Sex, Class, and the Theatrical Archive by Alan Sikes;

Author:Alan Sikes; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030231163
Publisher: Springer Nature

The same day that Lacombe delivered her address to the Society women, delegates from the Committee of General Security did indeed inspect her papers and found nothing with counterrevolutionary sentiments. But this victory for the revolutionary dignity of Lacombe and her supporters was overshadowed the very next day by the outbreak of the “War of the Cockades.” The tricolor brooch had fomented friction since late spring, but on September 18 several women wearing the cockade came into conflict with the market women of Les Halles, the largest Parisian venue for the sale of foodstuffs and other basic commodities. The recent implementation of price controls had made the women of Les Halles nervous about relations with their affluent suppliers, so they had little interest in donning the cockade themselves. Already famous for their assertive demeanor while hawking their wares, the sight of other women wearing the cockade reportedly threw the market women into a frenzy. Hoping to curtail future unrest by unruly women on both sides of the dispute, the Convention decreed on September 21 that all women must don the cockade. Those found in public without the cockade were subject to eight days in prison; upon a second offense, they were deemed in violation of the Law of Suspects and accountable to the Revolutionary Tribunal.66

The decree on the cockade, however, was prelude to another sartorial conflict broached by revolutionary Amazons in the next month. This time the fight arose over the right of women to wear the “Liberty Bonnet,” a flop-topped red cap adopted by Revolutionaries in imitation of similar caps worn by ancient Roman slaves. As President of the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, Lacombe regularly wore the bonnet whenever she led Society meetings. But the Liberty Bonnet was almost identical to the “Phrygian Cap” worn by Amazons in art of the classical era; women who donned the bonnet invoked unsettling parallels between revolutionary devotion and female empowerment. And so the “War of the Bonnets” began on October 28, 1793, when a certain Citizeness Marie-Françoise Dorlet, dutifully wearing her cockade, tried to remove bonnets from two women passing her on the street, claiming that only men had the right to wear the bonnet. When the two women tried to remove her cockade in turn, Dorlet replied “If you have the right to wear bonnets rouges, we will go to the Committee to see about it.”67 Two days later, debate about the bonnet passed from the Committee of Public Safety to the Convention floor. There the delegate Jean-Pierre Amar used the recent altercation to argue against women-only clubs: “Does the honesty of woman allow her to display herself in public and to struggle against men?” The same day the Convention banned all-female clubs, citing the recent unrest. Considering the fact that just one month previously the Convention demanded that all women wear the cockade, its ban on female clubs hot on the heels of the bonnet battle seems like a sudden policy flip-flop of exasperation, or desperation; here is the

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