The goddess Liberté, a symbol of freedom and equality in Revolutionary France, offers a unique way to explore the connections between language, gender, and ideas. Rooted in linguistic and cultural traditions, Liberté emerges as a feminine figure whose form transcends her own identity, embodying the ideals, contradictions, and aspirations of the society that shaped her. As a reflection of the linguistic origins of gendered symbolism and the philosophical concept of Otherness, Liberté illustrates how women’s representations have historically been used as vessels for political and cultural ideologies. Liberté's portrayal as a feminine ideal reveals the duality of her power, once a construct of male-dominated society and a transcendent force of adaptability and strength. Far from being a passive figure, Liberté's ‘Other’ empowers her as a symbol of both unity and resistance, embodying the evolving demands of the French Revolution and beyond.

In order to consider Liberté as a symbol without limits, there are two things that need to first be taken into account. The first, is in understanding the language of which she was created. The goddess Liberty was born from Ancient Rome, who’s main language, coming from Indo-European roots, was Latin.73 Latin later gave origin to the Romance languages which includes French. While Latin has five-case endings for declensions in order to organise their nouns, adjectives and verbs, most of the Romance languages kept only three; the first declension which is feminine, the second declension which is masculine and the third being neuter.74 In Junior Latin – Book One, Volume 1 (1917) , the following information is stated in regards to determining gendered nouns, ‘The term Masculine is applied to male nouns, and to nouns imagined to be male […] The term Feminine is applied to female nouns, and to nouns imagined to be female […].

The book further indicates ‘Important Rules of Syntax’. Rule number nine stating ‘The Adjective must agree with the Noun which it qualifies in gender […]’, and number ten, ‘The Predicate Adjective agrees with the Subject Noun […]’1. Gendered linguistics are especially obscure in Latin, and while one cannot speculate on the origin of liberty’s delegated gender, which is of the feminine declension, this early definition of ‘nouns imagined to be female’ is particularly interesting. Looking at Greek, like Latin, it is of an Indo-European inception. Although they are separate in their origin, there are some similarities in their structure; for example, both of their nouns and adjectives are gendered, including that of ‘liberty’.

Author Marina Warner offers additional understanding on how a virtue, as a being, may have become female in gender.

"[…] nouns in Greek were formed in relation to verbs and adjectives which are not in themselves marked by gender; when they commanded masculine or feminine articles and inflexions, they were incorporated into the linguistic group of animate things, not inanimate things. They could then acquire the face and character of divinities and appear active through an indwelling daimonic agent […]"2

This academic point of view offers a comprehensive understanding of how ‘liberty’ as a noun originally created as feminine, was able to transform a virtue into a female form. Greek Philosopher Philo (15 B.C.-?) who often wrote in regards to gender distinctions, offers a very different opinion in regards to virtues being in a female state. In his work De Fuga, et Inventione, he offers the following opinion,

"[…] all the virtues bear the names of women, but have the powers and functions of full-grown men, since whatever is subsequent to God, even if it be the most ancient of all other things, still has only the second placement compared with that omnipotent Being, appears not so much masculine as feminine, in accordance with its likeness to the other creatures; for as the male always has the presidents, the female falls short, and is inferior in rank3."

While Philo ‘appears to be improvising’, this statement is from a male understanding, the popular opinion of the time. This view point not only justifies the reason for virtues not being male, but also interpretates the belief of women being subordinate and second class in nature to her counterpart.

The second matter to take into consideration is the use of the female figure as a vessel. In her book The Second Sex (1949), philosopher and social theorist Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) discusses the treatment of women through time. She writes,

"History has shown that men have always held all the concrete powers; from patriarchy's earliest times they have deemed it useful to keep woman in a state of dependence; their codes were set up against her; she was thus concretely established as the Other. This condition served males' economic interests; but it also suited their ontological and moral ambitions4."

In this statement, the theorist, de Beauvoir, considers how historically women have been put into a subordinate position. In this reliance, man has been able to prioritise their own existence without objection, while woman has succumbed to meeting his needs. This divorce from state of being is what de Beauvoir refers to as Other. She then continues:

"Woman thus emerged as the inessential who never returned to the essential, as the absolute Other, without reciprocity. […] Appearing as the Other, woman appears at the same time as a plenitude of being by opposition to the nothingness of existence that man experiences in itself5."

Expounding on this argument, de Beauvoir states:

"[…] Her ambiguity is that of the very idea of Other: it is that of the human condition as defined in its relation with the Other. It has already been said that the Other is Evil; but as it is necessary for the Good, it reverts to the Good; through the Other I accede to the Whole, but it separates me from the Whole […] This is why woman embodies no set concept; through her the passage from hope to failure, hatred to love, good to bad, bad to good takes place ceaselessly6."

