Women in the Great European Revolutions - by Bailey Stone (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book presents a comprehensive account of how queens, bourgeois women, and "ordinary" female laborers, and peasants reacted to, and at times claimed agency in the dramatic, and at times perilous politics of the modern European Revolutions.

Book Synopsis

Women in the Great European Revolutions: Gender, Culture, Class, and the State explores and compares the roles, mentalities, and destinies of elitist and working-class women in Europe's most dramatic revolutions: England's "Puritan Revolution" of 1640-1660, France's 1789 Revolution, and Russia's 1917 Revolution.
By providing one of the most detailed analyses to date of how feminist historians, sociologists,
and specialists theorize gender, sexuality, and patriarchy, the author draws connections to current
debate over the causation of sociopolitical revolutions. This book briefly outlines the stage-by-stage
progression of events in the English, French, and Russian Revolutions.

Review Quotes

"In this masterful, deeply researched study, Bailey Stone expertly dissects the role and status of women in the genesis, course, and outcome of three European revolutions that defined the modern era. Arguing that gender as a historical phenomenon is best examined through its intersectionality with class, nationality, politics, and war, the author shows how the breakdown of public order and state collapse created a space for rethinking and recreating gender and family relationships in opposition to established patriarchies, only for this space to be narrowed or closed once revolutionary regimes solidified or were replaced by others devoted to restoring order. As this major study--illuminating our past as well as our present--demonstrates beyond any doubt, all patriarchies have their fragilities, making progress towards equality a possibility, if not an inevitability." --Thomas E. Kaiser, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

"Bailey Stone's meticulously researched book advances our understanding of the central role played by women in major European revolutions. Stone combines insights from feminism and revolutionary studies to show how, despite the centrality of women's agency to revolutionary movements and for all the hopes of gender emancipation via these movements, post-revolutionary states confined women within new patriarchal state structures. This is a powerful, if depressing, insight. It is also one that all students and scholars of revolutions should engage." --George Lawson, Professor of International Relations, Australian National University

"In this much-needed work, Bailey Stone brings feminist theory into the mainstream history of the great revolutions. Examining queens and peasants, radicals and traditionalists, Stone shows how the patriarchal structure of European societies shaped revolutionary struggles and their outcomes. This is essential reading for fully understanding these crucial events." --Jack A. Goldstone, Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr., Chair Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University

About the Author

Bailey Stone is an Emeritus Professor of European History and International Affairs and taught primarily at the University of Houston. Currently, Bailey Stone works in the Five Colleges Associates Program at Amherst, MA, and has been a member of the Five Colleges International Relations Seminar at Amherst