Citoyennes...

Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879) Citoyennes... on fait courir le bruit ... (Women Citizens... there is a rumor spreading...), 1848 Lithograph General Acquisitions Fund, 1935.77

During the Revolution of 1848 and in its aftermath, feminist activists founded newspapers and formed clubs as places to come together to discuss their goals and strategies. The intrusion of women into the political arena was ridiculed in the press. This activity flew in the face of prevailing attitudes about the role of women in society, attitudes summed up by the influential socialist theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in the notion of separate spheres: “Woman has her home, man his public life.” A woman who abandoned her “natural” role as housewife and mother was looked upon with suspicion and contempt. Proudhon ex-pressed the dichotomous view of women’s roles this way: “Either housewife or harlot, there is no middle ground.”

Daumier portrays this feminist activist with her violent, reaching gesture as hysterical, and her club as turbulent and disorderly. The suggestion, made throughout the press at the time, was that the political aims of the clubbistes were as silly and poorly organized as their boisterous rallies.

—Citoyennes ... on fait courir le bruit que le divorce est sur le point de nous être refusé... constituons-nous ici en permanence et déclarons que la patrie est en danger ! ...

—Women Citizens... there is a rumor spreading that they are about to deny us the divorce law we've been seeking... Let us organize ourselves here permanently and declare that the na-tion is in danger!...

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