Saint Just on Women: A Review
This will be a compilation plus a small reflection on Saint Just's idea about the role of women in society.
I. The Spirit of the Revolution
[1]: Les grands législateurs se sont distingués surtout par la hardiesse de leurs institutions à l'égard de la pudeur : à Dieu ne plaise que je veuille établir la gymnastique parmi nous. Le culte sévère que professe aujourd'hui l'Europe ne permet plus l'usage de ces lois : seulement je regrette qu'elles nous paraissent si étranges, et que nous ne soyons délicats que parce que nous sommes corrompus.
L'antiquité fut pleine d'institutions qui ressemblent à des vertiges, mais qui attestent son aimable simplicité. La pudeur n'a commencé à rougir qu'après que le cœur se fut rendu coupable et que les gouvernemens ont été affaiblis : les femmes ne sont nulle part plus modestes et plus bouillantes que dans les Etats ty-ranniques. Combien était plus touchante l'ingénuité des vierges grecques ! Toutes les vertus antiques sont devenues des égards parmi nous, et nous sommes des ingrats policés.
L'éducation moderne polit les mœurs des filles et les use ; elle les embellit et les rend dissimulées : et comme elle n'étouffe point la na-ture, mais la déprave seulement, elle devient un vice et ne fait que se cacher ; de-là les tristes inclinations qui pervertissent les mœurs et les mariages imprudens qui tourmentent les lois. La France doit envier à un peuple voisin cet heureux tempérament qui fait qu'on s'y mésallie sans honte : mais ce n'est point assez ; il faudrait encore que ce fût avec honneur. Il est vrai que le flegme des hommes de ce climat, un farouche penchant à l'amour, une certaine hauteur qui leur fait brusquer les devoirs, sont, plus que la vertu, la raison de ces usages. Quel qu'en soit le principe, il est favorable à la liberté ; il venge la nature, comme la loi des Crétois ramène le naturel, en permettant l'insurrection et la licence.
[1]: The great legislators were distinguished above all by the boldness of their institutions regarding modesty: heaven forbid that I should attempt to establish gymnastics among us. The austere cult that Europe professes today no longer permits the use of such laws: I only regret that they seem so strange to us, and that we are not delicate except because we are corrupt.
Antiquity was full of institutions that seem like delusions, but which bear witness to their gentle simplicity. Modesty only began to blush after the heart became guilty and governments weakened: women are nowhere more modest and more ardent than in tyrannical states.
How much more touching was the ingenuousness of the Greek virgins! All the ancient virtues have become mere courtesies among us, and we are ungrateful civilized people. Modern education polishes the morals of young women and wears them down; It embellishes them and makes them disguised: and since it does not stifle nature, but only corrupts it, it becomes a vice and does nothing but hide itself; hence the sad inclinations that pervert morals and the imprudent marriages that plague the laws.
France must envy a neighboring people that happy temperament which allows one to marry outside one's class without shame: but it is not enough; it would also be necessary that it be done with honor. It is true that the phlegmatic character of the men of that climate, a fierce inclination toward love, a certain pride that makes them ignore their duties, are, more than virtue, the reason for these customs. Whatever the principle, it is favorable to liberty; come to nature, as the law of the Cretans restores what is natural, permitting insurrection and license.
—Chapitre VII: La jeunesse et de l'amour. pp. 84.
[2]: On a dit que la dépendance naturelle de la femme rendait son infidélité plus coupable que celle du mari ; ce n'est point ici tout-à-fait que je veux examiner si cette dépendance [78] est naturelle ou politique, je prie seulement qu'on y réfléchisse, mais je veux une bonne fois qu'on m'explique pourquoi le mari qui met des enfans adulterins dans la maison d'un autre, ou de plusieurs autres, est moins criminel que la femme qui n'en peut mettre qu'un dans la sienne.
Il y a un contrat entre les époux, fe ne parle pas du contrat civil). Le contrat est nul si quelqu'un y perd ; dire que l'époux infidèle n'est point coupable, c'est dire qu'il s'est réservé, par le contrat, le privilège d'être mauvais ; il est donc nul dans son principe naturel ; il ne l'est pas moins dans son principe politique; puisque sa liberté, à cet égard, a dû enfreindre le contrat d'un tiers, ce qui choque le pacte social.
