History of European Ideas, Vol. IO, No. 3, pp.

333-351, 1989
Printed in Great Britam
0191-6599/89 $3.00 + 0.00
Q 1989 Pergamon Press pk.
FEMINIST REPUBLICANISM. ETTA PALM-AELDERS
ON JUSTICE, VIRTUE AND MEN
JUDITH VEGA*
One of the best known contributors to and even founders of early feminism dur-
ing the French Revolution is a Dutch woman. Living on her own in Paris since
1773 and financially well-off due to gifts and her own labour, Etta Palm-Aelders
has been noted by historians. She is mentioned conscientiously in studies of femi-
nism as well as of general Dutch politics or diplomacy during the democratic
revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century.2 Meanwhile, the few
interpretations of her convictions and way of life are highly anachronistic.
Except for an adventurous life and several energetic actions in the field of
womens rights, little seems to be known about her.
It is my purpose to make available the known information on her life history. I
also want to write a biography that aims to establish a more integrated
knowledge of her attitudes towards sexual as well as state politics.3
In the twentieth century two biographies were published by Dutch historians,
in addition to some shorter references by historians. These two reconstructions
of her life, character and opinions still are the only ones available. They are rather
diverse in extensiveness and thoroughness, but even more tiresome to evaluation
are their diverging contents. Nevertheless, both are instructive on the object of
study, perhaps most of all because of their diverging interpretations. The titles of
the studies are most revealing: the study published in 1929 is titledEttaPaIm. The
Netherlands' FirstFeminist, the one that followed in 1962 was namedEttaPalm. A
Dutch Parisienne.4
Even without the traditional desire for a clear picture these titles offer a
troubling one. The epithets suggest rather competing images: from one of them
emerges a serious feminist and from the other a political intriguante who uses
lovers to collect information and who plays around a bit, morally as well as
politically. They leave us badly guided in the complex field of historically
changing meanings of female virtue and female vice and of the equally changing
acceptance of feminism as a political discourse in its own right.
The first biographical study, by W.J. Koppius, is much more dedicated to a
serious consideration of her feminist attitude and opinions than the study of the
sixties. This one, by H. Hardenberg, more amply treats her political role as a
diplomat for the Dutch government. Given Hardenbergs more thorough
research this study could have been more extensive. The biographies live up to
the images suggested by the ominous titles. The authors respective attitudes
towards Ettas later cause, richly colour the scarce historical evidence on her
youth.
*Department of Social Philosophy, University of Groningen, Westersingel19,97 18 CA
Groningen, The Netherlands.
333
334 Judith Vega
In an attempt to make intelligible the scattered views on Etta Aelders, I want to
combine the rather outdated but useful biographical reconstructions with a
rereading of her own work, using insights from the modern feminist history of
ideas of the late eighteenth century. Because she was as much a part of Dutch
history as of French history, I also want to add the perspective of Dutch political
history to understand her political convictions and her personal biography. The
lack of this perspective has been partly responsible for the rather contradictory
judgements on her personality.
Etta Lubina Johanna Aelders was born April 1743 in Groningen. Her father,
Johan Aelders, owned a papermill and ran the local pawnshop. Her mother,
Agatha Pieternella de Sitter, took over the management of the pawnshop after
his death in 1749 under protest from her family, who did not think it an
appropriate occupation, her being of higher social standing than her husband.
The De Sitter family is politically characterised as having strong Orangist
sympathies and interests, Both authors take it for granted that Etta has been an
active little girl, quick of mind. Because her father died when she was a six-year-
old girl, the role of her mother is thought important. Koppius describes the
mother rather sympathetically. The mothers father had been a merchant in silk
cloth and the woman inherited his sense of business. Agatha de Sitter was a
strong, independent woman who had repeated setbacks in business matters,
perhaps due to prevailing antisemitism for she was in partnership with a Jew.
Typically, Hardenbergs less charitable description runs that she faced
bankruptcy because she had repeated quarrels with business partners as well as
with the customers of the pawnshop and therefore the city council deprived her of
the management.
Her mother gave Etta a good education including French lessons. Possibly
Etta even knew some English and Italian. Though disagreeing on the matter of
her physical beauty (Koppius being much more positive than Hardenberg), both
authors characterise Etta as a frivolous coquette in her teens. She had several
admirers and proposals of marriage; according to Koppius one admirer was a
married man, according to Hardenberg she was popular with the students in
Groningen. In 1762 she married a student in the humanities, Christiaan
Ferdinand Lodewijk Palm. The marriage did not last long. Etta is said to have
been unfaithful and Palm divorced her, set off for the Dutch colony in the East
and left Etta pregnant. In 1763 a daughter was born and named after Palms
mother but died within months. This event did not get her to repent,
Hardenberg sadly states.
Anyway, from then on Ettas already unconventional ways proceeded into a
truly adventurous life. She met a young lawyer, Jan Munniksj He is described as
having had an unresponsible and weak character and a bad moral reputation and
as having forced a divorce upon his wife by treating her very badly. In 1768
Munniks was appointed as consul in Messina and Etta left with him for Italy. The
historians are not clear on whether Etta ever reached Italy. According to
Koppius, Munniks left her during the trip, indifferent to her illness. He found the
post in Sicily disappointing and returned to Holland. According to Hardenberg,
the spoiled, greedy and lighthearted Etta was not satisfied with Munniks
revenues and returned with him to Holland. In Brussels, however, she met a new
admirer, a military man with close contacts with the Dutch court.
Feminist Rep~~~~ca~ism
335
Using her new contacts,, she left for Paris in 1773, with letters of
recommendation to Diderot and DAlembert and settled in worldly Paris. In a
short time, Etta was secured of a rather large income by powerful friends,
consisting of the profits on shares on military necessities (gunpowder and
saltpetre). She lived in a luxurious dwelling. Her house functioned as a salon for
young intellectuals.
In 1778 her diplomatic activities began. They would continue till 1792. In the
course of events, she developed a lively correspondence with the Dutch Grand
Pensionary Van de Spiegel and the French minister Lebrun, among others. Part
of the correspondence has been preserved.7 It is possible she also did some work
for the Prussian government.* Despite deficient evidence, Hardenberg assumes
that her road to diplomatic success was paved with several intimate affairs with
men. He could very well be right, though his insinuating tone does not strengthen
his argument.
She was regularly praised on the quality of her work and got well-paid for it.
Though in the course of events there are signs of embarrassment from Van de
Spiegel on account of her behaviour and growing democratic radicalism, he was
taking her very seriously as his correspondent. In a long letter dated January 18,
1790 he expounded to her his views on the motives of Dutch politics and on the
principles of the Dutch constitution.
