Vulgar History - French Revolution： Radicals (part 6)： The Secret Female Journalist

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast

00:00:46.120 my name is anne foster and this is part six of our mini-series about radical women of the french

00:00:52.700 Revolution. And today's topic is Menon Roland, who's sometimes known as Madame Roland, which

00:01:00.380 if you've ever come across her name, it might've been as Madame Roland. That's how she's often

00:01:04.740 written about by people from that time and people writing about that time. And we're going to be

00:01:10.400 touching on some topics we've looked at in, I think, every episode so far in this mini-series

00:01:15.980 about the radical women of the French Revolution, because these are women who are all living through

00:01:19.960 the same events and the same events were massively impactful to so many people. And this is today's

00:01:26.980 story is she's on the other side from what a lot of the women we've looked at so far. 1.00

00:01:33.340 Just to super briefly recap, in the French Revolution, and we'll get into this in the 1.00

00:01:38.060 episode as well, how it kind of coalesced. First, there's just everybody's angry. Everybody's angry

00:01:44.300 for various reasons. There was a bad yield of grains. There's not a bread. So everybody's

00:01:50.340 hungry. They're hangry. People are mad that the royal family and the aristocracy and the nobles

00:01:55.760 are all living this like 1% 0.1% life off in Versailles while other people are starving because

00:02:02.980 of the no bread. Just there's things are primed and ready for a big revolution to kick off. And

00:02:08.440 at first everyone has all their sort of different motivations and they coalesce together to be like,

00:02:13.500 Let's just change society. And then as that change happened, the different factions sort of coalesced around each other until there was really two main groups. There's the Jacobins. Their whole deal was they wanted to get rid of the royal family entirely and just have a republic like America did, because this is what all kicked off in 1789, about 10 years after the American Revolution started.

00:02:39.940 So people in France were thinking, let's be like them, you know, philosophically, let's have a democracy.

00:02:45.420 Like in ancient Rome, everybody was obsessed with ancient Rome and ancient Greece at this time. 0.65

00:02:49.240 That's the Jacobins.

00:02:51.040 The other main faction that's developed is the Girondins.

00:02:54.820 And their thing is, let's keep the monarch.

00:02:57.900 Let's still have a king, but let's also have an elected representative government.

00:03:02.640 Sort of like what England did at that time and still does now, where you have a monarch, but you also have elected representatives.

00:03:08.320 And these are kind of the two groups of people. And I can't overestimate or overemphasize how much that was really important to the people living through this in their time. Although now, myself, and I would presume other people looking back are just like, yeah, fuck yeah, French Revolution, just power to the people, whatever. It's like, it's more complicated than that.

00:03:30.380 wouldst that it were simpler. But that's why we're in part, I think, seven of the series about the

00:03:38.620 radical women of the French Revolution, which is a small portion of a larger series about the

00:03:44.580 decades of revolution happening in France and other places as well. It was a complicated

00:03:49.340 situation, as it turns out. So my two main sources for this, today's episode about Manon Roland,

00:03:57.220 was an essay from the ever-useful reference work, Women in World History. The essay was written by

00:04:03.760 Abel A. Elvis. And then also a book, Liberty, The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary

00:04:09.300 France by Lucy Moore, as well as the Wikipedia entry for Manon Roland. Like an episode we did

00:04:16.000 last year about Madame Tussauds, who became famous under that name, which was again her

00:04:20.660 married name because Madame means Mrs. in French. Manon Roland was not born, Manon Roland.

00:04:27.220 She was, in fact, born Marie-Jean Flippon.

00:04:30.860 And this is, like some other people in this series, her name was technically Marie, like

00:04:36.240 seemingly 99% of everyone in France was, but she was known as Manon was her nickname,

00:04:41.640 thank goodness, because there's too many Maries in the story already. 1.00

00:04:45.220 Although if you are following along on the Vulgar History bingo card, which you can get 1.00

00:04:48.380 for free on my Patreon, you can cross off the square.

00:04:51.540 Someone is called Marie.

00:04:52.200 So Marie-Jean Flupon was born in Paris on March 17th, 1754. Her father, Pierre Gatien Flupon,

00:05:03.200 was a skilled engraver who employed a number of apprentices and sold intricately detailed

00:05:08.480 snuff boxes. Snuff boxes are the little beautiful sort of jeweled cases that you keep your snuff in,

00:05:16.620 which is like tobacco that you put up your nose or in your mouth.

00:05:21.120 You might have seen that in Queen Charlotte of Bridgerton's story. 1.00

00:05:25.080 It must have been there because Queen Charlotte, the real Queen Charlotte, was a real fiend. 1.00

00:05:29.080 She loved her snuff.

00:05:30.440 Her father Pierre was also selling frames, I guess like picture frames,

00:05:35.460 as well as watch cases to wealthy members of the French royal court.

00:05:39.680 So he's of this merchant class, but he's got connections to the French royal court

00:05:45.600 because he's selling these beautiful things that they wanted. This is sort of like in the two weeks

00:05:51.580 ago episode when we talked about Pauline Leon, her family were chocolatiers, which again were

00:05:57.000 merchants, but they were selling luxury goods to the wealthy people. So you got to interact with

00:06:01.920 them in that context. Menon's mother was Marguerite Bimond, the daughter of a haberdasher.

00:06:08.280 And if you're thinking, what is a haberdasher other than a fun name for a job? It's somebody

00:06:13.420 who sells men's clothes. So she's solidly from this mercantile class of people. So she's not

00:06:20.200 on the streets with the market ladies, you know, selling fruit. She's growing up in kind of a

00:06:26.080 higher working class sort of level. But she was born in 1754. So this is decades before the French

00:06:32.380 Revolution kicked off. Although, as we all now know from the newest Hunger Games book,

00:06:38.420 Sunrise on the Reaping. A revolution, a rebellion, doesn't just happen. It takes

00:06:43.180 decades of work, decades of people just having their lives screwed over and being mad about it

00:06:50.020 for things to finally erupt. So although she's growing up pre-revolution, those vibes are still

00:06:57.160 very much around. So her mother, Marguerite, was the wife of a master artisan. That's how Pierre

00:07:04.420 is described. And so like wives of master artisans, Marguerite, the mom, divided her time between

00:07:10.360 household duties, like running the house, et cetera, making sure there's food on the table 0.75

00:07:14.860 and cleaning things, as well as helping her husband in the shop. Manon was their only child

00:07:20.560 who survived infancy because before we had lots of the medical knowledge we have now,

00:07:28.100 there was a lot more child death than there used to be because they didn't have stuff like

00:07:33.740 vaccines and fluoride in the water and things we're very lucky to have now. Anyway, so Manon

00:07:40.520 had six siblings who had died in infancy or in childhood. She's the only one who survived.

00:07:47.100 And I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but in terms of when you look at places where

00:07:50.800 medical knowledge is not great, people are starving, things are challenging, 1.00

00:07:56.860 more girls. And if there's like a lot of child death, girls tend to survive more than boys do. 1.00

00:08:04.000 That's just a medical fact for you to know. So they lived, the Flippon family, they lived in a

00:08:11.440 comfortable environment on the Quai d'Orlage in Paris, which means something about clock. So maybe

00:08:18.920 that's kind of like clockmaker neighborhood because he was a master artisan. She, although 0.85

00:08:24.100 for the first two years of her life because her mother was busy helping to run the household and 0.91

00:08:28.000 be in the shop. She couldn't be there breastfeeding her. So Manon grew up the first two years of her 1.00

00:08:31.900 life with a wet nurse in Arpajon, a small town southeast of Paris. And if you're new to this

00:08:37.560 podcast, I've come to really like to mention the names of villages and cities where people were

00:08:43.040 because so often I hear from somebody who has lived in one of these places or has visited one

00:08:49.100 in these places and they're excited to hear the name. So, so shout out to everyone in Arpajan,

00:08:54.360 the small town, Southeast of Paris. Manon was a smart little kid. She was taught to read when

00:09:01.240 she was not quite four years old and she took to books with a passion. She was a really,

00:09:08.600 I think I've known kids like this for sure. I myself, I don't think I was a kid like this,

00:09:15.340 but I know that both of my older sisters were. And I have some nieces who are like this as well,

00:09:21.160 who are just really into learning facts and figures. This is what we're going to see throughout

00:09:27.100 her life. Manon is just a real book nerd. She loves learning things and she loves telling

00:09:32.660 people the things that she's learned. So her parents, that wasn't their vibe. They weren't

00:09:37.940 super into reading and talking about the facts they learned, but they supported her interest.

00:09:43.560 They supplied her with tutors to help her learn new and interesting things and to really lean into the clear interest she had in reading and her curiosity about scholarly things.

00:09:56.960 And tutors came to the school because this is in a time before there was tutors came to her house because this was in the era before there was school available for people.

00:10:06.460 So this also kind of shows how wealthy the family was.

00:10:09.140 You'd have to pay for these tutors to come in.

00:10:10.800 So they came into the family home, and she learned subjects including calligraphy, history, geography, and music.

00:10:17.200 Her father, again, the master artisan, so he's obviously got quite a lot of artistic skill.

00:10:22.860 He taught her drawing and art history.

00:10:25.840 They had an uncle who was a priest who gave her some Latin lessons,

00:10:29.980 and her grandmother, who had been a governess before, took care of spelling and grammar.

00:10:34.300 So I do appreciate this.

00:10:35.160 They brought in tutors for some things, but they cut costs by having family members teach her things that they happen to know.

00:10:42.100 She also, growing up, her mother, if you're wondering where's Marguerite in all of this, Manon learned how to run a household.

00:10:48.940 Because this is a time and a place where that's all anyone would have ever expected her to do.

00:10:56.620 And so they wanted to prepare her for what life had in store for her, which is she's going to marry somebody, have some children, and run a household.

00:11:04.200 So she was being taught those skills as well.

00:11:05.820 Practical, because that's what everyone expected.

00:11:08.340 Every girl in her position to grow up and to do.

00:11:12.440 So while her dad, the master artisan Pierre, was selling his snuff boxes and stuff to the elite.

00:11:19.320 So again, he is coming into contact with them.

00:11:21.860 And so there might have been, this is like people writing about Manon, extrapolating.

00:11:27.100 But this feels true to me.

00:11:28.460 Like, why wouldn't they have thought this? 0.87

00:11:29.800 so her parents might have hoped that you know the more refined she is the more educated she is she 1.00

00:11:36.860 might attract a husband higher than above her station like somebody wealthier because especially 0.99

00:11:41.660 because her dad was interacting with these wealthy elites as well and that was a good plan 0.95

00:11:48.760 because in this era having a brilliant wife was an asset that's what people who were trying to find

00:11:55.780 a partner, what men were looking for. This was seen if you had a brilliant scholarly wife that 0.68

00:12:03.040 was an asset to a socially and politically active man, which a lot of these elite men were.

00:12:08.980 So Manon was really being prepared, not just to be eventually a wife and to run a household,

00:12:14.200 but also to be the sort of person that a man like this would want to marry. So she was trained in

00:12:20.220 singing viola and guitar so that she could better entertain when she inevitably

00:12:24.460 married some guy, was running a household, and was called upon to clearly not just prepare and host

00:12:31.300 dinner parties, but to be the entertainment of those parties herself as well. And she was up

00:12:36.260 to the challenge. She was skilled at everything. As she was growing up, so I mentioned that there

00:12:42.760 were her father was wealthy enough to have apprentices who he was teaching how to make

00:12:46.360 snuff boxes and things. Her father's workshop was attached to the family home and his adolescent

00:12:53.000 apprentices were part of the household. Like they were around all the time. So they would

00:12:56.860 have seen her as she was a young girl growing into a teenager. She would have interacted with

00:13:01.000 them like they were adjacent to the house in which she was growing up. A lot of what we know

00:13:07.280 about Manon is that she did in fact write her memoirs. And I'll explain to you much later the

00:13:12.760 context in which she wrote these memoirs. But she did write, and we believe women, that she was

00:13:19.220 sexually harassed by one of these apprentices who tried to make her fondle him. She told her mother

00:13:24.640 about the incident. And you know what? Marguerite believed her daughter. Always nice to see. And from

00:13:31.040 that point forward, Manon and the apprentices, they were more closely watched. She was never

00:13:35.760 left alone with him again, which honestly for a person in this olden times era is good, is

00:13:44.700 surprisingly, um, helpful and kind and correct behavior in, by way of her mother. And in today's

00:13:54.420 world, that's also good, kind and correct behavior that you don't always see. So like, these are like

00:14:01.380 good parents. Again, if you're a new listener, I'm emphasizing this because we don't come across

00:14:06.660 a lot of supportive, kind parents on this podcast, slash in history in general. So good job,

00:14:15.500 Pierre Marguerite, given the constructs that you're living within. So her mother Marguerite

00:14:21.440 was very devoutly Catholic. And so Manon was raised this way as well. So under her mother's

00:14:27.920 influence. And also because she was this real bookworm, she liked to read everything around her

00:14:32.160 and the only books that she had access to. And this is a time where books were really expensive

00:14:37.360 and really valuable and really rare. So there wouldn't have been the local public library to

00:14:42.280 go and get the latest bestsellers or whatever. She was just reading the books that were in her

00:14:46.940 house or that she could acquire. And these were the Bible and books about the Bible,

00:14:53.040 Christian themed books. So she was, but which is great because that was her interest and that's

00:14:57.420 what she read. When she was just seven years old, she apparently astounded the parish priest with

00:15:02.660 her knowledge of theological detail as she prepared for her first communion. I've known

00:15:08.600 little kids like this, especially little girls sometimes who just really are so smart. And when

00:15:16.140 they're little enough, they just like to explain to you what they know. And I find it so charming

00:15:21.240 and so lovely, but also like, are we looking at like a spectrum of an autism spectrum type 0.72

00:15:29.600 situation, some sort of neuro spiciness around Menon perhaps. And I find it really charming 0.96

00:15:37.220 that her parents were supporting this and everyone was impressed with her at this little

00:15:40.660 know-it-all kid. So when she was nine years old, and again, like her whole life is in terms of her

00:15:47.380 education. This really self-guided. She reminds me of those kids you read about sometimes who were

00:15:52.240 like, this kid is 12 years old and just got admitted to Harvard. Like she's super speeding

00:15:58.200 through an educational arc that usually takes people a couple of decades. But she's just nine

00:16:05.480 years old at this point. So when she's nine years old, she ran across a French translation of

00:16:11.140 Plutarch's lives. And Plutarch, just to remind myself and all of you, not just Plutarch Heavensby

00:16:19.820 from the Hunger Games series, Plutarch was the Greek philosopher and historian. And so he lived

00:16:26.940 an incredibly long time ago. And he was a philosopher and she was just like, oh my God,

00:16:32.080 Greek philosophy, like all she'd been reading was theology. And she's like, a new topic,

00:16:35.700 How exciting.

