Compelled to Witness: Women's Memoirs of the French Revolution

by Marilyn Yalom

From Marie Antoinette during her final days in prison, to Charlotte Robespierre, the sister of the man responsible for ordering hundreds to the guillotine, women on both sides of the relocation were bound together by a common nightmare. Join Stanford professor Marilyn Yalom, as she uncovers first-person accounts of more than eighty remarkable women memoirists--of all ages and backgrounds, all victims of the French Revolution.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, French Revolution, Research

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 30, 2015

About the author

Marilyn Yalom grew up in Washington D.C. and was educated at Wellesley College, the Sorbonne, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She has been a professor of French and comparative literature, director of an institute for research on women, a popular speaker on the lecture circuit, and the author of numerous books and articles on literature and women's history.

Reviews

[Michael Cresci]

Not a cohesive enough work to truly grip you, but a great resource for personal experiences and gender politics during the revolution

[Ashley]

I sought a book about the women of the French Revolution, and yielded little results from my search. I found this book, which seemed to have what I wanted in theory. Unfortunately, it was not. I tried to ignore the constant grammatical and editing/publishing errors in the text, but they were so abundant that it ruins the mood of it all. I preserved, because there SHOULD be more books available about the women of the French Revolution and I wanted this to be worth it. By the end of it, I don’t feel I learned more than a few odd facts further than I already knew coming into it. The chapters feel clunky and not cohesive. The author does not try to add much to these women’s stories. A great idea, but poorly executed (pun not intended).

[Josée Gervais]

it bleeds of bias and the author's 'interpretation' of the fact. When there's a hole, she clogs it up with what she thinks, which is frankly irresponsible for a History book. Also we can clearly tell who the author likes and doesn't like. Serious researchers of the French Revolution should avoid this book. The author is a French Lit. professor and a non-fiction writer and it shows.

[Tracy]

An excellent read...very inspiring.

I thoroughly enjoyed this thoughtful and compelling book as it gives one a very different perspective of the French revolution.

[Kayla Tornello]

It was interesting to learn about how the French Revolution affected the lives of women and their families. This book combined information from a large number of sources, so that you could see different viewpoints based on politics, social sphere, and location.