Women s Rights During The French Revolution - 1041 Words

However, ‘theory’ is the key word here, as this was not true in practice. As Johnson highlights, there were no legal provisions at any point during the French Revolution to guarantee these rights. Although the estates system was abolished, the class system remained, and there continued to be huge wealth disparity in France. As the October Days in the same year highlighted, urban workers continued to struggle to afford bread. The Declaration only guaranteed equality of rights. Although this is significant, the Declaration was by no means so revolutionary that it eliminated inequality and oppression in France. This is arguably best exemplified by examining women’s rights. The Declaration makes little progress in gender equality. Men†¦show more content†¦Since the constitution was likely to have taken a long time to compose and ratify, and France had no Magna Carta or Declaration of Independence to work from, it makes sense for Lafayette to have wanted to es tablish a list of rights to support the new French state during this interim period. Consequently, the Declaration was never meant to be the zenith of liberty and equality; that was what the constitution would be for. However, Lafayette had an agenda, and he included in his draft his own ideals for what France should be. He included provisions for universal suffrage (‘free representation of citizens’), gender equality, the abolition of slavery, and ‘the correction of the entire human establishment’. With this last phrase especially, it is essential to remember that Lafayette was writing a percussor to the constitution, the latter of which he hoped would fundamentally transform France into a free and equal society. If Mirabeau and Sieyà ¨s had not removed these clauses, it is possible that the French Revolution would have taken a different trajectory. However, it did not, and the final Declaration that was issued on the 26th August was a conservative retrea t that did comparatively little to improve the lives of the vast majority of French people. Consequently, these significant limitations of the Declaration mean that whilst it had a huge impact on the theoretical rights of French people, it was nowhere nearShow MoreRelatedWomen Of The French Revolution1696 Words   |  7 PagesWomen participated in virtually every aspect of the French Revolution. Their participation almost always proved controversial, as women s status in the family, society, and politics had long been a subject of great debate. In the eighteenth century, women were destined to cater to their husbands and families, taking on domestic roles in the home rather than public, political ones. 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