Louise Bodin
| Louise Bodin | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 1877 Paris, France |
| Died | 3 February 1929 Rennes, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Feminist |
Louise Bodin (1877 – 3 February 1929) was a French feminist and journalist who became a member of the steering committee of the French Communist Party.
Louise Charlotte Bodin was born in 1877. Her father was a communard, but otherwise nothing in her background predestined her to become a revolutionary. She had a typical education for the period, and married a professor of medicine. Her husband, Eugène Bodin, was head of the faculty of medicine in Rennes, so they were well-to-do. This later earned her the sobriquet la bolchevique aux bijoux (the Bolshevik with jewelry) from her enemies, although her friends called her La bonne Louise (Good Louise).
Rennes was a rough city at the turn of the century where alcoholism was endemic, there was no money for a girls' school, and the municipal council openly complained about the shortage of brothels. The second Dreyfus Trial was held in Rennes in 1899, and this profoundly affected Bodin. In March 1913 several women and a few men founded a local group of the French Union for Universal Suffrage, of which Bodin soon became president for Ille-et-Vilaine. In June 1913 she took her manuscript Les Petites Provinciales to Paris seeking a publisher, and was rejected by many reviews.
World War I (1914–18) caused Bodin became more aware of the class struggle. She was a convinced pacifist during the war. Socialism, pacifism and feminism became closely linked in her thinking. She noted that the Russian Revolution was hated because it had affected the sacred caste. In 1917 she and Colette Reynaud founded the journal La Voix des femmes, to which the major feminists contributed including Nelly Roussel and Hélène Brion. The journal appeared weekly, and presented socialist feminist viewpoints. The first issue of La Voix des Femmes appeared on 31 August 1917. Contributors included men such as Boris Souvarine and Georges Pioch as well as women such as Colette Reynaud. Bodin organized a series of conferences. She contributed to journals such as la Vie Ouvrière, l'Humanité and Populaire among others.
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