The correspondence mentions that she wrote two books concerning
constitutional and historical subjects. The first one will have been her pamphlet
against Mirabeau. The second one has as yet not been found; perhaps it was not
printed.9 We know she also wrote a third publication on a separate subject: a
collection of her lectures on the position of women, published July 1791.i
By 1790, when her feminist activities took a start, she was an already well
known political figure. From the beginnings of the French Revolution in 1789
she furthermore was a loyal defender of its cause. Among her acquaintances
were, for example, Robespierre and Condorcet.
Before discussing Etta Aelderss early-feminist ideas I will first enumerate the
known facts of her political career which she pursued in actions, words and with
the pen.
She had her first assignment when she was asked by first minister De Maurepas
to make inquiries into the public mood in the Dutch Republic about the English-
American war. France was interested in winning Dutch support for its pact with
America as announced to England in 1778. From then on she was involved in
various activities relating to state affairs. Thanks to her influence on De
Maurepas she also had contacts with Goltz, the Prussian envoy in Paris.
She personally contributed to the averting of a conspiracy in 1784 against Van
Brunswijk, the personal counselor of the stadholder.
In 1787 the arrest by revolting patriots of the wife of the stadholder, the Prussian
Princess Wilhelmina, led to the intervention of the Prussian army. The defeat of
the patriot party followed and some 6000 patriots fled to France. Confronted
with the possibility that a civil war would deliver the Netherlands to foreign
powers and threaten its autonomy, Etta mediated on her own initiative and
succeeded in stopping France from intervening in the conflict as planned by
minister Breteuil in 1787.
336
Judith Vega
In 1790 she succeeded in reassuring the French gov~rnmeRt with respect to
stories in the press about involvement of the Dutch government in a counter-
revolutiona~ plot in France. A Dutch general, Maillebois, played a pro~ni~~ent
role in the scheme.?.
She violently opposed Dutch patriotic pamphlets spread in Paris. She
defended the Dutch constitution several times against attacks from Dutch
patriots in the French press, sometimes on her own initiative, sometimes on
request from Van de Spiegel. In 1788 she wrote her pamflet against Mirabeaui-? in
which she firmly defended the historical institution of the stadhofder against his
attacks on it.
Later on these actions would be the ground for personal attacks, and not just
by the hostile journalist Cerisier of the Gazette ~~jve~~e~le. In a discourse for the
Socittt fraternelle on 12 June 1791, she felt compelled to take a stand against
the accusations of disloyalty to the revolutionary cause by Louise Robert-
Keralio, wife of the president of the Soci& fraternelle des patriottes de lun et
lautre sexe, who tried to prevent Etta Aelderss membership.i4 She was also
confronted with Dutch patriots who tried ta make her appear suspicious in the
French press.ls
In December 1789 however, in her enthusiasm for the French revolution, she
urged her correspondent Van de Spiegei to make reforms in the Dutch
Constitution in order to give the people more in~uen~e.~6
From then on her politicai sympathy for the revoiutionaries was not kept
secret. She became an active member of the SociCtt des Amis de la Verite that
issued from the Cercle Social. Her revolutionary sympathies were also
expressed in her correspondence with Van de Spiegel.
A number of historians describe Ettas work for both the Dutch government
and the French Revolution as politically ambiguous. They agree that there was a
swift and whimsical development in her political thinking. The reproach made to
her by Cerisier that she favoured monarchy in the Netherlands and the republic in
France, has in fact assumed the status of a historiographic interpretation in the
work of her twentieth-century biographer Hardenberg and of other historians. I
want to contend that this interpretation is caused partly by a debatable view of
Dutch political controversy at the time and partly by thed~cul~ of acomparative
history ofei~hteenth century revolutions, in this case in France and Holland. The
accusation that Etta Aelders suffered from political schizophrenia or intelIe~t~a1
feebleness can be refuted on the basis of her own texts. Her correspondence is
an especially instructive source for contemporary eighteenth century views on
the political power relations in Holland and the political position of the Dutch
refugees in France.
A biographical sketch that ignores her involvement in Dutch politics would
forfeit valuable information in two respects. In the first place, it would miss an
opportunity to contribute to the historiographic debate about Dutch political
controversy of the time, in which the issue of the possibility of combining the
potiticaf idiom of democratic rights and peoples sovereignty with sympathy for
the position of the stadholder has become central. In the second place, it would
miss out on a further understanding of the several ways in which feminism cauid
associate with other political positions. Ettas points of view may, for example,
remind us of the well known combination of feminism and monarchism of
Feminist Republicanism 337
Olympe de Gouges but, being an active member of several revolutionary clubs,
she does not present a Dutch version of non-leftist or autonomous feminism.i8
Her activities do show that Etta Aelders in her political views combines loyal
adherence to the House of Orange with democratic republican ideals and
feminist zeal. This assumed inconsistency of views must, however, be revalued as
consistency after having paid some attention to the structure of Dutch political
debate at the time.
For a long time Dutch historiography viewed the political conflict of the
period 1780-1800 as a continuation of the old sixteenth century conflict on the
status of the stadhouder. More recent stories have disproved this consensus by
asserting a central conflict between democracy and aristocracy, not between
stadholder and aristocratic patriots. I9 This implied a recognition of the
development in the Dutch Republic of new ideas on rights and of the gradual
replacement of the old conception of rights by a modern idea of rights. A
political landscape emerged with on the one side a party of regents fighting the
stadholder but holding on to feudal rights and on the other side genuine
democrats, striving towards a democratic monarchy and the only party to defend
the modern conception of rights.
After the first revolution in 1787 that led to the exile of several revolutionaries,
the restoration of the position of the stadholder and the converting of several of
the regents again to the Orangist party, we find in fact four social groups:
democrats and aristocrats both in France and in the Dutch Republic. Orangist
regents had achieved a temporary victory over their anti-Orangist counterparts.
After the French intervention in 1795 the stadholder fled and anti-Orangist
regents temporarily allied with democrats took over, to separate again in 1801 in
favour of a coalition of regents. It is in 1795, at the proclamation of the Batavian
Republic, that Etta Aelders, having lived in Holland again for two years, is
arrested for being an Orangist.
Aelders political position is very much part of the complicated Dutch political
setting. When we consider her earliest actions there is no convincing sign
whatsoever of aristocratic or anti-democratic sympathies, only of loyalty to the
stadholder. Her very first assignment was related to the French-American
cooperation-pact and can be considered as evidence of her interest in the
American revolutionary principles.
Her attack on Mirabeau could be considered as expressing anti-democratic
ideas. She does severely attack the patriot revolutionaries of 1787 and reproaches
them for disturbing the order, lacking plans for reform and of displaying a
senseless revolutionary zeal for liberty. It certainly is an Orangist pamphlet: in
passing she ridicules the patriots for having feared the activities of the female
Orangist Kaatje Mossel. Still, in this pamphlet the central object for attacking the
revolt is not some ideology of equality but its anti-Orangism and her answer is
relegating the political responsibility to the Estates General. She attacks
Mirabeau for neglecting the role of the Estates General in the disorderly
government politics he had blamed on the stadholder and for describing the
Republic as allowing herself to become a tool of a female wrath-that is of the
Princess Wilhelmina, wife of the stadholder.20
She is very clear on the grounds for her dislike of the Dutch patriots in Paris.
