Ο καιρός των καταιγίδων: Η Γαλλική Επανάσταση στη μνήμη των γυναικών

by Marilyn Yalom, Εύη Κλαδούχου (translator)

"Ο καιρός των καταιγίδων" αποκαθιστά στην ιστορία τη φωνή των γυναικών που υπήρξαν μάρτυρες της Γαλλικής Επανάστασης. Αυτές οι γυναίκες μας αφήνουν μιαν ανεκτίμητη κληρονομιά - περίπου ογδόντα αφηγήσεις όσων είδαν και βίωσαν. Από τη δεκαεξασέλιδη μαρτυρία της Χήρας Μπωλ, συζύγου του δεσμοφύλακα της Μαρίας-Αντουανέττας στη διάρκεια της φυλάκισής της, μέχρι τα δεκάτομα απομνημονεύματα της παραγωγικής συγγραφέως Κυρίας Ντε Ζανλί, οι ιστορίες τους περιγράφουν πώς συμμετείχαν, ατομικά και συλλογικά, στο επαναστατικό έπος, καθώς και πώς κατάφεραν μερικές φορές να χειριστούν επιδέξια ένα πολιτικό σύστημα πού ήταν σχεδιασμένο για να τις αποκλείει. Οι συγγραφείς απομνημονευμάτων του "Καιρού των καταιγίδων" περιγράφουν την ενεργό συμμετοχή τους υπέρ της Επανάστασης, στη διάρκεια της πορείας της, ή, συχνότερα, την αντίθεσή τους σε αυτήν.

Η Μαίριλυν Γιάλομ, μετά από πολυετή έρευνά της στις βιβλιοθήκες όλου του κόσμου, εστιάζει σε αυτές τις γυναίκες που έγραψαν τα πιο ξεχωριστά χρονικά: στην γκουβερνάντα των βασιλικών γόνων, στην υπηρέτρια της Μαρίας-Αντουανέττας κατά τις τελευταίες μέρες της, στην αδερφή του Ροβεσπιέρου, Σαρλότ, σε μια χωρική από τη Βαντέ που πολέμησε η ίδια ντυμένη με ανδρικά ρούχα, σε μια μαρκησία που στη διάρκεια της Επανάστασης έφυγε αυτοεξόριστη στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Αμερικής και, βεβαίως, στην Κυρία Ρολάν, ή αυτοβιογραφία της οποίας γοητεύει τους αναγνώστες εδώ και δύο αιώνες.

Αριστοκράτισσες και αστές, φιλοβασιλικές και δημοκρατικές, ακόμη και οι ελάχιστες χωρικές που αφηγήθηκαν τις εμπειρίες τους, συνδέονται όλες μεταξύ τους μ' έναν κοινό εφιάλτη. Οι μαρτυρίες τους επιβεβαιώνουν το κόστος που έχουν στην ανθρώπινη ψυχή οι ριζοσπαστικές κοινωνικές αλλαγές. Τα περισσότερα από αυτά τα κείμενα, γραμμένα με πάθος και οδύνη, ήταν μέχρι πρόσφατα γνωστά μόνο σε έναν περιορισμένο κύκλο ειδικών.

"Το πώς θυμήθηκαν και κατέγραψαν την Επανάσταση οι γυναίκες που έγραψαν απομνημονεύματα, είναι το κεντρικό θέμα τούτου του βιβλίου. Θα εστιάσω στο τι επέλεξαν να θυμηθούν και στο πώς μετέτρεψαν τις αναμνήσεις τους σε απομνημονεύματα. Καθώς αμφιταλαντεύονταν μεταξύ της δημόσιας ιστορίας, που είχε ήδη καταγραφεί από πολλούς άλλους, και της ιδιωτικής ιστορίας, που ανήκε σε καθεμιά τους ατομικά, αυτές οι γυναίκες ύφαναν τον δικό τους ιστό. Όποια κι αν ήταν η αλήθεια σχετικά με τις δραστηριότητές τους στη διάρκεια της Επανάστασης, παρουσιάζουν τον εαυτό τους όπως επιθυμούν να τις θυμούνται οι επόμενες γενιές. Ήταν ο τρόπος τους να διεκδικήσουν μια θέση στο επικό δράμα που ήδη είχε αποσιωπήσει τις κύριες πρωταγωνίστριές του.