Ceux qui portent des lois contre les femmes et non contre les époux, auraient dû établir aussi que l'assassin ne serait point le criminel, mais la victime ; mais tout ceci tient aux mœurs. O vous ! qui faites des lois, vous en répondez ; les bonnes mœurs peuplent les empires.
[2]: It has been said that a woman's natural dependence makes her infidelity more culpable than that of her husband. It is not here that I wish to examine whether this dependence is natural or political; I merely ask that it be considered. But I want it explained to me once and for all why a husband who brings illegitimate children into the house of another man, or several others, is less criminal than a woman who can only bring one into her own.
There is a contract between spouses (I am not referring to a civil contract). The contract is void if someone loses out. To say that the unfaithful husband is not guilty is to say that he has reserved for himself, by contract, the privilege of being wicked. It is, therefore, void in its natural principle; and it is no less so in its political principle, since his freedom in this respect must have violated the contract of a third party, which clashes with the social contract.
Those who enact laws against women and not against husbands should also have established that the murderer would not be the criminal, but the victim; but all this depends on custom. Oh, you who make the laws! You are responsible for them; good customs populate empires.
—Chapitre X: De l'infidélité des époux. pp. 87.
[3]: Marculfe appelait impie la loi qui excluait les femmes de la succession des fiefs. Cela eût été bon si les fiefs eux-mêmes n'eussent été une effroyable impiété. Il paraît que les Francs confondaient la loi salique qu'ils avaient puisée en Germanie et qu'ils rendaient tyrannique, chez eux, une loi sage chez les Germains et chez les Goths ; l'esprit de la loi salique était perdu. Le même abus de cette loi qui attacha le trône à la ligne mâle, et érigea en fief le diadême, fut aussi l'origine des autres fiefs et de la servitude. Le roi usa du peuple comme de son bien d'hérédité, et le seigneur, de ses vassaux, comme de bêtes attachées à sa glèbe.
L'esprit de la loi salique des Germains était bien l'économie, comme l'a judicieusement observé un grand homme, mais bien plus encore un sauvage amour pour la terre natale qu'ils savaient si bien défendre, et qu'ils ne voulaient point confier à la foiblesse et à l'instabilité des filles qui changent de lit, de famille et de nom. D'ailleurs, elles retrouvaient dans la maison d'un autre, ce qu'elles perdaient dans la leur, puisqu'on les prenaient sans dot. Il n'est point ici question de la succession collatérale ; chez les Germains, les filles étaient préférées parce qu'elles mettaient un mâle dans la maison salique.
Nous avons vu quel ravage fit dans la France cette loi de liberté travestie. Comme elle dénatura tout, fit un peuple d'animaux, couvrit la France de forts et de scélérats ; rendit la religion hypocrite et fit de redoutables maisons qui passaient la vie à perdre le sang de leurs vas-saux. Nous avons vu, disje, comme cette loi opprima le royaume, jusqu'à l'époque où, par un trait de fortune que produit le mal même, elle plaça sur le trône Henri IV qui calma un peu l'orage. La loi salique, depuis ce grand homme, fait pour la liberté, est dégénérée en loi purement civile, et enfin, en simple aleu comme autrefois.
La loi qui fixe la couronne de France dans la maison régnante, de mâle en mâle, à l'exclusion des femmes, a rendu la loi salique, par rapport au trône seulement, au sens des Germains ; ce n'est point la terre qui appartient au mâle, c'est le mâle qui appartient librement à la terre. Il est dans l'esprit de cette loi que les branches de la maison des Bourbons actuellement régnantes en Europe, n'aient aucun droit sur la couronne, car, comme je l'ai dit, elle n'appartient point aux Bourbons.
Il serait pareillement insensé qu'un peuple libre passe dans la main des étrangers ou des femmes ; les uns haïraient la constitution, les autres seraient plus aimées que la liberté. La loi qui exclut les étrangers est favorable au droit des gens ; l'extinction de la souche régnante allumerait toute l'Europe.