According to her own analysis most of them were aristocrat patriots, regenten
338 J udith Vega
who fought the monarchical position of the stadholder.2 Writing on 24 May
1790 to Van de Spiegel about the attempts of Dutch patriots in Paris to make her
politically suspicious, she contends firmly: il me serait tgal si un papier
aristocrate me dtnigre. She sends a letter to the editor of Revolutions de Paris,
Loustelot, to correct his views on the Dutch situation and the patriot refugees.
The intention of the discontented
was not to establish in Holland a popular government, but to overturn the
stadholdership, demolish the provincial statutes made by the people in 1747 in
order to curb the most unbearable of all tyrannies that is the aristocratic senate and
thus to govern the Republic by way of an intrigue in their service.22
Loustelot accepts her point of view gratefully. She sends a copy of her letter to
Van de Spiegel along with a copy of an article by Marat. While her accompanying
comment to Van de Spiegel runs that it is clear that someone more hot-headed
and less able than herself has written the article, it supports her own views. Also
directed against Loustelots views in Rtvolutions de Paris it amply defends the
view that not the stadholder should be considered the real despot.
(T)his party is composed of nothing but the genuine Dutch aristocracy, aldermen,
mayors, (. .) that is to say, the whole of the heridetary magistrates always from
powerful families (. . .) The people has always been attached to the House of Orange
(. .) The so called patriots are the real aristocrats, the masters of the Republic, the
suppressors of the state. . . 23
Her general political standpoint is repeated in some of her writings on feminism,
read to the Amis de la Vtritit.
Ettas position can only be made intelligible by accepting that the course of
events suggests a distinction between revolutionaries simply fighting monarchy
and others fighting old European feudal right. The way she viewed Dutch politics
offers an interesting and new confirmation of the historiographic position that
makes aristocracy instead of the House of Orange the focus of a democratic-
patriot opposition.
It nevertheless is plausible that the French revolution functioned to sort out
her political ideas that had been fragmented or articulated without clear political
references in the confused Dutch context. In her political correspondence she
seems to be insecure herself of the content of her persisting nationalism and the
role of the stadholder, expressing on the one hand her loyalty to the stadholder
and her admiration for his wife and on the other hand urging Van de Spiegel to
give her clearer information on the Dutch constitutional principles. She
furthermore allows herself, as late as 1791, to admit that she has not become
overnight the unwavering, purposive revolutionary she is by then paid tribute
for.
I confess meanwhile, gentlemen, that the prejudices with which I was surrounded
have often struggled in my heart with the pure and true principles your honored
legislators have developed with such energy and success.24
Anyway there is no evidence of a sudden turning point in convictions and her
own words that,
Feminist Republicanism 339
born and raised in a republic that for eighty years fought to establish the principles
of liberty and equality, these principles are rooted in my heart anddo not date from
the time of the revolution and are not dependent on circumstances.25
are not to be discounted.
Aelders statements of her political views show that they stem from the ideas of
the Enlightenment on equal rights and citizenship-and not from the
conservative ideas of society as structured by tradition, privilege and hierarchy.
Then again, while this may position her more accurately within contemporary
discourse, it is not meant to simplify existing political idiom. The Dutch
situation, in which arguments stemming from Enlightenment traditions did not
belong to one or the other political faction in the clear cut manner which was
typical elsewhere has to be taken into account. Political conflict was often a
struggle about the true meaning of concepts (such as popular sovereignty,
representation, tradition) used by both sides of the political spectrum.26 This
circumstance is surely responsible for the specific entanglement of Etta Aelderss
political notions and indeed complicated her survival in the context of both the
French and the Batavian revolution.
It is furthermore interesting to consider whether the conservatism to which she
clung in regard to the historical position of the stadholder did not allow more
space for political identification for a women of her background and ambition,
than did anti-Orangist patriotism. Her politics ought to provoke research on this
point, instead of depreciation.
I want to proceed by taking a closer look at her feminism.
Establishing relations between Enlightenment political theory and eighteenth
century early-feminist theory is a complex matter. It has been ascertained by
several feminist historians studying the eighteenth century democratic
revolutions in Western Europe and America, that the development of ideas on
gender-equality draws on diverging Enlightenment philosophies of citizenship:
natural rights theories and several traditions of interpretations of the notion of
civic virtue. The dominant line of thought emerging from these studies is that
neither the natural rights principle nor the republican image of public virtue
were able to serve the feminist cause in an umediated way.
The fact that the public and private realms of the modern state were gendered
over the short term is thought to be due both to male opposition to full female
participation in public life and to active female acceptance and promotion of a
female domestic sphere. The studies of Linda Kerber and Jane Rendall contend
that feminists applied republican values to the domestic sphere, actively
constructing a separate domestic sphere of republican motherhood in which the
role of women was defined as a positive contribution to public and social life.27
In a recent article Ruth Bloch sketched the Christian and classic republican
backgrounds of the meanings of virtue and the way in which private and public
meanings of virtue and their associations with masculinity and femininity
developed during the revolutionary era in America. The ancient classic
connotations with masculine public virtue as military courage and civic glory
were slowly displaced by protestant, Scottish and sentimentalist meanings of
virtue applied to a social and domestic instead of a political realm. In the course
of the revolutionary period the institutional base for the promotion of virtue and
340 Judith Vega
civic fulfilment became not the state but families, schools and churches. The
political realm became governed by the development of more instrumentalist
theories of government. Virtue was, in short, relegated to women. This feminised
and socialised or domesticated virtue lost its political meaning in the theory of
government to a masculine utilitarianism.28
Blochs findings can be taken to complement the assumption of J.G.A. Pocock
that the eighteenth century turn towards ideals of politeness, constituting a moral
instead of political theory of society, could have meant an opening towards self-
assertments of women.2g The culture of politeness may have opened up social
intercourse to women, but ensuing political assertions by women were not at all
implied.
It is interesting to see whether Etta Aelders fits this general picture of early
feminism during the democratic revolutions.
Her feminism presents another case where inclinations uncomfortable with
each other try to converge. Barbara Pope has construed within the feminism of
the French revolution a struggle between sociability and republican motherhood,
describing it as a struggle between social classes.30 The combination of Etta
Palms biography and her feminist pamphlets does not follow the social analysis
of this picture. Though she earned her living independently and partly by her own
labour she certainly was no working-class woman. Neither do the accounts of
her youth testify to an elite background. She is perhaps best characterised as a
bourgeoise, wandering through social stratification with relative ease. But the
tension noted by Pope does figure in Aelderss feminist attitudes.
