Today we resume the work of deconstructing and reconstructing the sociological canon begun in this article and continued with the figure of Harriet Martineau , to focus on Flora Tristán: a voice as marginalized as it was revolutionary, who lived between two worlds – France and nineteenth-century Peru – and capable of transforming her own experience of exclusion into a political and social project of universal emancipation.
The Life of Flora Tristán
Flora Célestine Thérèse Henriette Tristán Troncoso was born on April 7, 1803, in Paris. Her parents, Frenchwoman Thérèse Laisney and Peruvian Mariano Tristán y Moscoso, married in Spain, where they had met, but the marriage certificate was not transmitted to the authorities. As a result, Flora was considered illegitimate and suffered severe legal and social consequences : upon her father's death when she was just four years old, she and her mother were forced to leave their family home, unable to assert any inheritance rights.
From that moment on, mother and daughter lived in conditions of great economic precariousness . During her adolescence, Flora began working in a lithography workshop, and at the age of 18, her mother forced her to marry the workshop's owner, the engraver André Chazal . The marriage produced three children : two sons—one of whom died in infancy—and a daughter, Aline , the future mother of the painter Paul Gauguin . Due to her husband's constant violence, Flora decided to run away with her children, defying the rigid social conventions of the time: divorce had been abolished by the Napoleonic Code, and a separated woman risked marginalization and the loss of guardianship of her children.
Interest in women's rights
However, Chazal refused to accept the separation and attempted to kill Flora, shooting her in broad daylight on the street. Although she survived what we would now call an attempted femicide , the bullet remained lodged in her body, causing serious physical injuries that, over the years, contributed to her death. After a lengthy legal process, Flora Tristán obtained separation and custody of her children. It was the first legal separation decree in Napoleonic France. From that experience, Tristán became a staunch supporter of women's rights and the right to divorce , an issue on which she spoke publicly in 1837 with a petition addressed to the National Assembly.
In 1833, at the age of 30, she undertook a voyage to Peru aboard the Mexicano, to reclaim her father's inheritance from her uncle Pío Tristán Moscoso. The crossing lasted 133 days, and she was the only woman aboard a crew of sixteen men (Bolla and Debia, 2023). Upon her return, in 1835, she published her first essay, Necessity of Welcoming Foreign Women [1] , in which she reflected on the material and moral difficulties of women traveling alone, proposing the creation of a support society for women who migrated or moved to other cities and countries.
Wanderings of a Pariah and London Walks
The experiences she had during her journey and her observations on Peruvian society after independence from Spain were incorporated into The Wanderings of a Pariah [2] , published in 1838 in France. In the text, Tristán defined herself as a "pariah", becoming aware of her identity as a person on the margins of society, due to her condition as a woman, illegitimate daughter, separated wife, mother and worker. In the book, the author denounced the living conditions of the indigenous, black and poor populations, and criticised the dominant elite. When the work arrived in Peru, it was banned and her uncle himself ordered its public burning in the square of Arequipa.
In the following years, Flora Tristán continued to travel and develop her political and social thought. During her various trips to England, she visited London factories and observed the harsh living conditions of the working class at close range. From that experience was born London Walks [3] (1840), a work that anticipated reflections that would later be developed by Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) and in the Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels, 1848). In 1843, with the help of friends and acquaintances, Tristán published at her own expense Workers' Union [4] , a text in which she proposed the union of all workers, both men and women, to gain their rights. In the following two years, she promoted its diffusion throughout France through meetings and public debates.
Flora Tristán, between two revolutions
Tristán's thought was influenced by the Enlightenment and the ideals of the French Revolution —liberty, fraternity, solidarity—but also by the socialist theories of Charles Fourier (1772–1837), who criticized the dehumanizing effects of industrialization. Flora took up and developed these ideas in an original way, intertwining the women's question with social reflection.
On this topic, she developed an original thought, drawing on her own personal experience and on the influence of the Englishwoman Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), who advocated for equality between men and women, supporting the latter's right to education, equal rights, and full participation in citizenship and politics. Finally, as Andrea D'Atri (2019) argues, Flora Tristán's life unfolded between two revolutions, the French Revolution and the Revolution of 1848. This context allowed her to actively participate in the intellectual and political life of her time and to meet and debate with intellectuals such as Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and George Sand.
- [1] Original title: There is no need to provide good grooming for foreign women, text not translated into Italian.
- [2] Original title: Pérégrinations d'une Paria
- [3] Original title: Promenades dans Londres.
- [4] Original title: Workers' Union, text not translated into Italian.
He died on November 14, 1844, in Bordeaux at the age of 41. The workers of Paris raised money to pay for his funeral and his gravestone, which bears the following inscription:
"In memory of Mrs. Flora Tristan,
author of the Workers' Union.
The grateful workers.