La loi des Germains ressemble fort à celle de Licurgue qui ordonnait que les filles fussent mariées sans dot, mais elles ne se ressemblent qu'en apparence. La loi de Licurgue venait de la pauvreté et de certaines mœurs de Lacédémone ; celle des Germains dérivait de la simplicité ; ni l'une ni l'autre de ces lois ne convient à la France, l'une ne fait que des guerriers, l'autre que des soldats, et toutes deux ensemble que des tyrans.
[3]: Marculf condemned as impious the law that excluded women from inheriting fiefs. This would have been acceptable had the fiefs themselves not been appallingly impious. It seems the Franks mistook the Salic law, which they had adopted from Germania and which they made tyrannical among themselves, for a wise law among the Germanic and Gothic peoples; the spirit of stability had been lost.
The very abuse of this law, which tied the throne to the male line and made the diadem a fief, was also the origin of other fiefs and of serfdom. The king treated the people as his own property, and the lord treated his vassals like beasts of burden to their land.
The spirit of the Salic law of the Germanic tribes was certainly economy, as a great man has judiciously observed, but even more so a savage love for their homeland, which they knew how to defend so well, and which they were unwilling to entrust to the weakness and instability of daughters who changed beds, families, and names.
Moreover, these daughters found in another's house what they lost in their own, since they were taken without a dowry. This is not a matter of collateral succession; among the Germanic tribes, daughters were preferred because they provided a male heir to the Salic lineage.
We have seen the havoc this disguised law of liberty wreaked in France. How it distorted everything, turned a people into animals, filled France with the strong and the wicked; made religion hypocritical and created those fearsome houses that spent their lives shedding the blood of their vassals.
We have seen, I say, how this law oppressed the kingdom, until the time when, by a twist of fate brought about by evil itself, Henry IV was placed on the throne, who somewhat calmed the storm. The Salic law, after this great man, made for liberty, has degenerated into a purely civil law, and finally, into simple allodial land as in former times.
The law that fixes the crown of France in the reigning house, from male to male, to the exclusion of women, has restored the Salic law, solely in relation to the throne, to the Germanic sense: it is not the land that belongs to the man, but the man who freely belongs to the land. It is in the spirit of this law that the branches of the House of Bourbon currently reigning in Europe have no claim to the crown, for, as I have already stated, it does not belong to the Bourbons at all.
It would be equally senseless for a free people to fall into the hands of foreigners or women; the former would hate the constitution, the latter would be more beloved than liberty itself. The law that excludes foreigners is favorable to the law of nations; the extinction of the reigning line would ignite all of Europe.
The law of the Germans closely resembles that of Lycurgus, which decreed that young women be married without a dowry, but they are only similar in appearance. The law of Lycurgus came from poverty and certain customs of Lacedaemon; that of the Germans derived from simplicity; neither of these laws is suitable for France: one makes nothing but warriors, the other nothing but soldiers, and both together make nothing but tyrants.
—De la Loi Salique. pp. 105.
[4]: Chez les peuples vraiment libres, les femmes sont libres et adorées, et mènent une vie aussi douce que le mérite leur faiblesse intéressante.
Je me suis dit quelquefois dans la capitale, hélas ! chez ce peuple esclave, il n'est point une femme heureuse, et l'art avec lequel elles ménagent leur beauté ne prouve que trop que notre infamie leur a fait quitter la nature, car à la modestie d'une femme, on reconnaît la candeur de son époux.
Chez ce peuple philosophe et volage, tout le monde n'aimait plus que soi à force de mépriser les autres et de se mépriser soi-même ; tout le monde portait un cœur faux sous l'hermine et la soie, et les caresse des époux même étaient dissimulées.
Dans vingt ans je verrai sans doute avec bien de la joie, ce peuple qui recouvre aujourd'hui sa liberté, recouvrer peu-à-peu ses mœurs.
Nos enfans rougiront peut-être des tableaux efféminés de leurs pères. Moins énervés que nous par la débauche et le repos, leurs passions seront moins brutales que les nôtres, car dans des corps affaiblis par le vice on trouve toujours des ames dures.