The conceptual struggle between eighteenth century sociability and republi-
canism was re-enacted as a struggle within her own life and within her written
work. When polite culture functioned as a public ideal for women, it did so in a
natural state of animosity with the classic-republican public ideal. Its
simultaneous association with aristocracy and femininity defied the classic-
republican aversion to female public roles and the supposed female inclination to
luxury and corruption. An aversion echoed in Rousseaus critique of salon-life as
cultivated unnaturalness and in the Christian celebration of sober domesticity.
Having lived herself according to the requirements of sociability and apt in the
more public virtues of wit, generosity, magnanimity, grace and taste,3 Etta
Aelders formulates in her written work her public ideal of womens life from a
republican vantage point. She repudiates the domestic propensities of the elite
womans life and denounces its ornamental characteristics. She harshly criticises
the form of feminine power that derives from coquetterie, manipulation and
feminine empty-headedness. Female idleness and frivolity are recurring themes
in her work.
(1)t has to be said, gentlemen, most often it is the affectations, the little nothings,
the display of dressing, I had almost said, the vices themselves, that make us win your
favours and the preference of an educated souL3*
So the virtuous citoyennes ought to call back, by means of their example, (. . .)
they who, still bathing in a unbridled luxury, pass their days in a languid enervation
and in a wearying insignificance; (. . .) to tear away these victims from the midst of
this alluring frivolity that makes the distinct character of the French ladies; a
character necessary perhaps to soften the captivity that weighed them down.
With this she vocalises a notion of womens subordination but at the same time
a criticism of feminine style foreign in nature to republicanism. The criticism of
ornamental refinement easily associates with the republican criticism of an
effeminate polite culture, of sociability as the expression of a non-masculine style
that is hindering the classic republican ideal of virtuous and self-contained public
functioning.34
Her republican vantage point led her to deny the supposed necessity of female
vice, but on the other end of the spectrum it compels her to restore a difference,
She sometimes feels forced to point out a specific character of female virtues in
order to defend a female civic existence.
Yes, gentlemen, nature has created us to be your companions in your works and in
your glory. If she gave you a better-muscled arm, she made us your equals in moral
force, and perhaps your superiors in vivacity of imagination, by the delicacy of the
sentiments, by the resignation in misfortunes, by the fortitude in sorrows, the
patience in sufferings, finally in generosity of soul and patriotic zeals
Virtues still magnified by the knowledge that it is the women who are the
supports of your infancy and the consolation of your old age.
To understand ambivalences within the work of a feminist individual as Etta
Aelders, we must accentuate different legacies and a struggle between these
within feminist thought itself.
The opinions of Condorcet on the political existence of women, already
published in 1788, and probably other feminist petitions must have been
discussed earlier in the Cercle Social. Still, Etta Aelders is known to have been
the first woman who appeared on the tribune of the Cercle Social in defense of
feminist notions. Furthermore, while it was preceded by Amazones companies
in other French cities like Creil, Caen and Bordeaux, she is the initiator in 1791 of
the first womens club in Paris.
In November 26, 1790 she rescues a male orator who-unfortunately in a too
clumsy way-tries to defend the cause of women by discussing whether women
should have influence in the government, what kind of civic influence they should
be accorded, and the creation of a magistrature administered by women only.
When the irritated male audience in the Cercle Social obstructs his speech Etta
intervenes by climbing on the platform and asking them:
Gentleman, can it be that the holy revolution, that gives men their rights, has made
the French unjust and dishonest towards the women! You have listened with
patience to the other speakers, why interrupt the one who speaks in favor of
women?36
Notwithstanding the following applause the session closes, but Etta finds herself
surrounded by women. She tells them:
now that the French have become like the Romans, let us imitate the virtues and the
patriotism of the Roman Iadies.37
This clear assertion of a female republicanism is the starting point of a series of
feminist activities on her part. One month later, on 30 December her first
342 J udith Vega
discourse on the political existence of women is read at the Assemblee Federative
des Amis de la V&rite. It is printed in an edition of 1000 copies at the expense of
the SocietC des Amis de la Constitution in Caen to be distributed among the
women at the next public session in the hope to strengthen some in their
determination and to bring others to the genuine cause.38 It is reprinted in the
compilation of her main written feminist work Appel aux Francoises under the title
Sur Pinjustice des Loix en faveur des Hommes, au dkpend des Femmes together with
her lectures of February and March 1791, the womens petition to the Assemblee
Nationale of June 1791, and a declaration of the Socittt patriotique et de
bienfaisance des Amies de la V&rite aux quarante-huit Section, which she
founded.
Etta Palm uses the vocabularies of right alongside those of public virtue and of
private virtue, in a way however that does not completely parallel the dominant
lines of conclusion in feminist historiography. She does try to apply these idioms
in an unmediated way to women.
Justice should be the first virtue of free men, and justice demands that the laws be
communal to all beings, like the air and the sun; and meanwhile, the laws are in
favor of men, at the expense of women, because everywhere power is in your
hands.39
Some months later she puts to the test the most radical interpretations of the
Enliehtenments natural rights theory, radical in the sense of consistent
appliance to women and to the private sphere. Attacking the regulations on
adultery, that allow men to have their adulterous wives sent to jail for two years
and that explicitly allow just the husband, not the wife to file a charge for
adultery, she draws expressly on the constitutional principles of natural right
theory, not prepared to differ between marriage and government, private and
public spheres, when it comes to applying these principles.
It is a question of your duty, your honor, your interest, to destroy down to their
roots these gothic laws which abandon the weakest though most worthy half of
humanity to a humiliating existence, to an eternal slavery. You have restored to
man the dignity of his being in recognizing his rights; you will no longer allow women
to groan beneath an arbitrary authority; that would be to overturn the fundamental
principles on which rests the stately edifice you are raising by your untiring labors
for the happiness of the French. It is too late to equivocate. Philosophy has drawn
truth from the darkness; time has come; justice, sister of liberty, calls all individuals,
without differentation for sex, to the equality of rights. (. . .) this is a refinement
of despotism rendering the constitution odious to the female sex and by degrading
our lives while flattering your conceit, lulling you to sleep in the arms of a slave
(. . .) Conjugal authority should be only the consequence of the social pact. It is
wisdom in legislation, it is in the general interest to establish a balance between
despotism and license, but the powers of husband and wife must be equal and
separate. The laws cannot establish any difference between these two authorities;
they must give equal protection and maintain a perpetual balance between the two
married people.40
Her original republican call is worked out in several ways in her later writings.
The first sentences of her Discours SW ~i~jus~ice are set in the tone of militant
female activity in the years after 1789 when several associations of Amazones
were established.
You have admitted my sex to this patriot association of the Amis de la Veriti; this is
a first step in the direction ofjustice. The honored representives of this happy nation
just applauded at the undaunted courage of the Amazones in one of your
departments, and allowed them to found a corps for thedefense of the fatherland.4
After having cited such diverse examples of classic female heroism as the
daughter of Cato, the mother of Coriolanus, the warriors at Salamis, the mother
of Gracchs Cornelia, the wife of Petus, the virgin of Orleans and the reigns of
Elisabeth in Engiand and of Catherine in Russia, she continues:
But why search so far, when we have examples in our midst? The French citoyennes,
your wives, your sisters and your mothers, gentlemen, did not they give to the
universe a sublime example of patriotism, courage and civic virtues? Did not they
promptly sacrifice their jewelry for their fatherland?