00:16:36.480 And so this began her interest in philosophy, age nine.

00:16:40.380 So in her memoirs, Manon reminisced that this introduction to Plutarch made her a believer

00:16:46.420 in the republican form of government through the examples of ancient Athens and the Roman

00:16:51.180 republics that Plutarch wrote about, which is also, on the one hand, this is Manon's

00:16:58.040 memoir.

00:16:59.800 And so what better source do we have than her?

00:17:02.080 But also she might be, is she remembering correctly her nine-year-old self being like, oh my God, I'm now a believer in the Republican form of government. Everything we know about her, I kind of do believe it, but it does seem implausible, which makes it seem almost more true in some way.

00:17:20.180 anyway so this is like she's nine years old she's born in what 1754 so this is like just in the

00:17:27.260 1760s so still 25 years before the french revolution or so but already she was just

00:17:34.280 like yeah i think we should have a republican form of government which is what the jacobins

00:17:38.360 and girondins talk about much much later so she's just this little kid and she's got it all figured

00:17:42.500 out the vibes are a bit like natalie portman as padme amadala in the star wars prequels just like

00:17:49.800 a little girl, but it's like, you know what? Let's put her in charge. So at age 11, she begged

00:17:56.060 her parents to allow her to enter a convent for the salvation of her soul. So although she had

00:18:00.600 discovered Greek philosophy, she was still very, very, very Catholic and religious and concerned

00:18:06.600 about the salvation of her soul, which I read Ginger Duggar's book a few years ago, her first

00:18:15.480 book where she was talking about how she was a little kid. She's Ginger Duggar from like the

00:18:20.760 Duggars family from TLC fame. And she talked about the way that religion was described to her. She

00:18:28.120 was a really anxious little kid because she just felt like if you do anything wrong, you're going

00:18:34.740 to go to hell. You're going to disappoint everybody. And it really exacerbated just her

00:18:38.360 being kind of a nervous, anxious kid to begin with. And then the religious stuff, she just

00:18:42.700 made it all worse for her. And I think Manal might be having a similar thing here where she's

00:18:48.120 so smart and she's so interested and she's so curious and she's reading all this religious

00:18:52.160 theology at age 11. It was kind of making her panic, thinking like, I'm going to go to hell.

00:18:58.780 It was exacerbating maybe some tendency she might already have towards anxiety.

00:19:04.640 So her parents were still trying to be supportive of their daughter. They're like, okay. They've

00:19:09.080 been raising her to eventually become a housewife, but they're like, if you want to be a nun, you

00:19:12.260 know what? You do you, we support you. And again, parents of the year on this podcast.

00:19:17.140 So they agreed that she'd go to a convent, but on the condition that she'd try being

00:19:23.340 a student there for one year before making a final decision, which is similar to in White 0.71

00:19:29.980 Lotus season three, where Victoria told Piper, oh, you want to join this Buddhist monk order?

00:19:37.400 Like spend one night there and get back to me. Although here it was like, spend one year there

00:19:41.900 and come back to us. And so May 7th, 1765, Manon Philippon entered Paris's convent of the ladies

00:19:49.340 of the congregation. She was so advanced beyond that of other girls at the school, so they quickly

00:19:57.180 placed her in the older girls' classes, which would be, she's 11, so the older girls would be

00:20:03.080 teenagers. And she made two friends there who were her friends for the rest of her life,

00:20:07.420 18-year-old Henriette Canet and her sister 14-year-old Sophie Canet. These are the daughters

00:20:13.740 of a fairly comfortable provincial family of lesser nobles from Amiens. And so again like

00:20:21.480 she's interacting with people who are kind of a station higher than what her situation was

00:20:26.520 and they all got along. I guess they're all just nerds together. And after one year she returned

00:20:31.220 from the convent and was like actually you're right. Like Piper on White Lotus season three

00:20:36.140 she's like okay yeah that wasn't for me but she she decided to leave the convent and she got

00:20:43.280 not much tutoring after that because her parents had provided well honestly she probably had as

00:20:47.960 much education as anyone in her life was available to give her she learned all the things any adults

00:20:52.380 knew around her so she didn't receive much formal education beyond this age 12 but she embarked on

00:20:59.020 a self-guided educational journey. And she read, she was able to, I guess she's made some friends

00:21:06.340 with the local bookshop or librarian or something. She found more books to read. And she read books

00:21:11.640 on every subject she could find, history, mathematics, agriculture, law. And she continued

00:21:17.040 with her passion for the classics. She loved, again, Plutarch. He wrote a book with biographies

00:21:23.560 of famous Greeks and Romans, and she loved reading about them. And part of what we know about her

00:21:28.760 life at this point was the letters that she wrote to the Canet sisters, Henriette and Sophie.

00:21:34.780 And at this point, she's telling them, based on what she was reading, the more that she interacted

00:21:38.920 with different kinds of literature, the more she started having doubts about both Christianity

00:21:43.120 as a religion and also French society in general. And this is why people now in the year 2025 are

00:21:52.700 like, let's not let children read diverse books. Let's not let them learn things because then they 1.00

00:21:58.020 might come to conclusions on their own that are opposite of what society wants them to think.

00:22:02.940 She was doing this back in the 1700s. So at around the same time, so she's like 12,

00:22:07.940 13 years old, her grandmother, grand-mère Philippon, her father's elderly mother,

00:22:13.360 who remembers she was a governess before. So she decided to take Manon on a visit to visit

00:22:19.180 Madame de Bois Morel, a wealthy noblewoman who grand-mère used to work for as a governess.

00:22:27.060 So she'd been a servant in this household, but they were still kind of friends afterwards.

00:22:31.740 So Manon and Grandmère went to the court of Versailles, which is where Madame de Boismerol

00:22:36.500 was hanging out. And this was Manon's first, although her father interacted with these

00:22:41.940 elites. And Manon was friends with Henriette and Sophie. She had not witnessed what it was like to

00:22:49.060 be in these elite spaces before. And so she was shocked when they went in to meet her.

00:22:54.340 And the noblewoman had Grand Mare sit on a low stool while Madame de Bois Morel and her lap dog sat on a sofa.

00:23:04.240 Manon was just like, that's my elderly Grand Mare. 1.00

00:23:07.680 And this woman's making her sit on a low stool. 1.00

00:23:09.800 Like, this is fucked up. 1.00

00:23:11.460 Like, this is not right. 1.00

00:23:13.900 I don't like this social structure.

00:23:17.240 And so she was developing, just seeing this really stuck out in her memory.

00:23:22.460 She wrote about it in her memoirs.

00:23:23.640 She just had this aversion to the traditions of a French society built on rank, privilege,

00:23:29.000 and limited opportunities, which is what a lot of people are raging against in the eventual

00:23:32.940 French Revolution. And she's just like, wow, this is fucked up. Like what's going on in the world? 0.99

00:23:38.500 I need to find answers, which I will find in philosophy. And God help us all,

00:23:43.200 she turned to the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We've discussed Rousseau in past episodes of this

00:23:49.600 miniseries. To quickly summarize his point of view and my thoughts on him, Rousseau had ideas

00:23:58.640 that people should spend more time in nature and everything should be more natural. And also that

00:24:06.300 what is more natural than women being subservient to men and the highest, most wonderful thing

00:24:13.260 any woman could do is to marry a man and have babies and breastfeed them and raise the next 0.96

00:24:21.640 generation of French children. And that's a lot of what I've taken out of the Rings of Russo, 0.98

00:24:29.520 which were so popular. He was really the Joe Rogan of his time. People were really into what

00:24:35.100 he was throwing down. He also had democratic ideas and those ideas of his strongly influenced

00:24:44.200 Manon. It influenced her thinking about politics and social justice. And also in all the reading

00:24:51.260 she had done, because this was the 1760s, getting into the 1770s, she had not yet encountered

00:24:59.160 anything challenging the concept that what women should do is get married and have babies. That is 1.00

00:25:04.580 the consensus of everybody just everybody who is thinking about society this is what they're all

00:25:14.280 thinking about just women shouldn't do anything so again it's just this really interesting

00:25:20.820 situation that we find men are in where she's so clever and she's so curious and she's reading

00:25:28.440 so widely and she is a girl she's a teenage girl and she knows that all the society all like

00:25:37.140 nothing that she's read discounts the fact to her that the highest calling that she as a girl as a

00:25:45.240 woman has is to run a household and raise children and I do want to clarify no shade at all to people

00:25:51.880 who are running households and raising children,

00:25:55.580 I think that if that's someone's choice

00:25:59.500 and if that's something that brings you fulfillment

00:26:01.660 and joy and that's your calling, it's wonderful.

00:26:06.060 And I think anyone, women, any gender, everybody

00:26:08.600 should be able to choose what they want to do.

00:26:12.660 And so Manon, who is this person who in another

00:26:15.180 100 years from now, 100 years from when she's living,

00:26:18.460 if she's living today, if she's living even in like the 1800s,

00:26:21.880 the 1900s. She could have gone to university. She could have become an academic. She could

00:26:28.540 have written books. But there was no example of that for her to see that that was a possibility.

00:26:36.180 Even a couple of decades from this point, Mary Wollstonecraft, Olymp de Gouges, they were

00:26:42.420 publishing really important books about how women should have rights too. But that stuff hadn't come

00:26:49.900 out yet and so Manon was just developing her own worldview and her own understanding based on what

00:26:54.900 she was reading which was a bunch of things by people like Rousseau and Plutarch and it's just

00:26:59.560 it's a really fascinating situation to find yourself in I kind of think like I sympathize

00:27:03.620 with what I empathize I try to understand what would it have been like if I had been raised

00:27:07.960 having like a lot of people are still raised now with an understanding that all girls should

00:27:14.880 be present as feminine and should marry men and should have children. There's lots of cultures

00:27:21.720 like that still today in 2025. I'm just glad I didn't grow up in any of those cultures because 1.00

00:27:26.180 frankly, my house is incredibly messy. I don't have children. I never wanted to have children. 1.00

00:27:33.300 I am happily living here with my cat and doing a podcast. And I'm glad that

00:27:40.540 not for many people judging me for that. So anyway, Manon is doing what she can. So what

00:27:46.220 do you call it? It's like, try to square the circle, try to circle the square, just trying

00:27:50.340 to make everything make sense. Like, it's like, she's so close to getting to a point

00:27:56.260 where she's like, oh, women should be able to do more stuff, but she never, she doesn't 1.00

00:27:59.600 reach that point. Because if you don't see someone doing something, someone like you 1.00

00:28:06.660 doing something. They just don't know someone like you can do something. If you want to listen

00:28:10.600 back to an older episode of this podcast I did with my friend Gina Berry, when we were talking

00:28:16.260 about Hatshepsut, who in part of that conversation, we were talking about how Hatshepsut saw her

00:28:22.000 mother and other, her aunts and other women deriving power and being respected. And she saw,

00:28:29.040 oh, this is possible. Like this is a possible route that I could do as a woman. I could become

00:28:33.120 Pharaoh. And what my friend Gina said was, it's not just, she didn't see that it was possible.

00:28:37.860 She saw that it was inevitable. Once you see somebody succeeding like that, you're like,

00:28:42.040 oh, that can be me too. Anyway, Manon didn't have women role models to look up to. And so she's just 0.73

00:28:49.200 fingered all out by herself. She's a real, her energy is a bit like, it's a bit not like other

00:28:56.780 girls is her energy, but she was still friends with Henriette and Sophie. So she was friends

00:29:00.700 with some girls. So by age 14, where she's reached the point that some people reach by age 35 doing

00:29:08.220 their doctoral thesis. 14-year-old Menon is she went to circulating libraries. So there were

00:29:13.980 libraries. Okay. So I guess before she was just reading the books from her house, now she's able

00:29:20.080 to go to libraries, I guess because she's basically graduated school. And she's reading works of the

00:29:24.200 Enlightenment, such as the encyclopedia edited by Denis Diderot. So this encyclopedia was highly

00:29:31.080 critical of miracles, magic, and religion, religious dogma. It was also highly laudatory.

00:29:38.760 And by laudatory, I mean like it was complimentary. It said like these things are important and the

00:29:43.100 things that were important were practical, profitable, and beneficial activities of

00:29:46.700 artisans like her dad. So this encyclopedia talked about the importance and the expertise

00:29:52.820 is required to do things to make cloth, to make gunpowder, and just saying how these things were

00:30:00.180 more important than religion, for instance. And Manal was like, oh, interesting. Yeah,

00:30:06.600 I want to learn about how things work. So this is where she's like doing an engineering degree 1.00

00:30:09.680 for herself. So she taught herself algebra, geometry, physics, and natural history to 0.70

00:30:14.920 understand the technological innovations that were happening around her in the world.

00:30:18.620 she did also continue to attend church throughout her life so although she was questioning religious

00:30:26.020 dogma she's still she's still christian she's still religious and what the benefit that she

00:30:32.960 saw of religion like christianity was as a means of promoting morality and order among the mass of 0.82

00:30:39.720 ordinary people so this is where i need to explain to you that manan is also a real snob she

00:30:46.220 so she's raised in this artisan class with her her father who was uh artisan and her mother

00:30:54.160 was the daughter of haberdashers and she she saw herself as being morally superior to a lot of

00:31:02.220 other people and this is we'll see this throughout her life and she was clearly smarter than almost 1.00

00:31:08.300 anybody but she also thought that she was more morally upright than other people and so she

00:31:13.320 just saw the people of Paris where she's growing up, like the market ladies and other people we've

00:31:18.760 talked about in other podcasts. She just saw them as unruly and unintelligent and they needed

00:31:25.980 guidance and they needed someone like her to tell them what to do. But because she was a girl,

00:31:30.860 she couldn't tell them what to do. So she's like, they should go to church and then church will tell

00:31:34.300 them what to do because she thought they don't have reason. They're not smart enough to figure

00:31:40.380 out for themselves that they should have morality. So church is what she thought was a good

00:31:45.140 prescription for the poverty circa marginalized people of Paris. And she also felt that the

00:31:53.480 Christian religion provided these people with comfort because of all the social problems that

00:32:00.800 were plaguing them, like underemployment, price inflation, homelessness, increased taxation.

00:32:08.180 and to be fair like a sense of community and going to church can bring people that sort of comfort so 0.94

00:32:13.960 she's not wrong she's just also i need to be clear an asshole but i don't you know i don't 0.92

00:32:21.860 hold that against her throughout all this like she is bucking up against like there's only so 0.95

00:32:26.880 much that she can do as a young woman so she would she wrote to her friends the kenai sisters

00:32:32.480 that she's frustrated like she wished that she could be living in ancient roman times where

00:32:37.200 women had more opportunities to do more stuff. And we're going to have some episodes coming up

00:32:40.920 later, spoiler, about what it was like for women in Roman times. And I have to say it was better 0.99

00:32:45.700 than this. It was women in ancient Roman times, things weren't great, things weren't perfect, 0.97

00:32:53.460 but they had a lot more opportunity than what Manon was dealing with in her world at this time. 1.00

00:33:00.300 She also started, because her father had this snuffbox business where her mother worked too,

00:33:05.300 and she would work the counter in the store sometimes. So she would meet the clients,

00:33:09.320 these sort of like upper-class men who needed their snuff boxes and whatever. A lot of them

00:33:13.540 were scholars. And so she would chat with them and just try and learn from them as well.

