Etta Palm d'Aelders

Etta Lubina Johanna Palm d'Aelders (April 1743 – March 28 1799) was a Dutch feminist outspoken during the French Revolution. She gave the address "Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favour of Men, at the Expense of Women" to the French National Convention on December 30 1790.

Biography

Etta Aelders [The facts in this biography were taken (except where indicated) from the online article by Arboit (added as an external link), which has no page numbers that can be used as references.] was the daughter of Jacob Aelders van Nieuwenhuys, a merchant, and Agatha Petronella de Sitter. She was born in Groningen and received a good education, which was remarkable for a girl in her age in a non-aristocratic family. She married Christiaan Ferdinand Lodewijk Palm, the son of an attorney, in 1762. The marriage was not happy and Christiaan disappeared to the East Indies. [It is unlikely that they were divorced, as divorce became only possible in the Netherlands in 1796]

In 1768 she traveled with Jan Munniks, a young attorney, brother of the celebrated professor of botany Wynoldus Munniks, who had been appointed consul at Messina for the Dutch Republic to France, where she stayed behind because of illness. On the way she met Douwe Sirtema van Grovestins, a former equerry to the widow of Stadtholder William IV, Prince of Orange, who became her lover, and introduced her in higher circles. She left him in 1773 and moved to Paris, where she settled in the Palais Royal area, and became a courtesan for the better classes, taking a number of lovers. In these circumstances she was recruited for the French secret service, possibly by Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas himself. He sent her to The Hague in 1778 for a short mission, where she again met Jan Munniks, who himself now was a spy in British service.

The financial revenues of this mission enabled her to move to a grander house at the Rue Favard in Paris, where she set up a "salon", where many "political" people met. From this time dates her affectation of the title of "baroness." Among these people were Dutchmen like Gerard Brantsen, who negotiated the peace between the Republic and Austria in Paris in 1784, and Apollonius Jan Cornelis Lampsins, a prominent Patriot, who sought refuge in France in 1787. Around this time she apparently started working for the Dutch Grand Pensionary Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel [As what we would now call an agent of influence.] , to whom she became especially valuable after the events of July 14 1789, when her "salon" was frequented by prominent revolutionaries like Jean-Paul Marat, François Chabot and Claude Basire ["Neuf jours plus tard, la révolution amenait de nouvelles fréquentations dans son salon. Sa préférence se porta alors vers des députés montagnards, comme Jean-Paul Marat, François Chabot ou Claude Basire..."; Arboit, "op cit"] .

Etta now became involved in revolutionary politics, and she was especially active in feminist circles, like the "Société fraternelle de l'un et l'autre sexe ", "Société Patriotique des Amis de la Vérité ", and "Société Patriotique et de Bienfaisance des Amies de la Vérité ". From this period dates her famous address to the National Convention on the equal rights of women. But her activities also disquieted her conservative spymasters in the Netherlands, who now cut her loose. She was therefore forced to go into the service of the French foreign minister Lebrun-Tondu to go spy on her own country.

She set up shop in The Hague where she now spied on French émigrés like Beaumarchais and Dumouriez. However, events in France forced her to change sides again and she imposed on the Stadthouder himself, referring to her old services. Then in early 1795 the French revolutionary armies invaded the Netherlands. The Batavian Republic was proclaimed and Etta became suspect, because she tried to persuade the French representatives at the negotiations for the Treaty of The Hague (1795) to use the right of conquest to the detriment of the new Republic. These machinations, in cohorts with her old acquaintance Jan Munniks, brought her to the attention of the Hague "Comité van Waakzaamheid" (the Dutch equivalent of the French "Comité de surveillance révolutionnaire"). Munniks was sentenced to banishment, and Etta was put under arrest in the fortress of Woerden together with her old spymaster Van de Spiegel. She was released at the end of 1798, but her health had suffered so much, that she died the next March. [These details are taken from the report of the "Comité" in "Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën"]

Works

* "Sur l´injustice des Loix en faveur des Hommes, au dépens de Femmes", in "The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History", translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt (Bedford/St. Martin's: Boston/New York), 1996, 122–23.
* "Appel aux Francoises sur la régénération des moeurs, et nécessité de l'influence des femmes dans un gouvernement libre", L'imprimerie du Cercle Social, (probably) July, 1791. Facsimile in: "Les femmes dans la révolution Française", T. 2, Paris, Edhis, 1982 and on [http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k42498x Gallica]

References

ources

*nl iconaut|Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis (1905), "Rijks geschiedkundige publicatiën. v.1 1789-1795", pp. XLVII-LII (Bl. 148 noot)

Literature

*fr icon aut|Blanc, O. (1997) "Etta-Lubina-Johana d'Aëlders, Mme Palm", in "Les Libertines, Plaisir et Liberté au temps des Lumières", Paris, Perrin, pp. 213-234; 256-258.
*nl icon aut|Hardenberg, H. (1962) "Etta Palm. Een Hollandse Parisienne 1743-1799", Assen
*nl icon aut|Koppius, W.J.(1929) "Etta Palm. Nederlands's eerste feministe", Zeist
*aut|Vega, J.A. (1989a) "Feminist Republicanism. Etta Palm-Aelders on justice, virtue and men", in: "History of European Ideas, special issue on Women and the French Revolution" (eds. R.M. Dekker and J.A. Vega), 10, 3, pp. 333-351
*aut|Vega, J.A. (1989b) "Luxury, necessity, or the morality of men. The republican discourse of Etta Palm-Aelders", in: "Les Femmes et la Révolution Francaise", Actes du Colloque, I, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, pp. 363-370
*aut|Vega, J.A. (1998) "Inventing enlightenment's gender, The representation of modernity in dispute." (doctoral thesis), University of Leiden, pp. 96-116
*fr iconaut|Villiers, M. de (1910) "Histoire des Club des Femmes et des Légions d´Amazones", Paris, pp. 14- 41

External links

* [http://www.cf2r.org/fr/notes-historiques/souvent-femme-varie-une-espionne-hollandaise-paris.php Gérald Arboit, " « SOUVENT FEMME VARIE » UNE ESPIONNE HOLLANDAISE À PARIS..."]
* [http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/476/ Etta Palm D’Aelders, "Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favor of Men, at the Expense of Women" (30 December 1790)]