Quand les hommes n'ont plus de patrie, bientôt ils deviennent scélérats ; il faut bien poursuivre, à tel prix que ce soit, [80] le bonheur qui nous fuit ; les idées changent, on le trouve dans le crime.
O Législateurs ! donnez-nous des lois qui nous forcent à les aimer ; l'indifférence pour la patrie et l'amour de soi-même est la source de tout mal; l'indifférence pour soi-même et l'amour de la patrie est la source de tout bien.
[4]: In truly free nations, women are free and adored, and they lead lives as sweet as their intriguing fragility deserves.
I have said to myself several times in the capital: Alas! In this enslaved nation, there is not a single happy woman, and the art with which they cultivate their beauty only serves to prove that our infamy has forced them to abandon nature; for in a woman's modesty, one recognizes the innocence of her husband.
In this philosophical and fickle nation, no one loved anything but themselves, by dint of despising others and themselves; everyone wore a false heart beneath the ermine and silk, and even the caresses of husbands were concealed. In twenty years, I will undoubtedly see with great joy this nation, which today is regaining its freedom, gradually recovering its customs.
Our children will perhaps be ashamed of the effeminate portraits of their fathers. Less enervated than we by debauchery and idleness, their passions will be less brutal than ours; for in bodies weakened by vice, one always finds hardened souls. When men no longer have a homeland, they soon turn wicked; it is necessary to pursue, at any cost, the happiness that eludes us; ideas change, and it is found in crime.
Oh, Lawgivers! Give us laws that compel us to love them; indifference to one's country and love of self are the source of all evil; indifference to oneself and love of country are the source of all good.
II. On Nature and Civil Government
[1]: La plus part de nos vertus sont des vices delicats. plus les mœurs sont depravées plus les lois sont atroces [168]fures es pis qui pron le prud réglis compa de Pandes raisons que je vais dire. la guerre depeuplait leur payis et les de-pouilles du monde y introduisaient la paresse et le celibat. ce double principe de depppulation fit ces lois prodigieuses que nous voyons sur les mariages.
On est tout surpris d'entendre numidicus Dire au peuple — « s'il etait possible De n'avoir point de femmes nous nous delivrerions de ce mal, mais comme la nature a etabli qu'on ne peut guere vivre heureux avec elles ni subsister sans elles, il faut avoir plus d'egard à notre conservation qu'à des satisfactions passageres. »
En vain chercherait on un trait plus frappant du desordre de cette societé fameuse. rassasiée de sa fortune il fallut des lois terribles pour empecher qu'elle ne s'anéantit elle même après avoir tout detruit.
On peut voir dans ulpien et dans aulu-gelle par quelles lois on fle-chit le celibat. les censeurs et les lois avaient beau crier le vice etait dans le cœur de la cité auguste fit en faveur des mariages la loi papia popea du nom des consuls papius et popeus n'etaient point mariés.
Ces lois violentes pour empecher la depopulation totale de l'empire mirent dans l'etat une sorte de servitude politique inconnüe aupara-vant.
Il fallut flatter les epoux par des avantages nuptiaux et ensuitte les assujettir pour qu'ils ne s'abandonnassent point. le sexe le plus faible fut aussi le plus opprimé, tout fut mis en usage Pour irriter les dedaigneux appetit de l'homme une autre cause de la corruption Des mariages fut l'hipocrisie (f. 27 recto) religieuse. Les empereurs crétiens abrogerent les lois nuptiales de la republique l'empire ebranlé par sa depopulation fut exterminé par les barbares et le celibat religieux. Les lois papiennes etant abolies ou deshonorées les romains [169] payens ne se marierent plus les romains convertis ne se marierent point.
Saint-Just a biffé une phrase : « Je n'ai qu'un mot à ajoutter si les mariages etaient libres il Y aurait peu de separations. »
Saint-Just a biffé le passage suivant : « la france qui renonce aux conquettes et qui par la nature de ses lois a proscrit la molesse a du necessairement re-tablir l'independance des epoux. ce torrent de delices ou rome fut noyée vers la fin de la conquette y fit naitre le degout du mariage avec celui de l'innocence. »
[1]: Most of our virtues are delicate vices; the more depraved the customs, the more atrocious the laws.
