ABSTRACT
Suzanne formed her feminist ideals during the final decades of the Third Republic, but she was not typical of many other French feminists who were her contemporaries. In the early twentieth century, mainstream French feminists focused much of their attention on changing those institutions and organizations that threatened a woman’s autonomy. Interestingly many French feminists, while insisting on equal rights, often adhered to more traditional ideals of femininity and a woman’s place in the family, and were largely concerned with regaining the respectability lost during more radical periods of the women’s movement such as the Revolutions of 1789 and 1848. Thus, most protests against varying forms of gender inequality were, by the early twentieth century, tepid at best. These demonstrations often bordered on timorous as many women sought to enhance their reputation as models of civic virtue as an important element of the feminist movement, especially throughout the latter period of the Third Republic. 1
