How were liberty and equality for women to be defined?
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Answer:
Marie Antoinette famously asked the French poor to “eat cake” if bread was not available. Social disparities leading to a famine caused by rising bread prices, had hit the poor poorly. On 5th October 1789 women, unable to feed their families and outraged by the chronic shortage of bread, converged in the market place of Paris in a riotous mood. One young woman struck a drum and forced a nearby church to toll its bells for the crowd to gather. As it swelled nearly ten thousand women marched towards Versailles Palace —looting the armoury on their way. Armed with cannons and spears, they broke the heavily fortified palace gates that men had been, until then, unable to breach to place their demands to the King. It took them six hours to travel twenty-one miles from Paris to Versailles and less than twenty four hours to set the momentum for change. This was the defining moment of the French revolution that gave the Republic its constitution based on “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite”. This was also the beginning of modern day feminist movement based on the same ethos of liberty, equality and fraternity that fanned out to the world.
The demand for social and political reform was pushed forward by the modern day feminists of Paris through their bold March to Versailles. Threatened by women's power and ability to bring tumultuous change, French men, crushed the feminist movement of the post revolution days; organised women's groups were banned. Women were denied the rights of active citizenship and relegated to their 'natural roles'—to stay home and tend to the family. Earlier, during the “enlightenment” years in the 1750s, when the French needed women to support their cause, Louis de Jaucourt wrote, "it would be difficult to demonstrate that the husband's rule comes from nature, in as much as this principle is contrary to natural human equality . . . a man does not invariably have more strength of body, of wisdom, of mind or of conduct than a woman . . . women can succeed equally . . .”
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