Duchesse De Berry Chapter Summary

Duchesse de Berry, Flora Tristan, Marguerite Durand, and Nelly Roussel are all women who impacted the feminist movement in France after the Revolution. Though these women come from different backgrounds and with varying skills to fight for the feminist cause. All of these women used their gender performance and society’s gender roles to their advantage while relying on the intersectionality of gender and class to advance their personal campaign. The authors of the women’s stories did a wonderful job of pulling out how society, its stereotypes, and its fascination with melodramas set the stage perfectly for these women.

Jo Burr Margadant (2000) wrote about the Duchesse de Berry, and her ability to play herself into the hands of the Parisian

Later she used her gender, societal expectations, and entertainment preferences, royals, mothers, and melodrama, to win over the people to get her out of prison in the Blaye while pregnant (Margadant, 2000). Though the Duchesse’s contribution to feminism may be hard to see at first it can be seen in the way that she pushed her way into French politics, from garnering support for her Bourbon son, to getting herself out of prison. The Duchesse’s contributions may not be as elaborate as the rest of the women, it was still as step in the right direction in helping the

Margadant highlights this woman’s power, her beauty, as well as the intersectionality seen in her gender and class. By using her beauty as a way to navigate the potentially rough waters around running and publishing a feminist oriented newspaper, Durand was able to talk about the more interesting and provocative topics of feminism. Margadant (2000) argues that the use of her beauty that fits within conventional beauty standards at the time and using melodrama to gain the public’s affection without subjecting herself to negative press was quite an ingenious feat. Marguerite was able to do this through her ability to perform her gender in hyper feminine ways then she was at parties or had news reporters come to her newspaper. Her focus on fashion and femininity convinced the reporters that the feminism that the La Fronde was publishing was not as bad other feminist publishers (Margadant, 2000). For this tactic to have even worked Durand and those around her had to learn what acceptable displays of gender were, this falls perfectly into Butler’s theory that gender is taught. Margadant (2000) argues that Durand was able to publish this newspaper through relying on her class and her gender