Early Modern French Seminar

‘

Non-Consent and the Problem of Influence in Marie-Jeanne Roland’s Mémoires particulières’
Olivia Russell (Worcester College, Oxford)

Abstract

In June 1793, Marie-Jeanne Roland was arrested amidst the political upheavals of the French Revolution. During her five-month imprisonment, she began writing her memoirs: first the Notices historiques, which offer observations and reflections on the Revolution and its leading figures, and then the Mémoires particuliers, which recount her childhood and early adulthood. Although unfinished at the time of her execution in November 1793, these personal memoirs are striking for their candour, particularly in Roland’s revelation that she was sexually assaulted at the age of ten.

Since the first uncensored publication of the Mémoires particuliers in 1864, the account of sexual assault has been subject to problematic interpretation. Some critics have questioned Roland’s non-consent, accused her of embellishment, or read the episode through her admiration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, assuming she was inspired by his own portrayal of sexual harassment in the Confessions.

This paper challenges such readings by reconsidering Roland’s account on its own terms. It argues that her narrative offers a radical portrayal of non-consent that diverges from contemporaneous understandings of resistance and female virtue. It also reassesses the question of Rousseau’s influence. By situating the account in its original context and tracing its subsequent reception, this paper demonstrates that Roland’s memoirs constitute an original intervention in the autobiographical form, as well as a radical assertion of female voice in an era that sought to constrain it.

Biography

Olivia Russell is currently a Stipendiary Lecturer in French at Worcester College. She recently completed her DPhil on representations of embodied experience in the writings of Françoise de Graffigny, Isabelle de Charrière, and Marie-Jeanne Roland, showing how they challenged dominant narratives of female virtue and self-sacrifice. While her thesis focused on eighteenth-century literature, her broader research interests encompass women’s writing from the eighteenth century to the contemporary period.

The Early Modern French Seminar is convened by Wes Williams (St Edmund Hall), Rachel Hindmarsh (St Catherine’s College), and Marina Perkins (The Queen’s College)