The Romans, who were the most corrupt people in the world, were the greatest promoters of rigid marriage laws for two reasons I will explain: war depopulated their country, and the spoils of the world introduced laziness and celibacy.
This twofold principle of depopulation gave rise to those prodigious laws we see regarding marriage. One is astonished to hear Numidicus say to the people: “If it were possible not to have wives, we would be free of this evil; but since nature has decreed that one cannot live happily with them nor subsist without them, it is necessary to consider our preservation more than fleeting pleasures.”
One would search in vain for a more striking feature of the disorder of this famous society; satiated with its wealth, it needed terrible laws to prevent it from annihilating itself after having destroyed everything.
It can be seen in Ulpian and Aulus Gellius how celibacy was combated; the censors and the laws cried out in vain: the vice was at the heart of the city. Augustus enacted the Papia Poppaea law in favor of marriage, named after the consuls Papius and Poppaeus, who were not even married.
These violent laws, intended to prevent the total depopulation of the empire, plunged the state into a kind of political servitude previously unknown. Spouses had to be flattered with marital advantages and then subdued to prevent them from abandoning each other; the weaker sex was also the most oppressed; everything was used to inflame men's disdainful appetites.
Another cause of the corruption of marriages was religious hypocrisy. The Christian emperors abrogated the marriage laws of the republic; the empire, weakened by its depopulation, was exterminated by the barbarians and religious celibacy. With the Papiatian laws abolished or disgraced, pagan Romans no longer married; nor did converted Romans.
Deleted phrases: "I have only one word to add: if marriages were free, there would be few separations."
"France, which renounces conquests and, by the nature of its laws, has outlawed indolence, must necessarily restore the independence of spouses; that torrent of delights in which Rome drowned was the end of conquest and gave rise to a distaste for marriage along with a distaste for innocence."
—que la sevérité des mariages est l'effet De la corruption. pp. 181.
III. Republican Institutions
[1]: Les femmes ne peuvent etre censurées
[1]: Women cannot be censored.
[2]: Les camps sont interdits aux femmes sous peine de mort.
[2]: The camps are forbidden to women under penalty of death.
[3]: celui qui Veut rendre une femme contente doit l'abandonner à ellemême.
[3]: He who wants to make a woman happy must abandon her to herself.
—Republican institutions, pp. 305-343
I have decided to omit the last part of Republican Institutions where he mentions how to win a woman by being a gentleman (since it is more of a dating advice than a political issue), we can also notice an evident homosociability throughout his speech, although I will address it later.
Vinot's analysis doesn't leave me with much to say about a few declarative pages concerning Saint-Just's stance on women.
What is interesting about his analysis, given that he is one of the few historians who have taken the study of Saint-Just seriously, is the (respectively) historical or contextual perspective from which the work arises, and consequently, the idea of women in his political philosophy.
Vinot focuses the discussion on Saint-Just's relationship with Thérèse de Gellée, suggesting that a good part of his stance on women stems from the relationship he had with her (or perhaps with women in general):
«Les idées de Saint-Just sur l'amour, les femmes et le mariage se sont certes façonnées sous l'influence culturelle du moment, mais aussi de son expérience propre.»
«Mais cette liberté n'a aucunement pour objet de favoriser le libertinage, car l'union conjugale a pour fin la procréation et la constitution d'une famille : « Les époux, qui n'ont point eu d'enfants pendant les sept premières années de leur union et qui n'en ont point adopté, sont séparés par la loi, et doivent se quitter. » N'est-ce pas le cas de Thérèse?»
—Bernard Vinot: Saint Just et les femmes. pp. 195-197. Biographie de Sant-Just.