(T)hat civic crowns may replace on these important heads those miserable
pompons, symbols of frivolity and disgraceful signs of our servitude.42
Having earlier encouraged the Amazone associations in several French cities,
on 1 April 1792 she appears in parliament to claim the admission of women to
civilian and military positions. After a long eulogy of feminine virtues, after
having maintained that women equal men in courage and talent, and almost
always surpass them in imagination she again claims political equality for
women who should be accorded a moral and national education and equal
political liberty and rights, be declared of age at twenty-one and be able to file for
divorce.43.
Public spirit and private virtue have not in her work already been unraveled
into masculine and feminine attributes, though there does exist the awareness of
necessarily distinct, gendered forms of virtue. While the idiom of armed civic
virtue is considered equaly important for women and men, she does claim a
difference.
You have taken up the arms, gentlemen, and immediately the hydra of disgusting
tyranny retired in the heart of its cave, where it waits for only one more blow to
expire. We do not believe compared with you, gentlemen, to break the chains that
hold us, to have need of more than the arms that nature gave us, talents, worth,
virtue, and even that weakness that is our force and that made us triumph so often
over our proud superiors.44
It should also be noticed that when addressing herself to women, she
consequently calls them citoyennes or concitoyennes; when addressing herself
to men, asking their attention for her grievances, she refers to women in their
familial roles as daughters, sisters and mothers.
While according to her, women by nature possess virtues that are not that
different from those of men and sometimes even surpass the latter, the eighteenth
344 ~~~ig~ Vep
century theme of female unfitness for the republican values(the result from their
inclination to luxury), is mirrored in her awareness that many women do not
already answer the republican image. In several instances she stresses that virtue
is something one can achieve and be educated in. Beside her demand for equal
education for women, this does imply the ensuing responsibility of women in
educating themselves, their husbands and children in the true republican values.
StiIl, it is not just women who are educators. Just as often, she summons men to
take responsibility for their own virtues, with respect to their public as well as to
their private lives and for the virtues of others, public and private.
In several instances it is male virtue that constitutes a problem.
(Y)ou kept for yourselves all the conveniences of vice, whereas we, who have such a
fragile existence of which the sum of nuisances is enormous, you have given us all
the difficulty of virtue as our share; and this fragile institution by nature engraves
even deeper your injustice, because instead of supplementing it by education and by
laws in our favour, it seems that we are formed uniquely for your pleasures, while it
would be so sweet, so easy to include us in your glory! The prejudices with which
aur sex has been surrounded are founded on unjust laws that accord to us a
secondary existence in society and often forces us into the humiliating necessity of
conquering the ill-tempered or cruel character of a man, who because of the greed of
our kin has become our master. f.. .> Ah! some other injustice! our life, our
freedom, our fortune are not ours; from infancy delivered to a despot who often
revohs the heart, the beautiful days of our life drain away in groans and tears while
our fortune falls prey to fraud and debauchery. Ah! dont we see daiiy honest
citoyens, family fathers, involved in the infected shambles with which the capital
abounds, drunk with wine and debauchery, forget that they are husbands and
fathers, and sacrificing on the altar of disgrace, the tears of a virtuous wife, the
fortune and existence of their parents!45
It is not just in her public writings that she attacks male conduct as such. In a
personal letter to a (male) friend she exclaims:
Many a person desires the liberation of the slaves in America and uphotds the
despotism ofthe husband. f.. .) You want us to penetrate the deepest ofyourheart.
Oh! How much you thereby in general lose! How often do you not display feelings
you do not possess, while more stringent etiquette obliges us to hide the ones that
consume us. Well? What do your homages mean to us, when they are only the fruits
of a heated imagination? You court US? Yes, but for your own sake; where is the man
who knows to love tenderly when he does not hope to submit to his wit1 the object of
his desire? Ah, sir, there are oniy few people, who know Iove.46
By emphasising their republican responsibilities she tries to induce men to
establish female participation in politics. She does not address herself exclusively
to men or women when it comes to virtue in either sphere, public and private,
My fellow citizens, my brothers, if my feeble voice could reach your heart, if my zeal
for the happiness of Frenchmen could inspire you to some extent, then listen to me.
(. . .f Go, abjure on the aftar of the fatherland ah hatred and partial enmity, all
personal jealousies. Relegate to contempt, to anathema, whoever dares malign his
brother; may love of the fatherland, of liberty, of fraternity, be in your hearts as on
Feminist Republicanism
345
your lips; let us all seek out ways of supporting one another, of succoring the
unfortunate, of regenerating morals, of cherishing virtue, and of contributing, each
of us, individually and in general, to make the French people the happiest people in
the world.47
Stressing the generality of republican responsibility is used as an argument to
establish civic associations exclusively run by women. She seems to think it will
strengthen the case for womens civic existence when it can be shown that they
have a public task of their own. On 23 March 1791 she introduces to the
Assemblte federative des amis de la vtriti an ambitious project launching a
structure of womens organisations with their own public tasks of securing the
republic.
In the 83 departments armed citizens have united to defend the constitution; do you
not believe, gentlemen, that their wives and the mothers of families could join
together, following their example, to make it loved! The society of the Amis de la
v&rite is the first that has admitted us to the patriotic sessions; Creil, Alais,
Bordeaux, and several others havefollowedyour example. Would it not be useful to
form in each section of the capital a patriotic society of citoyennes, female friends of
the truth, the central and federative circle of which would be supervised by you,
gentlemen, and which would invite all the fraternal societies in the 83 departments
to contact with them. Each circle of citoyennes would meet in each section as
frequently as they think fit for the public good and following their particular
conventions. (. . .) It would thus be capable of supervising efficiently the enemies of
liberty the capital keeps in its midst, of differentiating the genuine destitute who
needs the help of his brothers from the scoundrel called by the enemies, And the
directorate of the central circle, in contact with the patriotic societies of the
departments, would propogate the enlightenment and would be able to break more
easily the webs woven by malevolent persons.*
She continues by expounding in some detail the concrete tasks of these
womens societies:
These circles of women could be charged with overseeing the establishment of wet
nurses. Ah! How urgent it is that a maternal eye is introduced in this administration
where a culpable negligence makes nature tremble. Yes, young women from the
country arriving in this huge capital without friends, without acquaintances,
abandoned to themselves, without work and wandering around, prey to all kinds of
seduction, often return home, their souls debased, their blood vitiated. (. . .) These
societies of citoyennes could be charged in addition with supervising public
education. Wouldnt it be natural that charity schools, for the most part confided to
ignorant beings brought up with all sorts of prejudices, be under the immediate
administration of enlightened and virtuous citoyennes? Zealous women patriots
would take care to teach children the rights of men, the respect and obedience for
the law, the duty of citizens, the decrees of the assemblee nationale, and finally the
revered names of the regenerators of France instead of the legends of saints and the
almanac of miracles. These womens clubs could be charged in addition with
investigating the conduct and the need of the unfortunate people who request the
help of the section, which would be easy using the central circle where the
citoyennes of all sections would gather.4g
Judith Vega
Continuing, she pleads for a sisterly solidarity with needy or unwed mothers,
expressed in moral aid but also in the form of a mutual financial fund.
