enough. As this essay demonstrates, Roland es?
capes reductive categorization. Roland's writings depict the deep conflict
of a woman with powerful, individual needs for expression but with con?
servative social instincts born of the culture of her time. While she never
fully accepted those views, she never could fullyreject them either. Roland
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was a woman who, above all, felt the need to participate in the political
process. For most of her life she could do so without openly transgressing a
woman's limited public role. When blocked from expressing her views

through men, she was left no other option than to reveal her political
savvy more openly. Yet when facing death?the ultimate silencing?she
also revealed a feminine voice with an audacity and rage unprecedented at
the time.
Roland's final memoirs disclosed feelings of solidarity with other women
in excess of those typically attributed to her by critics. And even though

Roland only expressed these views at her death, her earlier life was not one
of simple hypocrisy as typically depicted whereby Roland's political activ?
ities are seen as contradicting her own beliefs in women's fundamentally

domestic role and her critical attitude toward the political activities of
other women. Although Roland accepted that women should live within
the domestic sphere, she also believed that the domestic sphere should
have a wide radius. Her solidarity with women, which received expression
at the end of her life, probably did not reveal a shift in her views so much
as her abandonment of a strategy that required her to deny this solidarity
to contribute to her revolutionary goals.
Roland's writings exemplify a woman's complex struggle to overcome
the limited conception of femininity of her time. In the more general
context of revolutionary discourse, Roland's hiding behind male authori?
ties reads as a woman's ingenious strategy to reintegrate herself into a

fundamentally exclusionary ideology. Roland's expansion of the domestic

sphere reads as a concomitant effort to press against the boundaries of
women's role. Roland's retreat in the face of male adversity reads therefore
more as adaptation than resignation. It attests, in the end, to Roland's
personal courage and ultimate sacrifice.

NOTES
1

JulesMichelet, "Madame Roland," in Les Femmesde la Revolution,in Oeuvres

Completesde Jules Michelet(1851; Paris: Flammarion, 1971-87), XVI, 419. All
furtherreferencesto this workwill appear parentheticallyin the text. All transla?
tions in this article are mine.
2 The Girondists, who formedthe
majorityat the Conventional Assembly,
hoped, with thisprogram,to exterminatethe Mountain as well as the Commune of
Paris who, they felt,were fartoo inclined to impose theirviews on the restof the
nation.
3 In
July1789, the legislatorsof the Estates-General had denied women the
rightto vote. Equating women with "children"and "foreigners,"Abbe Sieves, who
voiced the general opinion had concluded: "[I]n shortthose who contributenoth118

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ing to the public establishmentshould have no direct influenceon the govern?

ment," quoted by Jane Albray in "Feminism in the French Revolution," American
HistoricalReview,80, No. 1 (1975), 54. On 4 November 1793, the Committee of
Public Safety had also ordered the closing of all women's clubs. See also Carol
Blum, Rousseau and the Republicof Virtue: The Language of Politicsin the French
Revolution(Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1986), chapter 11.
4 M.-J. (Phlipon) Roland, "Projet de defense,"in Memoiresde Madame Roland,
ed. Paul de Roux (Paris: Mercure de France, 1986), p. 371. This edition of the
Por?
published memoirsincludes, in addition to her letters,the Noticeshistoriques,
traitset anecdotes,and Memoiresparticuliers.
Furtherreferencesto all these memoirs
will appear parentheticallyin the text as Memoires.
5 Marie-Paule Duhet, Les
femmeset la Revolution(Paris: Julliard,1971), p. 78.
All furtherreferencesto this work will appear parentheticallyin the text.
6 Candice E. Proctor,Women,
Equalityand theFrenchRevolution,in Contribu?
tionsin Women'sStudies(New York; Westport,Connecticut; London: Greenwood
Press, 1990), No. 155, p. 181.
7 Quoted
by de Roux in "Introduction,"Memoires,p. 27.
8
MarilynYalom, Blood Sisters:The FrenchRevolutionin Women'sHistory(New
York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 94.
9 Chantal Thomas, "Heroism in the Feminine: The
Examples of Charlotte
Corday and Madame Roland," in The FrenchRevolution:Two Hundred Years of
ed. Sandy Petrey,special issue of The Eighteenth
Rethinking,
Century:Theoryand
(Lubbock: Texas Tech UniversityPress, 1989), p. 69.
Interpretation
10 Gita
May, Madame Roland and theAge of Revolution(New York: Columbia
UniversityPress, 1970), p. 170.
11
Mary Trouille, "Revolution in the Boudoir: Madame Roland's Subversion of
Rousseau's Feminine Ideals," in Eighteenth-Century
Life, 13, No. 2 (1989), 83.
12 Yalom
this
view
in
Blood
Sisters.
presents
pithily
According to Yalom, Ro?
land's "life and writingprove that . . . she played the queen bee to her sister
creatures"and that she "dealt with being female in contradictoryways" (p. 94).
13 Roland's
opposition to, or at least unwillingnessto champion, women's eman?
claims
was not unique. For Proctor,it reflects"the failureon the part of
cipatory
any of the women of the late eighteenthcenturywho had earned a reputationfor
either talent or intelligence willinglyto champion the cause of their own sex."
Such hostilitywas reflected,Proctorargues,in the writingsof Germaine de Stael,
and later George Sand who "farfromseeking the emancipation of their own sex,
actually professedto despise them and sought,instead,to identifythemselveswith
the dominant sex" (Women,Equalityand theFrenchRevolution,
p. 181). This hostil?
which
and
Proctor
other
critics
has
been attributedby
ity,
generallyexaggerate,
some critics to Roland's and these other women's comfortable social position,
which allowed them to engage in public debates on a personal basis (Duhet, p. 77).
As this studydemonstrates,Roland's opposition had a more strategicpurpose and
stemsfromher personal commitmentto the success of the Revolution, which could
only be predicated on the exclusion of women fromthe political process. She did
not, however, exclude a political role later,afterwomen had redeemed their tar?
nished reputation.

