Pauline Roland
Encyclopedia
Pauline Roland was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 feminist and socialist.

Upon her mother's insistence, Roland received a good education and was introduced to the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...

, the founder of French socialism, by one of her teachers. She became an enthusiastic supporter of his philosophy. Following her arrival in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1832, Roland began writing for early feminist papers and compiled a series of remarkable histories of France (1835), England (1838), and England, Scotland and Ireland (1844).

Roland was a close associate of Pierre Leroux
Pierre Leroux
Pierre Henri Leroux , French philosopher and political economist, was born at Bercy, now a part of Paris, the son of an artisan.- Life :...

 and George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

 and she joined Leroux's community at Boussac
Boussac, Creuse
Boussac is a commune in the Creuse department in the Limousin region in central France.-Geography:A small light industrial town situated by the banks of the Petite Creuse river, some northeast of Guéret, at the junction of the D11 and the D997 roads....

 (Indre) in 1847, where she worked in the school and wrote for l'Eclaireur de l'Indre. Roland lived for twelve years until 1845 in a "free union" with Jean Aicard
Jean Aicard
Jean François Victor Aicard was a French poet, dramatist and novelist.-Biography:He was born in Toulon. His father, Jean Aicard, was a journalist of some distinction, and the son early began his career in 1867 with Les Jeunes Croyances, followed in 1870 by a one-act play produced at the Marseille...

, insisting that their two children, and a son whose father was Adolphe Guérolt, bear her name and be brought up by her. On Flora Tristan
Flora Tristan
Flora Tristan was a socialist writer and activist. She was also one of the founders of modern feminism...

's death in 1844, she also undertook the care of her daughter Aline (later to be the mother of Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

).

On Roland's return to Paris in December, she became active in feminist and socialist agitation and publications (the Voix des Femmes
Voix des Femmes
La Voix des Femmes was a Parisian feminist newspaper, and later an organization dedicated to education and the advancement of women's rights. The newspaper was published daily beginning in 1848 with the fall of Louis Philippe and the emergence of the much more lenient French Second Republic...

), notably with Jeanne Deroin
Jeanne Deroin
Jeanne Deroin was a French socialist feminist.Born in Paris, Deroin became a seamstress. In 1831, she joined the followers of utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon...

 and Desirée Gay
Desirée Gay
Jeanne Desirée Véret Gay was a French socialist feminist.Born in Paris, as Desirée Véret, she worked as a seamstress before in 1831 joining the followers of utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon...

. With Deroin and Gustave Lefrançais
Gustave Lefrançais
Gustave Adolphe Lefrançais was born on January 30, 1826, in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, and died May 16, 1901 . He was a revolutionary anarchist militant, member of International Workingmen's Association , the Paris Commune, and the Jura Federation....

 she established the Association of Socialist Teachers stressing the importance of equality of the sexes in an education program spanning the first eighteen years of life and of women staying in the work force. Roland then played a key role in convening the Union of Workers Associations.

In October 1849 delegates of over 100 trades elected Roland to the central committee. This attempt to resuscitate the cooperative movement in 1848 was suppressed by the government in April 1850, and Roland was one of fifty people arrested the following month. At her subsequent trial for her socialism, feminism and "debauchery," she was attacked vitriolically and then imprisoned for seven months, until July 1851. Undaunted, Roland was active in the Parisian resistance to the coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

 of December and subsequently imprisoned in Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...

. She owed her early release to the intercession of Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Pierre-Jean de Béranger was a prolific French poet and chansonnier , who enjoyed great popularity and influence in France during his lifetime, but faded into obscurity in the decades following his death...

 and George Sand however, on the way home to rejoin her children, she became ill owing to the harsh conditions she had endured in prison and died in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

on 15 December 1852.

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