Arria Ly (real name Joséphine Gondon; March 24, 1881 – December 19, 1934) was a journalist, writer, lecturer and radical French feminist in the early twentieth century. Ly, who was known for her aggressive and impassioned rhetoric style, popularized radical feminist ideas, arguing for perpetual celibacy and putting forth a robust anti-marriage campaign. She gained notoriety nationally in France in the aftermath of the famous 1911 Ly-Massat affair.
Ly's radical ideas about male-female sexual relations set her apart from the mainstream French feminist movement and generated significant controversy among both the public and her feminist peers. Ly's notoriety as a radical alternative to mainstream feminism caused her to gain many nicknames including "Cadette de Gascogne," the "Laic Nun," and the "Pistol Virgin."
Family life and religious upbringing Ly was born on Mar. 24, 1881 in Cayran, France. She had a sheltered familial upbringing and was educated almost solely by her mother, Fanny Gondon, an ardent Catholic who was educated at a convent boarding school. Although Ly's father was an anticlerical republican who worked as an inventor, he believed a strict Catholic education to be the most appropriate for his daughters. As a result, Ly was only attended a conventional school for two years, with the remainder of her education stemming from her mother and private tutors.
By assuming near sole responsibility for Ly's education, Madame Gondon passed on to her daughter Catholic notions about sexuality and purity. After completing her Catholic education, Fanny Gondon desired to become a nun and requested that her parents allow her to take her vows. However, her mother denied her request and forced her into marrying Monsieur Gondon. In her writings, Madame Gondon's opinions on sexuality, morality and marriage all mirror the radical arguments later put forth by her daughter. Madame Gondon argued that all sexual relations were inherently immoral and that virginity provided the only avenue for a woman to maintain her purity. She specifically blamed men for spoiling the purity of women, pointing to their filthy and dishonorable desires as the source of the immorality. Gondon's writings further convey psychological conflict from her forced marriage to Monsieur Gondon and the subsequent loss of her virginity. In response to her own experience, Madame Gondon maintained high moral expectations for her daughter and hoped for her to be the embodiment of purity.
Further adding to Ly's isolation from mainstream society, her parents insisted on accompanying her in public and refused to take her to a variety of cultural spaces including museums, theaters and the cinema. Additionally, because her parents feared the corruptive influence of other children, Ly was also barred from having friends.
As a result of her secluded Catholic upbringing, Ly was not exposed to the realities of male-female sexual relations until 1903 when she, age twenty-two at the time, read a feminist report on prostitution. In a autobiographical piece titled "The Horrible Revelation!", Ly recalled this discovery as an extraordinarily painful moment of her young life. After reading the report, Ly demanded clarification from her parents. However, in her writing, she pointed to her mother's explanations as a source of further confusion. Ly's experience was a relatively common one for the many young French women who were kept ignorant of sexual acts by their sheltered educations in Catholic boarding schools. However, each of these women interpreted and responded to their revelatory experience in unique ways. For Ly, although she maintained anticlerical and atheist views later in life, the revulsion she experienced as a result of discovering male-female sexual relations was formative in shaping her commitments to both perpetual virginity and anti-marriage views.
Ly's father died later that same year, when Ly was twenty-two years old. Following the death of her father, convinced that an eminent Grenoble doctor was responsible for his death, she slightly wounded him with a firearm, resulting in a high-profile trial. Defended by one of France's first female lawyers, Marguerite Dilhan, she was acquitted on February 28, 1904. Ly and her mother continued living together for thirty-one years. As they moved from place to place, Madame Gondon was supportive of both Ly's participation in the feminist movement and her career pursuits. Faced with the responsibility of providing for both herself and her mother, Ly sought work as a journalist and a teacher.
Role in the French Feminist Movement In the early years of her feminist career, Ly's vision focused on both reclaiming the term "Mademoiselle" as an esteemed label for unmarried, working women like herself, and supporting the autonomy of young women in pursuing paths other than marriage. In a public lecture given in 1902, Ly spoke directly to the young women entering the professional workforce and charged them with the task of proving that women were capable of filling the professions newly available to them. In this lecture and throughout the remainder of her feminist career, Ly's activism specifically distinguished between the older generation of married women and the younger generation of single females. She characterized married women as enslaved women of the household who were highly susceptible to male influence and argued that because of this susceptibility, married women were ultimately detrimental to the younger generation's modern feminist movement. Continuing the message provided in the public lecture she gave in 1902, from 1902 to 1903, Ly published a weekly column in the Réveil du Dauphiné, in which she documented the advancement of middle-class women beyond white-collar positions and into a variety of liberal professions. In her columns, she often highlighted the admission of women to universities for the study of law, medicine and pharmacy, and discussed the emerging potential for women to earn substantial salaries and build independent lives. Over time, Ly's writings and public statements became more divisive and her vision began to focus more narrowly on the importance of perpetual virginity and singleness.