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14 See Harold T. Parker'sexcellent study of the influenceof Roman classical

authorson French revolutionaries,including Madame Roland, in The Cult of An?
tiquityand the FrenchRevolutionaries(Durham: Duke UniversityPress, 1965), in
particular,chapters 1, 2 and 3.
15 Madame Roland, Lettresde Madame Roland: Nouvelle Serie (1767-1780), ed.
Claude Perroud,2 vols. (Paris: ImprimerieNationale, 1913-15), letterto Sophie
Cannet, November 1773, I, 166. Significantly,Roland expressedthis understand?
ing beforeshe read Rousseau. Parkerwritesthat Plutarch awakened in Roland "a
republican character,an enthusiasmforlibertyand forpublic virtue,and a discon?
tent with the present" (The Cult of Antiquity,p. 41).
16
Jean-JacquesRousseau, Emile, in Oeuvres Completes,8 vols. (Paris: Lefevre,
1839), III, 437. All furtherreferencesto this work will appear parentheticallyin
the text.
17 See Parker,The Cult of Antiquity,p. 54.
18 "Comment l'education des femmespourraitcontribuera rendreles hommes
de I'lnterieur,
ed.
meilleurs,"in Oeuvres de J.-M. Ph. Roland,femmede I'ex-ministre
L.-A. Champagneux, 3 vols. (Paris: Bidault, 1800), II, 335-57. All furtherrefer?
ences will appear parentheticallyin the text.
19 In Women,
Equalityand theFrenchRevolution,Proctorwritesthat "Madame
in
a devoted disciple of Rousseau" (p. 164). Trouille in "Revolu?
was
Roland,
fact,
tion dans le boudoir" describes"Roland's initial enthusiasmforRousseau as a con?
firmationof the deepest convictions and longings of her youth, which gradually
gave way to a questioningand subversionof his narrowideals under the pressureof
external events and in response to her own evolving aspirations"(p. 83). Trouille
distinguishesher views fromMay's interpretationthat Rousseau's writingsaffected
Roland as a "conversion" to which Roland attempted to adhere all her life. Al?
though I agree with Trouille that Rousseau largelyconfirmedRoland's own vision
of a domestic role forwomen, her "subversion"of Rousseau's "narrow ideals" oc?
curredfromthe startand was not merelyin response to later events.
20
in
oftheGoddesses:Womenand Representation
Madelyn Gutwirth,The Twilight
theFrenchRevolutionary
Era (New Brunswick:RutgersUniversityPress, 1993), p.
194. This work is insightfuleven though it addressesRoland only briefly.
21 In a letterto Cannet, she wrote:"Cette lettrete sera remise
par le philosophe
dont je t'ai faitquelquefois mention, M. Roland de la Platiere,homme eclaire, de
moeurspures,a qui Ton ne peut reprocherque sa trop grande admirationpour les
anciens aux depens des modernesqu'il meprise,et le faiblede tropaimer a parlerde
lui" (Quoted by de Roux in Introduction,Memoires,p. 13; 'You will receive this
lettterfromthe hand of the philosopher whom I have sometimes mentioned to
you, M. Roland de la Platiere, an enlightened and virtuousman. One can only
reproach him forhis excessive admirationforclassical authors and despise forour
modern ones, and forhis propensityto enjoy talking about himself).
22 The Rolands'
friendshipwith Brissot dates back to 1787, when the latter
wrote Roland de la Platiere to congratulate him on the publication of his
Dictionnaire.
23 Letter to Bosc, 1 October 1788, in M.-J. (Phlipon) Roland, Lettres(17801793), ed. Claude Perroud,2 vols. (Paris: ImprimerieNationale, 1900-02), II, 29.
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All furtherparentheticalreferencesto Roland's correspondenceare taken fromthis

