Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The speaker believes French women are expected to conform to strict standards.
In plain terms
French women are not free to do as they wish.
What can you take from it?
Notice societal constraints on women.

Where it applies

  • social criticism
  • cultural analysis

Putting it to work

  • evaluating norms
  • promoting autonomy

Questions to consider

  • How do cultures restrict women?
  • Is freedom culturally relative?

Another view

This reflects an outdated view of French society.

More from Napoleon Bonaparte

  1. There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.

    Permalink to quote #183
  2. They think I am stern, even hardhearted. So much the better- this makes it unnecessary for me to justify my reputation. My firmness is taken for callousness. I…

    Permalink to quote #185
  3. There is no greater misfortune for a man than to be governed by his wife: in such case he is neither himself nor his wife, he is a perfect nonentity.

    Permalink to quote #182

Related quotes

  1. Yousef Al-Khattab: When you take the women and dress them like whores, on the street... Richard Dawkins: I don't dress women, they dress themselves... Yousef A…

    Richard DawkinsRichard Dawkins quote #76
  2. 'Men may control the free world, but women control the boobs.'

    Scott R. KurtzScott R. Kurtz quote #2
  3. Too much has already been said and written about 'women's sphere'. Leave women, then, to find their sphere.

    Lucy StoneLucy Stone quote #6