PrepTest 35, Section 4, Question 5

Of the more than one thousand people who published memoirs of the French Revolution of 1789, about eighty were women. And of these eighty women memoirists, two thirds were members of the upper class, a proportion that might be attributed solely to privilege�at the time of the Revolution, only half of all French citizens could read, and only members of the upper class were able to write easily. But there were also political reasons. Most of the memoirs were published decades after the Revolution, during the restored monarchy that came to power in 1815. Those written by royalists, who opposed the Revolution, were published under the monarchy's aegis; in contrast, republican memoirists, who supported the Revolution, risked political sanctions against their work.

Because the memoirs were written so long after the events they describe, some historians question their reliability. Certainly, memory is subject to the loss or confusion of facts and, more to the point in these partisan accounts, to the distortions of a mind intent on preserving its particular picture of the past. But other scholars have shown that close inspection of these documents resolves such doubts on two scores. First, for major public happenings, there are often multiple accounts, allowing for cross-verification. Second, regarding the truth of personal events known only to the author, more subjective guidelines must be used: Are there internal verifications within a text that suggest the author is describing a plausible sequence of events, and acting in accord with what is known of the writer's character? Or is the narrative voice so pervaded by self-justifications that it forfeits credibility?

Denis Bertholet, in a study of nineteenth-century French autobiography, states that the women memoirists of this period defined themselves "in relationship to their sex"�i.e., they conformed to socially prescribed feminine roles of the time, fulfilling obligations as daughters, wives, or mothers. Nonetheless, instances of social activism by women abounded during the Revolution. On the whole, women's memoirs during this period exhibit a variety of personalities and experiences, and describe how women participated, individually and collectively, in the events of the Revolution. For example, the imprisoned royalist Madame de La Villirou�t details how she managed to liberate not only herself but her co-prisoners through an epistolary campaign, and how she subsequently saved her husband's life by pleading his case in court. In addition, in both royalist and republican camps, several women defied the ban against women serving as soldiers and bore arms for their causes. Bertholet's study attests to the credibility of these accounts on both factual and subjective grounds, making the memoirs written by women particularly significant because they embody a clearly feminist mode of discourse and experience that one would not expect to find until the French Feminist movement more than a century later.

Of the more than one thousand people who published memoirs of the French Revolution of 1789, about eighty were women. And of these eighty women memoirists, two thirds were members of the upper class, a proportion that might be attributed solely to privilege�at the time of the Revolution, only half of all French citizens could read, and only members of the upper class were able to write easily. But there were also political reasons. Most of the memoirs were published decades after the Revolution, during the restored monarchy that came to power in 1815. Those written by royalists, who opposed the Revolution, were published under the monarchy's aegis; in contrast, republican memoirists, who supported the Revolution, risked political sanctions against their work.

Because the memoirs were written so long after the events they describe, some historians question their reliability. Certainly, memory is subject to the loss or confusion of facts and, more to the point in these partisan accounts, to the distortions of a mind intent on preserving its particular picture of the past. But other scholars have shown that close inspection of these documents resolves such doubts on two scores. First, for major public happenings, there are often multiple accounts, allowing for cross-verification. Second, regarding the truth of personal events known only to the author, more subjective guidelines must be used: Are there internal verifications within a text that suggest the author is describing a plausible sequence of events, and acting in accord with what is known of the writer's character? Or is the narrative voice so pervaded by self-justifications that it forfeits credibility?

Denis Bertholet, in a study of nineteenth-century French autobiography, states that the women memoirists of this period defined themselves "in relationship to their sex"�i.e., they conformed to socially prescribed feminine roles of the time, fulfilling obligations as daughters, wives, or mothers. Nonetheless, instances of social activism by women abounded during the Revolution. On the whole, women's memoirs during this period exhibit a variety of personalities and experiences, and describe how women participated, individually and collectively, in the events of the Revolution. For example, the imprisoned royalist Madame de La Villirou�t details how she managed to liberate not only herself but her co-prisoners through an epistolary campaign, and how she subsequently saved her husband's life by pleading his case in court. In addition, in both royalist and republican camps, several women defied the ban against women serving as soldiers and bore arms for their causes. Bertholet's study attests to the credibility of these accounts on both factual and subjective grounds, making the memoirs written by women particularly significant because they embody a clearly feminist mode of discourse and experience that one would not expect to find until the French Feminist movement more than a century later.