edition.
24 Parkerobservesthat Roland's viriletone patternedthe speech of male revolu?
tionary oratorswho drew their own aggressive,virile style fromRoman classical
sources (The Cult ofAntiquity,p. 26). See also Dorinda Outram, "Le langage male
de la vertu: Women and the Discourse of the French Revolution," in The Social
Historyof Language,ed. Peter Burke and Roy Porter(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni?
versityPress, 1987), pp. 120-35.
25 Elizabeth C. MacArthur has observed: "Letter writingwas perhaps the liter?
ary pursuitmost accessible to women, since lettersdid not have to be directed
toward publication, nor to obey strict genre requirements.Women could write
letterswithoutconsideringthemselvesand withoutbeing considered by others,as
authors," in "Devious Narratives: Refusal of Closure in Two Eighteenth-Century
Studies,21, No. 1 (1987), 19.
EpistolaryNovels," in Eighteenth-Century
26 In
her role,Roland was also intentupon distancingher own actions
justifying
fromthe traditionalcorrupt influenceexerted by women in the Ancien Regime.
InterestinglyRoland blamed this corruptionnot on the women themselves but
rather on the restrictionsthat kept women fromcontributingmore directlyto
politics by draftingletters,circulars,or posters.Only such restrictionscould lead
women to solicit favorsand conspire on behalf of a thirdor fourthparty.
27 Outram, The Bodyand theFrenchRevolution:Sex, Class and PoliticalStructure
(New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1989), pp. 125-26.
28 See
Olympe de Gouges, "Declaration des droitsde la femmeet de la citoyin Auswahl, ed. M.
enne" (1791), in Marie-Olympede Gouges: PolitischeSchriften
Voltersand C. Sutor (Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1979).
29 Francois-Xavier Lanthenas (1754-1799) worked in close association with
Roland duringhis firstministry.Later elected Girondist deputy,he escaped pro?
scriptionas he supportedsome of Marat's policies.
30 V.
Kapp, "Madame Roland ou l'auto-thematisationcomme moyende combat
dans la France revolutionnaire,"in Litteratureet Revolutionen France, ed. G. T.
Harris and P. M. Wetherhill (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), p. 45.
31
Sensitivitywas a determiningfeatureof revolutionarycharacter,regardlessof
gender.As disciples of Rousseau, revolutionarymen aimed to combine a reasonable
mind with a sensitiveheart. Women, whom Rousseau endowed with greatersensi?
tivitythan men, were not believed, however, to be capable of exercisingreason.
Roland's claim that she possessed a "sound mind," must again be read as a chal?
lenge to Rousseau's general assumption about women's poor intellectual abilities.
For furtherdetails on the role of sensitivityin revolutionary ideology, consult
Pierre Trahard's La sensibiliterevolutionnaire
(1789-1794) (Paris: Boivin & Cie,
1936), particularlychapters 1, 2, 9, 10.
32 She
just a day aftershe set out to write
began writingher Memoiresparticuliers
Portraitset anecdotes,on 9 August 1793.
33
Although she did not name the man in her memoirs,historianshave sus?
pected that she referredto Girondist deputy Francois Buzot.
34 In it, the author condemned her political oppressors in these terms: "[La
liberte] n'est pas pour ces hommes faibles qui temporisentavec le crime, en cou121

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vrant du nom de prudence leur egoisme et leur lachete. Elle n'est pas pour ces
hommes corrompusqui sortentdu lit de la debauche ou de la fange de la misere
pour s'abreuverdans le sang qui ruisselledes echafauds" (Memoires,p. 373; '[Free?
dom] is not for those weak men who compromise with crime, by covering their
selfishnessand cowardice with the name of prudence. It is not for those corrupt
men who rise fromthe bed of debauchery or fromthe mire of miseryto quench
their thirstin the blood that flowsfromscaffolds').
35 See Andre Amar's
reportto the Convention, on behalfof the Committee for
Public Safety(16 September 1793): "let us add that women, by theirconstitution,
are open to an exaltation which could be ominous in public life.The interestsof
the state would soon be sacrificedto all the kinds of disruptionand disorderthat
hysteriacan produce" (quoted by Albray in "Feminismin the French Revolution,"
p. 57). See also Elissa D. Gelfand's political analysisof the Memoiresin Imagination
in Confinement:Women'sWritings
fromFrenchPrisons(Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1983), p. 150.
36 No woman had writtenor
published personal confessionsto date. Because of
the intimate,often sexual, character of such writings,confessionsremain on the
whole a male-dominatedgenre.
37 Rousseau, Les Confessions,3 vols. (Paris: Gamier, 1964), p. 72. All further
referencesto this text will appear parentheticallyin the text.
38 Alphonse-Louis-Marie de Lamartine, Histoiredes Girondins,4 vols. (Bruxelles: WoutersFreres,1847), I, 283-84, 397.
39 For the firsttwo essays dated 1835 and 1840, see Sainte-Beuve, Portraitsde
femmes,in Oeuvres,ed. Maxime Leroy,2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), II, 113376. For the three additional essayspublished in 1865, see Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux
lundis,13 vols. (Paris: Michel Levy Freres,1864-70), VII, 190-265. Furtherrefer?
ences to these essays will appear parentheticallyin the text.
40 Madame Roland, Memoires de Madame Roland, ed. M.-P Faugere, 2 vols.
(Paris: Plon, 1864).

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