Marguerite Durand
Marguerite Durand was a French stage actress, journalist, and a leading suffragette. She founded her own newspaper, and ran for election. She is also known for having a pet lion. The Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand was named in her honour for her contributions to the women's suffrage movement in France.
Early life and acting career
Born into a middle-class family on 24 January 1864, Marguerite Durand was sent to study at a Roman Catholic convent. After finishing her primary education, she entered the Conservatoire de Paris before joining the Comédie Française, the oldest active theatre company in the world, in 1881.In 1888, she gave up her career in the theatre to marry an up-and-coming young lawyer, Georges Laguerre.
Politics
A friend and follower of the politically ambitious army general Georges Boulanger, her husband introduced her to the world of radical populist politics and involved her in writing pamphlets for the "Boulangists" movement. However, the marriage was short-lived, and in 1891 the couple separated after which Durand took a job writing for Le Figaro, the leading newspaper of the day. In 1896, the paper sent her to cover the Congrès Féministe International ostensibly to write a humorous article. She came away from the event a greatly changed person, so much so that the following year on 9 December 1897 she founded a feminist daily newspaper, La Fronde to pick up where Hubertine Auclert's La Citoyenne left off.Durand's newspaper, run exclusively by women, advocated for women's rights, including admission to the Bar association and the École des Beaux-Arts. Its editorials demanded that women be allowed to be named to the Legion of Honor and to participate in parliamentary debates. Later in 1910, this came to include Durand's attempt to organise female candidates to stand for the legislative elections. However, Durand considered Marie Denizard's presidential candidacy in 1913 to be an "unfortunate joke" detrimental to the credibility of the feminist movement.
At the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, she organised the Congress For The Rights of Women. As well as establishing a summer residence for female journalists in Pierrefonds in the Picardy region, Durand turned to activism for working women, helping to organise several trade unions.