Flora Tristan

*April 7, 1803 (Paris)

†November 14, 1844 (Bordeaux)

Flora Tristan was a French writer, feminist, and socialist, and is considered one of the early pioneers who connected the struggle for women’s rights with the emancipation of the working class. At the age of eighteen, she married her employer, André Chazal, in order to free herself and her mother from poverty. Four years later, she left the unloved husband and sought work as a travel companion for wealthy families. Since, according to the Code Napoléon, divorce was no longer possible, Chazal nevertheless retained full rights over her and their children. For years he pursued her and abducted their daughter Aline three times. Finally, he attempted to murder his wife. Flora nearly died from the gunshot wounds. Before this, she had undertaken a long journey to Peru, where she had hoped for financial support from the wealthy family of her prematurely deceased father, without success.

After her return to Paris, she published a socially critical travelogue in 1837 under the title Pérégrinations d’une paria. Moreover, she processed her observations in factories, prisons, and brothels of English industrial cities, which she visited in 1839, into vividly written reports (Walks in London) and her main work, Union ouvrière. In it, she called upon all workers, both men and women, to unite and fight together for the right to work and education.

In the spring of 1844, she set off on a major propaganda tour across France by boat (on the Seine) and stagecoach to promote her ideas. Thought the journey, she was constantly spied on by the police and mocked by the press as a “femme libre”, yet she was also received with enthusiasm in many towns. After ten gruelling months, she collapsed from exhaustion in Bordeaux and died shortly afterwards of typhoid fever.