Women, Salons, and the State in the Aftermath of the French Revolution

Abstract

Historians have generally accepted the argument that the salon culture through which women participated in the public sphere of eighteenth-century France faded in the 1780s, foreshadowing and complementing the general exclusion of women from politics by the French Revolution. This article presents evidence that salon sociability came back to life in the aftermath of the French Revolution, giving upper-class women renewed access to the public sphere as part of the partial reconstruction of aristocratic power. Napoleon encouraged this revival as part of a strategy for winning the support of traditional elites, but he deplored powerful women and struggled to contain salonni�res by reducing them to hostesses. He supported the development of ministerial salons centered on male notables and exiled Madame de Sta�l, France's most prominent salonni�re, in order to silence political dissent in high society. Salons recovered significantly with the liberalization of the public sphere during the Restoration and the July Monarchy, along with the influence of salonni�res, who presided over a new mondanit� (society life) linked closely with the political sociability of elites, and supported by an enduring nostalgia for the elegant society of the past. Nevertheless, the connection between mondanit� and politics slowly weakened, and upper-class women saw their informal political role diminished due to the rise of modern institutions designed to organize the political life of a widening middle-class electorate. The salon's decreasing significance within the public sphere occurred after the consolidation of modern gender norms and the juridical inscription of women's second-class status.

Harem education and heterotopic imagination

“…Heterotopia is a spatial, strategic metaphor that points to discursive transformations (Foucault 2007, 177). The construction of the public sphere on the discursive exclusion of women strengthens the necessity to pursue a public sphere in the private and vice versa (Fraser 1992, 113-7;Freedman 1979, 513;Kale 2002;Landes 1989Landes , 1998. In this vein, feminist geographers challenge the existing notions of political space, such as borders and maps, like they have challenged the dichotomous understanding of public and private spheres (England 2003, 611).…”

“…She debated over the changing nature of the harem with a Western woman, Grace Ellison (Lewis 2004). Muslim women, like the Egyptian writer, activist and autobiographer Huda Shaarawi and Edip, were in positions caught between the West and the 'Orient' (Badran 1995, 79;2005;El Saadawi 1999, 2002Fay 2003, 78;Jayawardena 1986;Shaarawi 1987). Originating from the Ottoman upper classes, Shaarawi and Edip were involved in the nationalist uprisings against the British, and organised massive anti-British demonstrations (Al-Hassan Golley 2003, 36).…”

“Sometimes a Community and Sometimes a Battlefield”: From the Comedic Public Sphere to the Commons of Speakers' Corner

“…Regular players' shared commitment to a free speech space, alongside the friendships forged, has helped to maintain the Corner in several ways, including by producing a regular, experienced stream of speakers and active participants. Although nobody at the Corner plays the careful hosting or`kneading' role historically associated with female salon hostesses (Heller, 1998;Kale, 2002), seasoned Corner regulars often encourage and help others to speak. At the same time, and this I want to stress, community and camaraderie are organised and sustained through the unruly speech that Speakers' Corner as a vibrant deliberative domain or`marketplace of ideas' generates.…”