PT111.S2.P1.Q2 > Analytics

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Of the more than one thousand people who published memoirs of the French Revolution of 1789, about eighty were women. ███ ██ █████ ██████ █████ ███████████ ███ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ ███ █████ ██████ █ ██████████ ████ █████ ██ ██████████ ██████ ██ ██████████████ ███ ████ ██ ███ ███████████ ████ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ████████ █████ █████ ███ ████ ███████ ██ ███ █████ █████ ████ ████ ██ █████ ███████ ███ █████ ████ ████ █████████ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ █████████ ███████ █████ ███ ███████████ ██████ ███ ████████ ████████ ████ ████ ██ █████ ██ █████ █████ ███████ ██ ██████████ ███ ███████ ███ ███████████ ████ █████████ █████ ███ ██████████ ██████ ██ █████████ ██████████ ███████████ ███ █████████ ███ ███████████ ██████ █████████ █████████ ███████ █████ █████

Phenomenon / Explanation · Very few memoirs of the French Revolution were written by women and most were written by aristocratic women

Socioeconomic explanation: literacy was high only among aristocrats. Political explanation: memoirs were published during the restored monarchy which, I presume, the aristocrats supported.

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Skeptics · Historians question reliability of memoirs

Are they telling the truth?

Concession · The skeptics have a point

Memory fades over time and these are mostly partisan (royalist) accounts.

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Critique (of Skeptics) · But their doubts can be resolved

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Argument 1 · Veracity of public events

Multiple accounts allow for cross-verification.

Argument 2 · Veracity of personal events

We can use subjective guidelines like whether the events are plausible, etc. to evaluate whether these accounts are true. Okay, so we've set out the guidelines but where's the application? Perhaps that's where the next paragraph will take us.

Premise (for Argument 2) · In spite of strong conformity to prescribed female roles, these memoirists were still socially active during the Revolution

Okay... I think this is setting up for the application of the guideline... The author will relate this to how their subject accounts are reliable, right?

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Premise (for Argument 2) · Women had varied experiences and participation in revolution

I think these examples are meant to show that the subject accounts of events in the memoirs are somehow reliable?

Conclusion of Argument 2 · The accounts of personal events are reliable

And this finding is significant because this "feminist mode of discourse" appears surprisingly early in the historical record.

Passage Style

Critique or debate

Based on the passage, which ███ ██ ███ █████████ ███ ████ ██████████ ██ ████████ █████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ █████████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████████ ████ ████ ███████ ██ ████

Question Type

Implied

We’ll have to use POE for this Inference question, since the author doesn’t explicitly mention memoirs written by men. P1 tells us that only a small percentage of memoirs about the French Revolution were written by women, suggesting that the majority were written by men. We also know that during the Revolution, only members of the upper class could write well, and that most memoirs were published long after the Revolution during the restored monarchy. This explains why most memoirs by women were written by aristocrats.

They depict women ███ █████████ ██ ████████ ██████████ ██████

Unsupported. Female memoirists depicted themselves as conforming to socially prescribed roles. But we don’t know anything about the contents of memoirs written by men, and we have no reason to infer that male memoirists depicted women this way too.

They depict women ███ ████████████ ██ ███ ███████████

Unsupported. Women’s memoirs depicted women who participated in the Revolution. But we don’t know anything about the contents of men’s memoirs, and we have no reason to infer that they depicted women this way too.

They were suppressed ██ █████████ ██████████

Anti-supported. Republican memoirists who supported the Revolution risked political sanctions. It’s possible that some male memoirists faced political sanctions, but we have no reason to assume that the majority did. It’s more likely that the majority of male memoirists were aristocrats— since only aristocrats could write well— and therefore did not face political sanctions.

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Supported. The author explains that most female memoirists were members of the upper class, since only members of the upper class could write well, and most memoirs were published long after the Revolution during the restored monarchy. We can reasonably infer that these same social and economic factors applied to male memoirists, and that most male memoirists were members of the upper class.

90%

They were written ██ ███████ ██ ███ █████ ██████

Anti-supported. The author explains that most female memoirists were members of the upper class, since only members of the upper class could write well, and most memoirs were published long after the Revolution during the restored monarchy. We can reasonably infer that these same social and economic factors applied to male memoirists, and that most male memoirists were members of the upper class.

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