Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution

by Sara E. Melzer (Editor), Leslie W. Rabine (Editor)

Overview

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the important and paradoxical relation between women and the French Revolution. Although the male leaders of the Revolution depended on the women's active militant participation, they denied to women the rights they helped to establish. At the same time that women were banned from the political sphere, "woman" was transformed into an allegorical figure which became the very symbol of (masculine) Liberty and Equality. This volume analyzes how the revolutionary process constructed a new gender system at the foundation of modern liberal culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190281809
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/21/1992
Series:	University of California Humanities Research Institute Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

University of California, Los Angeles

University of California, Irvine

Editorial Reviews

"Even in the context of a course that is not devoted exclusively to the Revolutionary Era, this anthology would be useful because of the range of perspectives on women that is offered."—Jenene J. Allison, University of Texas at Austin

"A wide ranging set of essays for anyone interested in the impact of the French Revolution on women and their lives."—Barbara B. Davis, Antioch College

"This volume could be quite usefully assigned to advance undergraduates and graduate students."—The Historian

"Provides a fascinating look at the French Revolution from the perspective of a group of distinguished feminist literary critics, historians, and political theorists....Rebel Daughters, in short, is a rich and compelling source of information on women and the French Revolution. There is something important to be learned and understood in each and every one of its essays. Anyone interested in women's history, the history of the French Revolution, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, feminist theory and politics, and cultural studies should have this volume on her bookshelf."—Eighteenth-Century Studies

"Instructive and stimulating for anyone doing historical work."—European Romantic Review

"[An] excellent collection....So much has been written in recent years on the symbolic meanings of femininity before and during the Revolution that one turns with some relief to the set of essays which deal with the actions and writings of real women during the upheaval....Rebel Daughters stands out among collective volumes for the high quality and overall coherence among its essays."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History

From the Publisher