Two days later the newborn Societi: patriotique et de bienfaisance des Amies
de la V&it& gathered in the office of the journal Douche de Fer for the first time.
The meeting voted to send a letter of thanks to the Assemblie Nationale
concerning its decree on equal sharing of inheritance, that at the same time
included the womens protest against article 13 on female infidelity of the Code
police. Etta was chosen president for a period of three months.50 Letters to the
other sections asking for cooperation seem not to have been successful.
Public civic virtue is claimed for women partly in its own right, partly in the
form of a republican motherhood ethos. Etta did not anticipate the future
conflict between public civic virtue and republican motherhood which has been
sketched by several feminist historians.
Joan Hoff Wilson conciuded for the American Revolution that the ideology of
republican motherhood never led up to something equal to modern feminism
for its lack of public content. Still, Ettas version is no domestic ideal. It is not
confined to the private sphere but is lived out in the public sphere and constantly
refers to citoyennes-not to mothers.
In her thought, motherhood is at its most a reason for respect and rights, not a
moral destiny or vocation: when it counts at all, it makes women citizen not non-
citizen. There is no conflation of femininity and private virtue elsewhere noted by
Ruth Bloch, and we do see classic civic virtue and heroism-supposed masculine
qualities-being claimed on the behalf of women.
So first, she offers a public image of female citizenship appealing to heroism as
well as to political aptness. She locates it on state level by demanding full access
to all public functions and equal juridic citizenship; she also points out a new
moral organisation of the social-more than the political. In this sense we may
associate her again with sociability, understood as the historical redefinition of
society that searches an institutional basis in society more than in government,
for civic more than militant conceptions of virtue. These social expressions of
virtue were quickly relegated predominantly to women but the development had
roots within feminist discourse commenting on dominant blueprints for society.
Secondly, she does have a domestic ideal: the sober republican concept of
social bonding is applied to the male-female relationship as one of friendship,
equality, mutual responsibility and of aversion to cruelty and corruption. Where
she speaks of the private relations between men and women, she stresses elements
of republicanism that were seldom valued for their possible worth in private
contexts: ideals of fidelity, non-corruptness, trustworthiness and comradeship.53
She does not define these domestic virtues as feminine nor as natural but worthy
of a republican outlook on the world.
In attempting to apply classic republican values to both public and private
concerns at the same time as constructing a public sphere run exclusively by
citoyennes, she has drafted a feminist republicanism that cannot be subsumed
under the idiom of republican motherhood.
By now we are able to take a serious look at the opinions on character with
which the bibliographers have provided us. Hardenbergs amazement at Ettas
seemingly inexplicable movements in different instances lapses into severe
Feminist Republicanism 347
sexism-he obviously does not like Etta as a woman, nor her mother for that
matter. He tells us that her man-hatred is petty spitefulness. If she hadnt been
such a loose woman and adventurer herself, she wouldnt have had to complain
about men so much. We have to look beyond his contemptuous statements to see
what his approach does say about her history.
We may call it anachronism to interpret her lifestyle as loose and her mind as
ideologically inconsistent as Hardenberg did. But the anachronism has richer
dimensions than an eternal sexism on the part of historiographers. More
important than the issue of historians subjective sympathies is the issue of the
mstorical caveat these are ignoring. His judgement of Ettas life and opinions
witnesses the complicated growth of new notions of feminine civic virtue,
formulated initially as an opening towards gender-equality but already in her
own time becoming associated with the notions of private feminine virtues
Hardenberg still retains.54 It is, of course, precisely the tension her biography
produces between salon-life and bourgeois morality, between mundane
sociability and decent democratic convictions of rights, that generates his
intuitive hostility. In fact he sees it as corruption-of an honest, consistent
political ideology as well as of a proper and consistent behavior of women.
Read this way, his biography does put us on the track of the specificity of her
early feminism, and does perhaps more to gain understanding than Koppius
account of a predecessor whose ideas can be subsumed under the categories of
modem feminism. Ignoring the elements in her discourses and behavioral codes
which are unfamiliar to modern feminists, in order to render her recognisable is
equally anachronistic and may supply us with views on early feminism which are
equally as wrong as those found in sexist history. The choice between the
politician, the society-girl and the private-oriented, emotionally vulnerable
woman, so compelling to the modern mind, was forced upon us by history itself
and Ettas life-history is invaluable for this insight.
University of Groningen
The Netherlands
Judith Vega
NOTES
1. I want to thank Marybeth Carbon and Rudolf Dekker. Their careful readings of the
article have contributed much to the form and content of the article.
2. See e.g.: Baron Marc de Villiers. Histoire des clubs defemmes et des I kgions dAmazones
1793-1848-1871 (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1910); Marie Cerati, Le club des citoyennes
republicaines revolutionnaires (Paris: Editions sociales, 1966); Paule-Marie Duhet, Les
femmes et la Revolution 1789-1794 (Paris: Collection Archives Julliard, 1971); Jane
Abray, Feminism in the French revolution, in: American HistoricalReview 80 (1975),
43-62; Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, Mary Durham Johnson,
Women in revolutionary Paris 1789-I 795. Selected documents translated with notes
and commentary (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979); Jane Rendall, The
origins of modern feminism: women in Britain, France and the United States 1780-1860
(London: Macmillan, 1985); Gary Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the
french Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Joan B. Landes,
Women and the public sphere in the age of the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell
J udith Vega
University Press, 1988); Dominique Godineau, Citoyennes Tricoteuses. Lesfemmes du
peuple a Parispendant loRevolution Francaise(Aix en Provence: Alinea, 1988); Simon
Schama, Patriots andliberators. Revolution in theNetherlands 1780-1813 (New York:
Knopf, 1977). Textbooks on Dutch womens history offer no exception in regard to
this lack of perspective on Etta Aelderss life.
3. While I employ the word feminism, we have to keep in mind that the historical
context is the late eighteenth century. This context further clouds the lack of
transparency the word already possesses. For one thing, feminist speech was not
provoked by the tension between the personal and the political that characterizes
the modern state. It is probably more accurate to state that early feminism was
articulated in a debate centering on the proper outlook of the public sphere. See for an
inspiring discussion: Landes, Women and the public sphere, passim. Of course the
debate did harbour the future dialectic between the political and the personal, where
moral philosophy and modernist subject-theory pervaded the terms ofthe debate and
orchestrated the limits of public society as well as its gendered content.
