3 French Women You Need To Know About (but Probably Never Heard Of)!

Tutorial Transcript

Salut YouTube today I am here with a very special guest miss Heidi who runs the woman of Paris tours and they are these amazing tours where you walk around Paris and you discover historical moments and times that Paris has really changed and been shaped but really focused on the woman who have changed the face of history the reason I do so is because I felt that women have been overlooked you generally hear a lot about Napoleon but not so much about I'm gonna talk to you about today if you are interested in taking one of these tours you can find my website is womenofparis.fr you can also follow on Instagram Women of Paris Twitter Women of Paris Facebook it's Women of Paris walk okay I was just blown away by her knowledge of this magnificent woman who have shaped the history of France who we hear very little about and so we wanted to do it video today on French women who have made a huge impact on Paris on France in general and on the world actually that you may never have heard of you probably haven't heard of but need to know you know the first woman I want to talk to you about today is Olympe de Gouges who has to have one of the best names in history of Olympe de Gouges was a writer and she was essentially the first female women's rights activist in France she was really a self-taught self-made noblewoman she stole that name it wasn't the name that she was all with, de Gouges makes her sound more aristocratic she taught herself basically educated herself and she was around in the revolution the French Revolution in the late 18th century and she's famous for her writing and specifically for writing the Declaration of the rights of women and the citizen oh well the female citizen I should because Lafayette's had written a Declaration of the Rights of Man and the citizen which unfortunately neglected to talk about the rights of women and so as a parody she wrote this unfortunately though Olympe de Gouges wasn't well liked for her writings and she eventually ended up on the guillotine so she was yeah one of the first female activists if not the first women's rights activist in France who unfortunately was a bit too ahead of her time right I guess and they solved that problem pretty quickly I guess she was taking huge risks yes she was and she was also writing not only about the rights of women but of abolition of slavery she was very much in favor of a welfare state and democracy all of this hard work that she was doing before her untimely death did anything ever come up there yeah I mean eventually and thanks to the women's liberation movement which started in France really in 1968 officially known as the mouvement de libération des femmes but of course women's suffrage came before that crazily though women did not attain full legal rights with with men in this country in France until 1970 Wow yeah and some of the biggest and best feminists have been French yes so it's it's interesting that they're often just a few steps behind sort of European counterparts or you know the UK or the US wasn't New Zealand the first country to give women the vote yes probably yeah okay so the next woman I want to talk to you about she was a contemporary of Olympe de Gouges her name was Germaine de Staël, she was an 18th century writer novelist and salon host and she was a 19th century fugitive and highly influential figure she was very much in a similar way she was that she was a believer in women's rights she was an incredibly intelligent woman but she was a lot more pragmatic than Olympe de Gouge in that she recognized that there are some things that she shouldn't and couldn't say right but nonetheless she still managed to get her voice heard let me just tell you a little bit about her she was the daughter of Necker a very very successful and popular finance minister of louis xvi and she was the daughter of a very famous and well-liked salon host so salons originated in France in the 1600s and they were informal meetings hosted by women so prominent women in society and they were meetings of intellectuals so you had writers philosophers the great thinkers of of the time and it was also a way for for these women who hosted them to gain an informal education so her mother was a salon host and from a young age she was taken to the salon she would sit at her mother's feet and she would hear these incredible intellectuals talking about politics and art so she grew up with a very open education and education that that far surpassed what was expected of women at the time cause and she also hosted her own salon but during the revolution her and her family were pretty much in exile in Switzerland and then she was also a bit of a fugitive during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte and I love this quote Napoleon apparently only recognized three powers in Europe Russia Great Britain and Germaine de Staël They were opposed in almost everything so Napoleon was an imperial Emperor who believed in in spreading the the culture of France throughout his impoverished European nations whereas she believed that there was lot to be learned from Europe and and she wanted to have an education of of German playwrights for example or Russian music they also differed in terms of how they viewed religion so German de style was a Protestant and Napoleon is famous for his segregation of church and state famously actually taking the crown from the Pope's hands and putting it on it on his own head that women should kind of be seen him not heard right you know he didn't he didn't really permit women to have a voice in society but Germaine de Staël was unstoppable and she managed to be an incredibly influential writer mhm despite being in exile influential in politics despite the fact that women were denied any access to politics so in terms of her long-term legacy she was influential in bringing about political change in France and in Europe and she was also an inspiration to great thinkers and writers like Tolstoy and Marcel Proust and so for the last little teaser of these incredible woman who have impacted French society who do you have for us? Georges Sand. Georges actually that wasn't her real name her real name was Lucille Amandine Aurore Dupina like Aurora although when she was a naughty child she was known as l'Horreure - the horror and she was a writer she was a novelist she also wrote plays and she was a journalist but most of all she was a badass she was born in 1804 she's actually born the same year that Napoleon seized that crown out of the Pope's hands and placed it on his own head and crown himself and she was born into therefore a very turbulent century in France the 19th century saw a lot of change and in fact the government in France was changing every few decades almost as you know frequently as the Frenchman changes his underwear. Is that often? After her first marriage breaks down she didn't ever get remarried but she had several lovers often very high-profile lovers and she dressed up in society as a man in order to go around and live a free existence and go to places that women couldn't go to comfortable of course because the corset was I could imagine pretty restrictive she was just a big rebel I mean she also was an incredibly successful writer as well so she is Frances second best-selling writer after Victor Hugo and she was incredibly prolific she published 80 novels something like a hundred and twenty plays and thousands of her letters have also been published which give you an insight into she was smart she was she was super sassy yeah she was also writing pretty sexually explicit novels and so in a way that linked to her her life so I think that was something that made her so so attractive and popular she was like a player and a cougar let me just say that at the time that she was cross-dressing it was illegal but she managed to get around that getting like a written permission from the French police which she could take with her and show two people that would allow her to legally crossdress so what's her legacy then to this day so really she led a very shocking rebellious lifestyle and she in that way embodies this sexual liberalism the countess is known for today she helped women to break free of those restrictive shackles like having to wear that kind of feminine clothing of the time and made it more acceptable for women to to behave like that and to dress like that this is just a tiny tiny little insight into all the things that Heidi knows about the amazing badass rebellious women that have walked these streets if you can come and do her tour because that's when you'll really have your eyes opened or recommend it to some friends because it's definitely worth it 10 out of 10 would recommend so a post written about you recently and they said you know the future is female which is very much the case the future is female but not just that, the past is too - the past was also female I hope you guys enjoyed that video and until the next one see you next time à bientôt!