"Καθεμία από τις αφηγήσεις γεγονότων στα οποία υπήρξαν αυτόπτες μάρτυρες έχει τις ρίζες της και στη δημόσια και την ιδιωτική ιστορία. Όλα αυτά τα κείμενα, ακόμη και τα πιο ταπεινά ή τα πιο εγωκεντρικά, συνιστούν υβριδικά χρονικά πού παρακολουθούν τη σύγκλιση του προσωπικού με το εθνικό πεπρωμένο. Και σχεδόν όλες οι συγγραφείς αναφέρονται όχι μόνο στην περίοδο από το 1789 ώς το 1795, αλλά και στα επόμενα χρόνια ή δεκαετίες, στη διάρκεια των οποίων αυτές οι γυναίκες εσωτερίκευσαν την Επανάσταση, την αφομοίωσαν στην ταυτότητά τους και την οικειοποιήθηκαν, προκειμένου να δημιουργήσει ή καθεμία τη δική της επαναστατική μυθολογία."

Genres: History, French Revolution, France, Nonfiction, Feminism, Womens, 18th Century

416 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 1993

About the author

Marilyn Yalom grew up in Washington D.C. and was educated at Wellesley College, the Sorbonne, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She has been a professor of French and comparative literature, director of an institute for research on women, a popular speaker on the lecture circuit, and the author of numerous books and articles on literature and women's history.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ordered this book because I wanted to deepen my knowledge of the experience of women during the French Revolution since I teach Olympe de Gouges's *Declaration of the Rights of Woman*. Yalom's book had a super outdated cover (only slightly better than the image you see above) and there were few options in English on this subject to begin with, so I was a bit skeptical. (FYI It seems that they DID publish a new edition after the 90s, but under a different name: *Compelled to Witness*)

AS IT TURNS OUT, this book is incredible--and that is thanks to these women who recorded their experiences during the French Revolution AND to the incredible research and biographical skills of Marilyn Yalom. She definitely writes this book as an academic, but she clearly knew these memoirs SO well that her account of these women is compelling, not dry or stilted. The connections between the events of this book and our current historical moment are unsettling.

I plan to read as much of Yalom's work as I can get my hands on. In the meantime, I leave you with this:

"The women in this book have been my companions for a very long time. I have grown accustomed to their presence in the corners of my mind where they continuously appeal for my attention, and I have come to see myself as a medium for their resurrection...But why, I ask myself, have I chosen to identify with French women who lived two centuries ago, and were predominately elitists? The simplest and truest answer lies in their strength as givers of testimony. I was drawn into their lives by the stories they left behind, eloquent and moving accounts of survival on the cusp of catastrophe."

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a terrific read; the best thing I can say about it is that it will send me to her sources (or at least such as may now have been translated into English, curse my lack of French!). Yalom has assembled every female narrative she could find, and the results are fascinating. We get Madame de Tourzel's memoirs (she was the last governess to Louis Charles and Marie Therese de France) as well as a glimpse at Robespierre's sister. In between are accounts of the Vendee uprising from the female peasant point of view, and the story of Mme. de la Tour du Pin, who not only made the best of emigre life, but actually thrived in upstate New York for several years before reluctantly obeying her husband's desire to return to France.

Incredibly well-documented and researched. I think this is an essential introduction to a long-overlooked segment of the Revolutionary period. I'm off to see what else exists in the field. My hope is that Yalom's 1993 work spurred others to mine what they could.

[Pippa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. It's the most interesting part of history, hearing about individual experience. The only reason I didn't give it five stars was that I'd have liked much longer extracts from the women mentioned... but I realise this is partly because it is so good, and has thoroughly captured my interest!