While I don't intend to deny this point (since I will address it later in the context of the conditions that lead some male authors to comment on this fact), the truth is that he doesn't base his thinking on his present, or rather, the political present, largely contractualist and nostalgic for Roman law, or as Christopher Goddard puts it in his article "Saint-Just: Critique de Rousseau":
Let us remember that Saint-Just, fundamentally a primitivist and pessimist, conceived of history as the unequivocal alteration of a state of nature in which man once fully realized his essence. Therefore, he categorically rejected Rousseau’s dialectical conception of history, according to which all denaturalization is linked to the cultivation of perfectibility. (…) It is important to recognize his opposition to change and innovation. ‘I do not seek to establish novelties, but to destroy novelties themselves,’ he wrote. For the new undoes the original. While he rejects history, Saint-Just does not intend to abolish the past. Therefore, he cannot be accused of being caught in the deadly trap of incessant and sterile renewal. Nor can he agree with the idea that ‘good social institutions are those that best denature man.’ Whereas in the natural man conceived by Rousseau, sociability remained an as-yet-unrealized potentiality, Saint-Just denies the priority of the individual over the natural world.” to the whole and sees in the state of nature a state of immediate sociability, with an atomized isolation that, on the contrary, stems from the historical alteration of this primordial harmony of consciousness. The contractualist and artificialist viewpoint adopted by Rousseau testifies precisely to this alteration. Natural harmony, founded on the strict separation of social law—which defines the relationship of independence and organic solidarity of men in natural society—and political law—which defines the balance of power between one people and another—is broken by the social contract. By attempting to found social life on political life, turning the force of political law against society under the pretext of defending society against itself, the contract, fundamentally more political than social, destroys natural law, causes the fragmentation of the social body, and inaugurates what Saint-Just calls "savage life": the clash of factions and parties for domination. (...) Through it, the natural order is broken, in which each individual becomes a species unto himself and enters a state of maximum dependence. By contrasting the internally experienced, immanent unity of natural society with the uncertain aggregation imposed by the social contract—in a word, by its anti-individualistic naturalism—Saint-Just's political thought is the antithesis of the voluntarist natural law tradition in force in his century, and appears to be a survival of ancient natural law.
—Christopher Goddard, “Saint-Just: critique de Rousseau. pp.3.
Therefore, his political thought may indeed have arisen from the context of his time (with a primary emphasis on his relationship with women and also with men); however, its epistemological basis is completely removed from what was understood during the revolutionary period. This line of thought can also be found in some revolutionaries—not really divergent from Saint-Just's perspective.
Now, it's important to understand his political stance on women. It was unusual for the time for a man to speak out in favor of female equality, a point addressed in a well-known text by Nicolas de Condorcet.
I will discuss this later, along with other authors who held clearer positions on women's rights. What I intend to analyze in this section is to understand certain aspects of his work concerning women.
Something important to highlight is that no man of the French Revolution decisively contributed to the formation of women's suffrage. This merit belongs to other eras and, far more valuable, to the revolutionary women.
However, Saint-Just's position regarding women is not particularly robust when compared to other authors or other sections of his own work, which, comparatively, develops the homosociality of men more fully. Let us understand that, by the homosociability of men:
To say that a man is heterosexual implies that he has sexual relations exclusively with the opposite sex, that is, women. However, everything, or almost everything, that is characteristic of love, most heterosexual men reserve exclusively for other men. The people they admire, respect, adore, and venerate; those they honor; those they imitate, idolize, and with whom they cultivate deeper bonds; those they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn; those whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence, and love they desire: these are, for the most part, other men. In their relationships with women, what is seen as respect is courtesy, generosity, or paternalism; what is seen as honor is placing the woman on a pedestal. From women, they want devotion, servitude, and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homo-affective; it cultivates love for men.
—“Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory", Marilyn Frye.
We can compare it with the more homo-affective fragments of his work, especially in Republican Institutions:
Every 21-year-old man must declare in the temple who his friends are, and this declaration must be renewed annually during the month of Ventose.
In battles, friends stand side by side.
No one may disturb the affection of his son, regardless of his wealth.
Those who remain friends throughout their lives are buried in the same grave.
If a man abandons a friend, he must explain to the people of the temple the reasons for his departure.