00:33:18.100 And she started having sort of pen pal relationships with some of them. Like she

00:33:22.320 started writing letters back and forth with these men who were sort of her mentors,

00:33:25.720 sort of her intellectual mentors, not in a creepy way, I want to emphasize, but these guys were

00:33:30.640 just like, whoa, this kid, this little Doogie Howser kid, she's, sure, like we will answer

00:33:37.260 her questions about philosophy and republicanism. And so years go by. She's by now 20 years old,

00:33:46.280 which was at this point for somebody of her social rank, unusual that she was not engaged

00:33:53.060 or married yet, but that's not because of lack of interest. She had received at least 10 marriage

00:33:58.940 proposals for men and she rejected all of them. She had a brief romance with a writer named

00:34:05.440 Pahine de la Blancherie, who was, I told you before that she had these intellectual mentors

00:34:13.540 and they weren't creepy. This one was. So she was 20 and he was a 56 year old widower

00:34:18.420 and they corresponded about philosophy. And he, Pahine de la Blancherie, asked her to come and

00:34:25.160 live with him on his estate so they could study philosophy together and she was like well you know

00:34:32.700 I might consider marrying you but just in a platonic way so we can be scholars together

00:34:37.140 but he I think ghosted her and then this wounded her greatly so actually maybe it wasn't creepy

00:34:43.160 maybe I don't know how creepy Plahine or La Blancherie was if he was legitimately just like

00:34:48.040 hey come hang with me in my house and like we'll talk about philosophy or if she took it the wrong

00:34:52.100 way. But anyway, anyway, that did not work out. So now she's 21. Her mother Marguerite suddenly

00:34:59.200 died of, I didn't write down and I don't know, but let's assume tuberculosis, something like that.

00:35:07.140 And so Manon, like so many people had to pivot from doing what she wanted to do, which was

00:35:14.200 scholarly pursuits into helping take, manage this household because that was her mother's

00:35:20.040 unpaid job and now Manon had to take on these tasks because her father's fortunes so although

00:35:27.520 he had this like seemingly prosperous snuffbox business he had made poor investments and what

00:35:34.520 is described here as an overzealous dedication to lotteries which is just gambling problems

00:35:40.460 so she needed to help out in the shop more around the house because the family was in need of money 0.99

00:35:46.500 and spending more time in the shop,

00:35:49.240 she met more of his customers

00:35:50.760 who were impressed with her wit and her intellect.

00:35:53.880 So I will say, like, yes, 1.00

00:35:54.980 was she a know-it-all, snob, asshole? 1.00

00:35:57.140 Yes. 1.00

00:35:57.520 But she was also charming and witty.

00:36:01.800 So she got to meet some more people

00:36:03.560 and learn some more intellectuals working in the shop.

00:36:07.760 And then in the one hour day 0.99

00:36:10.380 where she wasn't running the household

00:36:11.680 or working in the shop,

00:36:12.940 she used her leisure time to continue her own studies

00:36:15.560 and just, you know, lifelong learning.

00:36:18.820 In 1776, she was doing her doctoral thesis,

00:36:22.580 like this would be the topic.

00:36:24.180 So she began an in-depth and extensive reading of Rousseau.

00:36:29.100 Everything he'd ever written, his fiction, his philosophy,

00:36:32.860 his essays, just she really dedicated herself

00:36:35.300 to really becoming a Rousseau-ologist.

00:36:38.800 So another like part of what drew her to him as well

00:36:43.020 is he emphasized that civilization and the arts.

00:36:46.960 I told you the Russo's whole thing was like,

00:36:48.680 we should all just be natural.

00:36:49.980 We should live like how our ancestors were, natural.

00:36:53.200 So he said civilization and the arts had hurt humanity

00:36:55.960 by diverting natural instincts,

00:36:58.380 which provided for human survival in the world.

00:37:00.600 Like he was advocating for what seems to me

00:37:02.920 a sort of paleo diet, barefoot running,

00:37:07.540 like don't take medication type vibe. 0.99

00:37:10.820 anyway but she was just like i fuck with this guy i like i like what this guy has to say 0.99

00:37:16.800 even though he um said women were second class people that they should only ever have babies 0.99

00:37:26.160 and that was it but she found a lot in his writing that she found attractive and again i'm going to 0.98

00:37:30.780 learn more about russo in a month or two because i'm going to do a special episode so this asshole

00:37:36.500 colon russo and maybe i will come to like some things about him as well but as far as i've come

00:37:41.200 across so far in this series don't care for him what she also got out of russo's works was what's

00:37:48.860 described as a non-biblical religious sensibility so she also started worshiping kind of nature

00:37:57.940 kind of like what who is god if you divorce it from the bible it's kind of like the universe

00:38:04.880 Versus sending me a sign, like that kind of religion.

00:38:09.260 So rather than believing the teachings of any single book, like the Bible, she felt that people should just feel the divine presence in the beauty and order of nature.

00:38:21.600 He also, Rousseau, also wrote about how social ranks based on birth were human contrivances.

00:38:27.620 So he was against those and she was like, yes, because she was like very much against like after seeing Grommere, me to sit in that low stool.

00:38:34.880 So Rousseau was also kind of against stratified social classes.

00:38:41.480 She and he thought that instead of having a hierarchy based on how much money do you have, it should be based on talent and intellect, which, of course, someone like Manon would think because she was really, really smart.

00:38:53.060 And this would be a pyramid that she would be on the top of.

00:38:56.800 so she wrote in a letter to her friend sophie kenney russo lifted a veil from her tired eyes

00:39:02.160 so she was finally able to see the magnificent scene of the universe and she at this time

00:39:10.680 there's various contests by different essay contests people could just write their own

00:39:16.520 philosophy papers into these contests and she decided to enter one of these contests

00:39:20.480 anonymously because she knew that as a woman maybe they wouldn't take her entry seriously

00:39:26.220 So she entered this essay contest sponsored by the Académie of Besançon.

00:39:30.920 And maybe this is why she chose this contest, because what you had to do is write an essay on the topic of,

00:39:36.340 would the education of women make men better citizens?

00:39:40.080 And in her entry, she argued that women should be educated, but that was on their own merits,

00:39:48.140 not just because that would improve men being better citizens.

00:39:53.120 And for some reason, what the sources I read didn't know why, the Academy decided not to

00:39:58.560 name a winner that year, which maybe there was a tie or maybe they didn't think any of them were

00:40:01.840 good. But her anonymous entry received high praise from the jury. And that same year,

00:40:08.920 while in her father's shop selling snuff boxes, she met 42-year-old Jean-Marie Roland de La

00:40:16.640 so she was 22 he was 42 he his job was the inspector of manufacturers in picardy which

00:40:25.820 meant he was in charge of quality control of the products of local manufacturers and craftsmen and

00:40:31.260 she had been reading about how manufacturing crafts and tools are more important than religion

00:40:36.720 and other things i'm sure she found that job interesting he was intelligent well-read and

00:40:42.920 well-traveled, but he was also known as being, quote, a difficult human being, reluctant to take

00:40:48.740 into consideration any opinions but his own and easily irritated. So an asshole. And because of 1.00

00:40:55.240 this, although he had some good ideas about economic reforms, people didn't take on his ideas

00:40:59.740 because he was really annoying about it. Do you see where this is headed? Because she fell for

00:41:06.440 this guy. So his family, the Rollands, had once belonged to the lower nobility, but no longer had

00:41:15.860 a title. So this was, although they didn't have a title, he was a step above her family, the

00:41:22.980 Flippons family of artisans and shopkeepers. So he proposed marriage to her in 1778, and she refused

00:41:30.200 because she said no because of our social class differences. But I guess he stuck at it, and a

00:41:35.060 year later, she did accept. And the wedding plans were initially kept secret because he expected

00:41:41.940 that her family would object because the marriage was considered inappropriate socially due to the

00:41:48.840 large difference in social status between him and her in the sense that he was so much higher

00:41:53.340 socially than she was. But they did eventually get married February 1780. And they lived in Paris

00:42:00.100 where they met, where they were in the first place. They just moved in together, I guess.

00:42:03.160 Jean-Marie worked at the Ministry of the Interior doing his like manufacturing inspections job

00:42:10.740 and Menon stepped up just like she had helped out just like her mother had helped her father

00:42:15.600 just like she had helped her father she was like I'm gonna help out you with your job

00:42:19.860 so she worked more or less as his secretary while in her spare time she attended lectures

00:42:27.740 on natural history in the Jardin des Plants, which means Garden of Plants, the Botanical

00:42:33.500 Garden of Paris.

00:42:35.000 And while she was there attending these lectures, she met Louis-Augustin Bosque d'Antique,

00:42:40.980 a natural historian who became a close friend and remained, was a close friend for the rest

00:42:45.440 of her life.

00:42:46.600 She also, at around this time, made friends with a parliamentarian named François-Xavier

00:42:51.260 L'Anthénance.

00:42:52.760 I'm saying a lot of these names just because I enjoy saying French names, but some of them

00:42:56.100 will come up later.

00:42:57.740 After a year in Paris, Manon and Jean-Marie moved to Amiens, the provincial capital of Picardy.

00:43:05.780 Because remember, he was in charge of the manufacturers in Picardy.

00:43:09.240 October 4th, 1781, she had a child.

00:43:12.760 She gave birth to their daughter, whose name was Eudora.

00:43:16.400 And against the doctor's orders and the social customs of her class and of the time, she decided to breastfeed her daughter herself rather than sending her out to a wet nurse.

00:43:26.020 Remember, she herself had been raised for the first two years of her life with a wet nurse in that town outside of Paris.

00:43:32.340 And this is because of Rousseau.

00:43:34.800 I keep mentioning Rousseau and breastfeeding, but this was important to Rousseau.

00:43:38.500 He saw breastfeeding as central to the development of human bonds.

00:43:43.040 And Menal, just like nerds today who have children, she read all she could about nursing and medical dictionaries and in the encyclopedia.

00:43:51.740 and just tried to learn everything she could from books about how to raise a child.

00:43:56.920 She hired a maid named Marguerite Fleury, who also remained her friend for the rest of her life. 0.99

00:44:03.020 So like as much as she is like a snob and an asshole, like when you became a friend with her, 0.99

00:44:07.520 like it was for life. She was a real ride or die type vibe of person. So Marguerite Fleury came in 1.00

00:44:13.740 to help with childcare and housekeeping, which gave Manon time for her intellectual and business

00:44:18.740 activities. And when she later wrote her memoirs, again, I'll tell you why she wrote her memoirs and

00:44:25.520 when it actually happens. But in those memoirs, she included candid information about the childbirth

00:44:34.020 and problems she had with breastfeeding, which made her one of the first women of this time to

00:44:38.840 write openly about such matters. And if you listen to the episode from a few months ago about the

00:44:46.040 painter Adelaide Labie Gouillard. One of her paintings that gained a lot of attention was

00:44:51.640 showing an upper-class woman breastfeeding her child. So this is kind of like breastfeeding was

00:44:56.540 a real, to have an upper-class woman performing the act of breastfeeding was controversial at

00:45:04.020 this time, but it was something that Rousseau was advocating and people loved Rousseau. So I guess

00:45:07.760 more people are doing it. And at first, well, not at first, at this time, the couple lived a very

00:45:15.220 quiet life in Amiens and had few social contacts. So I guess she's just reading her books,

00:45:20.380 raising this child. Manon assisted her husband with his writing and research.

00:45:25.240 In her memoirs, she looks back on the situation with some resentment where she was

00:45:29.600 not able to pursue her own activities because she was helping him out so much with his job.

00:45:34.880 And she also didn't love being a mother because she had thought Eudora would be like herself,

00:45:42.460 a clone and they could be sort of like intellectual friends or something, but Eudora was not interested

00:45:48.100 in books and learning. And so Manon was kind of like, well, then I'm not interested in her.

00:45:52.860 And so her daughter was mostly raised by the maid Marguerite, it seems. Anyway, so she helped her

00:46:00.140 husband with his business more and more. So not just like it's a before she's doing secretarial

00:46:04.600 type tasks and that turned into, she started to edit and modify his texts. And eventually she

00:46:09.220 wrote major sections of his writings herself. Initially, her husband Jean-Marie did not realize

00:46:15.060 that she was writing this. He just saw a thing. He's like, wow, I wrote a good thing. Huh? I don't

00:46:18.860 remember writing that. Like he didn't realize that she had written it and not him. Within a few years

00:46:24.420 of working together, she was the better writer, which he eventually noticed and acknowledged. In

00:46:31.380 the end, he fully accepted her as his intellectual equal and there was an equal partnership,

00:46:35.300 although he got credit for all the things that he wrote because she was a woman. In 1784. So

00:46:42.960 remember how he was from his noble family, but they didn't have a title. So she was like, it

00:46:47.860 would be cool if he got a title again. So she went to Paris to try to get a peerage, which means

00:46:53.940 effectively a title for him. Because if he got a title, that comes with money. And so that would

00:47:01.380 allow him to give up his job as an inspector so he could focus entirely on the writing and

00:47:05.740 research that he wanted to do and that she wanted to do. And while in Paris to try to get this

00:47:10.140 paperwork through, she discovered that she was talented at lobbying and negotiating because of 1.00

00:47:14.840 her intelligence and her wit and her, one might say, asshole ways. She was quite convincing she 1.00

00:47:22.860 could wear people down until they agreed with her. Although she did not get the peerage because her

00:47:29.800 husband was even more of an asshole. And so many people remembered him being an asshole. They're 1.00

00:47:33.800 just like, you're great. He sucks. Sorry. But what she did manage to get for him was an appointment 1.00

00:47:40.460 in Lyon, which was less demanding than his post in MENs and better paid. She also negotiated for

00:47:48.140 him an excellent salary and retirement benefits. This has given me a little Kris Jenner sort of

00:47:53.140 vibe of just sort of someone who has a natural ability to negotiate and do contract things and

00:48:00.040 just uses that to help their own family. So before they moved to Lyon, they went for a quick trip to

00:48:06.700 England where Manon was able to attend a debate in the House of Commons between legendary political

00:48:12.180 opponents William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox. If you know who they are, that's all

00:48:17.440 fun fact for you, English history fans. And so for the next five years, they lived in Lyon and

00:48:25.780 nearby Ville-Franche-sur-Saône, which is again, like as their daughter Eudora grew older, Manon 0.91

00:48:33.600 was, this is where she's like, oh, she's a dud. When I say that, that Eudora was far more interested

00:48:41.420 in playing than in reading. Like I would say most children, like I would say myself, but Manon was

00:48:49.160 just, she had high expectations and she's like, oh, my daughter isn't learning how to like write

00:48:53.860 a doctoral thesis at age three. No, thanks. What a disappointment. So in the following years,

00:49:00.920 she would write to her friends and also she later wrote in her memoir, she called her daughter slow

00:49:05.720 and lamented that Eudora had such bad taste. And I don't know if Eudora had learning difficulties

00:49:12.440 or if she was, you know, learning differences like dyslexia or whatever, but I feel like Eudora

00:49:18.380 was just like an average child. And that was just disgusting to Menno because she found that very

00:49:24.120 boring. But her maid was raising the daughter and she was able to spend her time working on

00:49:30.540 working with her husband to write an encyclopedia of trade and industry.