[Vicki Kondelik · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Blood Sisters, historian Marilyn Yalom tells the story of the French Revolution through the perspective of women’s memoirs. She studied the memoirs of over eighty women, of various ages and social classes, who lived through the French Revolution. In her introductory chapter, Yalom writes about the advantages and disadvantages of memoirs as sources. The great advantage is that they provide an eyewitness account of the time, by people who had met the major figures and experienced the important events. Even the women who lived far from the center of the action write about what life was like at the time.

One major disadvantage of these sources is that many of the memoirs were written long after the events they recount. Memory, of course, is imperfect, especially after so many years, and often accounts of the same events will conflict with each other. Also, many of these memoirs, especially those by poor or working-class women who were illiterate, were dictated to someone or heavily edited. Even women who could write often had their memoirs edited. That means that the editor often intrudes with his (and it almost always was “his”) own perspective, and, in certain cases, we do not know exactly what was written by the author and what was written by the editor. Another problem is that the authors of the memoirs often wrote in order to justify their actions and show themselves in the best light, so they cannot provide a balanced perspective. Some of these memoirs were written only for the author’s family, and were not meant for publication, while others, particularly those by famous women of the time such as Manon Roland or Germaine de Staël, were meant to be published. Many of the memoirs were written under the restored monarchy, so the authors, especially those who had supported the Revolution to some extent, and who were writing for publication, had to be careful what they said, so as not to offend the monarchs.

With these problems in mind, though, the memoirs provide a very important perspective on what life was like during the French Revolution. The women who wrote them came from a great variety of backgrounds, but, even there, certain biases come into play. A great majority of the women who wrote memoirs were from the aristocracy and upper classes, which means most of them opposed the Revolution. As Yalom says, upper-class women were more likely to be literate, so that accounts for the fact that there are relatively few memoirs by working-class women who supported the Revolution. Those that exist were, as mentioned above, dictated to someone else. Many of the women lived in Paris, but there are also important memoirs from women who lived in the provinces, especially the Vendée region of western France, where a bloody civil war was fought between royalist and revolutionary armies. Another important category of memoirs that Yalom uses are those by women who escaped from France and lived in exile. Some of the authors returned to France after the Revolution, and some did not. These authors, with a few important exceptions, were aristocrats or upper-class women.

Since Yalom used over eighty memoirs, of various lengths (one was 10 volumes, some were only a few pages), as her sources, it is impossible for her to cover them all in detail. Fortunately, she provides an excellent annotated bibliography at the end, where she writes about each author and the events the memoir covers. In the main part of the book, she focuses on particular women. First of all, Yalom tells the story of the fall of the monarchy through the perspective of the Duchesse de Tourzel, governess to the royal children. She writes of the royal family’s attempt to flee the country in 1791, and then she tells a horrifying story of the September Massacres of 1792, from which she and her daughter narrowly escaped, with the help of a stranger who, for reasons unknown to the Duchesse de Tourzel, decided to save their lives. The Duchesse saw things in black and white, though: in her eyes, the royal family could do no wrong, and she had nothing good to say about anyone who opposed them. This illustrates the problem with perspective in these memoirs: you see only what the author wants you to see.

The Duchesse de Tourzel was separated from the royal family at the time of the September Massacres, so she did not share their captivity. The story of the royal family’s captivity is told from two very different points of view: first through that of Madame Royale, the only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, and then, in one of the most moving memoirs discussed in the book, through that of Rosalie Lamorlière, a servant in the Conciergerie prison, who attended on Marie-Antoinette in her last days. She gives a very touching account of the queen’s final moments.
The perspective then shifts to someone who thought Marie-Antoinette deserved what she got: Manon Roland, one of the most famous women of the French Revolution. Mme Roland was the wife of a much-older man, Jean-Marie Roland, the minister of the interior, and was a strong supporter of the Revolution until it turned into the Terror. As a young woman, before her marriage, she had wanted to be a novelist, but she decided against it, because women novelists were looked down on at the time. She made a comment to the effect that, if their writing was bad, they were ridiculed, and if their writing was good, people said someone else must have written the novels. Instead, Mme Roland turned her interests to politics. Of course, at that time it was forbidden for women to vote or hold office, so she worked behind the scenes, writing her husband’s letters and speeches. She hosted a salon for the Girondin (moderate revolutionary) deputies to the National Convention and strongly allied herself to them in their conflict with the more radical Jacobins such as Robespierre, Danton, and Marat.

