speak more for themselves, rather than seeing them as subjects of a scientific, "multidisciplinary" study (as in the case of Melzer-Rabine), Yalom inevitably focuses more than Melzer-Rabine on the non-scientific, personal and emotional aspects of women's participation in the revolution. For this reason, Yalom's book is the more involving and convincing for this reader. This is not to say that the essayists in Melzer and Rabine do not make important contributions to the understanding of women's complex and often paradoxical roles in the revolution, for they certainly do. However, the personal and moving stories of the women in Yalom's book allow the reader to connect more viscerally with the grand historical events in which those women took part. In whatever order they are read, the two books give the reader a well-rounded understanding of both the personal and the historical/theoretical aspects of women's involvement in the French Revolution.
Melzer and Rabine are effective in describing why the gender bias practiced in the French Revolution was particularly hurtful to women:
Of course the asymmetry of gender that connotes man as central and primary, woman as peripheral and secondary predates the French Revolution by centuries if not millennia. So what changes with the French Revolution? It marks a new era that holds out to women the promise of inclusion in its universal community of equal human subjects only to snatch that promise away when women rise up to actively claim its fulfillment.
Women were, therefore, cast into the difficult and
Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution, edited by Sara E. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine, includes 14 articles (including the editors' Introduction) which explore two basic issues---ways in which women took part in the Revolution and played important roles in its success, and ways in which women were victims of discrimination in the Revolution and left out of both the rewards...