Background
Upon her mother"s insistence, Roland received a good education and was introduced to the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, the founder of French socialism, by one of her teachers.
Upon her mother"s insistence, Roland received a good education and was introduced to the ideas of Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, the founder of French socialism, by one of her teachers.
She became an enthusiastic supporter of his philosophy. Following her arrival in Paris in 1832, Roland began writing for early feminist papers and compiled a series of remarkable histories of France (1835), England (1838), and England, Scotland and Ireland (1844). Roland then played a key role in convening the Union of Workers Associations.
In October 1849 delegates of over 100 trades elected Roland to the central committee.
This attempt to resuscitate the cooperative movement in 1848 was suppressed by the government in April 1850, and Roland was one of fifty people arrested the following month. Undaunted, Roland was active in the Parisian resistance to the coup d"état of December and subsequently imprisoned in Algeria.
On Roland"s return to Paris in December, she became active in feminist and socialist agitation and publications (the Voix des Femmes), notably with Jeanne Deroin and Desirée Gay. With Deroin and Gustave Lefrançais she established the Association of Socialist Teachers stressing the importance of equality of the sexes in an education program spanning the first eighteen years of life and of women staying in the work force. At her subsequent trial for her socialism, feminism and "debauchery," she was attacked vitriolically and then imprisoned for seven months, until July 1851.