Jeanne Deroin

Who was Jeanne Deroin?

Jeanne Deroin was a French socialist feminist.

Born in Paris, Deroin became a seamstress. In 1831, she joined the followers of utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon. For her required statement of her belief in their principles, she wrote a forty-four page essay, in part inspired by Olympe de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, in which Deroin argued against the idea that women were inferior to men, and likened marriage to slavery. Despite this, in 1832, she married Antoine Ulysse Desroches, a fellow Saint-Simonite, but refused to take his surname and insisted on taking a vow of equality in a civil ceremony.

Later in 1832, Deroin was part of a group of working women who, in protest at the Saint-Simonites hierarchical and religious nature left the group, and became supporters of the socialist Charles Fourier. They began publishing La Femme Libre, the first newspaper for women in France, for which she wrote under the pseudonym Jeanne Victoire.

During this period, Deroin qualified as a schoolteacher. From 1834, she focussed on this work, and on bringing up her children and those of Flora Tristan.