Incorporating Women/Gender into French History Courses, 1429-1789: Did Women of the Old Regime Have a Political History?

Incorporating women/gender into courses on early modern France is largely a matter of including women in state building. Thirty years of social and cultural history notwithstanding, most Old Regime French history courses still deal with politics, according to my own, informal Web survey. State building, not the wielding of power per se, is the focus. "The growth of the state," "the centralization of the monarchy," and "the consolidation of rule" remain the descriptive phrases most often attached to courses titled "France: 1450–1789." The triumph of monarchy is still the story most often recounted to juniors and seniors across the land.

Of course, other narratives are possible: the decline of the nobility, the uneven course of French economic development, the emergence of an oppositional public sphere, the first signs of a French national identity—these are often themes woven into the basic political narrative. Politics means more now than it did thirty years ago, so most French history courses go beyond Richelieu's machinations or Louis XIV's battles. Norbert Elias's notion of court society and its "civilizing" mission usually finds a place on the syllabus, as does some discussion of New France and French imperial adventures. But the growth of the monarchy is still the principal fare.

Consequently, political history is my sole concern in this essay, and my definition of politics is narrow and limited to involvement in the monarchy. Many subjects—childbearing, women's education, family life, the law, even feminism—will be ignored even though they would form the core of a women's history course. Common women, notaries' wives, seamstresses, peasants, and midwives will be slighted. ¹ So too will the thousands of women who supported the monarchy by loaning it money and purchasing its annuities and rentes. ² These women were all necessary to the monarchy, but they could not affect its policies. Like their husbands and sons, they had only a limited role in political life. Status more than gender determined who made the monarchy, and the vast majority of French women—like men—had no say whatsoever in their government.

So how, one might wonder, can women/gender be included in courses devoted to the development of the French state? Do French women of the Old Regime even have a political history? It is hard to say. Studies of women and power between 1400 and 1789 are rare and usually over a decade old. Scarcer still is any general interpretation or narrative that might guide our students. Twenty years ago Joan Kelly-Gadol argued that state formation eroded elite women's authority by limiting the powers of the aristocratic household. ³ This picture of decline held until the bicentennial of the French Revolution. At that time, focus shifted to a comparison of women under the old and new regimes. In a very influential study, Joan Landes argued that "the excessively personal . . . and political universe (of the monarchy) tolerated arenas of public speech and performance by women." ⁴ Compared to the Jacobin Republic, the Bourbon monarchy seemed empowering. Historians of earlier periods also found that Old Regime women wielded power in unexpected places. Sarah Hanley, Dena Goodman, Kristen Neuschel, Barbara Diefendorf, and Sharon Kettering all demonstrated that women manipulated Old Regime structures and found in the courts, the armies, the churches, and the salons sources of power. In an important volume on the history of women, Natalie Zemon Davis saw "scope for action" at the French court, but only within the context of persistent gender asymmetries. ⁵

What should we tell our students? Did the centralizing monarchy act for or against women? Did women's proximity to the king, as mother, wife, and mistress, equal power? How did women's political fortunes wax or wane over the course of almost four centuries? Did French women help...