Madame Roland

Marie-Jeanne "Manon" Roland de la Platière (Paris, March 17, 1754 – Paris, November 8, 1793), born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, and best known under the name Madame Roland was a French revolutionary, salonnière and writer. Her letters and memoirs became famous for recording the state of mind that conditioned the events leading to the revolution.

From a young age Roland was interested in philosophy and political theory and studied a brought range of writers and thinkers. At the same time she was aware that, as a woman, she was predestined to play another role in society than a man. After marrying the economist Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, she did develop with him a ''husband and wife team'' through which it was possible to use her brilliant mind for public politics, which was a man’s business.

She moved from Paris to Lyon, where she initially led a quiet and unremarkable life as a provincial intellectual with her husband,. She became actively involved in politics when the French Revolution broke out in 1789. She spent the first years of the revolution in Lyon, where her husband was elected to the city council. During this period she developed a network of contacts with politicians and journalists. Her reports on developments in Lyon in letters to people in her network, were published in national revolutionary newspapers.

In 1791 the couple settled in Paris, where Madame Roland soon established herself as a leading figure within the political group the Girondins, one of the more moderate revolutionary factions. She was known for her intelligence, astute political analyses and her tenacity, and was a good lobbyist and negotiator. The salon she hosted in her home several times a week was an important meeting place for politicians. However, she was also convinced of her own intellectual and moral superiority and alienated important political leaders like Robespierre and Danton.

Unlike the feminist revolutionaries Olympe de Gouges and Etta Palm, Madame Roland was not an advocate for political rights for women. She accepted that women should play a very modest role in public and political life. Even during her lifetime, many found this position difficult to reconcile with her own active involvement in politics and her important role within the Girondins.

When her husband unexpectedly became Minister of the Interior in 1792, her political influence grew. She had control over the content of ministerial letters, memorandums and speeches, was involved in decisions about political appointments, and was in charge of a bureau set up to influence public opinion in France. She was both admired and reviled, and particularly hated by the sans-culottes of Paris. The publicists Marat and Hébert conducted a smear campaign against Madame Roland as part of the power struggle between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins and Montagnards. In June 1793, she was the first Girondin to be arrested during the Terror and was guillotined a few months later.

Madame Roland wrote her memoirs while she was imprisoned in the months before her execution. They are – like her letters – a valuable source of information about the first years of the French Revolution. Provided by Wikipedia