Madame Roland (1754–93,) Fully Marie-Jeanne ‘Manon’ Roland de la Platière, born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, was a French revolutionary, salonnière, and writer. The wife of Jean-Marie Roland, she directed her husband’s political career during the French Revolution, greatly influencing the policies of the moderate Girondin faction of bourgeois revolutionaries.
Born in Paris, the daughter of an engraver, Roland was educated in a convent and, influenced by writers such as Plutarch and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, went on to become a woman of letters. She established a salon in Paris in 1791 and became well known for her Republican sympathies.
Roland married Jean-Marie Roland in 1780, who became Minister for the Interior in 1792; they both belonged to the Girondin faction of bourgeois revolutionaries.
Roland’s influential personality caused her to be held responsible for the anti-Parisian policy shared by themselves and their friends. Despite her husband’s earlier resignation, she was arrested in June 1793 and refused permission to speak in her own defense. Before being sent to the guillotine in November of the same year, she wrote her Memoires, upon which her literary reputation is primarily based.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Madame Roland
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.
—Madame Roland
Topics: Opinions, Opinion
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