Now, let's not be mistaken, Saint-Just does not set out (like other authors) to analyze women in and of themselves, but rather the legal treatment they have received throughout history, how the role of being a woman has been assigned to them.
Many authors of his time and later have discredited women's capacity in public life, a capacity facilitated by Roman customs (as Saint-Just explained in his critique of the chapter: "That the severity of marriages is the effect of corruption in republican institutions"). They assigned women an inferior and subjugated role, politically and spiritually, to men:
«“Girls don’t like to learn to read and write, yet they are always ready to learn to sew.” —Rousseau “For Hegel, women ‘are not made for the higher sciences,’ Auguste Comte spoke of the ‘intrinsic weakness of their reasoning,’ and Fichte asserted that ‘in marriage, a woman freely expresses her will to be annulled before the State for love of her husband.’”»
Quoting Régine Pernoud in her quote from Robert Villers in “La femme au temps des cathédrales”:
In Rome, without exaggeration or paradox, woman was not a subject of law… Her personal status, the relationship of the woman with her parents or with her husband, falls under the jurisdiction of the domus, of which the father, father-in-law, or husband are all-powerful heads… Woman is merely an object.
The truth is that the resurgence of Roman law among the European bourgeoisie (Napoleonic Code) and also in the Old Regime, further excluded women from the political sphere, resulting in their objectification, still present in contemporary society, where women are valued not for their virtues, but for their contributions to men.
In this sense, Saint-Just seeks to analyze the relationships between men and women from, as previously mentioned, an anti-modernist and anti-Roman perspective.
Saint-Just's critique of women's education focuses on the suppression of their naturalness and character: the attempt to make women repress or at least conceal their desires. But what desires is he referring to? Simone de Beauvoir said: "One is not born a woman, but learns to be one." In a sense, women learn to conceal their lives and expectations, adhering to what being a woman implies: pleasing men. The expectations for women, then, are of compliance and subordination.
Therefore, Saint-Just's critique of female education concerns how, in political relations, women are expected to be subordinate and not treated as equals.
Regarding marriage, which is perhaps the most explored aspect of the female condition, we can consider one thing: Saint-Just criticizes the argument that female infidelity is more serious due to a supposed natural dependence, since this idea of dependence returns to the point of submission, and submission, for Saint-Just, is the political state, unnatural to humanity.
Perhaps the most controversial point of his position can be found in fragment [3]/The Spirit of the Revolution. The reason why it would be foolish to leave a free people in the hands of women is more the fault of men than of women themselves. (This should not be confused with an attributed inferiority): He feared, therefore, that devotion or personal love for a woman ruler would overshadow a rational and strict love for the laws. For him, in a republic, nothing should be above liberty. This could also be understood in fragment [4]/The Spirit of the Revolution.
We could say that he fears the increased veneration of women (whether due to maternal instincts, as in some Hindu traditions such as the worship of Shakti), and that, in one way or another, they would be given greater devotion than freedom. (False idols, another male author would say).
The truth is, these are suppositions, vague and lacking a truly rational understanding of women and their relationship to freedom: from the feminist perspective of revolution, whose cause is nothing more than maternal sentiment towards all humankind—"defending the child against danger," be that child the people and the danger slavery, death, and hunger. True emancipation comes hand in hand with women's emancipation, which is born from the revolution.
Perhaps he could have understood it; however, not as deeply as a woman would.
VI. Bibliographical references
Textes établis et commentés par Alain Liénard. Paris : Les Éditions du Seuil, 1976, 312 pp. Collection Politique.
Pernoud, R. (1982). La mujer en el tiempo de las catedrales (M. Vassallo, Trad.). Ediciones Juan Granica. (Obra original publicada en 1980)
Ayala Martínez, J. M. (2003). El Derecho natural antiguo y medieval. Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval, 10, 377-386.
Goddard, J.-C. (1988). Saint-Just critique de Rousseau. Espaces Temps, (38-39), 107-112
Vinot, B. (1985). Saint-Just. Librairie Arthème Fayard.
Marilyn Frye (1983) Politics of Reality - Essays in Feminist Theory
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