She concludes:

"Not only are cities and nations clothed in feminine attributes, but also abstract entities, such as […] Peace, War, Liberty, the Revolution, Victory. Man feminizes the ideal he sets up before him as the essential Other, because woman is the material representation of alterity; that is why almost all allegories, in language as in pictorial representation, are women7."

De Beauvoir considers that in a woman’s removal from being into Other, she turns into a contradiction, able to take on any combination of ideas or elements, as she no longer has an identity in the state of Other. De Beauvoir then deduces that due to this state of Other, a woman’s image has effectively stood for the ideas, symbolism, and rhetoric of men, constructed through her. This example is put into work by Maurice Agulhon, where he calls Liberté a ‘double allegory,’ standing for liberty as well as the French Republic8. Marianne, a direct iconographical descendent of Liberté, whose name is said to derive from Mary, Mother of Jesus, and Anne, Mother to Mary, was able to use her state of Other to connect with Catholic individuals where Liberté could not. This aided the Republic’s cause in future civil unrest throughout France’s history9. This example can also be used in relation to the Statue of Liberty. Originally meant to stand for the abolishment of slavery, once this rhetoric was deemed unsuitable due to the uneasy civil climate still ensuing after the Civil War, she quickly took on the role of mother to immigrants.

De Beauvoir further remarks, ‘Perhaps the myth of woman will be phased out one day: the more women assert themselves as human beings, the more of the marvellous quality of Other dies in them10.’ But perhaps the female form does not need to be removed ‘of the marvellous quality of Other.’ As de Beauvoir stated previously, in the state of Other women have the ability to take on contrasting ideology and devices, unassociated from herself. If women as Other are able to be more than one thing, including contradictions, then women as Other can also be their own definitions of themselves as well as what is placed on them. While Liberté is not a physical being, her form is that of a woman and in such representational of one. As demonstrated, Liberty and her female form are able to manifest the needs of those around her, but conceivably in being Other, she still retains her virtue of liberty. Instead of perceiving Other as a weakness, perhaps this is part of her power.

Warner hints at a similar sentiment indicating:

"Women, so often predominant conveyors of ulterior meaning in Paris, are not mute mineral, and their marvellous allegorical range, in a single small area of central Paris, can tell us something about what we have cherished, found valuable, held dear11."

In this statement Warner relates the use of the female form to signify importance.

Hunt writes, ‘the projection of the Republic onto a feminine figure allowed French revolutionaries to idealise and utopianise their political goals while living in the midst of life-and-death struggles that had nothing pretty about them12.’ This is demonstrated through the long history of the French Revolution and how the image and symbolism surrounding Liberté was able to adjust depending on the Republic’s goals and intentions. Liberté is first pictured as a feminine goddess, then in 1793 changed to a warrior, taking on more male dominant attributes. In response to the excessive executions and arrests, she is depicted as a judge and conveyer of justice. In order to again adjust the narrative in the wake of civil unrest she is shown as resigned and matronly, even pictured with a child at one point.

Liberté was able to successfully take on these roles due to her linguistic origins and state of Other. While this state of Other may be considered negative and void of identity, it is also possible that the state of Other is a strength and can be used in conjunction with identity. The underestimations by men made it possible for a female form to be the infinite symbol for civil liberty, as well as the symbol of the Republic of France, which is still used today.

References

1 F John Evans Forythe and Richard M Gummere, Junior Latin. Book One, the Declension of Nouns, Adjectives and Pronouns, Roman Ideas, (Philadelphia: Sower, 1917), 11-13.
2 Marina Warner, Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 67.
3 Philon Le Juif, De Fuga, et Inventione in The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, trans. by Charles Duke Yonge (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Pub, 1993), 325.
4 Simone de Beauvoir, 1949, The Second Sex, trans. by Constance Borde and Shelia Malovany, (New York: Random House, 2014), 129.
5 Ibid., 131.
6 Ibid., 133.
7 Ibid., 167.
8 Maurice Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France 1789-1880 trans. by Janet Lloyd, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 18.
9 Kristina Molin Cherneski, ‘Gender the Secular, and the Image of the Marianne in the French Revolution’ in Past Imperfect, 21.2 (2019), 48; Hunt, Hercules and the Radical Image, 98; Agulhon, Marianne into Battle, 33.
10 de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 166.
11 Marina Warner, Monuments & Maidens, 17.
12 Lynn Hunt, ‘Engraving the Republic: Prints and Propaganda in the French Revolution’, History Today, 30.10 (1980), 17.