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Pauline Léon (28 September 1768 – 5 October 1838) was a French woman born in Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution. She had a fiery spirit and held strong feminist and anti-royalist beliefs.

Biography

Léon was born to chocolate makers Pierre-Paul Léon and Mathrine Telohan in Paris on 28 September 1768. She was one of six children. When her father died in 1784, Léon began helping her mother with the chocolate business in exchange for room and board. She was also responsible for helping to raise and support her siblings until the time of her marriage.

Throughout Léon's life, she became progressively more involved and entrenched in the unique politics of her day. She began speaking her opinion and affiliating with radical anti-royalist groups such as the Cordeliers club and the Enragés. It was through these affiliations that she met Théophile Leclerc, an active member and leader of the Enragés who fought - sometimes violently - for the creation of a French direct democracy. The two were married in 1793 when Pauline was 29 years old. They were later arrested together in April of 1794, but held separately in the Luxembourg prison. Their arrest was a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because they had committed no major crimes, they were released three months later.

After Léon's marriage, she began to focus her efforts more on her own household than the public sphere, a phenomenon that was common among politically-involved women of the French Revolution due to the deeply embedded French values associated with being a wife and mother. She also worked as a schoolteacher for a period of her adult life.

Léon died at age 70 at home in Bourbon-Vendée on 5 October 1838.

Political Involvement

The French Revolution generated political excitement and sometimes violent unrest. Witnessing this unrest stirred Léon to action, and she became a radical for the revolutionary cause. In 1789 at the beginning of the Revolution, she joined in the famous Storming of the Bastille, even carrying her own pike. A couple years later, in 1791, she again joined a passionate political crowd and risked her life by signing the Cordeliers' republican petition at the Champ de Mars.

Léon's political leanings were no secret. For years, she openly protested against all of the following: Lafayette and his royalist wartime opinions, King Louis XVI and the system of French monarchy, and all those who were openly counter-revolutionary. She was considered by some to be the most radical among her fellow female political activists.

As mentioned above, Léon was also a frequenter of the radical Cordeliers Club and was closely associated with the Enragés. Being a part of these groups fueled her revolutionary spirit, and she stood with them even when it landed her in prison for several months.

Léon's personal involvement in the Revolution is especially noteworthy because she came from the Parisian artisan class, while most other revolutionary women of her day were aristocratic.

Feminism

The Revolution was also a time of great debate concerning the status and right of women from all social classes. The entire governmental structure was in question, and men all over France were exploring the ideas of natural rights. In these unique circumstances, many French women seized the opportunity to call into question the rights of women as well, and what constituted their proper place in society. While people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau worked to create a limited domestic image of womanhood, others like Olympe de Gouges fought back in the effort to pioneer women's rights and equality with men. Léon observed this and became passionately involved in this emerging feminist cause.

On 6 March 1792 she addressed the Legislative Assembly on behalf of Parisian women, calling for the creation of an all-female militia so that women could protect their own homes from counter-revolutionary assaults. Over 300 Parisian woman had signed the petition she was presenting. Her idea of the female militia was strikingly radical because it implied that women would gain the right to bear arms. This right that was closely associated with full citizenship, and had hardly ever been considered appropriate or necessary for women. Although the militia Léon wanted was never formed, many French women still fought how they could in the conflicts associated with the French Revolution.

Léon, with her friend and fellow feminist Claire Lacombe, founded the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women (Société des Républicaines-Révolutionnaires) and became its president on 9 July 1793. She did not serve long as president however, because the Société only lasted for eight months. It was shut down by authorities because it was judged by both Girondins and Jacobins as a dangerous organization that opposed proper womanhood. At its height, however, the Society's meetings were attended by up to 200 people.

In the same year that Léon served as president of the Société, she also served as a prominent leader of the Femmes Sans-Culottes.

Legacy

It is known that Léon was very active in the public sphere and tried to widely share her opinions. However, either she did not write much, or not many of her writings have been preserved. The following are a couple of exceptions:

One of her writings that is available to us today is a statement she wrote while in prison in Luxembourg, on July 4, 1794. In it, she highlighted her personal involvement in the Revolution and her recruitment of many others to the revolutionary cause. She made pointed mention of her hatred toward Lafayette and confirmed the fact that she once broke into a man's home to throw a bust of Lafayette out the window. She wrote highly of the sans-culottes and the Cordeliers club. Her statement concluded with an assertion that she and her husband were innocent and did nothing to merit an arrest.

In addition to this statement, her "Petition to the National Assembly on Women's Rights to Bear Arms" is preserved and available to read today. Her petition asserts that the new French Constitution is for women as well as men, and thus they require the arms necessary to defend it and themselves. She promised that French women still held dear their roles as wives and mothers, and that their possession of the right to bear arms would not detract from this. The petition was persuasively and eloquently written. It concluded with a declaration of female patriotism for France, and the women's desire to defend and serve their nation alongside French men.

These writings are valuable, but because there are so few sources from Pauline Léon herself, her story and her legacy have been handed down and preserved through the writings and records of others who knew her and/or noticed her passion and her leadership.