4. Dr W.J. Koppius, Etta Palm. Nederlands eerstefeministe tijdensdeFranscherevolutie
te Part@ (Zeist: Ploegsma, 1929); Mr H. Hardenberg, Etta Palm, een Hollandse
Parisienne 1743-1799 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1962).
5. Hardenberg, Etta Palm, p.12.
6. Hardenberg lets us know that in 1785 Munniks published a work in which a
democratic signature is revealed. A third historian reports him as a spy for England
after a banishment from the Republic. See: Dr H.T. Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken
der algemeene geschiedenis van Nederland van 1795 tot 1840. Dee1 1. Nederland en de
revolutie, 1789-1795 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1905), p. xlviii.
7. It is published in: Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken.
8. Hardenberg, Etta Palm, e.g. p. 44.
9. Letters from Van de Spiegel to Madam DAelders, 5 Dec. 1788; 18 Jan. 1790 and 12
Feb. 1790. In the first letter mentioned, the author writes about the printed reflexions
you were so kind to send me have done me great pleasure; the defense of a such good
cause could not be in better hands than yours. Madam, I dare to beseech you to
continue to give it your talents and your really patriotic zeal. In his letter dated 11
March 1790, Van de Spiegel mentions the planned printing of the second manuscript.
Aelders mentions the manuscript herself in letters of 15 April 1790 and 7 June 1790. She
wants to improve the book before having it printed. (Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken,
pp. 150, 156, 160, 162, 165 and 167.)
10. Appel aux Francoises sur la regeneration des moeurs, et ntcessite de linfluence des
femmes dans un gouvernment libre. LImprimerie du Cercle Social. There is no year,
probably it has been printed July 179 1. (See: Villiers, Histoire des clubs desfemmes, p.
26; Louis Devance, Le feminisme pendant la revolution francaise, in: Annales
Historiques de la Revolution Francaise, 277(1977), 341-376, p. 371.) A facsimile of the
publication appeared in: Les femmes dans la revolution Francaise, Tome 2 (Paris:
Edhis, 1982) text no. 33.
11. She translates into Dutch Condorcets Declaration de I AssembI ee aux puissances de
I Europe delivered to the National Assembly on 29 December 179 1. The translation is
dated 7 January 1792. (Hardenberg, Etta Palm, p. 68; Villiers, Histoire des clubs de
femmes, p. 38.)
12. See: Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, p. 164. Letter from Madam dAelders, dated 15
April 1790.
13. madame dAelders], RPf7exions sur louvrage intituI eAuxBataves sur le Stadhouderat,
par I e Comte de Mirabeau (Paris, 1788. Et en Hollande) 36 pp. Translated by herself
into Dutch under two titles; as Aanmerkingen op een werk betytelt: Ann de Batavieren
over het Stadhouderschap, van den Heere Graave de Mirabeau, and as De rechten van
Feminist Republicanism
349
het Stadhouderschap verdeedigd, tegen de Listen en Laage van eenige gebanne en
gevluchte Hollanders, en byzonder tegen den heer I U***** voornaam Patriotjespeelder.
48 PP.
14. Louise Robert defended a domestic role for women. See: Villiers, Histoire des clubs de
femmes, pp. 25-26 and ch. 3; Hardenberg, Etta Palm, p. 54.
15. Hardenberg, Etta Palm; Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, p. 166.
16. Letter of 18 January 1790 from Van de Spiegel to Madam dAelders. You raise the
question, Madam, whether it wouldnt be profitable for Holland if the Prince
Stadholder in giving influence to the people, concluded a treaty af guarantee with
France and Brabant for then Holland would not have to fear any interior troubles nor
foreign hostility. Van de Spiegel goes on to inform haughtily what this influence
should consist of because the Dutch people is completely satisfied enjoying all the
advantages of a liberty controlled by law. In the provinces where the people do not
participate directly in government, they do so via representatives-an office open to
every citizen. He does not exclude the possibility of allowing for more popular
influence in case a new republic would have to be made, but adds that it is dangerous
to touch the foundations of a constitution, especially in a Republic. (Colenbrander,
Gedenkstukken, pp. 154-155) In January 1790 she again thinks it is desirable that the
Prince of Orange gives in a bit. (Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, p. 159).
17. See for example: Hardenberg, Etta Palm, pp. 32-33 and 68; Colenbrander,
Gedenkstukken, p. 148, n. 1.
18. As De Gouges who dedicated her feminist appeal Declaration des droits de lafemme
et de la citoyenne to the queen, Aelders tries to be allowed to dedicate her manuscript
to the wife of the stadholder, princess Wilhelmina. She does not succeed and is bought
off with the choice between a jewel or an amount of money. Colenbrander,
Gedenkstukken, p. 162.
19. R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A political history ofEurope and
America, 1760-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964); C.H.E. de Wit, De
strud tussen aristocratic en democratic in Nederland 1780-1848. Kritisch onderzoek
van enn historisch beeld en herwaardering van een periode [Heerlen: Winants, 1965
(diss.)]; idem, Her ontstaan van het moderne Nederland 1780-1848 en zijn
geschiedschriiving, Oirsbeek (L.) (1978); Schama, Patriots and liberators, passim. See
for a recent discussion: N.C.F. van Sas, Tweedragt overal: het patriottisme en de
uitvinding van de moderne politiek, in: H. Bots en W.W. Mijnhardt (red.), Dedroom
van de revolutie. Nieuwe benaderingen van het patriottisme (Amsterdam: De
Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988), pp. 18-31.
20. Also noteworthy in this context is her defense of the decision of the stadholder to
replace the radical professor of law Van der Marck. She takes it to be an attempt to
prevent clerical schisms as had disturbed the Republic in the last century. Meanwhile
her criticism on the patriots is not so foreign to his own position. Van der Marck
himself accentuated in 1783 patriots should be led by reason, instead of passion.
Popular sovereignty is not to be conceived as natural or military power but as moral
faculty or right. Patriotism should be armed with rights, not with force. F.A. van der
Marck, Redenvoering over de I iefde tot het vaderland. te bestuuren overeenkomstig met
de redelijke en gezellige natuur der menschen. Of over den waaren aard van bet
zogenaamde Patriotismus (Deventer: G. Brouwer, 1783). Interestingly, Van der
Marck is known for having defended a rather feminist interpretation of natural rights
theory. See: Judith Vega, Het Beeld der Vryheid; Is het niet uwe Zuster?, in:
Socialisties-Feministiese Teksten 11 (Baarn: Ambo, 1989).
21. Compare: De Wit, De strud tussen aristocratic en democratic, pp. 36-46 and 79-103.
22. Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, p. 169.
23. Marat, Malheurs affreux qui rtsulteraient de la guerre ministtrielle avec
350 Judith Vega
IAngleterre, in: LAmi du Peuple, 4-6 June 1790. See: Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken,
pp 167-168.
