After marrying the economist Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, she did develop with him a husband and wife team which made it possible for her to engage in public politics.

In 1791 the couple settled in Paris, where Madame Roland soon established herself as a leading figure within the political group the Girondins, one of the more moderate revolutionary factions.

Unlike the feminist revolutionaries Olympe de Gouges and Etta Palm, Madame Roland was not an advocate for political rights for women.

She had control over the content of ministerial letters, memorandums and speeches, was involved in decisions about political appointments, and was in charge of a bureau set up to influence public opinion in France.

The publicists Marat and Hébert conducted a smear campaign against Madame Roland as part of the power struggle between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins and Montagnards.

Her father taught her drawing and art history, an uncle who was a priest gave her some Latin lessons and her grandmother, who had been a governess, took care of spelling and grammar.

[17] Before the move to Lyon, the couple visited England, where Madame Roland attended a debate in the House of Commons between the legendary political opponents William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox.

Madame Roland focused on the education of her daughter Eudora, who to her great disappointment turned out to be less interested in books and acquiring knowledge than she herself had been at that age.

[21] When the French States General were convened in 1789, Madame Roland and her husband were involved in drawing up the local Cahier de Doléances, the document in which the citizens of Lyon could express their grievances about the political and economic system.

She corresponded with a network of publicists and politicians, including the Parisian journalist Jacques Pierre Brissot, the future leader of the Girondins, and the lawyer Jean-Henri Bancal d'Issarts.

Madame Roland wrote most of her husband's official letters and regretted that she could not go to the new National Assembly herself to argue the case of Lyon: women were admitted only to the public gallery.

Rousseau’s glorification of women’s private virtues as the foundation for a new social order influenced many, despite his emphasis on circumscribed domestic and public gender roles.

[40] In the months immediately after her arrival in Paris, Madame Roland was not satisfied with the progress of social and political change in France, which she felt to be not fast and far-reaching enough.

Madame Roland herself took to the streets to lobby for the introduction of a republic; she also became a member of a political club under her own name for the first time, despite her conviction that women should not have a role in public life.

Many prominent revolutionaries feared for their lives and fled; the Rolands provided a temporary hiding place for Louise de Kéralio and her husband François Robert.

Brissot and most of the Girondins were in favour (they feared military support for the monarchy from Prussia and Austria), while Robespierre first wanted to put internal affairs in order.

The political situation was so divided that it was next to impossible to form a stable government: there were no ministerial candidates that were acceptable to all parties (including the king and the court).

The Jacobins, the Montagnards and the Paris Commune viewed them with suspicion: that Roland had served as minister under Louis XVI was seen as collaborating with the ancien régime.

It was common knowledge that she wrote most of her husband's political texts and that he fully relied on her judgment and ideas; both Danton and Marat publicly mocked him for it.

[50] The romance with Buzot was possibly also one of the factors contributing to the break with a political ally; her old friend Lanthenas, now a parliamentarian, had for years been in love with her himself, and now distanced himself from the circle around Madame Roland — and from the Girondins.

[61] On October 31, 1793, twenty-one Girondin politicians were executed after a short trial; most of them were known to Madame Roland and the group included her good friend Brissot.

She defended herself in her customary self-assured, (according to the newspaper Le Moniteur Universel) even haughty manner against the accusations, but also argued in her defence that she was "only a wife" and therefore could not be held responsible for the political actions of her husband.

[64] During the five months she was imprisoned, Madame Roland wrote her memoirs entitled Appel à l'impartiale postérité (Appeal to the impartial posterity).

At the same time, through her description of events she shows — consciously or unconsciously — how large her influence was within the Girondin circle, and how fundamentally important her contribution was to Roland's ministry.

This second manuscript was smuggled out of prison in small packages, was hidden by Bosc d'Antic during the Terror and is now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.

[68] Many of her letters to friends, relatives and co-revolutionaries survived and have been published; these too are a rich source of information about historical events and people, and about daily life at the end of the 18th century.

Until the 20th century, biographers emphasized her intelligence, feminine charm and high morals, and depicted her primarily as a tragic heroine in the struggle for freedom and equality.

[72] Madame Roland's memoirs and letters are unique in that they show the French Revolution from the perspective of a very intelligent woman who played an active role in the heart of events.

When interest in the role of women in history grew at the end of the twentieth century, there was an upsurge in the number of publications on the life and work of Madame Roland.

[73] In particular, attention focussed on the contrast between Madame Roland's views on the limited role women should play in public life, and her own active and directive involvement in politics.