Katie L. Jarvis

This dissertation examines the political activism and cultural representation of Parisian merchants called the Dames des Halles during the French Revolution. In order to highlight the complexity of female political practice, it analyzes the economic, ritual, and gendered elements of the Dames’ activism. It inquires how marketplace reform affected their collective concerns. The project also studies how other actors deployed the Dames’ image for their own political ends, and probes the genre poissard, whose evolving literary representations of the Dames informed their cultural construction. By examining the relationship among the Dames’ economic interests, activism, and literary image, this dissertation creates new pathways in the sociocultural methodology of history.

“Democratizing Forgiveness” analyzes how the French revolutionaries refashioned forgiveness from 1789 to 1802. It argues that, amid conflict, the French Revolution forged modern politics and society by reinventing reconciliation. The revolutionaries enacted a cooperative social contract by developing new reparative judicial practices, religious beliefs, economic relations, and political imaginings. This project explores how citizens repaired broken bonds by arbitrating local disputes, forgiving debts, and settling bankruptcies in court. It also considers how citizens reconceptualized reconciliation through sacramental confession, innovative religious cults, and the education of youth. “Democratizing Forgiveness” demonstrates how, through quotidian relationships, revolutionary forgiveness became both a brake on conflict and a motor for change.