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Article: Women & politics: Madame Roland.(figure in French Revolution)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- October 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I should need a Madame Roland as my reader.
--Stendhal
That unpunished vice, reading.
--Valery Larbaud
If anyone helps to overturn conventional notions about the role of women in politics in eighteenth-century France it is Marie-Jeanne (Manon) Phlipon, later Mme Roland (1754-1793). It was not simply the French Revolution of 1789 that inspired her concern with history, society, and the art of government. That interest was of long standing in a deeply studious young woman who loved reading, even works by the most difficult thinkers, and who read widely for self-instruction and self-knowledge as well as pleasure. Much cherished by her ...