Archive note: This text comes from the older archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with editorial care for historical and informative reading.

The Time of Storms - the French Revolution in women's memory - aristocrats, bourgeois women and peasant women narrate - by Marilyn Yalom, translated by Evi Kladouchou, published by AGRA editions (original title: Blood Sisters, The French Revolution In Women's Memory).

It is an interesting history book made up only of women's memoirs on the great French Revolution of 1789, texts that had remained unknown to non-specialist researchers and scholars.

The overwhelming majority of the women who wrote their memoirs were aristocrats, because of their education, unlike women of the people, who were completely illiterate and for that reason had to dictate the memories of their experiences.

As the author observes in her introduction, all these women, aristocrats, bourgeois women, royalists, republicans, the few peasant women and the workers, were linked by a common nightmare: the experience of having survived when so many others had been lost, an experience that often creates what is called survivor's guilt.

Among the most characteristic accounts are the memoirs of Madame Roland, whose husband served as minister of the interior in the government that emerged from the Revolution, from 1791 to 1793. Despite her genuinely republican convictions, she was arrested and remained in prison for five months during Robespierre's purges in 1793. During her imprisonment she wrote the work considered the most important of all. Special mention is made of Madame Roland's memoirs because the famous phrase is attributed to her before her execution:

  • Liberty! How many crimes have been committed in your name!...

The book is marked by complete documentation and by a successful translation, which helps readers maintain undiminished interest as they learn about and participate in the experiences of the women who lived before, during and after the great French Revolution.