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 revolution 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.

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"Seven heads fell to the acclamation of that mad crowd, which, fortunately for me, was too captivated by this bloody scene to notice my flight and my fear..."

-Alexandrine des Echerolles, then fourteen years old, describing executions by guillotine in the public square of Lyon, France.

"The murder of my father, before my very eyes, filled me with rage and despair. From this moment on....I swore to fight until death or victory."

-RenEe Bordereau, a peasant woman, who disguised herself as a man and fought as a counterrevolutionary solider in more than two hundred battles.

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Compelled to Witness: Women's Memoirs of the French Revolution has garnered critical acclaim from colleagues and reviewers since its original publication as Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory.

"This masterfully crafted book adds a new dimension to our understanding of the French Revolution." - Library Journal

..".a thoughtful feminist analysis of the French Revolution." - Publishers Weekly

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, French Revolution

240 pages, Paperback

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Josée Gervais · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.