In 1989, at the University of Toronto, Olwen H. Hufton gave a lecture series as part of the Creighton Lecture series, given in memory of Canadian historian Donald Creighton. Hufton later published these lectures as Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution. Prior to her shift towards women’s history in the 1980s, Hufton was primarily interested in poverty and social relations; her previous books focused on social history and political history, one of which attempted to place the French Revolution in a broader historical context. Partially in response to the plethora of publications that emphasize specific experiences of women and attempt to generate a generic or theoretical profile of the experiences of revolutionary women,
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She notes that historians have previously marginalized women’s involvement in the Revolution; for example, Rudé dismissed women’s involvement as only concerned with food. The rendering of events that Hufton herself encountered as a child in the 1950s was that of the Victorians, who preferred to believe that the October Days’ participants were transvestites, thus retaining woman’s image as an apolitical creature. In addition, Hufton speculates that women manipulated men’s perceptions of them in order to accomplish their goals; she proposes that women intentionally excluded men from the October Days demonstrations because they “were intent on a particular kind of demonstration which the men might have ruined” (14). In an attempt to present a more inclusive picture of women in the revolution, Hufton deemphasizes the women’s clubs and intellectual writers such as Olympe de Gouges because they limitedly impacted the majority of women. Hufton also suggests that because they diligently fought against the internal enemy to defend popular sovereignty, politicians feared women and pushed them back into the confines of their …show more content…
Hufton highlights the neglect that historians have demonstrated towards the peasant woman and argues for her importance, saying that when increasing demands of the Revolution disillusioned the populace, “women entered the public arena to push it back and won” (130). The peasant woman continued to hold onto Catholicism: she continued to practice her religion and she was hostile towards ‘intruder’ priests and reform movements, voiding the Directory’s attempts to replace religious
She notes that historians have previously marginalized women’s involvement in the Revolution; for example, Rudé dismissed women’s involvement as only concerned with food. The rendering of events that Hufton herself encountered as a child in the 1950s was that of the Victorians, who preferred to believe that the October Days’ participants were transvestites, thus retaining woman’s image as an apolitical creature. In addition, Hufton speculates that women manipulated men’s perceptions of them in order to accomplish their goals; she proposes that women intentionally excluded men from the October Days demonstrations because they “were intent on a particular kind of demonstration which the men might have ruined” (14). In an attempt to present a more inclusive picture of women in the revolution, Hufton deemphasizes the women’s clubs and intellectual writers such as Olympe de Gouges because they limitedly impacted the majority of women. Hufton also suggests that because they diligently fought against the internal enemy to defend popular sovereignty, politicians feared women and pushed them back into the confines of their …show more content…
Hufton highlights the neglect that historians have demonstrated towards the peasant woman and argues for her importance, saying that when increasing demands of the Revolution disillusioned the populace, “women entered the public arena to push it back and won” (130). The peasant woman continued to hold onto Catholicism: she continued to practice her religion and she was hostile towards ‘intruder’ priests and reform movements, voiding the Directory’s attempts to replace religious