"Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men? It is the music of the people who will not be slaves again!" I hum the lyrics as we walk through the Conciergerie. We read Les Misérables by Victor Hugo before the trip, and saw the musical last week. Claude-Michel Schönberg, the songwriter who wrote these incredible lyrics, is so intelligent, so masterful that I want to immerse myself in his music.
As I pass a sign titled "Femmes en Révolution," I am still softly singing.
"Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men-"
Wait. Just angry men?
Right in front of me are memorials for women who lost their lives in the revolution. Just yesterday, we learned about the Women's March on Versailles, where a crowd of Parisian women, concerned about the high price and scarcity of bread, marched to Versailles. They demanded reforms to the king and brought him back to Paris. It was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. Yet, the song seemed to sideline the role of women in these revolutions.
Schönberg wrote the lyrics about the June Rebellion (1832), but the tune has come to represent the revolutionary spirit more broadly. So, where are women in that spirit?
In the courtyard of the women's prison, I'm stunned by the beauty: stone walls, open sky, even a fountain to wash clothes. If I didn't know its history, I would think it was a town! But this place held women awaiting execution. These political prisoners have stories that deserve to be heard.
I first read about Charlotte Corday. She believed the French Revolution was getting out of hand and becoming too bloody. She entered Jean-Paul Marat's home, an extreme leader of the Jacobins, and killed him in his bathtub, hoping to stop the violence. I don't condone murder, and I can't fully judge her; none of us can, but I understand her desperation. She was angry. And she put matters into her own hands.
Then there's Olympe de Gouges, a French playwright and political activist. She wrote vehemently, attacking the Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror. She wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Women in 1791, in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man written in 1781. She demanded equality in marriage, education, and political life. She was angry and refused to stay quiet. She published works accusing Robespierre of establishing a dictatorship. For that, she was executed.
The next day, we visited the Chapelle Expiatoire, a controversial place where King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were buried after being guillotined. Yet, I find myself coming back to Olympe de Gouges when I see her quote in the building:
““The most extravagant assure that my works do not belong to me, that there is too much energy and knowledge of the laws in my writings for them to be the work of a woman.” ”
Even in her death, she had to fight for authorship of her own mind. The prejudice to discredit her abilities is appalling to me. Did men not think a woman could be intelligent? Insightful? Creative? I would be mad too.
Of course, one cannot talk about angry women in the revolution and forget Madame Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities. After the aristocratic Evrémonde brothers destroy her family, she becomes consumed by vengeance. She even cuts the governor's head off with a knife. Talk about bloodshed and anger.
We see her anger when she knits names into her death list. Yet, the same outrage brings her to her downfall. She dies trying to kill Lucie, who is barely associated with the aristocrats at all. Dickens shows readers that responding to evil with evil can have devastating consequences.
Women, whether supporting the revolution or not, whether fictional or not, played a vital role in the revolutions of their time. They sing the song of angry women. We must've forgotten that in the chorus somewhere.
One may argue that "angry men" is a stand-in for all people. But history shows us that not only are women underrepresented in their importance, but also when they are not named, they are often erased.
And the erasure didn't end with the 18th century. French women couldn't vote until 1944. Switzerland was in 1971. Private members' clubs in London, including Brooks's Club, a Whig-affiliated club founded in 1778, still do not admit women. It's easy to think we've come a long way. And we have. But the reminders of inequality are everywhere.
Guerrilla Girls art at the Tate Modern London
Yes, I'm grateful I can vote. But then Roe v. Wade gets overturned.
I'm so grateful I can open a credit card. But I'll still earn 85 cents to the dollar a man makes, for the same work.
I'm so lucky to have the privilege of access to higher education. So how are doctors still less likely to recognize heart attacks in women?
Material mortality rates are horrible, including the fact that black women have a three times higher maternal mortality rate than white women. Trans women of color are disproportionately victims of violence, and missing Indigenous women go uncounted and unsearched for. The systems that are supposed to protect us? They fail us.
Don't get me wrong. I love my country. But because I love it, I will criticize it. I will demand it live up to its promises of justice and liberty for all.
So yes, I hear the men singing.
But I'm learning to hear the women, past and present, who refused to stay silent.
Because we are singing. Louder and louder. And one day, they won't just hear it. They'll have to listen.