24. Appel aux Fr~~oises, p. 12.
25. Etta Palm, n&e dAelders, Discours de reception prononce B la societi: fraternelle, et
justification sur la dtnonciation de Louise Robert, 21 June 1791, in: Appel aux
Francoises, p. 35.
26. W.R.E. Velema, Contemporaine reacties op het patriotse politieke vocabulaire, in:
H. Bots en W.W. Mijnhardt (red.), De droom van de revolutie. Nieuwe benaderingen
van het Patrioitisme (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988), pp. 32-48.
27. Linda Kerber, Women of the~epub~~~. I ntersect andrdeo~ogy inRevolutionary America.
pew York: Norton, 1986 (1980)]. Jane Rendall, The origins of modern feminism,
passim. See also: Mary Beth Norton, Libertys daughters. The revolutionary experience
of American women, 17.50-1800 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1980).
28. Ruth Bloch, The gendered meanings of virtue in revolutionary America, in: Signs 13,
(1987) 37-58.
29. J.G.A. Pocock, Virtues, rights and manners, in: Political Theory 9 (August 1981),
pp. 353-368; idem, Machiavelli in the liberal cosmos, in: Political Theory 13
(November 1985), 559-574.
30. Barbara Corrado Pope, Revolution and Retreat: Upper-class French women after
1789, in: CR. Berkin and C.M. iovett (eds), Women, War andRevoZution(New York:
Holmes and Meier, 1980), pp. 215-236.
31. Pope, Revolution and Retreat, p. 216.
32. Appel aux Francoises, p. 4.
33. Appel aux Franqoises, p. 43.
34. See for discussions of the themes of ornamentalism, sociability and republicanism as
they relate to gender, besides the references in notes 28, 29 and 30, also: J. Wilson
James, Changing ideas about women in the United States, 1776-1825 (New York:
Garland, 1981, 1954); Abby R. Kleinbaum, Women in the Age of Light, in: R.
B~denthal and C. Koonz (eds), Becoming visible. Women in European History
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 19?7), pp. 217-235; Ruth H. Bloch, American
feminine ideals in transition: the rise of the moral mother, 178%1815, in: Feminist
Studies 4 (June 1978), 101-126; Inge Baxmann, Von der Egalite im Salon zur
Citoyenne-einige.Aspekte der Genese des Burgerlichen Frauenbildes, in: A. Kuhn
und J. R&en (hrsg.), Frauen in der Geschichte I I I (Dusseldorf: Schwann, 1983);
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Fortune is a woman. Gender and Politics in the thought of
Niccoli, Machiavelh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Ursula Vogel,
Rationalism and romanticism: two strategies for womens liberation, in: Judith
Evans et al., Feminism andpolitical theory (London: Sage, 1986); Landes, Women and
the public sphere, passim
35. Appel aux FranCoises, pp. 6-T.
36. LOrateur du Peuple, III, 360, cited in: Villiers, Histoire des clubs de femmes, p. 19.
37. I dem, in: Villiers, Histoire des clubs de femmes, p. 20.
38. A facsimile of the lecture is published in: Les Femmes a&s la Revolution Frarqaise,
passim, text 32.
39. Appel aux Franqoises, p. 2.
40. Adresse des citoyennes francoises a lassemblbe nationale, s.a. [12 June 17911, in:
Appeiaux Francoises, pp. 37-39. For the translations into English of this citation and
the ones referred to in notes 47 and 48, I have largely copied the translations by:
Applewhite, Levy and Johnson teds), Women in revolutionary Paris, pp. 68-71 and
75-77.
41. Appel aux Franqoises, p. 2.
42. Appel aux Franqoises, p. 8 and 9.
Feminist Republicanism
351
43. Archivesparlementaires 41, (1 April 1792) 63-64. Cited and translated in: Applewhite,
Levy and Johnson (eds), Women in revoiutionary Paris, passim, p. 323.
44. Appef aux Francokes, p. 6.
45. Appd aux Franqoises, pp. 3-5.
46. Cited by: Hardenberg, Etta Palm, p. 70.
47. Appel aux Francoises, p. 24.
48. Appel aux Franqoises, pp. 25-26.
49. Appei aux Franqoises, pp. 26-28
50. Villiers, Histoire des rlubs de femmes, p. 30. It is typical of Ettas embodiment of two
clashing political codes to invite (with result) the princesse de Bourbon to subscribe
her initiative for the Societt des Amies de la VCritt, appealing to her civic virtues and
benevolence.
51. Meanwhile her political works continue to stamp her life. She is arrested on the day
following the anti-royalist demonstration on the Champ de Mars on 17 July for
being a suspect foreigner and perhaps on suspicion of having contacts with another
foreigner, the Jewish banker Ephrdim who is in Paris by order of the Prussian king.
Both are released within three days for lack of proof. But Parisian political climate has
changed in a definite way. The same month the Cercle Socialcloses, the Bouche defer
stops appearing and the Confederation des Amis de la VCritB has disappeared. The
womens society however seems to have hold out till autumn 1792.
In 1792 Etta fulfils a final diplomatic mission and returns to Holland to make
inquiries on behalf of Lebrun. It is possible she was again in Paris, in January 1793,
the month in which Louis XVI was sentenced to death, but she then leaves definitively
for Holland. After her arrest in 1795 she is held prisoner for three years, in the same
castle as Van de Spiegel. In March 1799, some months after her release, she died in the
Hague.
52. Joan Hoff Wilson, The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution,
in: Alfred F. Young (ed.), The American revolution Explorations in the History of
American ~adicaZism (Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1976), pp. 383-445.
A similar conclusion is found in Abray, Feminism in the French Revolution. passim.
53. There is, though, an ongoing debate on the character of the classical heritage on this,
point. A. MacIntyre, for example, suggests a singular model of friendship for all social
bonds, that is the identity of private and public moral imperatives, in the classical
narratives on heroic society. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. A study in moraitheory
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984, 1981), especially chapter 10.
54. The report in January 1796 oftheDutch Comitee van Waakzaamheid (Commiteeof
Vigilance) that was to study her politica trustworthiness and that led to her arrest,
words its convictions in the following way: We are obliged to turn your attention
away from more important matters and to speak to you a while about a woman. A
woman, who could have been a jewel of her sex. (. . .) Did not the deviation cost her
dearly from that enchanting gentleness, subservience and diffidence, that ought to
typify the female character. Cited by: Dr H.E. van Gelder, Feministische Bataven,
in: De Amsterdammer, (weekly) (10 November 1907). Reprinted in: W. Fritschy,
Fragmenten Vrouwengeschiedenis, Part I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980),
Citation pp. 78-79 (The italics are Van Gelders). The words are strikingly similar to
those used in 1793 by the French Committee of Public Safety against Olympe de
Gouges and to forbid the womens clubs.