Forgotten feminist: Claude Vignon (1828–1888), revolutionary and femme de lettres

Abstract

Claude Vignon (née Noémi Cadiot) was both an active protagonist in the feminist movement of 1848 and a prolific, if now forgotten, writer later in the century. Her political and literary careers and her personal life, notably her separation from romantic socialist and future occultist Alphonse-Louis Constant, provide a new perspective on the split between romantic socialism and early feminism after 1848. Many of the themes of Vignon's work, such as women's lack of control over their own property, subordination in marriage and the impossibility of divorce, and the double standards of nineteenthcentury society, reflect concerns relevant to the work of contemporary feminist scholars of the period. Rooting her literary work firmly in her own experiences of hope, frustration and desire, Vignon offered a feminist response to the misogyny of nineteenth-century French society, and also to the idealization and marginalization of women offered by the male romantic socialists with whom she was intimately acquainted in her youth.