MARIA DESRAISMES

Born in 1828 in Paris, Maria Deraismes, was a well-known humanitarian and suffragist was initiated on 14th January, 1882. She was instrumental in bringing into the ranks of Freemasonry several other well-known French women, effectively founding our Order, the International Order of Co-Freemasonry, Le Droit Humain - along with Dr. Georges Martin.

Before co-founding Le Droit Humain, Maria was also a prominent "Martinist", a philosophical order which was also thought to include such well known esotericists as Papus, Arthur Edward Waite, Eliphas Levi, Margaret Peeke, Henri Delaage, Georges Martin, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and Charles Webster Leadbeater.

Thanks to her father, a well-to-do merchant with republican tendencies, Maria received a good education and inherited a considerable estate. The possession of such an education was unusual in itself, and no doubt played some part in her decision to remain unmarried. One assumes she saw this as another aspect of feminine emancipation.

Though she had written profusely, her real strength was in her oratory and in the 1860s, she addressed meetings organised by freemasons and anti-clerical opponents of the Second Empire. She is known in particular for a defense of the aged Eugénie Niboyet and rebuttal of the misogynistic views of the writer Barbey d'Aurevilly who labeled female intellectuals as "Bluestockings".

She joined the "Société de la Revendication des Droits de la Femme", founded by André Léo, in 1866. She collaborated with Léon Richer in 1869 and wrote regularly for the journal "Le Droit des Femmes". This generated the momentum for the French suffragist movement "L'Association pour le Droit des Femmes, founded in early 1870.

Deraismes pursued this vision and was proposed as a symbolic candidate in the 1885 elections. Nevertheless, Richer persuaded her - to the chagrin of Hubertine Auclert - not to use the feminist congress held in Paris in 1889 as a platform for suffragist issues.

Maria's contribution to humanity has been recognised in the outer world too. She was much admired by Victor Hugo and the town square in St. Nazaire is named after her.

Maria died on 6th February 1894. She will be remembered as the founder of the first women's rights organisation in France, dedicated to improving conditions and securing greater educational advantages for women. Her complete writings were published in 1895.

Sources:

www.gla.ac.uk/centres/tltphistory/training/advanced/custom/coredocs/biograp3.htm