00:49:33.820 And then she really wanted to go to Switzerland to visit some sites that had played a role in

00:49:40.560 Rousseau's life. And she convinced her husband to go with her in 1787. And they went to Switzerland

00:49:45.680 and just like had a nice time. Probably Eudora not with them. And then the French Revolution

00:49:53.160 happened. And now for a quick advertising break. Sorry, investing, trading, that isn't a personality.

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00:50:27.480 the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered

00:50:35.900 like bones in the dust now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying

00:50:42.660 the darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins

00:50:49.100 this is old school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that

00:50:56.020 flame dies something else rises to finish the job this is a brutal rules light nightmare with a

00:51:01.720 story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make this is what

00:51:06.980 it felt like to play rpgs in the 80s and man it is so good to be back join the glass cannon podcast

00:51:12.620 as we plunge into the shadow dark every thursday night at 8 p.m eastern on youtube.com slash the

00:51:18.140 glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day see what everybody's talking about

00:51:23.380 and join us in the dark.

00:51:29.020 Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.

00:51:34.720 Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,

00:51:39.160 the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,

00:51:42.720 and the cyberpunk chaos of Cyborg.

00:51:47.500 Be awed by our incredible guests

00:51:50.120 from familiar shows like Oxventure and No Rolls Barred.

00:51:55.620 Search Realms of Peril and Glory to find out more.

00:52:01.080 Hi, I'm Whitney.

00:52:03.160 And I'm Katie.

00:52:04.140 And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire.

00:52:06.560 We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to.

00:52:10.080 We get right to the story.

00:52:11.760 We don't do a lot of extra talking, 0.99

00:52:13.340 and when we do, it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. 0.98

00:52:18.180 You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.98

00:52:20.820 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

00:52:24.860 BTK and his awful poetry.

00:52:27.080 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

00:52:30.800 We look for the stranger-than-fiction stories,

00:52:33.200 like the case of Patty James,

00:52:34.700 a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing.

00:52:37.520 Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry

00:52:40.520 who convinced his town he'd won the lottery,

00:52:43.020 fleeced local businesses out of thousands,

00:52:45.220 and then became a romance scammer.

00:52:46.940 we've covered tons of cases you've never heard of cults scammers killers so come find your next

00:52:53.040 great binge listen to true crime campfire on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcasts

00:52:58.880 new episodes every friday and we're back so at this time and this is where this story is

00:53:09.380 different from the others we've looked at so far in this radical women of the french revolution

00:53:14.780 miniseries is because Menon and Jean-Marie were not poor. They were not, like she had started off

00:53:23.140 in this mercantile class. He was higher up. And so they were representative of the revolutionary

00:53:31.400 elite because they had obtained their social position through work, not through birth. Like

00:53:37.580 although he had been born into this nobility, he didn't have a title. He still didn't have a title,

00:53:41.760 but he got this good job because of her lobbying and through his reputation of doing work.

00:53:48.500 And so they resented the court in Versailles because the people who were there who were

00:53:52.400 really wealthy, that was because of who their father was and how rich they were when they

00:53:56.120 were born. And they felt it was really corrupt. Remember Manon had that thing about the poor

00:54:00.920 people need us to guide them so they're not disasters. She felt that way about the rich

00:54:07.920 people as well she felt that she was the best most moral ethical person and everyone should

00:54:14.260 just listen to her and do what she said so she felt that the people in Versailles were so corrupt

00:54:18.160 which they were to be fair she and Jean-Marie lived this I feel like this is her more than 0.99

00:54:26.660 Jean-Marie like as much as he was a nightmare asshole I think she was like here's how her 0.97

00:54:30.320 household is going to run and he's like okay like I'm tired of fighting with you fine so they live 1.00

00:54:35.220 this quasi-Puritan lifestyle. For instance, instead of drinking alcohol or serving alcohol

00:54:41.400 at her party, she drank and offered water with sugar in it. And in their defense, they also

00:54:49.940 advocated for relief for the poor and to get rid of some other regulations, old regulations of the

00:54:56.720 class structures of French society. In 1789, so this episode is focusing on her and her life,

00:55:06.180 but she coincides with some political things that I'm going to have to mention, even though I don't

00:55:11.060 entirely understand them myself, because this is not a political history podcast, but the French

00:55:16.240 Estates General were convened in 1789. That's where they called the people from the three

00:55:21.100 estates to all come together to kind of make a new constitution for France. And the Rollands were

00:55:29.120 involved in drawing up a document. So that was happening in Paris. The Rollands, they're in 0.51

00:55:33.960 Lyon, remember. But they made a document in which the citizens of Lyon could express their grievances

00:55:39.760 about the political and economic system. She had not been super interested in politics up to this

00:55:47.020 point as evidenced by what she wrote about her memoirs and the letters she wrote. But she became

00:55:51.440 more and more fascinated by politics after the estates general were convened. She got, one might

00:55:57.260 say, a hyperfixation in this new topic that she had not read about before. So July 14th, 1789,

00:56:04.000 the storming of the Bastille. That was when people, revolutionary-minded people in Paris,

00:56:11.480 they descended upon the Bastille which was one of the only buildings in Paris that was

00:56:18.500 associated or affiliated with the monarchy because the monarchy lived outside of Paris in Versailles

00:56:22.740 so they attacked the Bastille to get the weapons from there and also to free the like

00:56:27.320 seven prisoners who happened to be there and that is what most people agree it was like the

00:56:32.120 beginning of the French Revolution era and when that happened she her thinking radicalized quickly

00:56:39.800 when you look at the tone and content of her letters she kind of you can see right away she

00:56:44.680 decides on her point of view and she sticks to it so before she'd written sort of hypothetically 0.99

00:56:49.400 about societal reform now she was writing about like fuck yes revolution yes like let's burn it 0.99

00:56:56.800 all down like she was just like on board with the revolutionary vibe because she had hated 0.99

00:57:01.740 the social structure of the ancien regime of france she hated what it meant for her as a woman

00:57:08.320 what it meant for her in her social class. Like, she was just like, yes, let's make something

00:57:13.120 newer and better. Let's destroy the old institutions. So she was like, a completely 0.89

00:57:19.460 new form of government has to be developed. Like, let's just use the, like looking at Rousseau and

00:57:25.360 Plutarch and the example of the ancient Greeks and Romans, like let's build something beautiful.

00:57:30.060 Let's build a republic. So this was seen at the time as radical, although in the French Revolution,

00:57:37.640 more people, other groups will become more radical, but this was seen as radical, especially

00:57:42.040 for a woman to be thinking like this. And in her usual way, as my notes describe, she was not

00:57:47.960 inclined to compromise on anything, nor had she ever been. I relate to her in that way.

00:57:55.620 She was just like, we want to achieve this revolution and we should do whatever it takes,

00:58:00.420 like the use of force, sure. Civil war, bring it on. We want to get this revolution so we can

00:58:06.940 implement a republic and have this beautiful intellectual society like ancient Greece and Rome

00:58:12.080 had. So the French Revolution started again with the Bastille. And over the next 18 months,

00:58:18.280 the Rollands were still, like they were in Lyon, but she was writing about it. She was cheering it

00:58:22.540 on. They lived in Villefranche part of the time, although they're in Lyon. And she started to

00:58:30.920 worry about a counter-revolution. So like the revolution is people who want to get rid of the

00:58:35.660 old ways bring in a new thing counter-revolution would be people who wanted to defeat the

00:58:40.460 revolution to keep the old ways to keep the king to keep the social structures and everything

00:58:44.740 she started being worried about the counter-revolutionaries she's trying to get her

00:58:49.460 friends to to mobilize and she spread rumors like this is just it feels very 2025 to me like she's

00:58:58.400 she's your your mom on facebook who's like see some ai thing and it's just like oh my god do

00:59:05.640 you see what's happening like she's just every rumor she believed is true and she's telling 0.80

00:59:09.660 her friends like we need to stop these kind of revolutionaries and it's like manal like

00:59:13.200 q anon is not real but she's just like all in like this is this is what she wants to think 0.94

00:59:18.200 about right now and she was never a subtle bitch it had become common knowledge in leon that she 0.95

00:59:26.180 and her husband sympathize with the revolutionaries. They supported the establishment of the radical 0.96

00:59:30.600 political club. So we've talked about in other episodes. And so people in Lyon from the elite

00:59:36.040 hated them because they were on the side of the revolution and that side inherently was against

00:59:42.240 the elites. But so Manon, people knew that she felt this way, but she did not publicly take part

00:59:48.280 in political discussions because she's like, I'm a woman. So like, I'm not going to be part of this

00:59:54.240 political discussion i'll just write ferocious letters to my friends and tell my husband what

00:59:58.420 to say and he'll take part of the political discussions so she's behind the scenes very

01:00:03.140 involved and this is how she managed to gain some political influence during this period

01:00:07.640 she she's just writing letters which again is just like someone just sending emails to everybody

01:00:13.900 like i think she'd be really busy on again like i don't know why facebook is the social media i

01:00:20.720 picture her using, but that's where I feel she's just writing long Facebook posts. I'm leaving

01:00:26.360 long comments on Fox News posts or whatever. So she was writing letters, which is not to say that

01:00:31.780 they asked her to write the letters or that they wanted to read the letters or that they did read

01:00:34.960 the letters, but to people, to publicists and politicians just being, my name is Manon and

01:00:39.940 here's what I think. One of the people who she wrote to is the Parisian journalist Jacques-Pierre

01:00:45.260 Brissot, future leader of the Girondins faction. And in her letter, she described and analyzed what

01:00:54.020 was happening in Lyon to let them know like kind of what was going on there. At least on five

01:00:59.100 occasions, Brissot published excerpts from her letters as articles in his newspaper, La Patriote

01:01:04.400 Française. So her opinions were discussed outside Lyon. People read this stuff, but they didn't

01:01:10.560 necessarily know that she was the one who was writing it. Another newspaper, Le Courier de

01:01:15.100 Lyon, which was published by Luc Antoine de Champagny, also published some of her letters

01:01:21.700 in his newspaper, which made her, interestingly, one of the first female journalists,

01:01:29.960 correspondents in history, I think, because she was writing these letters and they were being

01:01:36.340 published and she was keeping people apprised of what was up, what was happening in Lyon.

01:01:41.280 But her contributions were not published under her own name, but anonymously, either fully anonymously, or as, quote, a woman from the south of France.

01:01:50.480 So it's impossible to determine how, like, historians have figured out some of the ones that she wrote, but there could have been others.

01:01:58.000 We don't know how many articles she wrote that appeared in the press, because her name wasn't on them, because she was a woman.

01:02:03.380 in 1790, so a year after the storming of the Bastille, Jean-Marie was elected in the city

01:02:11.220 council of Lyon, which is interesting. Like the elites of Lyon were not super cool with him,

01:02:16.340 but I guess the people of Lyon were cool with it. And he was elected into this role. So they're

01:02:21.260 living in Lyon, but in order to get money to do the revolutionary reforms they wanted to do in

01:02:27.920 Lyon. They went to Paris in 1791 for a short stay to just try and find some benefactors,

01:02:33.940 to try some funders so they could help improve things in Lyon or make it more revolutionary

01:02:37.700 there. But as soon as they showed up, guess what? Menon became a sensation. She became a well-known

01:02:44.420 figure in political circles in Paris, especially thanks to Brissot, the newspaper guy who had

01:02:50.240 published her articles. He introduced her everywhere. He's like, this is the woman who

01:02:54.440 was writing those articles like this is Manon like have you ever met somebody so smart and clever

01:02:58.900 and her husband was there with her too it's like this is Manon oh also her husband it's a real

01:03:04.540 and Peggy is like yeah Jean-Marie was there as well but she also like she was always working

01:03:10.620 alongside her husband like he was the one who's able to go and make talk to people but she was

01:03:17.060 telling him what to say sort of thing and because she was busy busy with political stuff they hired

01:03:24.180 an assistant named Sophie Grandchamp who would do the routine copying and editing work because 0.82

01:03:28.540 she was too busy and important to do that anymore. Manon, however, wrote most of her husband's

01:03:33.140 official letters and she wished that she could go to the National Assembly herself to explain to

01:03:39.620 them why Lyon needed funds. And she couldn't do that because women were only admitted to the 1.00

01:03:44.200 public gallery. They weren't allowed to speak there. So she observed the debates and while 1.00

01:03:50.880 there. Like she wrote about what she thought and it annoyed her that the conservatives are so much

01:03:55.220 better and more eloquent in the debates than the revolutionaries. And here conservatives means the

01:04:00.080 people who want to stop the revolution. Revolutionaries means people who are like into

01:04:04.040 the revolution. So she's like, oh, the revolutionaries aren't as well-spoken as, for instance, I would be

01:04:09.240 if I was allowed to talk. Oh, well, she did not put on a male disguise, wouldst that she did,

01:04:14.980 but she did not. Anyway, so she wasn't able to speak in the assembly, but she was active as a

01:04:20.500 lobbyist outside the assembly, just trying to get her point of view across to other people

01:04:25.080 and to get other people to support what she wanted. She was also a regular visitor with her

01:04:30.900 husband to the Jacobin Club, which is where that faction would meet. Women were only allowed access 1.00

01:04:38.020 to the public gallery there as well. So she would just kind of watch. This is sort of her, I mean, 1.00

01:04:44.040 in the sort of journalist way, like a lot of what we know about these people and about this time

01:04:48.240 from the French Revolution comes from her and what she said and what she saw. And because she

01:04:52.020 wasn't interacting with people, she could just see what was happening. So she's kind of a fly

01:04:56.440 on the wall there. Although she wished she could have been more involved, obviously.

01:05:01.200 Starting in April, like they came to Paris just to try and get some funds for Lyon, but they'd

01:05:05.880 kind of decided to stay. So April 1791, she started hosting a salon in her home several times a week.

