Volume 7, Number 9 · December 1, 1966
The Group
By Olwen Hufton
The Women Incendiaries
by Edith Thomas
Braziller, 274 pp., $7.95
Of the succession of revolutions which mark French history from 1789 that of the Commune was one of the least enduring—a brief, bloodstained interlude between an aristocratic Second Empire and an exaggeratedly noble République des ducs. But the intensity of its short life, the vindictiveness with which it was crushed, and the passions it aroused have made it one of the most controversial events in French history. It was not merely in its initial impetus but throughout a movement of the Paris masses, of the 'have nots' against the 'haves,' of those who had never been enfranchised against those, who had tasted power; in short, an unambiguous class struggle. The rising commanded not only the participation of the male working class but, for the first time in French history, that of the working women of the city, who were drawn from the shadow of domestic obscurity into political clubs and ultimately into the defense of Paris on the barricades.
Review, 2089 words
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