Marianne, the veil and the rights of women: About Valls annoy a historian – The World

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During the reentry meeting of the Socialist Party, Monday, Aug. 29 in Colomiers (Haute-Garonne ), the Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, stated: “ Marianne she naked breast because it feeds people, it is not veiled because it is free! That is the Republic! “. True, Marianne breast naked and she is not veiled. It is not bare head as far as it wears a Phrygian cap, but never mind.

Having the naked breast is not in itself a symbol of what should be the female “Republican cloakroom “. Marianne is an allegory, which simply responds to aesthetic codes. Historian Mathilde Larrère, lecturer at the University Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée and the Revolution’s history specialist, responded on Twitter Prime Minister

Another problem. Marianne has not always had the bare breast. In fact, as explained by historian in a series of tweets on Storify collected from two iconographic traditions clash, that match “two conceptions of the Republic” . Marianne “ wise ‘breasts covered and seated, and Marianne” revolutionary “hair down, topless, on.

So, concludes the historian, Marianne embodies the Republic, not the women who live there. She looks more or less “liberated” actually has nothing to do with any role given to women in French society. Mathilde Larrère also points out that, in the nineteenth ^th century, when the two clash Marianne “none of these gentlemen has envisaged at the time of giving women legal capacity, freedom, or the right to vote. “

Rest assured, specialist historian of revolutions is not the only one who found the words of Manuel Valls displaced. If users were initially desperate lack of historical culture of the Prime Minister, they also raised another problem: Marianne “ fed the people ,” he said, before adding “ that’s it, the Republic . ” The Republic, therefore, is that women are mothers?

Not to mention the logical link “is not veiled because it is free” , that implying that veiled women are not. Other acrobatics difficult to justify.

Finally, just when the sentence is pronounced, some have noticed some discomfort in the ranks of government, on the side of Ministers Najat Vallaud-Belkacem and Marisol Touraine. Images broadcast on BFM TV show the two ministers impassive while the rest of the congregation applauded.