Freedom, equality, fraternity, solidarity"
Flora Tristán, the themes and works
Flora Tristán's thought was strongly influenced by the intellectual and social climate of the first half of the 19th century. Due to her status as a woman, mother, and worker, she had no access to formal education, but was self-taught , reading widely and writing essays and works of social commentary.
One of the central themes of her thought concerns the criticism of inequalities in access to education and knowledge, determined both by social origin and gender. In London Walks (1840) – a book born from her experiences in what she defines as a “monstrous” city , visited several times between 1826 and 1839 – Tristán reflects, among other things, on the role of women in cultural production . She acknowledges the existence of “female authors” belonging to the wealthy classes, who could dedicate themselves to writing and sometimes addressed social injustices. However, she observes how rarely these writers dealt with the fight against female oppression. An exception – Tristán notes – is Mary Wollstonecraft who in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) denounces prejudice and gender inequalities (Tristán, 1972).
Wollstonecraft's text had a profound influence on Flora Tristán's thinking, particularly on her conception of gender equality and her rejection of the idea of a presumed female inferiority based on biological grounds. According to Tristán, in fact, women's subordination stems from inequalities in education and training , built on prejudice and aimed at perpetuating female dependence and submission. The author also observes how society confines women to the private sphere , denying them rights and equal recognition with men:
"Women are subject, by prejudice and by law, to the most scandalous inequalities. They do not inherit unless they have no brothers; they are deprived of civil and political rights, and the law subjects them in everything to their husbands." (Tristán, 1972, p. 137, own trans.).
Industrialization, between factories and brothels
In London Walks (1840), Flora Tristán focuses primarily on the transformations of the city resulting from the rapid process of industrialization and its brutal consequences. The work offers a critical analysis of the conditions of the English proletariat, starting with central themes such as the exploitation of workers, the formation of social classes, poverty, and what she defines as "slavery disguised as freedom." According to Tristán, in fact, the bond between master and worker, while seemingly free, actually denotes a state of dependence and exploitation.
During her stays in the English capital, Flora visits gasworks and breweries , as well as brothels and streets where prostitution was practiced , closely observing the oppressive conditions in which women and men lived and worked. She highlights abuses and gender inequalities related to productive and reproductive labor , noting that factory workers had a life expectancy of seven to eight years, while London prostitutes survived for an even shorter time—on average, three to four years.
Workers' Union
In 1843, Flora Tristán published her most important work, Workers' Union , in which she argued that the working class is the most oppressed because, despite being the one that produces wealth, it lives in poverty. For this reason, she called on workers from all over the world to unite against oppression. She was among the first to conceive of workers' union as an internationalist project , based on collective organization and education as tools of emancipation. For Tristán, in fact, education was an essential weapon in the struggle for the liberation of women and the lower classes:
“I propose a general union of working men and women, regardless of profession, living in the same kingdom; a union whose objective is to ESTABLISH THE WORKING CLASS and construct several buildings (WORKERS' UNION Palaces), equally distributed throughout France. These buildings would educate children of both sexes, from six to eighteen years old, and would house disabled or injured workers and the elderly” (Tristán, 1977, p. 73, own translation).
In conclusion, Flora Tristán's thought was fundamental to the development of socialist, Marxist, and feminist ideas, as well as to the formation of sociological thought. Her innovative analyses, rooted in personal experience and constant direct observation of social reality, pioneered a method that combined theoretical reflection and empirical research, contributing in an original way to the construction of sociological knowledge.
"Workers, you are weak and unhappy because you are divided. Unite. UNITY IS STRENGTH." (Tristán, 1977, p. 51, own trans.)
Coming soon: the article on Jane Addams, to continue rediscovering women's contributions to social theory!
Eliana Debia
[This article was written as part of the UNICATT Gendering Sociology project ( IG: @gendering.sociology )]
References
- Bolla, L. and Debia, E. (2023). Flora Tristan. Reivindications of a pariah. Los Polvorines: Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento.
- D'Atri, A. (2019). Prologue. In Tristan, Flora. Anthology. The hammer and the rose. CABA: Ediciones IPS.
- Engels, F. (2021). The situation of the working class in England. Milan: Feltrinelli. (original ed. 1845).
- Martina, G. (2003). Presentation. In Tristan, Flora. Wanderings of a Pariah (edited by Graziella Martina), pp. 9-15. Como-Pavia: Ibis.
- Marx, K. & Engels, F. (2001). The Communist ManifestoRome: United Publishers.
- Tristán, F. (1972). Paseos en Londres. Lima: National Library of Peru.
- Tristán, F. (1977). Workers Union. Barcelona: Editorial Fontamara.
- Wollstonecraft, M. (2024). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In Ideals and Ideologies (pp. 411-416). Routledge. (or. ed. 1792).
