ABSTRACT
In the 1870s the feminist agenda had been set by Maria Deraismes and Léon Richer, whose politique de la brèche deliberately excluded the issue of women’s suffrage as too controversial. As we have seen, however, even before the decade closed the ‘breach’ strategy had come under fire from a younger generation of militants headed by Hubertine Auclert. In the 1880s, virtually singlehanded, Auclert launched a debate on the female franchise which was aimed at making women full citizens of the Republic. It was her profound conviction that political rights were ‘the keystone [clef de voûte] which will give them all other rights’ and her strategy was one of frontal assault on the bastions of male power. 1