When the Jacobins expelled the Girondins from the National Convention, many of Mme Roland’s friends fled or went to prison, and were eventually guillotined. Mme Roland herself was imprisoned, and wrote her memoirs in prison, hoping that, one day, her reputation would be restored, even though she had no hope of surviving. She wrote about the important figures of the time, as well as her own life. Interestingly, Mme Roland didn’t care much for other women, with a few exceptions, especially Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Marat. She admired Corday for ridding the world of a monster. Another exception was a friend named Sophie Grandchamp, who left her own memoir. When Mme Roland was sent to the guillotine in 1793, she asked Sophie to watch the procession, to give her strength.

Yalom then goes on to write about two women in Robespierre’s circle. First was his sister Charlotte, who kept house for him for many years. Then, when Robespierre was elected to the National Convention, he lodged with the Duplay family in Paris. It has been said that the Duplays’ daughter Éléonore became his mistress, even though no one knows that for certain. Charlotte Robespierre hated the Duplays because they held a place in Robespierre’s affections that she had reserved for herself. This led to a quarrel between the siblings that they never made up. In her memoir, Charlotte deeply regrets this falling-out, and she writes of her brother as if he were a saint. Charlotte lived until the 1830s. Toward the end of her life, a young admirer of Robespierre named Laponneraye came to visit her, to talk about her brother, and this led to her writing the memoir, which Lapponeraye heavily edited. Another memoir that Yalom discusses is by the youngest Duplay sister, Élisabeth, who married Robespierre’s friend Philippe Le Bas, a deputy to the National Convention, who was guillotined with him. Élisabeth writes of her romance with Le Bas, her mother’s opposition because her older sisters were not yet married, their marriage, the birth of their son, and the execution of her husband and Robespierre, when her son was only five weeks old.

Another famous woman of the French revolution Yalom discusses is Germaine de Staël, novelist and society hostess. Her 600-page work is not just a memoir, but also a work of political theory on the causes of the French Revolution, as well as a biography of her father, the Swiss-born finance minister Jacques Necker. As is the case with all the memoirists, de Staël brings her own biases into her work: according to her, her father could do no wrong, and he becomes the hero of her memoir. Necker was very popular with the French people, and his dismissal by Louis XVI was one of the events that led to the fall of the Bastille, even though de Staël probably exaggerates its importance. The only other person besides her father whom de Staël wrote about with unqualified admiration is Lafayette. She admired the American system of government with checks and balances and two legislative chambers instead of the one National Assembly. De Staël wrote of the excitement of the early days of the Revolution, with the meeting the Estates-General, but she became disillusioned with the Revolution as it became increasingly radical. She fled from Paris in 1792, in the midst of the September Massacres, and she writes thrillingly of her escape. She spent the years of the Terror abroad, returning to France in 1795, only to be forced to leave again several years later because of her opposition to Napoleon.

After writing about the famous Mme de Staël, Yalom turns to ordinary women from the provinces, including Marie-Catherine Vallon, the daughter of a royalist notary, who voluntarily shared her father’s imprisonment, and Alexandrine des Écherolles, who experienced one of the worst massacres of the French Revolution, in Lyon. Yalom writes of several women’s experiences of the bloody civil war in the Vendée region. Of particular interest is the memoir of Renée Bordereau, who disguised herself as a man and served as a soldier in the royalist army, fighting in several battles. After the war was over, Bordereau continued to live as a man. She was illiterate, so she dictated her memoir to an editor.

