Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun: « Les femmes régnaient alors, la Révolution les a détrônées. »

While making research about Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, I discovered the following quote from her “Les femmes régnaient alors, la Révolution les a détrônées”. The literal translation would be “The women used to reign, the Revolution dethroned them”. She made this quote when she came back to France after her exile, during the Empire of Napoléon the first. Thus according to her, the Revolution of 1789 worsened the social position of the women in France. I found this quote very interesting since, as a French citizen, I have always considered the French revolution to be one of the most important events in French history and I never heard of someone speaking of it in a negative way like Vigée-Lebrun did.

Indeed we tend to consider that the French revolution was the event which set the foundations of our current political regime: the Republic. Nowadays the French National Day commemorates the Bastille Takeover on the 14^th of July 1789. The French revolution is thus a symbol of the victory of the people over the nobility and of the democracy against the monarchy. It was also the basis for the development in France of the Human Rights declaration. Even though the French revolution resulted in many executions and some dark times especially during “la Terreur”, we consider that its positive outcomes outweighed the negative consequences by far.

For these reasons, I was really surprised by the quote from Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun which implied that she regretted the monarchy. This viewpoint was obviously influenced by the painter’s position in the French aristocracy and by her privileged status due to her relationship with the Queen Marie-Antoinette. Nevertheless, I think that she made an interesting point. Indeed at the time of the Monarchy, the women were not officially in charge of France but they could have an important impact on the country’s politics by influencing their relatives (husbands, sons, brothers…). After the Revolution, the political decisions were made by the men and the women were not allowed to have any political functions or to vote until 1944. During this time they were classified in the category of the “passive citizens”, along with the children and the foreigners.

The French Revolution was thus an important step for the development of several ideas such as the human rights and the equality of men. However it denied the women of the rights of vote and of representation which prevented them from playing any role in French politics for decades.