Blood sisters Book

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.