author
Madame d' Héricourt
1809–1875
A bold 19th-century French feminist, writer, and midwife, she took on some of her era's most famous thinkers in a fierce defense of women's equality. Her work mixes social criticism with a practical belief that women deserved education, independence, and full civic rights.
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About the author
Born Jeanne-Marie-Fabienne Poinsard in Besançon in 1809, Jenny d'Héricourt wrote under the name Madame d'Héricourt and became known as a French feminist activist, writer, and physician-midwife. She came from a Protestant family and built an unusually independent public life for a woman of her time.
She is best remembered for arguing directly against leading male intellectuals who defended women's subordination. In works such as La femme affranchie and its English version, A Woman's Philosophy of Woman, she challenged the claims of writers including Jules Michelet and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, insisting that women were fully capable of reason, work, and citizenship.
Her career reached beyond books alone. She studied and practiced medicine as a midwife, took part in radical political circles, and spent time in both France and the United States. She died in 1875, but her writing remains a striking example of clear, combative early feminist thought.