Nikolay Shcherbina's epigram against emancipated women and Théroigne de Méricourt

Théroigne de Méricourt opened schools for women, so that our silly girls might graduate from them as nihilists...

There was in the nineteenth century a satirist by the name of Nikolay Shcherbina, by and large an interesting poet and, it seems, a decent man, though not without his rough edges and obtuseness. These lines, for instance, he addressed to the first emancipated women in Russia, who had treacherously dared to attend universities, live in communes and set up enterprises of their own: what scoundrels!

Anne-Josèphe Théroigne de Méricourt came in for her share of Shcherbina's abuse too, which is rather odd, considering that she had died forty years before the epigram appeared. Still, the attacks of so very middling a reactionary could hardly have harmed a participant in the storming of the Bastille, who had led the women to Versailles for bread, fought for equal rights, gone to prison for her convictions, and boxed the ears of feuilletonists of his sort without a qualm.