01:05:14.660 And we've talked in this podcast before about salons run by women in France and sometimes in England. And these are, we're going to talk about some other women who ran salons in Paris during the French Revolution. But this was really what women could do. This was the most political a woman could be at this time in this echelon of society.

01:05:37.300 But remember, her mother had trained her in how to host parties. She could play all these instruments. So she would host intellectuals and thinkers into her home so they could all talk to each other. And it became a real meeting. Her home, like the Salon of Madame Roland, became known as a place that people could really go and have these political conversations. 0.97

01:05:56.500 People who attended included Robespierre, an American revolutionary named Thomas Paine

01:06:01.840 was there.

01:06:03.400 Manal, however, did not interact with these people because she is a woman and she was 1.00

01:06:08.660 like, well, women can't be involved in these things.

01:06:11.360 So she just listened and learned. 0.98

01:06:13.640 So she was always seen sitting at a table by the window, reading, writing letters or

01:06:18.220 doing needlework slash just like eavesdropping on everybody.

01:06:21.220 she never involved herself in the conversations but listened carefully so she had political

01:06:28.520 influence but it was all through her letters and through personal conversations not through being

01:06:34.860 in a room with a bunch of people and persuading people that way it was a quieter softer sort of

01:06:40.260 political power she was known for her sharp political analysis and she was recognized as one

01:06:47.040 of the most important people in this group, like this Jacobin group, or sorry, not the Jacobin

01:06:52.640 group, but the group like Briso, her newspaper friend. Like in that clique, she was seen as one

01:06:57.820 of the most important people. And people came to her one-on-one to ask advice on political strategy.

01:07:03.980 And she contributed to lots of people who were writing letters, parliamentary bills,

01:07:09.300 and speeches. So behind the scenes, she was so influential. She's described by people from this

01:07:14.340 time as a charming woman and a brilliant conversationalist. And her salon is, it was

01:07:23.820 different from other salons that other women were doing. For instance, hardly any food or drink was 1.00

01:07:28.560 served because she and her husband were these kind of extreme Puritans. And the salons that 0.93

01:07:36.800 other people were hosting were kind of more social and hers were entirely political, like

01:07:42.140 specifically, strictly, only political. She would host her salon in the few hours between the end

01:07:49.060 of the debates at the National Assembly and the beginning of the meetings in the Jacobin Club.

01:07:52.660 So it's really sort of like after-school care for the revolutionaries. There were no women present

01:07:59.400 except for herself, but she was like, I'm just overheating my needlework. Totally. Don't mind me. 1.00

01:08:03.640 It's not like having a woman present. Just pretend I'm not even there. And this was different from 1.00

01:08:08.580 events hosted by other women we're going to talk about in other episodes like Jermaine de Stael

01:08:12.880 and Sophie de Condorcet. Those other women's salons are kind of more similar to the aristocratic

01:08:19.100 salons of the ancien regime of the pre-revolutionary time where men and women could hang out and have

01:08:26.420 fun and eat food and drink. Manon wanted to make hers be like no confusion. Like this has nothing

01:08:32.480 to do with how things were before. This is a specific new revolutionary thing. Like I don't

01:08:37.700 want anyone to mistake this for what it was like in the Ancien regime. So I mentioned that these

01:08:42.720 meetings were between the National Assembly and the Jacobin Club meetings. And that's because

01:08:47.500 originally Manon and her husband were part of the Jacobin movement, which was a broader movement

01:08:52.540 initially. But as the revolution progressed, the Jacobins became dominated by radical Parisian

01:08:59.920 leaders, but like Georges Danton, who is on your bingo cards if you're doing the vulgar history

01:09:05.540 bingo. This might be his first appearance, certainly not his last in the upcoming episodes.

01:09:11.260 Georges Danton was one of the leaders of the radical Jacobins, and so was Jean-Paul Marat,

01:09:15.620 the one who's later killed in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday. So the Jacobins were becoming 0.70

01:09:20.380 more radical. Menon and her husband were like, we prefer the Girondins. And also a lot of the

01:09:28.920 Girondin politicians came from outside the capital. The Jacobins were focused in Paris,

01:09:33.460 and it was Parisian people, but like Manon and her husband had lived in Lyon. They kind of knew

01:09:37.720 what mattered to people outside of Paris. And that's kind of what the Girondins were more about.

01:09:44.080 So her ideas on women and the rights, again, followed the ideas articulated by

01:09:51.700 Rousseau. So she was just in terms of this time period, like 1791, other women we've talked about

01:10:00.540 on this podcast, like Olympe de Gouges was talking. She had feminist arguments about equal rights of 1.00

01:10:06.520 people. Menon was like, that's not for her. Like she believed in the existence of natural divisions

01:10:13.380 between men and women. She felt that women were the moral center of the home, which again, like

01:10:19.200 she felt like she was so moral and like she knew what was best. People should do what she said. 0.94

01:10:24.320 And so she felt like the sort of quiet influence she was doing is what she felt was natural for

01:10:29.060 women versus what olympe de gouge or someone like edipam delders was doing where they were like

01:10:36.380 standing up and giving speeches and circulating pamphlets like men all just felt that was gross 0.99

01:10:41.080 that was unnatural like women should be quiet and in the corners and secretly secretly affecting 0.70

01:10:46.020 everything so she came to paris she and her husband and she's like okay i guess we're here 1.00

01:10:52.080 for a while like let's start this salon um that was in april so then by june 1791 after she'd been

01:10:59.820 in paris for a few months that is when louis the 16th the king marie antoinette the whole family

01:11:06.680 attempted to flee the country and was caught and the revolution gained momentum from that because

01:11:12.740 that was a moment that really stoked the flames when he tried to flee and was brought back

01:11:18.740 so at this point Manon was like okay time for us to like step things up like let's get our 0.93

01:11:25.760 republic of intellectuals going so she was lobbying to all of the influential other 0.63

01:11:30.680 politicians being like hey here's what we should do she also became a member of a political club

01:11:35.940 under her own name for the first time not just like Jean-Marie and wife despite her conviction

01:11:41.120 that women should not have a role in public life not sure which club she joined but that this is

01:11:46.620 an interesting stat for her as well one of the reasons she did this was she felt after the royal

01:11:53.120 family tried to leave and couldn't she felt that there was so much at stake like everything had

01:11:56.580 reached this like the stakes were so high right this is my cat Hepburn and she's just like yeah

01:12:02.340 things are getting pretty extreme and she's like everyone like no one can sit back on this like men

01:12:09.340 women everybody has to step up and like fight for for to save france to turn into this republic

01:12:16.360 more brutal things happened so in june the king tried to flee in july there's a demonstration

01:12:23.840 that led to a massacre where the national guard opened fire on demonstrators killing as many as

01:12:29.520 50 people many prominent revolutionaries feared for their lives and fled at this point the roll

01:12:36.040 provided a temporary hiding place for for some of their friends during this time but they were not

01:12:41.880 going to leave Paris. She was not going to leave Paris. Like she's in this. And this is where just

01:12:47.940 the whole revolutionary government really starts, like the factions, it all starts really breaking

01:12:53.940 down. So a big point of contention was like, should France start a war against Prussia and

01:13:00.360 Austria? The Girondins and the Rollands felt that they should do this, but Robespierre,

01:13:07.220 who was leading the Jacobins at this time, wanted to focus on internal affairs rather than

01:13:11.880 going to wars. So the political situation was so divided between these two factions

01:13:17.500 that it was impossible to form a stable government just because the two groups would never get along

01:13:23.660 with each other. But to run a government, you needed ministers of different portfolios,

01:13:29.620 and nobody would agree on a person to take the job because of the two factions. So at this point,

01:13:36.320 louis the 16th who's still around he asked the girondins to appoint three ministers so march

01:13:43.460 1792 so about a year after they had gone to paris for quote a short time still in paris

01:13:48.620 manon's husband jean marie was appointed minister of the interior and in fact this appointment came

01:13:54.000 so unexpectedly at first they both thought that it was a joke but with this job they moved into

01:14:00.460 the Hotel Pont Chartrand, the official residence of the minister. But they also kept their small

01:14:07.280 apartment in the city, quote, just in case. This job was difficult. The workload was extremely heavy.

01:14:16.080 So the minister of the interior was responsible for elections, education, agriculture, industry,

01:14:20.900 commerce, roads, public order, poor relief, and the working of the government in the midst of

01:14:25.920 the French Revolution. And Jean-Marie, again, he's doing what he can, but Manon was really

01:14:33.140 the person doing everything. She was the driving force behind her husband's work. She was doing

01:14:38.700 everything and he was just a public face of this job. She commented on all the documents. She wrote

01:14:43.080 his letters and memos. She had a major say in who he appointed to what job. And she was very firm in

01:14:49.980 her opinions and felt that she was always right. April 1792, the war broke out against Austria and

01:14:59.160 Prussia. Madame Roulande was like, the Girondins wanted this, so she's like, okay, good. Robespierre

01:15:07.040 was mad about it, so she wrote a letter to Robespierre being like, Robespierre, like, come on,

01:15:11.880 like, how dare you not support this? Like, don't antagonize Robespierre, Madame, but she's just so

01:15:17.380 self-righteous like she can't like it just feels like such a contemporary social media

01:15:24.360 cluelessness sort of it's like you don't need to respond to every comment Menon but this letter

01:15:32.480 that she wrote he used to go to her salon but after this this led to the end of the friendly

01:15:38.200 relations between Rose Pierre Menon and her husband and eventually he would come to be her

01:15:44.800 enemy. So stay tuned for how that goes for her. So she was able to convince her husband and the

01:15:50.420 other ministers, because again, like she just believed all the rumors, all the rumors are true.

01:15:56.980 She had heard that the king was trying to restore the Ancien regime. And so she convinced her

01:16:02.760 husband and the other ministers that the king was doing this. Was he? I don't know. But it was her

01:16:06.520 idea to establish an army camp near Paris with 20,000 soldiers from all over France who would

01:16:11.860 be there ready, like on call, to intervene in case there was a counter-revolution in Paris.

01:16:18.380 Louis XVI hesitated to sign this into law, but Jean-Marie, actually Manon actually writing this

01:16:24.800 letter, sent him a protest letter and published it before the king could respond. In her memoirs,

01:16:30.680 Manon is vague as to whether she was involved in editing the letter or whether she wrote it.

01:16:36.220 Most biographers assume she wrote it because she wrote all of the letters that Jean-Marie did.

01:16:41.860 In any case, it was definitely her idea to publish the letter to try to get more support from the population to get this army camp established.

01:16:54.620 June 10th, 1792, Louis XVI fired Jean-Marie and two other Girondin ministers.

01:17:02.360 And this led eventually to the end of the monarchy on August 10th, at which point Jean-Marie was then reappointed as minister.

01:17:09.800 everything's just messy and pretty weird and that's what's happening so when the king stopped

01:17:19.100 being king this was the start of the terror which is the period in which Robespierre oversaw great

01:17:26.500 bloodshed where he went out and arrested and had executed all of his enemies and this the

01:17:34.480 Roland's got caught up in this because Jean-Marie had served as minister under Louis XVI.

01:17:41.380 So it was seen that he was like collaborating with the king.

01:17:44.700 And so that made them seem suspicious to the Jacobins.

01:17:48.560 Menon, ever true to herself, she had no sympathy for hooligans like the Jacobins. 0.74

01:17:55.860 The same way that she thought like poor people should go to church because they're too unintelligent to decide their own lives themselves.

01:18:02.260 she felt that like although earlier on she had advocated this violence early in the revolution

01:18:09.300 she had a great aversion to uncivilized behavior she didn't like she didn't like the revolutionaries

01:18:18.060 not behaving the way that she imagined the intellectual people did in the days of ancient

01:18:22.780 greece and rome she specifically resented this guy george danton who was the jacobin foreman

01:18:29.360 And if you look at pictures of Danton, he looks like, what if a pit bull was turned into a human

01:18:36.080 being is what he looked like, which is an interesting way to look. So she did not like

01:18:42.320 Danton and he tried to reach out to her to like, let's cooperate, like let's team up. I know you

01:18:48.040 have all this political influence. And she was just like, no, because once her mind is made up,

01:18:52.460 she would not change her mind, which in some situations is an admirable quality. And in her

01:18:59.140 situation in the french revolution in the terror is maybe not the best quality to have

01:19:03.520 so some historians argue that her refusal to ally with danton ultimately contributed to the fall of

01:19:11.600 the girondins which maybe did because she was so influential on the september 6th and 7th

01:19:19.200 hundreds of prisoners are massacred in parisian prisons because they were suspected of anti-revolutionary

01:19:24.480 sympathies. This is part of the terror. Manon wrote to a friend. She was beginning to feel 0.73

01:19:29.120 ashamed of the revolution. Determining who was responsible for this massacre became another

01:19:34.620 point of contention between the factions. Like it happened. Clearly one or the other factions

01:19:39.080 had been behind it, but it was unpopular with the people. So they were both just kind of

01:19:45.220 blaming each other, which again, feels very 2025. So Manon and the Girondins were like,

01:19:50.860 you know who's behind it? Jean-Paul Marat, Georges Danton, and Robespierre. Like that's who was

01:19:55.800 behind it. But their opponents pointed out that the Ministry of the Interior, which Jean-Marie

01:20:02.220 was again in charge of, was responsible for the prisons and they had taken very little action to

01:20:06.700 prevent or stop the violence. So it's like, whose fault was it? Everyone's trying to use it to get

01:20:13.660 power against the other, against their opposition. So Jean-Marie was like, this is his second term

01:20:20.240 as Minister of the Interior. And Manon was, again, just the power behind the scenes.

01:20:24.700 It was common knowledge that she wrote everything, all of the letters and everything that he wrote

01:20:29.520 actually was her, that he fully relied on her judgment and ideas. Both Danton and Marat

01:20:35.640 mocked him for this publicly. She even at this point had her own office in the ministry and

01:20:41.920 directed the work of the Public Opinion Office, which aimed to spread the revolutionary ideals

01:20:46.520 among the population, which, given that she couldn't really read a room, is not the best

01:20:52.160 choice, but she felt like her instincts were always right, so that's where she wanted to be.

01:20:57.060 So their enemies, of which there were an increasing amount, accused them of using this public

01:21:02.140 relations office to issue state propaganda in support of the Girondin cause. And there's also

01:21:08.480 rumors that they had been appropriating public money for their own ends, which it's like,

01:21:13.360 would they have? Like, she's so morally upright. Like, she drank water with sugar in it. Would

01:21:18.740 she have been, like, money laundering? I don't know. But these were rumors spread about them

01:21:22.680 by their enemies. Behind closed doors, oh, actually, I want to say, the ministry had

01:21:28.160 secret agents working for them, and at least one of them reported directly to Madame Roland.

