ABSTRACT
The history of women is usually related by men and the history of the women of the French Revolution is no exception. 1 Even their contemporaries presented a distorted picture of them: male journalists reported their activities in the newspapers or composed pamphlets about them; the National Assembly (of men!) gave their opinions and decided the outcome of their petitions; judges pronounced sentence upon them and doctors evaluated their state of mental health. Apart from very few personal accounts (the preservation of which is mostly the result of men’s own interests), all of the available sources concerning the women of the Revolution show the filtration due to the perception of men. The historians then wrote their story, a history which reveals more about the ideas of men, their fears, desires and fantasies than it does about the women themselves.
