Marie Bonnevial | |
|---|---|
 Marie Bonnevial as Grand Mistress of the Supreme Council of Le Droit Humain | |
| Born | 28 June 1841 |
| Died | 4 December 1918 (aged 77) |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Teacher |
Marie Bonnevial (28 June 1841 - 4 December 1918) was a French teacher and women's rights activist. She became Grand Mistress of the Supreme Council of Le Droit Humain.
Marie Bonnevial was born on 28 June 1841 in Rive-de-Gier, Loire, to a poor family. She was able to go to school, and under the Second French Empire (1852-1870) she was a secular school teacher in Lyon. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) she served as a volunteer nurse. [1]
In 1871 Marie Bonnevial joined the movement of the Paris Commune. She agitated for the creation of a teachers' union. The government deprived her of her job because of her support for the Communards and for those who were convicted after the suppression of the commune began on 28 May 1871. She left the country and joined her aunt in Turkey, where she taught French to the children of the commercial bourgeoisie. [1] Victor Hugo wrote her a supportive letter on 17 September 1872 urging her to keep fighting and saying all honorable people admired her. [2] In 1877 she returned to France, and created a vocational school in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. [1]
Marie Bonnevial became involved with various groups interested in spiritualism and literature. [1] She was also a feminist, syndicalist and socialist. [3] She became active in the Ligue des droits des femmes (League of Women's Rights), where she met Maria Deraismes and Clémence Royer. [1] The secretary of the Fédération Française des Sociétés Féministes , Aline Valette, founded the weekly tabloid L'Harmonie sociale which first appeared on 15 October 1892. The masthead had the message: "The emancipation of women is in emancipated labor". [4] Some of the contributors to the journal included Eliska Vincent, Marie Bonnevial and Marya Chéliga-Loevy. [5]
On 3 November 1894 Bonnevial was initiated into Lodge #1 of the International Order of Freemasonry Le Droit Humain. In 1895 she created Lodge #2 in Lyon, and in 1904 she created Lodge #4, now known as the Bonnevial Lodge. Marie Bonnevial was in contact with many other masons, including Gabriel Persigoud in Bordeaux, with whom she campaigned for creation of a teachers' union. [1] In 1893 she was elected delegate to the national secretariat of the Fédération des Bourses du Travail (Federation of Workers' Councils). [6] In 1900 she was the first woman appointed to the Higher Labor Council of France. [7]
Speaking at the Congress of Women's Rights in 1900 Marie Bonnevial said that women were victims of a false education that made them hold as a virtue the principle of resignation, which was opposed to all progress. [8] She was among the women such as Marie Guillot, Maria Vérone, Séverine and Aline Valette who campaigned for women's right to vote, for reform of the civil code (which treated a woman as a minor) and for access by women to all topics of study and all professions. [9] She contributed to the feminist daily La Fronde, and by the start of the 20th century was a well-known feminist. She was deeply involved in the Conseil national des femmes françaises (CNFF - National Council of French Women) and the Ligue française pour le droit des femmes (LFDF - French league for women's rights). [10] In 1913 she was president of the Standing Committee of the Supreme Council of Le Droit Humain. [1]
Marie Bonnevial became a volunteer nurse again during World War I (1914-1918). When Marie-Georges Martin died she succeeded her as the Grand Mistress. [1] She was head of Le Droit Humain from 1916 to 1918. [10] She was hit by a military ambulance on 4 December 1918 and died in the hospital at the age of 77. [1]
A Lyon journalist said of her in 1902: "For her candor and the uprightness of her attacks, often violent but never bitter, she honors our profession and holds an honorable place." [7]
Maria Deraismes was a French author, Freemason, and major pioneering force for women's rights.
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Freemasonry has had a complex relationship with women for centuries. A few women were involved in Freemasonry before the 18th century, despite de jure prohibitions in the Premier Grand Lodge of England.
Aline Valette (née Alphonsine Goudeman was a French feminist and socialist. She believed that society should provide support to women engaged in motherhood, the most important of all occupations.
Marya Chéliga-Loevy was a Polish writer, playwright, feminist and pacifist. She was born in Poland but spent much of her life in France.
Eliska Vincent was a Utopian socialist and militant feminist in France. She argued that women had lost civil rights that existed in the Middle Ages, and these should be restored. In the late 1880s and 1890s she was one of the most influential of the Parisian feminists. She created extensive archives on the feminist movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but these have been lost.
Marie Guillot was a teacher in Saône-et-Loire and a pioneer of trade unionism in primary education. She associated the social emancipation that syndicalism would bring with the empowerment of women. An anarcho-syndicalist, she was a member of the national leadership of the Confédération générale du travail unitaire in 1922–1923. She was active in the struggle of the anarchists, who believed in a decentralized or federal organization of workers' syndicates, against the communists who believed in a central organization.
Théo Bretin was a French teacher and socialist politician who was deputy for Saône-et-Loire from 1914 to 1919 and again from 1924 to 1928.
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The Fédération Française des Sociétés Féministes was a short-lived French organization founded in 1891.
Louise Bodin was a French feminist and journalist who became a member of the steering committee of the French Communist Party.
Léon-Pierre Richer was a French free-thinker, freemason, journalist and feminist who worked closely with Maria Deraismes during the early years of the feminist movement in Paris. He edited Le Droit des femmes, a feminist journal that appeared from 1869 to 1891. He was founder of the Ligue française pour le droit des femmes, one of the main feminist organizations in France in the 1880s. However, Richer was concerned that women were not sufficiently educated in republican principles, and that giving them the vote could cause a clericalist and monarchist reaction and the loss of democracy.
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Alice Jouenne was a French educator and socialist activist. During the interwar period, Jouenne focused on education, pacifism, and feminism. She was one of the founders of Éducation nouvelle en France.
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