The final section of the book is about women who left France during the Revolution and lived in exile. Most of these women were aristocrats, who had to adapt their lifestyles to changing conditions. When their families’ property was confiscated and they no longer had any money, the women had to work for a living, which was something that, as aristocrats, they had disdained before the Revolution. Many women made a living in exile with their needlework, and some opened shops. One particularly fascinating memoir is by Mme de la Tour du Pin who, after going into hiding in the area near Bordeaux, eventually emigrated, with her husband and children, to upstate New York, where they bought a farm. She embraced the hard work of farming, which several of her fellow aristocratic exiles did not understand. She, as well, as many of the exiles, eventually returned to France when it was safe to do so. It was difficult for the exiles, especially those who had left France at a very young age, to re-adjust to life in France. People who had come to England as children spoke English, and had forgotten their French. Even for people who left as adults, it was hard to return because their way of life had vanished. Besides the aristocrats, Yalom writes of several non-aristocratic exiles: a few actresses as well as the painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who was known for her portraits of Marie-Antoinette and other members of the royal family. Vigée-Lebrun spent her years of exile in Italy, Austria, and Russia at the court of Catherine the Great.
In spite of the wide differences in social and political views among the authors, the memoirs have certain things in common. One of these things is a desire to help loved ones who were imprisoned or in hiding. Very often, the women approached the authorities to plead for their family members, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Many women, of course, witnessed the execution of someone they loved, and they often expressed a desire for revenge. Renée Bordereau, for example, joined the royalist army in the Vendée to avenge the deaths of her family at the hands of the revolutionaries. Often the women who survived the Revolution felt a sense of guilt at having survived when their loved ones died.

Blood Sisters is a wonderful book, which gives an important perspective on the French Revolution. No matter what your opinion on the French Revolution is, or even if you don’t know much about that period, all of the stories Yalom tells are absorbing. She makes you want to read more of these memoirs. Most of them, of course, are in French and have not been translated into English, with the exception of those by prominent women such as Mme Roland, Mme de Staël, and Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Even then, some of them are only available in an abridged translation (Mme de la Tour du Pin’s memoir, for example). The book is aimed at a scholarly audience, but reads very well, without academic jargon. Blood Sisters was later reissued, with no additional material, under the title Compelled to Witness. Sadly, Marilyn Yalom died in 2019.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d first like to thank ‘Blood Sisters’ for distracting me from feeling like crap today. It is a fascinating, well-written, and thoughtful synthesis of women’s memoirs that survive from the time of the French Revolution. The women writing range from the royal children’s final governess to a peasant woman who crossdressed to fight in the Vendée civil war, via Robespierre’s sister and Germaine de Staël, the famous woman of letters. Yalom summarises and extracts from these memoirs to present the variety of women’s experience during the revolution, in their own words. This is especially useful as the eighty or so accounts include many that are obscure and/or largely forgotten. Although famous figures are included, the unknown (to me) women also provide powerful and illuminating perspectives.

Yalom’s analysis includes interesting commentary on the attitudes and roles women were allowed and expected to play during the time of the revolution. Many of the memoirists display incredible courage, intelligence, resourcefulness, and strength, but are nearly always limited to the domestic sphere. Admittedly, that sphere expanded in some ways during the revolution, to include pleading for the lives of relatives, protesting against high bread prices, and supporting soldiers fighting in the civil war. Despite this, women were generally cast as protectors, carers, and peacemakers. Women were considered ‘passive citizens’, not entitled to political rights. Some, such as Olympe de Gouges and Théroigne de Méricourt, sought to break out of this and suffered severely for it (de Gouges was guillotined and de Méricourt locked in a mental institution). One of the most politically powerful women of the time, Germaine de Staël, seems to have been ambivalent about her own role. Yalom notes the popularity of Rousseau’s views on women as belonging securely in the home; de Staël greatly esteemed Rousseau yet was surely frustrated by the limitations placed on her intelligence and political acumen by lesser minds who happened to be male.

That reminds me, I must look for de Staël’s Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution, in which she combines historical analysis with personal recollections. I’ve been meaning to read it for ages. 'Blood Sisters' also complements City of Darkness, City of Light, a novel of the French Revolution with particularly strong female viewpoints.

[Anna Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://invitinghistorybookreviews.blo...

Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory by Marilyn Yalom is an exploration of the memoirs of women from a variety of social positions who, in some way, were affected by the French Revolution. These women range from female soldiers to the wives of prominent revolutionary figures to the only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The memoirs encompass a range of different experiences during the revolution as well as range of different "memories" of these events which are colored by the context the time period the memoirs were written in and the own personal ideals of the writer. In the book, Yalom not only explores the importance of historical context when reading these memoirs (a book written by a royalist during the Bourbon Restoration will naturally be colored by that context) but argues that the primary drive behind these memoirs - and indeed, many memoirs before and since the 18th and 19th centuries - is to bear witness to events which uprooted the country and resulted in the deaths of family, friends and countless others.

Blood Sisters excels in several ways. Yalom is clearly invested in this subject and her passion for these women and their writing shines in a narrative that is clear, engaging and incredibly hard to put down. The book also benefits because Yalom has chosen to engage the reader in these memoirs not only from a narrative point of view - explaining what happened to the women and what they wrote - but also from a critical point of view, exploring how these women wrote about what happened to them. Memory and personal conviction can have a great effect on what we write about our lives later in life, something Yalom doesn't hesitate to explore.

The one downside to this book is that I personally wish it was longer! As a side note, Yalom does provide an extensive list of memoirs written by women who were affected by the French Revolution, although this list only contains the French editions of these memoirs.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in women's memoirs, the study of women's history, or the French Revolution.

[Meredith Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory by Marilyn Yalom

This is a book I learned about while reviewing Hilton Obenzinger's book Why We Write (Issue # 183). Yalom was one of his interviewees, and her study of women's views of the French Revolution is build around old memoirs and letters. She has passages from Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun's memoir, which I also reviewed last issue (Vigée-Lebrun right). Yalom's book includes a majority of aristocratic writers or admirers of the aristocracy, but also Madame Roland, a Republican who wrote a lot of her husband's material and died on the guillotine during the Terror.
Among the aristocrats, Madame Tour de la Pin has a particularly striking story. She was young and energetic and fled with her husband to various European countries and America during the revolution. They farmed and made a popular hard cider. So she was aristocratic but not afraid of work. There is also a conservative peasant French Revolution womenwoman who was a soldier of the Vendée. No one fits neatly in a box. My only caveat, and it is one that Yalom is very aware of herself, is that there is very little to represent the truly poor (and most likely illiterate) women who supported the Revolution.
So one has to make do with the endlessly entertaining Liberal and enemy of NapoleonGermaine de Stael, Madame de Staël (right). Unlike most of the writers here, she was a theorist even more than a recorder of her own experience, although she gets that into her writings too. She was one of the richest women in Europe and always worth reading for her sharp observations and her quasi-feminism-- or at least De Staëlism.
Yalom has great notes and a bibliography, of course, and is also good on the position of women in the eighteenth century, all classes. The work began as a scholarly piece, but is very readable, with excellent images and choice quotations from the various memoirs and letters and journals.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting feminist reading of women's memoirs in the time of the French Revolution, a historical event which marks a breakthrough for female authorship, as for the first time in French history so many women decided to publicize their personal experience. A good collection that includes accounts by high ranking aristocrats, republican middle class women (like Mme Roland and Robespierre's sister) to women from the countryside and even women who fought in the counter-revolutionary movement disguised as men! Fascinating stuff!

[Terence Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very fine book, soon to be re-published as an e-edition by Red Room Press. If you are interested in The French Revolution, this is a unique look at that remarkable event from the points of view of many women who witnessed it and were able to write down their observations about it. Five-star rating.

[Susan Waller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting writings from women on both sides of the French Revolution. I would have liked more of the actual writings of the women; most of the book was devoted to the author introducing the women and explaining their experiences.

[Josie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in a more academic voice, brilliantly researched, full of absolutely incredible stories.

[Janis Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can you say about a collection of excerpted memoirs, written by women who experienced the upheaval accompanying the revolution in France? A great read for sure. The commentary by the editor was helpful, too.