New Addition: Cartoon of Military Feminists

Gustave Moines, Projet d'uniforme (Proposed Uniform). (Late 1848) Lithograph. Printed by Aubert.

The Revolution of 1848 ushered in the short-lived "Second Republic" in France, only to be evaporated again in 1851 when a coup d'état established the totalitarian regime of Napoleon III. The wake of the revolution brought many radical, marginalised political struggles into the public eye for the first time in decades, among them the demands of feminists. These aspirations, along with the possibility (or myth) of collaboration of bourgeois liberals with radicals and the proletariat, were crushed in 1849 when the new Republican government used the army to suppress a massive working-class demonstration agitating for universal employment and suffrage. This misogynist satirical print was produced during that brief burst of radical hope, and ridicules the notion––laughable to average Frenchmen––that political equality for women might lead to such 'excesses' as female military units. It is unknown whether this cartoon refers to a real, specific proposal, but it is not unlikely; many women had fought on the barricades in the revolution.

The caption reads: "The female citizens of the republic demand to be organised into a volunteer mobile army corps and to be dressed at their husbands' expense. They promise to maintain perfect discipline and silence... sometimes."