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During this electoral period, a brief look back at the life of Hubertine Auclert, suffragette and activist for women's rights.
©️Gallica-BnF
Hubertine Auclert, whose real name is Marie Anne Hubertine, was born on April 10, 1848 in Saint-Priest-en-Murat in the Allier. Fifth of seven children, she grew up between a Republican father opposed to the Second Empire and a mother who dedicated herself to unwed mothers.
From the age of nine, Hubertine was placed in a convent in Montmarault. She attended all her schooling with the nuns. History even tells us that at 13, our protagonist considered joining the Daughters of Charity of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. She was not accepted. Years later, after the death of her parents in 1864 and 1866, her brother placed her in a convent in Montluçon. A convent from which she was again excluded in 1869. These experiences made Hubertine a confirmed anti-clerical.
Credit: Departmental Archives of Allier. Birth certificate of Anne Marie Hubérine Auclaire - April 10, 1848
Hubertine arrived in Paris in 1873. The advent of the Third Republic explains this new enthusiasm for feminist activism. These women wanted to revise the Napoleonic Code, which made women minors for life and subject to their husbands.
Very quickly, our activist joined the Association for Women's Rights. Hubertine worked there for a time as a librarian before opposing Léon Richer, the founder of the association. She committed herself and demanded that women be allowed to stand for elections, which could avoid a civil regime so unequal between men and women. This activism led her to write articles in several newspapers and to found the society The Rights of Women in 1876, which became The Suffrage of Women in 1883.
As early as 1877, Hubertine spoke directly to women: "Women of France, we too have rights to claim: it is time to come out of indifference and inertia to demand against prejudices and laws that humiliate us. Let us unite our efforts, associate ourselves; the example of the proletariat calls to us; let us know how to emancipate ourselves like them!". In 1880, she ran for the electoral lists and began a tax strike. If women are not legally represented, then they are not taxable! A year later, Hubertine launched her newspaper The Citizen for the liberation of women's rights. And as early as 1884, she proposed the idea of a marriage contract between spouses with separation of property - a first at the time! - and the feminization of the language for several words (witness, lawyer, voter, deputy...).
Credit - Paris, Heritage Libraries - Marguerite Durand Library
Between 1888 and 1892, Hubertine left France for Algeria with her future husband Pierre Antonin Lévrier. This new country with codes still very different from France was a true observation ground for the activist. Her writings, which she carefully preserved, are all the more important as very few feminists were interested in colonization, racism, and anti-Semitism. Hubertine spoke of "double patriarchy, French and Arab" and she even estimated that French colonialism had worsened the situation of women in Algeria.
Back in France following the death of her husband, Hubertine continued to engage in favor of the rights of Arab women.
Later, other notable facts demonstrate Hubertine Auclert's continuous and strong commitment to the fight for women's right to vote. First, in 1908, she decided to symbolically break a ballot box during the municipal elections in Paris. Then, in April 1910, she ran for the legislative elections alongside Marguerite Durand. Their candidacy rejected, Hubertine called for a boycott of the census: "If we are not counted, why are we counted?".
Hubertine Auclert died on April 8, 1914, 30 years before women's right to vote was legal in France (first vote authorized on April 21, 1944). But her efforts were not in vain. Thanks to Hubertine's actions, shop girls and workers obtained the right to sit in large stores and workshops, women became electors and eligible for the council of prud'hommes (1907), and married women obtained control of their own wages (1908)...