Louise Michel

Louise Michel appears briefly in Simone de Beauvoir’s historical account of feminism as a revolutionary who opposed feminism because she believed the struggle against capitalism should take precedence. The reference exposes a central tension in the account: a movement may proclaim general emancipation while treating women’s freedom as secondary, leaving their specific conditions unresolved.

Political Position and Context

In discussing the nineteenth-century feminist movement, Beauvoir distinguishes revolutionary feminism, associated with Saint-Simonian and Marxist traditions, from bourgeois feminism, which sought reforms within existing society. Michel is cited as a critic of feminism from the revolutionary left: she argued that feminist organizing diverted energy that should be devoted entirely to class struggle, on the assumption that abolishing capital would resolve women’s condition.

Class Solidarity and Women’s Emancipation

The passage places Michel’s position within a broader dispute over whether women could rely on the emancipation of workers in general. Beauvoir notes that the Socialist Congress of 1879 proclaimed equality between the sexes, but argues that women who expected liberty through workers’ emancipation tended to make their own cause secondary. The political promise of universal change thus coexisted with the risk that women’s demands would be postponed rather than addressed in their particular circumstances.

Material Conditions and the Limits of General Promises

Beauvoir’s account challenges the idea that economic transformation alone automatically frees women. Women workers faced low wages, and their employment could provoke hostility from male workers who viewed them as cheap competition; integration into unions was necessary for women to defend their interests while building wider labor solidarity. Women’s domestic and caregiving responsibilities also persisted alongside paid work. The chapter’s example of a French peasant woman, whose day combined field labor, household management, pregnancy, and child care, makes concrete the burdens that a general appeal to class emancipation could leave unexamined.

Significance in Beauvoir’s Argument

Michel’s brief appearance marks a conflict within emancipatory politics, not a developed personal portrait. Her position supplies a sharp example of the claim that women’s liberation cannot simply be assumed to follow from another group’s victory. For Beauvoir, the issue is whether women can act as subjects pursuing their own freedom, rather than remaining dependent on a future transformation defined by others. This concern connects the historical discussion to her account of women being placed in a world where their freedom is constrained and their possibilities restricted.