01:21:32.220 Was that person Edipon Delders, spy, triple agent of the French Revolution who we talked about last

01:21:37.960 week? I like to think so. While this is all happening, as if there's not enough going on 0.99

01:21:46.460 in her life slash the world, she had fallen in love with someone new. So she had fallen

01:21:52.640 in love with a Girondin deputy named François Bouzeau. She had first met him as a visitor to

01:21:58.780 her salon, and they fell in love, but she described it as a platonic romance. And she

01:22:05.040 felt like she fell for him. And then she's like, okay, W. W. Rousseau do. What would Rousseau do?

01:22:11.600 He would be honest about this. So she told her husband, Jean-Marie, like, guess what? I'm in

01:22:17.480 love with this guy, Francoise Buzot, but I'm not going to leave you, Jean-Marie, because I admire

01:22:23.540 your intellect and I know you need my support in your job. And at this point, the revolutionary

01:22:28.640 government had introduced legal no-fault divorce in France. So she could have divorced him, but

01:22:34.200 She was like, guess what?

01:22:36.380 I'm going to stay married to you, but I'm in love with this other guy. 0.68

01:22:39.760 And let's just move on.

01:22:41.420 And you'll just know that I'm making this great sacrifice for myself.

01:22:45.780 Anyway, she, Rousseau called for truth at all times.

01:22:50.200 And so she was doing that.

01:22:52.200 But Jean-Marie, I will say, his feelings were hurt by this.

01:22:56.540 And she was just kind of like, I'm just living the Rousseauian ideals.

01:23:00.760 Sorry about it.

01:23:01.380 and they were getting more and more enemies so radical newspapers and pamphlets spread more and

01:23:08.040 more rumors about that the anti-revolutionary conspiracies had been come up with at their home 0.88

01:23:15.520 like these boring ass parties she hosted where she sat in the corner doing embroidery and there

01:23:21.240 was no food or drink and all that anyone was allowed to talk about was politics were being 0.98

01:23:25.120 described in the pamphlets as like orgies like decadent orgies where people are conspiring

01:23:30.560 against the revolution. Jean-Paul Marat and another man who published newspapers, Camille

01:23:37.560 Desmoulins, depicted Manon as this manipulative whore who was manipulating Jean-Marie. They 0.98

01:23:46.360 compared her to very widely hated figures at the time, widely hated sexualized people at the time,

01:23:53.660 Madame du Berry, and Marie Antoinette. Although I will say to their very slight credit, Danton and

01:24:00.800 Robespierre also criticized Manon, but never in a sexualized way, always just as a she's a dangerous

01:24:07.100 political opponent sort of way. In December 1792, Manon was ordered to appear before the National

01:24:15.400 Convention, which the Legislative Assembly was now called the National Convention, to answer to

01:24:22.160 charges that she had been corresponding with aristocrats who had fled to England. And this

01:24:26.240 was the time where many aristocrats had fled to England because they're like, I don't want to be

01:24:31.080 murdered. So I'm going to go to England. And they were called the emigres and they were very much

01:24:36.500 looked down upon. And so they were saying like, were you, were you pen pals with these people?

01:24:42.640 She defended herself so well that the deputies applauded her defense. And you know what? She'd

01:24:49.260 just been dying for the ability to speak in this room, like because women couldn't speak. So she 1.00

01:24:54.860 finally got to, and she just got to, she would have been a good lawyer, I think. Anyway, the

01:25:01.580 deputies applauded, but the public gallery, like the audience of just regular everyday people who

01:25:06.900 come to watch did not applaud because these pamphlets had so ruined her reputation among

01:25:12.440 the people of Paris. They hated her. She, there were fears that somebody might try to assassinate

01:25:18.880 her. In fact, for her own safety, she no longer went outside because she was so widely hated.

01:25:25.580 She, at this point in time, slept with a loaded gun, like within arm's reach of her in case of

01:25:31.800 an attack. She wanted to be able to kill herself so that she wouldn't be taken alive by her enemies.

01:25:39.560 And yet, you know, admirably, or is it admirably, she's stuck to her point of view throughout all

01:25:47.300 of this. She did not, she could have fled. She could have gone anywhere, but she's just like,

01:25:52.460 no, I, I don't know. She was sticking to her convictions here. So the king was put on trial

01:26:01.620 and found guilty. And there was disagreements about how he should be punished. So the

01:26:07.840 Girondins voted against executing him. And Manon was, she was not a voting member because she was

01:26:15.080 a woman, but she was also against executing the king. But that wasn't enough to stop it. The

01:26:21.560 Jacobins and Robespierre were like, yeah, we're going to execute the king. So he was taken to

01:26:25.780 the guillotine, January 21st, 1793. At this point, Jean-Marie resigned as minister of the interior,

01:26:33.200 possibly as a protest against the execution, but possibly because that job had a lot in it,

01:26:39.300 possibly because the ongoing attacks against him and Manon were getting to him. And maybe

01:26:45.960 possibly part of it was the fact that Manon was being open with him, that she was in love with

01:26:50.720 another man. He was just like, I'm done. So as soon as he retired, an investigation was started

01:26:58.700 into his actions as the minister. And so the Rollins were forbidden to leave Paris, which is

01:27:04.420 pretty ominous. In April, Robespierre accused the Girondins in general of betraying the revolution.

01:27:11.560 And a few weeks later, a revolutionary committee made an attempt to arrest Jean-Marie, who managed

01:27:17.060 to escape. He went into hiding with their friend. Do you remember the guy she met at the Garden of

01:27:22.440 Gardens, the Monsieur Bosque Dantic? So Jean-Marie went and hid with him. And then he fled to Amiens

01:27:30.300 and from there to Rouen. Manon, still in Paris. She refused to flee or to go into hiding.

01:27:36.480 She even went to the convention personally herself. One thing I read indicated she like

01:27:41.900 went there in her nightgown, like she went right there to personally protest against the attempted

01:27:46.720 arrest of her husband. Like she's, we see this again today. There's a point where

01:27:52.160 you can't use logic to change someone's mind when they're just really in on what they're doing and

01:28:01.000 they're gonna keep doing what they're doing and you can't use logic to change their mind from

01:28:05.140 doing what they're gonna do but she's like such an intellectual she's like i'm gonna use logic

01:28:08.640 and reason and my intellectual skills to appeal to them and we can still start a democratic republic 0.96

01:28:16.500 like ancient Rome. So in her memoirs, she does not fully explain why she acted this way

01:28:22.400 at this time. I mean, she was under a lot of stress and not doing well and sleeping with a

01:28:29.200 gun next to her and her husband had just fled for his life. But also, also I do think that she was 0.54

01:28:35.360 just like so felt morally correct and she had to do what she felt was right to do.

01:28:40.560 She also is pretty sure there was no legal basis to arrest her, which yeah, in regular times, 0.73

01:28:45.280 there wouldn't have been Menon, but like during the terror, like you don't, anyone can arrest 0.86

01:28:50.120 anyone. That's kind of what society is like at this time. And in fact, early morning of June 1st,

01:28:55.620 1793, she was arrested at her home and transferred to the prison in the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

01:29:03.160 The radical anti-feminist newspaper La Père Duchesne falsely claimed that she had confessed

01:29:09.100 to counter-revolutionary activities, although she had not. In her writings, she kind of clapped

01:29:15.760 back at this anti-feminist newspaper and just kind of said like, she criticized like the style 0.97

01:29:21.400 of writing of this newspaper. Here's what she wrote, quote, translated, I was not only transformed

01:29:26.640 into a counter-revolutionary, but into a toothless old hag. And they finished by making me cry about 0.93

01:29:31.420 my sins while expecting me to expiate them on the guillotine. She was the first prominent

01:29:37.820 Girondin to be thrown in jail at this time. But after this, a wave of arrests followed.

01:29:44.660 A number of Girondin politicians managed to escape from Paris during this time, but she was in jail.

01:29:51.040 And it was at this time she started to write her memoirs in secret. She was allowed during this

01:29:56.680 time to receive visitors, such as her assistant Sophie Grandchamp, who came every other day.

01:30:01.400 Her gardening friend, Boss Dantic, brought her flowers from the botanical garden on his regular visits.

01:30:08.760 And they smuggled out her letters to her lover, Bouzeau, and presumably also letters to her husband.

01:30:15.060 And pages of her memoir that she was writing, they smuggled them out.

01:30:18.800 And while she was there, somehow she got books.

01:30:21.160 And she even was allowed to have a piano in her cell so she could practice her piano skills.

01:30:27.260 So in terms of jail, there are worse ones.

01:30:31.400 But it was still pretty bad, obviously. It was jail in the French Revolution during the terror. So it was crowded there, and she was not physically tortured, but she was yelled at all the time, and she was not used to being treated like this.

01:30:45.480 and out in the outside world the jacobin newspapers published like too many to count

01:30:51.420 articles like again about like these alleged orgies that she had overseen at her salon

01:30:57.380 and just really these newspapers and jacobins and rose pierre just trying to really make 0.93

01:31:03.640 everybody hate her as much as possible so when they executed her no one would be mad about it

01:31:09.980 on june 24th she was unexpectedly released because the legal basis for her arrest had been flawed

01:31:17.340 but then she was re-arrested right away like she left jail went to her home and just when she was

01:31:23.200 about to enter her home they arrested her again right away so she was released for not even a day

01:31:29.080 so she was re-arrested with the paperwork all in order now and this time she was sent to the

01:31:35.120 harsher prison of Sainte-Palégie where she continued to write her secret memoirs. She was

01:31:41.020 very concerned about her lover Buzot, much more than about her husband Jean-Marie. She was hurt

01:31:48.620 and angry when she heard that her husband was writing his memoirs in which he was going to

01:31:53.760 hold Buzot responsible for breaking up their marriage. She somehow, through letters, because

01:32:00.500 she's so good at lobbying, she convinced her husband to destroy his manuscript and not publish

01:32:05.660 this book. And she also at this point was, she knew that she would eventually be put to death,

01:32:13.160 but refused when Jean-Marie tried to organize like an Ocean's Eleven prison escape. And Jean-Marie's

01:32:19.500 plan was with her friend Henriette Canet, who had also been coming to visit her sometimes.

01:32:26.320 And so the plan was that Henriette Canet would come and visit, and then she and Manon would switch clothes, and then Manon could leave, but Henriette would stay.

01:32:33.900 And the reason why Manon refused to do this was because it was too risky for Henriette.

01:32:39.740 Outside of Paris, in the summer of 1793, so remember Paris is where the French Revolution stuff is all happening.

01:32:47.420 The whole rest of France is like, what the fuck is going on? 0.70

01:32:49.840 this is. Because remember, they're from Lyon. And Lyon was the place where there was so much 0.99

01:32:54.660 textile manufacturing, silk manufacturing. And then because people had stopped buying so much

01:33:01.720 fabric, they were really poor as well. So there was resistance growing outside of Paris about

01:33:08.120 the French Revolution. A revolt broke out in Lyon. There were centers of resistance also in Brittany

01:33:12.760 and a Normandy. In the provinces, some Girondins were arguing to, they were arguing to be like,

01:33:21.080 let's just make Paris be its own thing and let's let the rest of France be its own republic. Like,

01:33:27.420 just like, let's separate, was what was being discussed at this point.

01:33:32.920 Menon knew that these revolts were breaking out and so she wrote letters to her friends,

01:33:37.160 like don't put yourself at risk. She especially wrote that to Buzo, her platonic lover. And

01:33:44.240 apparently Buzo reportedly always had a miniature of Manon with him that contained a lock of her

01:33:49.500 hair. And he was involved in attempts to organize a revolt in where? Caen, C-A-E-N, the place where

01:33:56.860 Charlotte Corday was from that we talked about before. Speaking of Charlotte Corday, so that was

01:34:02.580 the in the charlotte corday episode remember the girondins in con were coming up with this plan to

01:34:08.440 try to bring down robespierre and that's part of why charlotte corday came to paris and killed

01:34:13.400 jean paul marat she did that and that uh sealed the fate of the imprisoned girondins like manon

01:34:20.720 because charlotte corday was a girondin sympathizer and now this is gave robespierre an excuse to just

01:34:26.100 execute all the Gironals. Manal learned that Buzot was in danger of being arrested and she tried to

01:34:33.820 end her own life because she was so despondent about this. She stopped eating the food that was

01:34:38.120 given to her. But her friends Sophie Grandchamp and Bosque Dantique convinced her that it would

01:34:43.860 be better to stay alive so she could stand trial because that way she'd be able to answer

01:34:48.860 like the accusations and save her reputation. And after all, she loved speaking in public.

01:34:55.300 On October 31st, 1793, 21 Girondins politicians were executed after a short trial.

01:35:02.180 Most of these were her friends, including her friend Brissot, the newspaper guy who had published her journalism.

01:35:10.100 One day later, November 1st, she was transferred to the Conciergerie, which we've talked about.

01:35:14.680 This is the prison known as the last stop on the way to the guillotine.

01:35:19.100 Upon arrival, she was questioned for two days by the prosecutor.

01:35:22.920 She defended herself in her usual self-assured, snobby way.

01:35:27.600 She argued in her defense,

01:35:29.060 I'm only a woman, I'm just a wife,

01:35:31.440 therefore I can't be responsible for the political actions of her husband,

01:35:34.620 even though she had orchestrated those actions.

01:35:38.780 According to eyewitnesses,

01:35:40.920 she remained calm and courageous during this time,

01:35:43.840 and she continued to write her memoirs.

01:35:45.900 On November 8th, she appeared before the Revolutionary Tribunal.

01:35:50.640 She knew by now, and she had known for a while, that she was going to be sentenced to death.

01:35:55.040 And so that day, she got dressed for her execution.

01:35:59.240 She dressed in her toilette d'amour, her outfit of death.

01:36:03.720 So a simple dress of white, yellow muslin with a black belt.

01:36:08.520 She took the stand.

01:36:10.160 She had planned a speech in defense of the Girondins and of her husband's service as minister of the interior.

01:36:16.220 But the judges intervened, and they wouldn't let her give her speech.

01:36:19.060 they said it was not permitted to sing the praises of known traitors. So she appealed to

01:36:24.400 the assembled audience, but the Jacobin press had been so relentless against her for so long.

01:36:30.780 The crowd booed and hissed and they denounced her as a traitor. So it was a short trial at the end

01:36:36.120 of which she's found guilty of conspiracy against the revolution and the death sentence was

01:36:40.860 pronounced. And one day later, she was taken to the guillotine, November 9th, 1793. So her assistant

01:36:48.660 Sophie Groschamp saw her pass by on her way to the scaffold and reported that Manon appeared very

01:36:54.680 calm. There are two versions of what she might have said, like her final words when she was at

01:37:01.060 the guillotine. One of them, and these are both translated to English, oh freedom, what crimes are

01:37:06.380 committed in your name. Or she might have said, oh freedom, they have made a mockery of you.

