h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Yarn Bombing the Revolution: Tricoteuses and Phrygian Caps - A87874924
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

I have actually knitted a Phyrgian cap, but doing this on a knitting loom is...well, fraught. The result does look a bit like a red Smurf hat...

Anyway, here's a bit of history to the thing.

Excellent how you bring different threads together in this Entry

Reminds me of the work of these people http://makingfeminism.wordpress.com

They look like a jolly group.

Nice Entry !

Just a few things, though :
You write "What was Robespierre fighting for? Universal adult male suffrage. No mention of women there."
But Robespierre was actually one of the few defenders of equality for all, including the vote (men, women, jews, and even coloured people).

You write "Environmentalist Jacques Cousteau wore one"
I believe Cousteau wore a simple red beanie hat, but I might be wrong on that one.


Apart from that, it's a great read, and I'm putting the phrygian hat on my to-knit list.

Great entry!
I hadn't heard of yarn bombing. Perhaps it hasn't caught on here. Though I have heard of guerilla gardening, which sounds quite fun.
I'd also wondered about Madame Defarge's coded knitting and thought it had to be binary.
Have you read Hilary Mantel's book about the French Revolution A Place of Greater Safety? Interesting portrait of Robespierre - the sort of dangerous intellectual who never hurt anyone personally, but could come up with a justification for the terror.

Hey, Superfrenchie, thanks! Although some of the sources I've found claimed that Jacques Cousteau was, indeed, wearing a red cap in emulation of French revolutionaries, I'll leave that out.

However, I'm not finding that Robespierre supported women's suffrage. What I've found repeatedly is that he was for universal MALE suffrage, which was usually considered the cutting edge back then. Now, I'm sure he was for rights for all, but that may not have extended to voting. (It's usually complicated.)

Now, if you can find me an unambiguous and utterly reliable source that shows Robespierre actually wanting to give women the vote, I'll chalk all those other sources up to the usual history muddle, and gladly change this.

Can you find me a source, please? If it's in French, that's okay. If I don't understand something, I'll ask. I read it much better than I write it, trust me on this...

And thanks, MVP - no, haven't read that book! (Maybe someday...)

Robespierre's certainly a complicated character.

Superfrenchie:

Here's what I found:

'As a member of the insurrectionary Commune that overthrew the monarchy following the popular uprising of August 10, 1792, Robespierre supported universal male suffrage without property qualifications.'

Nicole Rae de Gioia-Keane, 'Robespierre: Rehabilitating a "Terrorist"', Anamesa, Spring 2004, https://www.nyu.edu/pubs/anamesa/archive/spring_2004_violence/02_gioia_keane.htm

'Throughout 1794 and 1795, urban and rural radicals alike demanded "bread and the constitution of 1793," meaning that the government should feed the people and grant universal male suffrage.'

City University of New York, 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution'. http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/searchfr.php?function=find&keyword=suffrage

Now, it's perfectly true that the idea of universal male suffrage was so radical that they couldn't even get that...and it was only in the 1830s that the United State managed it. (Though women in New Jersey got the vote in the 1790s through a fluke of legislation...didn't last long, voting women scared them to death...)

'Few deputies opposed the property requirements for voting and holding office. One of the few who did, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–94), a lawyer from Arras in northern France, made a reputation for himself as a determined and devoted defender of "the people," that is, for the most democratic possible interpretation [still, however, excluding women] of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and of the constitution under deliberation.'

Same source.

Hi Dmitri,
I'm positive that I read it somewhere not long ago, but I can't find the source any more (neither that particular one nor any other, really).

What I did find was that he supported the idea of admitting women into science academies, for example, but nothing about women's suffrage.

So I guess either I misremembered (which I doubt), or the source wasn't that reliable after all (more probable...).

As you were.

Thanks, Superfrenchie - and thanks for looking.

No problem.

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Excellent!

Well done

Yay !