André Léo
“Les Séances du Vauxhall sur le travail des femmes”, L’Opinion nationale, 18 July 1868
For about three weeks, the new right of assembly has been exercised on various subjects, the most interesting of which is the question of women’s work; three sessions have already been devoted to it. Attendance is large; women mingle with men, the bourgeois with the worker.
We find there, revived no doubt, but still as ardent and convinced, that part of the population which – while some are depressed, discouraged under the weight of their miseries; as others confine themselves to the greedy concerns of personal, immediate gain – trusts in the powers of mind, science and life, appeals from present evils to future reforms, and bravely strives to discover them, with the aid of the collective voice of common sense, study and experience.
Also, these are not vain discussions that it takes up. First of all, it resolutely attacks the problem of women’s work, that is the deepest layer of misery and immorality.
The eminent economist who chaired the meeting gave cruel statistics, inane in their truth. Can partial measures touch an evil so great, so fundamental, the obvious result of a vicious social order? It does not seem that the assembly has many illusions in this regard.
Yet, they came with their husbands, with their brothers, these workers whose fingers were bruised from the day’s work, to listen, to learn, to seek, with all the strength of their spirit. Some even, if not exactly workers, at least hard-working, wanted to speak too.
Every woman is, by the regulations, favoured on this point at the expense of men, and this is not, as has been said, a gallantry, a sad word which recalls the sad order of things, and which has nothing to do with these noble and serious discussions, it is justice; for woman, so long oppressed, so devoid of forces in the current order, needs to be encouraged in her shyness, in her insufficiency, and must be heard in her own cause.
First of all, the debate began on the terrain of theory, of right itself. It did not leave it. I will report on this debate and summarise these theories. But an incident occurred last Monday which must be reported: the commissioner present at the meeting, and whose attitude during the first sessions had been excellent – I mean null – showed himself yesterday in a different mood, and after repeated observations, ended up prohibiting the reading of a speech.
It was necessary to yield for the sake of the office, for the sake of the seven victims on whose heads punishment was hanging. But this ban, although it was in accordance with the law, greatly offended the assembly.
We are crazy! We cry anachronism when our soldiers prolong the agony of the papacy, and we hold meetings at the pleasure of a commissioner, papal arbiter of which thoughts are permitted or which are not. Let us keep quiet, and agree that the illogic in which we find ourselves is at least logical within itself.
Here are the passages from this speech which aroused the sensitives of the commissioner. It was about women’s rights, which some want to restrict, which other want outright:
“… If we believe in these great principles, let us view them faithfully; let us not limit right. Let us not imitate our adversaries in this, let us not do their work.
“The whole of the history of humanity, preceding the French Revolution, is but the history of various contests, of rival ambitions and of traditional rights, with no other basis than the fact, happy or lethal, of freedom for some, slavery for others. The God of this world was Destiny.
“He was replaced, this blind and deaf fellow, who nevertheless had one merit, that of impartiality, by the God of arbitrariness.”
– it was here that the commissioner’s belief began to be hurt.
“We do not want that one any more, no more than the other; for we now have a new God, Justice, founded upon the unassailable basis of individual human right; a God born very recently, in 89, and whose birthday is tomorrow (July 14); who, according to the habit of newborn Gods, has only a stable or a garret to shelter his head, and whose temple it is a question of building or rather establishing paradise, no longer in the clouds this time; but amongst us on earth.
“Gentlemen, if there were once compromises with Heaven, there are no longer any with Right. It is not a question of worrying about what consequences right can have; it is a question of accepting them with respect and wanting them with confidence. Woman, as a human being, also has the right to repeat these words, already so old and still so beautiful: ‘Nothing that is human is alien to me.’[1]
“Are we afraid of weakening motherhood? We fear the dangers of freedom for the sake of duty. – And where does this distrust come from? Is it really the responsibility of democrats to express this? Is freedom for them no longer the source of great thoughts, of great devotion, the sacred fire, whose flame it is a question of rekindling instead of quenching?
“Will it therefore also be amongst us these ‘wise measures’, these cleaver culinary preparations, which mix so many grammes of despotism with so many scruples of freedom? Is it also amongst us a question of reconciling the irreconcilable, and of associating in oblique phrases the just and the arbitrary, God and the Devil, the false and the true? It is we who distrust free human expansion, the forces of nature and reason!”
– Here, the Commissioner intervened for the second time, claiming that the speaker was not addressing the topic. After some discussion, it continued like this:
“The family is raised in objection. And who is talking about diminishing it? Do we not see that it is precisely through the mother that it is lessened? And that it is through the mother than it must be raised? No, it is not diminishing the family, but cleansing it, to remove from it this maggot of the past, slavery, which is at the heart of the whole current institution. We want to make women a strength instead of a weakness; a citizen instead of a slave; we want to make the child suck the milk of freedom, and found the new family on the level of the new order.
– A new interruption from M. Commissioner. This, he asserted, was still not addressing the topic.
“Should we demonstrate to this assembly that the true strength of a being, its value, its virtue depends on the respect it has for itself? Raising women’s awareness of their freedom and their rights means at the same time to reform morals; to fight her dependence is to fight her misery, by developing her strengths. A free and strong being does not sell itself, it does not betray great interests for the sake of small ones, does not whisper shameful capitulations and has no secret relations with the enemy.
“The whole moralisation of the family and of society is contained in the conversion of woman to the new principles and in her abjuration of the old principles, in which the bitter enemies of progress strive so ardently to keep her. Now, let us not forget, of these new principles, the first word is: freedom; of these old principles, the last word is obedience. It is necessary to choose.”
This time, and in spite of the complaints of the audience who affirmed, unlike M. Commissioner, that all this was indeed within the theoretical subject of the rights of women, it was necessary to forego completing the speech.
Was the pretext false? The reader may judge for themselves. A more naïve interruption was made some time later by M. Commissioner, when the new speaker, a worthy Freemason, uttered the word “Revolutionary”. Immediately rebuked for such a scandalous adjective, the speaker wittily used it to describe economic ideas, alleging that the Revolution and the words derived from it applied to everything at the present time. And now, may the God of arbitrariness take the right of assembly into his worthy and holy care!
André Léo
P.S. In the second of these sessions, a manifesto was read, signed by twenty names of honourable women, who – striving to make the democracy[2], still divided on this point, understand how much freedom and equality, necessary for the dignity and development of the human being, are, therefore necessary to women and through them for the improvement of our morals, securing of our institutions – declare their commitment to claim and assert their rights, and call upon all women and men who share the same convictions to aid them in this work. We will present this manifesto to our readers soon.
A.L.
[1] Publius Terentius Afer (c.195/185–c.159? BC), better known in English as Terence, was an African Roman playwright during the Roman Republic. A slave who was freed by his master, he is famous for the quote “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” (“I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me”) which appeared in his play Heauton Timorumenos. (Translator)
[2] The democracy was a catch-all term for the left in France and referred to all those who sought a democratic republic, including those who aimed at the “social and democratic republic” raised during the 1848 revolution which combined political with economic and social reform. (Translator)