The Victims of Defeat by Louise Michel and Marguerite Tinayre

Educator, revolutionary and feminist Louise Michel (1830–1905) played an important role in the Paris Commune. Michel wrote the novel La Misère (1882) in collaboration with teacher and anticlerical militant Marguerite Tinayre (1831–1895), the opening chapter of which is translated here. Michel and Tinayre introduce a poor Parisian family in a modest neighbourhood. The chapter focuses on the bond between a mother and a daughter against the backdrop of poverty, social violence and gender-based oppression. The sorrow these women experience is the personal expression of the political and social question that was Michel’s primary focus throughout her life. The novel follows the working-class Brodard family across a succession of tragedies and forms of class oppression. The authors depict relentless instances of persecution and abuse throughout the narrative, paying particular attention to the intersection between material dispossession and the social reality of womanhood.