Suzanne Monnier Voilquin was a French feminist, journalist, midwife, traveler and author, best known as editor of Tribune des femmes, the first working-class feminist periodical, and her memoirs, Souvenirs d'une fille du peuple: ou, La saint-simonienne en Egypt.
16 Facts About Suzanne Voilquin
2.
Suzanne Voilquin was born in Paris in 1801 to a working-class family.
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Suzanne Voilquin received some convent education, and spent most of her youth nursing her dying mother, raising her little sister and working as an embroiderer.
4.
Suzanne Voilquin gave him her blessing and he left for Louisiana.
5.
In 1834 Suzanne Voilquin published Ma loi d'Avenir by fellow Saint-Simonian Claire Demar after she and her lover, Perret Desessarts, killed themselves.
6.
Suzanne Voilquin announced in April, 1834 that she would join other Saint-Simonian women such as Clorinde Roge and travel to Egypt to work with the French medical doctors, scientists and engineers, including Ferdinand de Lesseps.
7.
Suzanne Voilquin began assisting a French doctor who taught her medicine in exchange for her tutoring his Egyptian children.
8.
Suzanne Voilquin studied Arabic and learned medicine in his clinic and the harems, often wearing Arab male clothing.
9.
Suzanne Voilquin got the plague, and, although she survived, many of her friends, including the doctor and his family succumbed.
10.
In France, Suzanne Voilquin became certified as a midwife, studied homeopathy, and continued to work on behalf of women, with an unsuccessful attempt to form a Maternal Association to Aid Young Mothers in 1838.
11.
Work was again scarce, and, needing to support herself, her ailing father and her brother who was a political prisoner, Suzanne Voilquin left for Russia in 1839.
12.
Suzanne Voilquin joined other feminists and Saint-Simonian women including Eugenie Niboyet, Pauline Roland, Jeanne Deroin, Desiree Gay and Elisa Lemonnier to organize on behalf of women's employment and education issues and to write for La Voix des Femmes.
13.
Suzanne Voilquin organized wet nurses and founded a Society of United Midwives.
14.
Suzanne Voilquin joined her sister there, who died in 1849.
15.
Suzanne Voilquin published her memoirs Souvenirs d'une fille du people: ou la Saint-simonienne en Egypt in 1866.
16.
Suzanne Voilquin died in Paris in December 1876 or January 1877.