SOURCE: Jones, Vivien. “Femininity, Nationalism and Romanticism: The Politics of Gender in the Revolution Controversy.” History of European Ideas 16, nos. 1-3 (January 1993): 299-305.

In the following essay, Jones contrasts Williams's emotional account of the French Revolution with the more rational writings of Mary Wollstonecraft on this subject.

Survey with me, what ne'er our fathers saw A female band despising NATURE's law As ‘proud defiance’ flashes from their arms, And vengeance smothers all their softer charms. I shudder at the new unpictur'd scene, Where unsex'd woman vaunts the imperious mien; … With equal ease, in body or in mind, To Gallic freaks or Gallic faith resign'd, … With liberty's sublimer views expand, And o'er the wreck of kingdoms sternly stand … 

In this scurrilous piece of conservative propaganda, radical British women writers of the 1790s are found guilty of a triple violation: of national loyalty, of generic decorum and, inevitably, of sexual...