Fembio Special: Women from Latin America
Flora Tristan
born on April 7, 1803 in Paris, France
died on November 14, 1844 in Bordeaux, France
French writer, feminist and socialist; grandmother of Paul Gauguin
180th anniversary of death on November 14, 2024
Biography
“In our misfortunate society, the woman is a pariah by birth, she has the position of a servant ... and almost always she can only choose between hypocrisy and disgrace.”
Flora Tristan was not alone in her harsh criticism of the oppression of women in her time - the 1830s and 1840s - and her hope that “the future will belong to women” was also shared by the early French socialists (Saint-Simon, Fourier). But unlike the male theorists, her writings were based on her own painful experiences.
She had married her employer, the engraver André Chazal, when she was barely eighteen years old in order to free herself and her mother from abject poverty. Four years later, she herself had to choose between hypocrisy and disgrace; she left the husband she did not love and sought work as a traveling companion for wealthy families. As divorce was no longer possible under the Napoleonic Code, Chazal continued to have every right over her and their children. He persecuted her for years, kidnapping daughter Aline three times and emerging unscathed after having faced charges of incest. In the end, he tried to kill his “unfaithful” wife; she almost died from the gunshot wounds.
Previously, she had made a long journey to Peru. But her hopes for financial support from the wealthy family of her father, a Peruvian nobleman who died young, had been in vain. Two texts emerged from these experiences: the socially critical travelogue Peregrinations of a Pariah and her appeal to found a Society for Foreign Women to provide assistance to foreign women traveling alone to Paris.
In 1839 she recorded her observations in the factories, slums, prisons and brothels in the English industrial cities she visited, and these were published as a collection of fervent reportages (Promenades in London). Her main work, The Workers' Union, called upon all workers to unite and fight together for the right to work and education (especially for women!).
In the spring of 1844, she set off on a major tour throughout France by ship (on the Seine) and by stagecoach to promote her ideas. While she was constantly spied on by the police and ridiculed by the press as a femme libre, she also received an enthusiastic welcome in many cities. After ten grueling months, she collapsed exhausted in Bordeaux and died shortly afterwards of typhoid fever.
(Text from 1993; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2024.
Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
I want you to know, wondrous woman, what shivers of joy run through me given your letter ... You say you love me and that I magnetize you, even that I arose feelings of ecstasy. Perhaps you are joking with me? Be careful - I have long longed for a woman to love me passionately. ...
A woman's feelings, a woman's play of thoughts contain such great powers, a woman has such immense spiritual wealth!
(Flora Tristan to her friend Olympe Chodzko, 1839)
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