Liberty: Women and the French Revolution
By Lucy Moore
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About this ebook
The ideals of the French Revolution inflamed a longing for liberty and equality within courageous, freethinking women of the era—women who played vital roles in the momentous events that reshaped their nation and the world. In Liberty, Lucy Moore paints a vivid portrait of six extraordinary Frenchwomen from vastly different social and economic backgrounds who helped stoke the fervor and idealism of those years, and who risked everything to make their mark on history.
Germaine de Staël was a wealthy, passionate Parisian intellectual—as consumed by love affairs as she was by politics—who helped write the 1791 Constitution. Théroigne de Méricourt was an unhappy courtesan who fell in love with revolutionary ideals. Exuberant, decadent Thérésia Tallien was a ruthless manipulator instrumental in engineering Robespierre's downfall. Their stories and others provide a fascinating new perspective on one of history's most turbulent epochs.
Lucy Moore
Lucy Moore was born in 1970 and read history at Edinburgh University. She is the author and editor of many books including the critically acclaimed 'Maharanis' which has been reprinted six times, was an Evening Standard best-seller, and the top selling non-fiction title in WHSmith on paperback publication. Lucy was voted one of the 'top twenty young writers in Britain' by the Independent on Sunday and in The New Statesman's "Best of Young British" issue.
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Reviews for Liberty
27 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read this close after Marge Piercy's fictional account of women during the French Revolution, 'City of Darkness', and I now have a new-found appreciation of Piercy's ability to portray women such as Pauline Leon and Clare Lacombe in a sympathetic light! Leon, Lacombe and Theroigne de Mericourt were three working-class women who enthusiastically suported the Revolution in a bid to escape the poverty and confines of their lives; in contrast, Germaine de Stael, Theresia Cabarrus (later Tallien) and Juliette Recamier were beautiful and clever mascots of the new republican era, leading society and fashion from their salons and through their lovers.What I found most interesting is that, even in the midst of chaos, women were still kept firmly 'in their place' - the home; intelligent women could have their say, and even exert a degree of influence, but only as represented by a husband or impressionable lover. Germaine de Stael, though maintaining in her journal that she did not interfere with her husband's business, was the brains of the marriage; and Theresia Tallien persuaded her lover to aid in the escape of many of her royalist friends, despite the fact that when she met him, he had been sent to Bordeaux from Paris to 'purge' the area of counter-revolutionaries! The revolutionary zeal of powerless women like Pauline and Theroigne was tolerated until their behaviour became a threat to the men in power, and then their fellow citizens turned against them. 'Fraternity' was to be taken literally during the French Revolution, and women instructed to support the Republic by caring for their families, not by toting pistols and speaking out in public!I warmed to the eloquence and perseverance of Germaine, the noble spirit and wiles of Theresia, and the youth and beauty of Juliette (really more a celebrity of the Directory than the Revolution), but I will admit that Pauline and the other more outspoken women did come across as rather overbearing - though it is hard to comprehend their situations from a modern perspective.Detailed, engaging and generous biographies from Moore - recommended.
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