Radical contributions
Anti-marriage campaign Building upon her early characterizations of married women as detrimental to the modern feminist movement, in 1908, Ly published an article titled "The Young Woman's New Year" which encouraged young, single women to confidently resist parental pressure to marry. In similar articles, Ly often included fictional stories about young women who succumbed to external pressure to get married, stemming from their parents and society as a whole. Ly used these types of stories to emphasize marriage as a sudden transition which steals from promising young women their intellectual freedom.
In a later article, published in 1910, Ly adopted a controversial critique of married women referring to them as "femmes à la mer," or "seaside women" who were enslaved to the demands of unpaid housework. In the article, Ly specifically distinguished between the two potential paths women faced, delineating married women as man's inferior and young, unmarried women as the free-spirited and intelligent women of tomorrow.
As part of her emphasis on the need for female autonomy, Ly also specifically portrayed marriage as a method for degrading women's legal status to that of a minor and argued that it was necessary for all women to reject the social and political dependency imposed by marriage. Ly often launched harsh criticism against married women arguing that their marriage is evidence of their failure to resist the temptation of men and the finality of their loss of virtue. At times, she did express sympathy for the women forced into marriages by social and familial pressures, however, in general, her writings tended to draw uncompromising distinctions between the sacred nature of virginity and the sullied nature of married women.
Perpetual abstinence In 1902, Ly also began writing and publishing articles arguing for unconditional celibacy as an important part of the feminist movement. Her views on sexual relations differed sharply from those of mainstream feminists. She advocated for women's unconditional celibacy and upheld permanent virginity as the only way for women to liberate themselves from the inherent abasement of male-female sexual acts and to prevent the degradation of their purity.
In 1905, she published an article titled "Restons Mademoiselle" in La Femme affranchie which encouraged all young French women to remain virgins for life. Ly's feminist colleagues responded to this article and others of a similar nature by arguing that Ly's notion of virginity was foolish and naïve and unfairly asked women to effectively detach themselves from the predominant social and political conditions of the Third Republic.
Six years later, in June of 1911, she published her most controversial and famous article "Vive 'Mademoiselle!'" which built upon previous arguments by tying unconditional celibacy to the need for female autonomy and specifically pinpointing virginity as the highest honor for feminism.
Ly's article "Vive 'Mademoiselle!'" was inspired by debates, popular in the fall of 1910, surrounding whether the term "Madame" should be used to refer to both single and married women, rather than continuing to distinguish between the two. Looking to mitigate continued stigmatization of unmarried women, the majority of the public favored applying the term "Madame" to all women. Ly, however, rejected the use of "Madame," arguing that the term implied the permanency of women's psycho-sexual subordination to men and their dependent status in marriage. Ly preferred to reclaim the term "Mademoiselle" as a symbol of the unique autonomy of unmarried, working women in twentieth century France. Ly used this term to encompass the need for single women to retain their independence and purity by refraining from both marriage and all sexual relations with men. However, because her argument was highly antagonistic toward married women, characterizing wives as besmirched women, akin to prostitutes, she received heavy criticism for her article.
From 1904 to 1911, Ly also engaged in frequent communication with other prominent French feminists to discuss questions surrounding sexual ideals and practices. Ly used this feedback to continually revise and polish her doctrine, up until publication of "Vive 'Mademoiselle!'". During this time, Ly came to understand that her ideas separated her from mainstream feminists and, in the article, she specifically acknowledged her failure to rally other French women around the promise of unconditional celibacy.
In 1913, Ly founded her own, albeit short-lived, newspaper, Le Combat féministe, organe du mouvement féministe arrilyst, in which she reinforced the ideas voiced in "Vive 'Mademoiselle!'" and declared war on male-female sexual intercourse. In the very first issue, published in 1913, Ly spoke to women's capacity as militants and delineated her push for perpetual virginity as a politically motivated assault on male sexuality.
Religious influence Although Ly publicly identified as an atheist, the enduring influence of her ultra-Catholic upbringing and her jarring discovery of male-female sexual relations was evident in her treatment of other French feminists and many of her writings. Ly was often publicly antagonistic toward fellow French feminists who she deemed to be sexually immoral. For example, she coined the term "femellistes" to categorize and publicly shame feminists who she believed to be using sexual allure to garner support for their cause. And, in her disagreements with other French feminists, Ly often focused her arguments on charges of sexual impropriety rather than specific political differences.