01:37:12.600 A newspaper called Le Moniteur Universelle wrote disapprovingly that she, that like Marie Antoinette 0.98

01:37:19.900 and Olymp de Gouges, she had been put to death because she had crossed the boundaries of female

01:37:23.880 virtue. A few days later, Jean-Marie, who was hiding in Rouen, he heard that Manon had been

01:37:29.500 executed and he took his own life. Bouzeau, her lover, lived as a fugitive for several months

01:37:35.480 and then also ended his own life and of all the people in the story uh the only person left really

01:37:42.600 is her daughter eudora who is now an orphan and she came under the guardianship of the gardening

01:37:48.900 friend uh bosque dantic and so yet again like the video game or run lola run if you know that movie

01:37:59.240 that this whole time period really was yet another one of the main characters on this podcast did not

01:38:04.840 survive past the end of 1793. Will anyone ever? Somehow the French community did continue on to

01:38:13.800 live today. Someone must have lived past 1793, and perhaps we'll talk about them next week.

01:38:21.100 But there's more to say about Manon Roland, because her story, just because she died,

01:38:26.900 her story did not, because there's still people around who knew her story, who wanted people to

01:38:32.340 know, who wanted to share who she was and to make sure she wasn't forgotten. So before her execution,

01:38:37.400 she entrusted the manuscript of her memoirs to a person who I think I mentioned once is one of the

01:38:43.500 newspaper people who shared her articles, Luc Antoine de Champagne, who she knew from Lyon.

01:38:50.640 When he was also in danger of being arrested for his Girondin leanings, he burned the document to

01:38:58.120 prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. So she wrote this memoir, she smuggled it out,

01:39:02.680 she entrusted to him, and then he had to burn it. Devastating. But we all know that it exists

01:39:07.800 because I've been telling you lots of facts from her memoir. And the way that happened was in the

01:39:12.940 final months of her imprisonment, she wrote the memoirs all over again. Can you imagine? Like,

01:39:17.800 this is like a higher stakes, more purge-like version of, I know this happened to all of us,

01:39:24.440 you know, you're writing a document on your computer and you forget to hit save or your

01:39:28.820 computer crashes and you lose it. And like all your work, it's a school paper or you're writing

01:39:33.440 a book or an essay. And it just, you have to start from scratch, like the devastation of it all.

01:39:40.100 Anyway, but you know what? She did it because if, if there's something we know about Menon,

01:39:44.420 then we can all agree on is that she was single-minded and she was going to see through

01:39:47.980 any project to completion. So this second manuscript was smuggled out of prison in small

01:39:52.940 packages to her visitors, to the various people who came to see her. This manuscript was hidden

01:39:59.020 by her gardening friend slash her daughter's new guardian, Bosque d'Antique, during the terror.

01:40:05.660 And this manuscript itself is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.

01:40:11.140 You could go and see it if you're there. Go see it. If you ever go there and go see it,

01:40:15.760 take a picture of it for me if you're allowed to, please. And she wanted this to be published

01:40:21.360 after her death. She wanted people to know her story. She wrote in it that she regretted she

01:40:27.280 would not live long enough to write the complete history of the French Revolution, given that she

01:40:31.400 was killed early on in it. So 1795, two years after her death, the memoirs appeared in print

01:40:38.560 for the first time. At least 12,000 copies were sold at that point. The first edition was edited

01:40:44.580 by Bosque d'Antique, which part of what he did, and it's kind of like what happened when Anne Frank's

01:40:50.380 diary was first published by her dad and he kind of edited it to, I don't know, just to preserve

01:40:55.900 some of the privacy. So Boston Tech, quote unquote, cleansed references to her love for

01:41:02.500 Buzo and also her ideas for like anti-Christian beliefs, just to kind of make it more palatable

01:41:08.500 to people maybe. And maybe he had reasons for doing that. And I think one of them was that

01:41:13.340 before she died, and part of the reason that she was executed is because of all these rumors that

01:41:17.600 she was such a sexually dangerous person. And he just kind of wanted to show like, no, like pay

01:41:22.280 attention to what she's really like. Like she was this snobby asshole, clever, witty, complex, 1.00

01:41:28.940 interesting person. Um, and she did have a platonic lover and she was not Christian, but like, 1.00

01:41:38.260 let's focus on the other stuff. And you know, that's why he did that. So for a while, that was

01:41:42.900 although it was available, the cleansed version of her memoirs, until 1837, the Scottish historian

01:41:49.760 Thomas Carlyle, always happy to hear from a Scottish historian, published a book called

01:41:54.300 The French Revolution, A History. And he paid lots of attention to Manon, who hadn't to that point

01:42:01.560 really been included in works about the French Revolution, which more focused on like Robespierre

01:42:06.920 and Danton and Marat. He, Thomas Carlyle, called Manon the bravest of French women.

01:42:12.900 In 1847, a man called Alphonse de Lamartine also praised her in his book, The Histoire des Girondins.

01:42:20.220 And then later on in the 19th century, the first biographies of Manon Roland were published.

01:42:25.700 These followed the example of those two previous historians I just said, and they wrote admiringly about her.

01:42:35.320 And these were based on the censored versions of her memoirs, which is all that anyone had access to at that point.

01:42:40.360 These later biographers emphasized her intelligence, her feminine charm, quote unquote, and her high morals.

01:42:47.040 So at that point, you know, her like, let's drink sugar water and like not have food at our parties, like that whole vibe.

01:42:54.340 And they depicted her primarily as a tragic heroine in the struggle for freedom and equality.

01:42:58.940 in 1864 guess what the part that bosk had cleansed were discovered as well as five letters from

01:43:08.840 manol to her lover buzot so at this point it's like guess what missing scenes so it was like

01:43:15.800 really the the director's cut of of manol's memoirs so at this point it became known in 1864

01:43:23.780 like who her lover had been and what the relationship was like what's it called what's

01:43:31.180 that thing the snyder cut the snyder cut of menon's memoirs came up and then in 1905 the

01:43:36.860 complete uncensored text was published for the first time scandalous the american writer jeannette

01:43:43.620 eaton because guess what by 1929 and before then women were allowed to write books so the american

01:43:51.860 writer Jeanette Eaton wrote a prize-winning biography about Manon Roland for children

01:43:56.020 titled A Daughter of the Seine in 1929. That's bananas. I don't know if any of you out there 0.85

01:44:01.660 have read it, but I can't, you know, the sort of children, like just writing this as a story for

01:44:08.480 children, like would that be interesting to children? But the sort of children who would

01:44:11.380 be interested are children like Manon Roland herself, like little, little academic nerd

01:44:17.620 children. So maybe that's who liked that book. Many of her letters to friends, relatives, and

01:44:22.580 other revolutionaries survived because she sent them to those people and they kept those letters.

01:44:27.140 And these have been published. So these are like, along with the memoirs, these are a rich source

01:44:31.340 of information about historical events and people, as well as just about daily life during this time

01:44:36.040 period. She was prolific. There are about a thousand letters dating from 1767 to 1793.

01:44:42.720 her main correspondence were her friend Sophie Canet along with her husband Jean-Marie and her

01:44:48.580 gardening friend Bosque Dom Tick and so what's unique about her memoirs and also her letters is

01:44:55.640 that they show the French Revolution from the from her perspective and her perspective is very

01:44:59.320 it's very unique like she was a very intelligent woman and she was actively involved in the heart

01:45:06.040 of what was going on so the other revolutionary women we've talked about were they were never in

01:45:11.140 these inside room discussions. Olympe de Gouges was never allowed to be, to be involved in the 0.91

01:45:18.160 actual revolution itself. The others, like they were just outsiders really, but Manon was like

01:45:23.120 right there. So she could say like in the room where it happened, that was her thing. She was

01:45:26.860 literally there, you know, listening and learning, embroidering, pretending to not be eavesdropping,

01:45:30.960 but like she was there in that room. And as interest in women's history developed towards

01:45:37.460 the end of the 20th century, there was an increase of interest in, in her. And so there

01:45:43.500 was more books published about her life and about her writings. And these are what I drew

01:45:48.580 from to make this podcast episode to try and show a more nuanced, multifaceted portrayal

01:45:55.160 of what she was like, rather than just like, look at this heroic person. So some of these

01:46:01.820 like later 20th century, like feminist viewings or biographies of Manon were engaging with sort

01:46:11.260 of the contrast between her being this really strong, opinionated, intelligent woman who

01:46:15.500 believed that women shouldn't be involved in politics, but she was involved in politics.

01:46:20.600 Like just the contrast between those two things is fascinating. She never spoke out for women's 0.78

01:46:27.120 rights, like Olympe de Gouges did, like Claire Lacombe, like Tyrone de Mericourt, other women

01:46:32.960 we looked at in this miniseries. So it's like, she was involved in this stuff because she felt

01:46:40.300 that she was smart and had something to contribute, but she's like, but that's not because I'm a woman

01:46:45.000 and other women shouldn't do this. Like just me, it's okay because I'm not like other girls.

01:46:50.840 hashtag. So she stated that the time was not yet right for women to openly participate in public

01:46:57.280 debate. It was the role of women to inspire and support the men behind the scenes, which to her,

01:47:03.520 what that meant was like to literally like be the puppet master of her husband and tell him what to

01:47:07.640 say and do. She believed only when all French men were politically and socially free could women

01:47:13.460 also claim their place in public life. So she wanted equality for French men. And then once

01:47:20.540 that was settled, then women could maybe emerge, which doesn't make sense to me, but apparently

01:47:27.400 this is what Russo said. And she, she was a big Russo follower. His whole thing was women should 0.96

01:47:32.580 be supportive and subservient. So her beliefs are not at all. Like they're maybe slightly

01:47:40.320 overlapping in Venn diagrams, but not very much with like Olympe de Gouges and Edipham Dalder's

01:47:45.560 other feminist writers we've looked at in this series. And what I do at the end of these podcast

01:47:53.920 episodes, if this is your first time here, is just to kind of wrap things up and to sort of put

01:47:58.520 everybody in conversation with each other. I have the Fredegund Memorial Scandaliciousness Scale,

01:48:04.200 where I score everybody in four categories. And those categories are scandalousness,

01:48:10.800 how scandalous was this person perceived by the people in the time and place where they lived?

01:48:17.560 Because that can vary. Someone could be doing something that to us would be like,

01:48:21.280 I'm in my pills. But in the time and place, it's like, yeah, that's fine.

01:48:25.420 The second category is scheminess. How much does this person have come up with schemes and plans,

01:48:30.840 whether they were successful or not? But just was this person always sort of like flexible

01:48:35.500 and able to like roll with the punches and figure out a way to thrive despite challenging

01:48:40.580 circumstances. The significance of the person is the third category. What is their significance to

01:48:46.460 the overall history or to the time period in which they lived? And then the final category

01:48:50.880 is what I call the sexism bonus, which is how much more could this person have achieved if 0.95

01:48:55.420 they hadn't had to spend so much of their life just convincing people that it's okay for a woman to 1.00

01:49:01.560 do stuff. So in terms of the first category, this Manol Roland is a funny person to be thinking of

01:49:07.980 in this way as scandalous because she would not consider herself scandalous. She was like, 0.69

01:49:11.940 I am like Rousseau says, I am a subservient wife to my husband. Like, I don't think she was.

01:49:21.380 People portrayed her as scandalous, like talking about like her parties were like orgies and stuff.

01:49:25.740 And she was on the side of the revolution, but like you had to be on some side of the revolution

01:49:30.380 and she was, I don't know. I don't think she was a scandalous person. I don't think she would want

01:49:34.920 me to call her scandalous person. I'm going to give her a low score on this because it's like

01:49:40.520 the stuff that she did was unusual for a woman of that time and place, but she was not herself

01:49:48.600 trying to be scandalous. She didn't see herself as scandalous. She was always trying to be like,

01:49:53.940 i'm a wife and i'm behind the scenes and i'm just doing this these behind the scenes work 0.99

01:50:01.140 i'm gonna give her like a two for scandalousness because i just don't think that was her vibe 0.51

01:50:05.280 that's not how she would want to be remembered uh scheminess i think is much higher because 0.88

01:50:10.740 she was behind so much of like getting her husband to try to get him a peerage and when 0.99

01:50:16.060 that wouldn't work then she got him this job in leon and then she was running the ministry of

01:50:20.420 the interior herself basically um just he was the man who's kind of pretending to be doing it like

01:50:26.700 she was always here with the scheme were they good not always were the schemes often predicated on

01:50:32.580 everyone doing what she said because she thought she was right yeah but she was she was a schemey 1.00

01:50:38.180 bitch and i respect that i'm gonna give her a seven out of ten for scheminess her significance 0.96

01:50:43.540 as i was saying just in this last sort of section about how she was remembered in biographies and 1.00

01:50:48.860 stuff. Like at first it's like, oh, look at this heroine of the revolution. And then it's kind of

01:50:52.600 like, oh, she's kind of a messy bitch, but isn't that more interesting? The salon of Madame Roulant 1.00

01:50:59.300 is quasi famous to people who study the French revolution because a lot of important men were

01:51:06.700 there. She was the one who invited them there and she gave them the opportunity to do all this

01:51:11.860 scheming. I think she's up there in terms of significant people of the French revolution.

01:51:17.180 She's certainly up there in terms of significant women during the French Revolution.

01:51:21.580 In terms of her actual importance, the stuff that her husband did, there was that one part

01:51:30.600 where Danton wanted to have a détente.

01:51:34.420 A détente with Danton would be a good episode name.

01:51:38.300 And she said no, because once her opinion of somebody was fixed, she would never change

01:51:42.100 it.

01:51:42.300 And had she not been so stubborn, if she had made an alliance with him, maybe things would have gone differently. So that's quite significant, actually. I'm going to say eight for significance. The sexism bonus is interesting because this is where it's like, how much more could she have done if she was a man?

01:51:59.400 And I feel like sexism certainly affected her life. 0.97

01:52:06.080 Like she wasn't able to go and get as much education as she wanted, formal education. 0.98

01:52:10.420 She wasn't able to go and become an academic scholar or philosopher like maybe she would

01:52:15.780 have wanted, but she didn't want that.

