Marie Madeleine Jodin (1741â€"1790) was an eighteenth-century French
actress, friend of Diderot, and early feminist.Jodin was born to a
prostitute mother and a Swiss clockmaker father. After a childhood of
forced imprisonment and religious conversion, she eventually became an
actress performing in the Comedie Francaise in Paris and then in
Warsaw, Dresden, and Bordeaux during the 1760s. When her father died
she became the ward of his friend, the encyclopedist, and art critic
Denis Diderot, who would become her mentor. Diderot's help would shape
the course of her adult acting life and many of her feminist theories
that she would later present in her treatise Vues Legislative Pour Les
Femmes to the French National Assembly. Her treatise is considered to
be the first feminist work to be written and signed by a woman in the
French Revolutionary period and Enlightenment periods.Marie's father,
Jean Jodin, married a former prostitute much older than himself. Due
to the nature of his marriage his artisan family was wary of his new
wife's ability to be a fit mother and suitable wife, Through letters
that Jean Jodin wrote to his sister it is known that Marie Jodin was a
troublesome child; her own father called her a “monster clothed in a
human face†. At the age of nine she was forced to convert from
Protestant to Catholic, a conversion that she fought throughout her
childhood into her teenage years. As being Protestant in France was
much more undesirable than being Catholic, it was advised that
children convert in order to be treated better. Families like the
Jodins were able to gain extra money by making children renounce the
Protestant faith, or forcing a conversion. Throughout her life, Jodin
was described as “quarrelsome and (having) often violent
behavior†. Her violent behavior and her constant rejection of her
Catholic conversion led to Jodin being sent to many convents
throughout her childhood, as a way to fix her problems. Her behavior
did not change while she was in the convents; she violently resisted
the disciplines of convent life and of her conversion, and was
expelled from six different convents. Her passage through these
convents did however allow Jodin to become well educated, which in her
adult years would allow her to write with intellectual and social
confidence.Jodin's family saw her as a lost cause, and pushed for her
imprisonment. Familial rights were very strong during the 18th century
throughout France, if a family wanted a young woman held against her
own will, for their own good, the state could assist them in
attempting to control their daughters and save their reputations. By
the age of 16, after being expelled from numerous convents, Jodin
along with her mother were working as prostitutes. Marie's family
believes that her own mother forced her into prostitution at such a
young age for her own financial gain. As a result, they were
imprisoned for their actions for two years. This period of two years
at which Jodin was imprisoned in Salpêtrière Hospital had a profound
effect on her life, and her later political writings. Conditions were
deplorable even for 18th century standards; girls lived in cramped
overcrowded rooms and only received blankets during the cold winter
months. Stories of prisoners being beaten for lack of productivity or
disobedience were common. It was said by a member of an acting troupe,
which Jodin would later belong to, that her shoulders showed visible
signs of abuse and whippings that she received during her time at
Salpêtrière. Marie-Madeleine Jodin Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter