Les Tricoteuses: The Knitting Women of the French Revolution

What comes to mind when you think of the French Revolution? Terror? Violence? Guillotine? Regicide? Mobs? Riots? Starvation? Knitting?... Knitting? Yes, you read that correctly. Whilst it may not jump to the forefront of everybody’s minds when you think of the bloody years following 1789, knitting played an interesting role in the course of the revolution.

The role of women is often forgotten in the history of the French Revolution. “Liberty, Equality,” and, tellingly, “Fraternity” became the three words synonymous with these revolutionary years. But what of the role of women? Perhaps the most famous actions by women during these years was the women’s march on Versailles in October 1789 when the hungry women of Paris forced King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to leave the gilded gates of the Palace of Versailles and move to the Tuileries Palace in Paris with the aim of forcing the King to recognise the hardships people were suffering. Less famous is the tale of the knitting women or the Tricoteuses who brought their knitting while observing the horrifying spectacle of the guillotine.

The Women's March on Versailles

As a result of the women’s success in forcing the royal family to Paris, they enjoyed a fleeting period of recognition, forming clubs modelled on the Jacobins and other political clubs, and taking to the streets to join other revolutionaries in attacking and insulting royalists and suspected counter-revolutionaries. They would sit in the galleries at political talks and the National Convention and knit, hence gaining the name ‘Tricoteuses’ or ‘Knitting Women.’

However, this moment was transitory. By May 1793, women were banned from forming any part of a political assembly. This meant that during the Reign of Terror (September 1793 – July 1794) the women resorted to congregating in the Place de la Revolution, the square that housed that instrument of Terror – the guillotine. They placed chairs or stood around the guillotine to watch the executions and the men who had banned the women’s political meetings could not stop them. The Jacobins wished to promote the executions as patriotic so to banish the women from congregating at the foot of the guillotine would have been contradictory to their cause.

Les Tricoteuses

Whilst the women watched the executions they would knit. Why? Why did the women complete this domestic task at such a grisly event? Some have suggested they knitted to keep their hands busy, some have claimed they were being productive and supplementing their income, some have claimed it was due to social expectation, and some have surmised that they knitted simply to relax.

The Tricoteuses knitted a variety of items in front of the ‘National Razor’: socks, scarves, mittens and, most famously, the red caps of liberty. The Phrygian or Liberty Cap became synonymous with the French Revolution and, specifically, the bloodthirsty, riotous Sans-culottes (working-class radical and violent revolutionaries). In June 1792, revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace and forced King Louis XVI to wear the Liberty Cap in a humiliating moment for the monarchy. The cap grew in popularity throughout the revolution and by 1793 all members of the Paris Assemblies were required to wear one. The Tricoteuses started a roaring trade by selling their wears near the guillotine. This helped to supplement their income through the years of economic hardship and instability.

The Phrygian or Liberty Cap

The tale of the Tricoteuses has been popularised in classic books about the French Revolution including the 1908 novel ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ by Baroness Orczy and Charles Dicken’s 1859 novel ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’ Both of these popular novels may have embellished the story of the Tricoteuses with some artistic license. In ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ Orczy claims that the knitters “got quite bespattered with the blood” adding to the grisly image of the revolution, however this is unlikely. Similarly, in Dicken’s novel the antagonist Madame Defarge encoded the names of suspected counter-revolutionaries and monarchists headed for the guillotine into her knitting. However, whether this is true is also dubious as a very small number of women, and an even smaller number of peasant women, would have been able to read or write, let alone encode names into knitting!

Covers of Charles Dicken's 'A Tale of Two Cities' (Left) and Baroness Orczy's "The Scarlet Pimpernel' (Right)

Whatever the historical accuracies of these novels, they have ensured that the legacies of the Tricoteuses have lived on. In a violent time of blood, death and suspicion, the menial household task of knitting seems out of place, nevertheless, the role of these women, from their monumental achievement of forcing the royal family from Versailles to the roaring trade they created with the epitome of revolutionary symbols, the Liberty Cap, has had a lasting impact on the history of the French Revolution.

References and Further Reading:

https://lithub.com/on-the-covert-role-of-knitting-during-the-french-revolution-and-world-war-ii/

https://www.geriwalton.com/tricoteuse-knitting-women-of-the-guillotine/

https://lisawallerrogers.com/2018/11/03/the-tricoteuses-of-the-french-revolution/

https://timeline.com/tricoteuse-french-revolution-b9887af073f4

https://www.midi-france.info/06141204_libertycap.htm

Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

Baroness Orczy – The Scarlet Pimpernel

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