01:52:18.320 She wanted to fulfill these Rousseauian ideals. 0.68

01:52:22.460 Like she found ways to have an enormous amount of power considering who she was and where 0.50

01:52:26.980 she was. 0.98

01:52:27.400 like she was from the merchant class and she was a woman, but she ended up being the power of like 1.00

01:52:31.840 this Lady Macbeth figure for her husband. Like, I don't think sexism held her back. 1.00

01:52:37.720 I mean, it certainly did a bit, but she kind of morphed her way around that and was still able 0.98

01:52:42.920 to do most of the stuff she wanted to do. Maybe like, I don't know. Cause it's like, I don't

01:52:48.660 think she would say it held her back because I don't think she thought that, but I'm going to

01:52:53.680 say at stamp five for sexism because had that not been a factor in her story I think she would have

01:53:01.120 just gone off and written books and just been this weird academic nerd but she didn't and she did

01:53:07.520 achieve and accomplish a lot like even the stuff of being the the first female war correspondent

01:53:15.240 I guess it would go in significance more than this but let's add this all up

01:53:19.180 22 is her total. I'm just going to enter that here on the Scandaliciousness Hall of Fame. I'm

01:53:28.720 going to say that is not a high score. It's towards the bottom. In fact, let me see one,

01:53:35.560 two, three, four. She's in the bottom 10 of all time of Scandaliciousness scores. And I think 1.00

01:53:41.140 that is where she would want to be. I think she saw herself as a non-scandalous person. And that's

01:53:49.180 this is how she would want to be remembered. Which brings me to something else that I wanted

01:53:53.560 to tell you about, which is that friend of the podcast, Karen Moynihan, who is a graphic designer

01:53:59.280 and was a guest on our episodes about Peg Plunkett, the iconic Irish brothel owner.

01:54:05.200 So I worked with Karen Moynihan to design new merchandise for Vulgar History. And a design

01:54:11.080 that I've recently just released is, it's the names of several women from the French Revolution.

01:54:16.240 You know, that the sorts of shirts that just say like George and Ringo and Paul and John or whatever. But this is the name of the women, feminist, radical women of the French Revolution. And the names are Olymp and Tyrone and Claire and Pauline and Etta. And those are the five women we talked about most recently on this podcast.

01:54:36.880 And I was thinking about doing that shirt.

01:54:38.440 And then I was like, oh, but should I include Menon?

01:54:40.700 And I asked another friend of the podcast,

01:54:42.520 Lea Redmond Chang,

01:54:43.520 who is really the guardian angel

01:54:46.460 of this whole French Revolution season

01:54:48.140 because she knows so much about it

01:54:49.500 and is very gracious in answering my questions.

01:54:52.000 And I was like, should I put Menon on the shirt?

01:54:53.720 And she was like, I think Menon would hate 1.00

01:54:55.500 to be associated with these other women

01:54:57.940 because she hated violent revolutionaries. 1.00

01:55:00.140 She hated women who spoke politically. 0.99

01:55:02.620 She hated people who she says are unintelligent. 1.00

01:55:05.060 And I think that's how you can see all those women. So Manon, not on the shirt. Those other five, on the shirt. And so there's two different places where you can get vulgar history merchandise. Both that design, as well as there's also the new design inspired by the Girl Scouts of America, which is a beautiful vintage image inspired by vintage Girl Scouts merch, I guess, that is just like several, several people's faces in this beautiful sort of like clover shape. 0.92

01:55:32.680 and then it says tits out brigade which is the name of the listeners of this podcast and it's

01:55:37.340 so cute that's also designed by karen moynhan you can get that on a t-shirt or sticker mug or 0.66

01:55:42.180 whatever and then also leaning to that theme of the girl scouts there's four merit badges and so

01:55:47.420 you can get the merit badges they're not i want to say embroidered badges they're merit badge

01:55:50.880 inspired designs so you can get these as stickers or as magnets individually or all four is a

01:55:56.520 beautiful sort of like image of them all together and the four there are four categories of people

01:56:01.620 on this podcast, people who've profiled on this podcast, I celebrate them for these achievements

01:56:06.760 and they are stitchery. It's a stitch bitch. There's a merit badge for poisoning. There's 1.00

01:56:13.460 one for stabbing. And there's one that's just called 365 party girl, which are four types of

01:56:18.600 women that Manal Roland was not. She would not earn any of actually maybe stitch bitch, but she'd 1.00

01:56:24.380 be like, bitch, bitch, Herman, my pills. Like she would just be, I'm just going to go drink some 1.00

01:56:29.140 water with sugar in it how dare you but anyway so you can get the vulgar history merchandise

01:56:32.780 all those things the one with all the the names the revolutionary women the girl scouts theme

01:56:38.080 stuff if you're in america your best option is to go to vulgarhistory.com slash store which takes

01:56:44.500 you to our dashery store which is where you can just choose which design you want and what color

01:56:49.900 and on what product and if you're international anywhere except for america you i recommend going

01:56:55.620 to our Redbubble store, which is vulgarhistory.redbubble.com. And the same thing, you just

01:56:59.640 choose the design you like, say, do you want on a sticker or on a t-shirt? Choose what color

01:57:03.820 background you want and Bob's your uncle. Everything's all good. And I have two very

01:57:09.700 important announcements to make. I'm going to do them. They're both exciting. So I don't know,

01:57:14.740 I was going to say less to more exciting, but they're equally exciting to me. The first thing

01:57:18.720 is that I did some, I've had some in-person meetups for Vulgar History listeners over the

01:57:24.880 last little while, which basically coincide with like, I happen to be in a city at a time

01:57:28.600 and I happen to be going to Toronto in July. So if you're in or near Toronto in July,

01:57:34.160 I don't know what date it's going to be exactly yet. And I don't know where it's going to be

01:57:37.780 exactly yet. But if you want to get updates about Tits Up Brigade Takes Toronto, an in-person meetup

01:57:43.160 for listeners of this podcast in Toronto. And I think there might be even some authors who

01:57:48.120 have interviewed might be coming to this as well. So it'll be like a huge event. By huge,

01:57:52.220 I mean, maybe there'll be like 15 people there. To me, that's huge. Anyway, if you want to get

01:57:58.060 updates on that, go to vulgarhistory.com slash meetup and just leave me your email address so

01:58:03.260 I can give you updates as I figure stuff out, like when I'm going there and where we'll meet up. But

01:58:09.280 also how many people are coming will affect where we meet and that sort of thing. So anyway,

01:58:13.860 vulgarhistory.com slash meetup is where you can RSVP if you want to hang out with me in Toronto

01:58:19.680 in July. The other news is that I'm writing a book that may not be news to you. I've talked

01:58:26.660 about it a lot on here and on the Patreon, but my book, Rebel of the Regency, The Scandal Saga

01:58:31.860 of Carolina Brunswick, Britain's Uncrowned Queen, title official now, is available now for pre-order.

01:58:38.940 So it's coming out in February of 2026. That is like nine months from now, but you can pre-order

01:58:47.320 it now. And I'm going to be talking about it incessantly from now until then. And I'm really

01:58:51.680 excited. If you go onto, this is hashtag, not hashtag, asterisks, people in Canada, people in

01:58:57.780 America. That's what I'm talking to about this. People in Canada and America can go to your local

01:59:03.340 bookstore. If you have a bookstore around the corner, if you're lucky enough to have an

01:59:06.740 independent bookstore nearby or wherever you buy your books online, look up Rebel of the Regency

01:59:11.480 by Ann Foster. And it will be there and you can pre-order it. And it's so exciting to me to see

01:59:17.960 it there. If you use Goodreads or Storygraph, you can add it there as a book you want to read.

01:59:23.360 And every single one of you indicating your interest by pre-ordering it, adding it on

01:59:27.240 Goodreads or Storygraph, that lets the publisher know that there's enthusiasm about it. And then

01:59:32.760 that helps, hopefully, them to promote it more and market it more. And the more they're excited

01:59:39.080 about it, the more copies of it will sell. And then maybe I'll get to write another book. And

01:59:43.240 also you get it. When you pre-order the book, people in Canada and America, like asterisks,

01:59:48.340 rest of world, hang on. I'll tell you what to do in a second. Canadians, Americans.

01:59:54.280 When you make your pre-order, if you pre-order it from your local independent bookstore or from an

01:59:58.760 online site, what you need to do next is go to rebeloftheregency.com, which is a website,

02:00:05.400 domain that I've purchased. And then from there, there's a link to upload a picture of your receipt

02:00:12.000 that will go to me. And then once I get that, I will give you treats, pre-order incentives.

02:00:17.780 They're called, you can choose one of three different things. One of them is a digital

02:00:22.600 paper doll of Carolina Brunswick designed by my friend, friend of the podcast, Siobhan Gallagher,

02:00:28.040 who's done some merch for us before. And she, it's incredibly cute. It's so cute. It's Carolina

02:00:32.540 Brunswick and it's some of her outfits. There's like Easter eggs of some of the accessories that

02:00:36.760 she has with her. One of the things is a pumpkin that you could put in her head that she wears

02:00:40.640 like a hat, which is a thing she did. And you'll read about that in the book. So what you do,

02:00:44.680 rebeltheragency.com, click on the link to share your receipt with me. And then you say, which of

02:00:50.100 these three things do you want? And you could choose all three things. Do you want the digital

02:00:53.280 paper doll? Do you want to get one year free membership to my sub stack? Do you want to get

02:00:58.860 one-year free membership to my Patreon. You say what you want to get, and then I will get that

02:01:04.040 message. And then I will bestow these treats upon you as a thank you for pre-ordering my book.

02:01:09.880 And so rebelofthereagency.com, just like that's where you go. That's where you can,

02:01:15.820 well, I guess first go to a bookstore, then go to rebelofthereagency.com. And that's what you

02:01:19.900 need to do. People in rest of world, hold tight because we're trying to, and by we, I mean my

02:01:26.740 publisher my editor my agent the whole squad we're trying to figure out how best how we're

02:01:33.340 going to be able to have this book published in the uk australia new zealand other places

02:01:38.860 we're just waiting to see if a publisher from one of those places is going to pick it up

02:01:43.180 and or not and whether they do or not that will affect how you'll get it but i will keep you

02:01:49.520 apprised like keep listening to this podcast um keep following me for updates and i will let you

02:01:55.320 other countries know when this book will be available for you to pre-order as well. And

02:02:00.160 don't worry, like I'm not going to run out of pre-order incentives. The book comes out in nine

02:02:04.060 months. If you're able to order it three months from now, six months from now, like you can still

02:02:09.560 get these treats. So like, I know you've got enthusiasm, but just like hold tight, rest of

02:02:13.920 world. Canada and the US, you're up. Like not Europe, you are up. And yeah, pre-order that

02:02:22.280 book y'all i'm really excited about it there's a bookstore in my hometown of halifax nova scotia

02:02:29.140 called bookmark which is a fantastic bookstore and when my mother went in to to place her pre-order

02:02:34.660 they're like oh you're the fifth person to order it and i was like i'm pretty sure i know who those

02:02:38.720 other four are and in fact it was four of my other friends so so bookstores are hearing about it and

02:02:44.160 i'm going to talk about this a gazillion times over the next nine months but when you pre-order

02:02:50.240 the book, then the bookstore knows that there's interest in it. And that means they'll maybe buy

02:02:53.320 some more copies of it. And then if there's more copies of it in the bookstore, then more people

02:02:56.740 will buy it. And it all just like, it's a beautiful, beautiful journey. And you know,

02:03:01.480 Manon Roland was not able to publish books under her name. I am. And that's a thing that I am proud

02:03:07.440 of. And maybe Manon Roland would be proud of me too for that. I don't know. So other things that

02:03:13.960 I want to tell slash remind you about. So I mentioned that when you pre-order my book,

02:03:20.800 one of the things that you can sign up for is to get a free membership to my sub stack. So I want

02:03:27.020 to say my sub stack is called Vulgar History a la carte. And I post essays, funny essays about

02:03:32.780 women from history on there. And some of them are free and some of them are just for paid members.

02:03:37.960 And if you, so you can become a paid member, please, please, I would love it. If you buy my

02:03:42.260 book and you ask for the membership, what I give you is the equivalent of the paid membership.

02:03:46.700 So anyway, go to vulgarhistory.substack.com and that's where you can subscribe to that to get my

02:03:52.780 writings. And if you want to just get a one-stop shop updates from me about like live in-person

02:04:00.440 events, like updates about the book and where you can pre-order it and stuff, then you can subscribe

02:04:05.260 to my other newsletter. Like Substack is sort of like, that's like a magazine I publish. It's like,

02:04:10.740 hey here's a entertaining thing for you to read the newsletter is like hi it's me and here's some

02:04:16.620 information for you to know about what i'm doing so the newsletter go to vulgarhistory.com slash

02:04:22.380 news and that is where you can sign up to get those updates from me and i also have a patreon

02:04:30.060 where you can follow me at patreon.com slash ann foster writer and so for one dollar a month

02:04:35.720 you get early ad free access to all episodes of vulgar history if you pledge six dollars or more

02:04:42.000 a month you get access to also bonus episodes and also you get access to our discord server

02:04:48.140 which i call the vulgar history salon which is i promise more fun than manon roll on's salon but i

02:04:56.260 also want to mention that if you pre-order the book one of the incentives you can choose is

02:05:00.300 one-year membership to the Patreon and that's at the $6 a month level. So that's my treat for you.

02:05:06.540 And then also we work with our gorgeous brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, who make beautiful

02:05:12.660 jewelry inspired by women from history, as well as, you know why Manon Roland would love this

02:05:17.660 jewelry? Because a lot of it's inspired by ancient Greece and Rome. Although she would be like,

02:05:21.820 I don't want a woman on my necklace. I want to have a picture of like Rousseau or like Plutarch. 1.00

02:05:28.000 but tragically there's not pictures of men on this jewelry it's pictures of women

02:05:31.820 and as well there's a beautiful zodiac collection that they're doing too if you want to get some

02:05:38.660 pieces from common era jewelry their pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more

02:05:43.280 affordable gold vermeil and if you want to get 15 off that order vulgar history listeners can

02:05:49.040 always get 15 off all items from common era by going to commonera.com slash vulgar or use the

02:05:54.440 called vulgar at checkout. And if you want to get in touch with me, you can go to vulgarhistory.com

02:06:01.660 and there's a little form there where you can email me. And I'm also posting updates on Blue

02:06:07.720 Sky, Instagram, and threads at vulgarhistorypod. On Instagram, my DMs are open, so you can also

02:06:12.680 contact me that way. Next week, we're staying in our French Revolution shit with an interesting

02:06:20.800 sidestep. We're going to be talking about somebody who was in town during the French Revolution 0.96

02:06:26.620 with a connection to America and what he thought about what was going on. And it might surprise you

02:06:35.520 how many sex scandals are involved. So that's what's coming up next week on the podcast. And

02:06:42.060 until then, everybody go to rebeloftheregency.com. Well, actually order my book, go to rebeloftheregency.com,

02:06:48.820 register that you ordered my book and then I'll send you some treats. And also Manon Roland would 0.98

02:06:55.200 be horrified to hear me say, to keep your pants on and your tits out. Vulgar History is researched, 1.00

02:07:02.480 written, and hosted by Anne Foster. That's me. The editor is Christina Lumagi. The music is by 0.97

02:07:09.000 The Severn Duo. The Vulgar History Show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by

02:07:14.740 Aveline Malik. Find transcripts of

02:07:16.680 recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.

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Vulgar History - May 21, 2025

French Revolution： Radicals (part 6)： The Secret Female Journalist

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Transcript