Author: ELIZABETH RECHNIEWSKI
The French Australian Review No 67 (Australian Summer 2019-2020): 26-45.
https://doi.org/10.62586/FDIW7549
This article explores the representation of Louise Michel’s ideas and activism in the Australian press, in a period when newspapers played such an influential role in the transmission of news and the formation of opinion. The Australian press devoted over two thousand articles and items of news to her in the twenty-five years from late 1880 to early 1905, from her return to France from deportation to the year of her death. In a period of rapid political and social change in Australia, Michel became a reference point and a touchstone for discussion about key issues of the day: the rise of the workers’ movement, the new ideologies of anarchism and socialism, and women’s rights. Moreover, in a period of Franco-British imperial rivalry the papers did not hesitate to use Michel’s case to criticise the ‘illiberal’ political regime in France or that nation’s bellicose intentions. The article focuses on the significance accorded to this controversial figure in the debate over women’s rights in Australia, when Michel was often cited as an example of a ‘political woman’ to be feared, or, more rarely, as a model to be emulated.
Keywords: Louise Michel, women’s rights, Australia, press history