Feminist ideas, the expression of a sentiment, can be traced all the way back. Quite possibly it began with history itself. To be sure, the ancient Greek drama shows women in organized movement and so Lysistrata is justly famous. Feminism has to be seen as one wing of this modern complex, arising side by side with all the rest.
The birth of the feminist movement from revolution later became a shameful fact in its eyes. One way to draw a curtain over this parentage was to drop the history of the French revolutionary women down the Memory Hole. Especially if we limit ourselves to books in English, it is very difficult to find a work on feminist history that does justice to say one of the greatest woman leaders in revolutionary history, or indeed one of the leaders of either sex: Claire Lacombe.
See the Note on Sources appended to the introduction. Another historical problem to keep in mind is that this sector of history, like all other sectors, tends to be seen in historical works through the eyes of the upper classes.
There is no better example of this generalization than the period before us. We see an example of this factor at work when we ask our first question, in the next section.
Ideas about and sentiments for equal rights, held by women, did not suddenly come into existence in During the eighteenth century there had been a lively burgeoning of feminist ideas in the vanguard countries prefiguring the development of Western society, France and England.
