November 14

Flora Tristan and Hugh Faringdon

Author

David Barnhart
November 14, 2025

Photo by Angela Barnhart.

Today marks the death, in 1844, of Flora Tristan, French author and early feminist activist. She made cross-cultural comparisons of women in Peru and Europe, and was one of the first to connect her feminism with a critique of capitalism. She was also the grandmother of the artist Paul Gauguin. 

Today marks the martyrdom, in 1539, of Hugh Faringdon, Abbot of Reading Abbey. Though he had been an ally of Henry VIII, when the King dissolved the Catholic monasteries of England as part of his formation of the Church of England, he was found guilty of trumped-up charges of treason and hanged. 

Reflection: 

Flora Tristan wrote: 

“The most oppressed man finds a being to oppress, his wife: she is the proletarian of the proletarian.”

and

"Prostitution is the most hideous of the afflictions produced by the unequal distribution of the world's goods; this infamy stigmatizes the human species and bears witness against the social organization far more than does crime." 

and

"Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man's yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!" 

Prayer: Jesus, in you there is no longer male and female, but we are all one. Help our social politics reflect your divine impartiality. Amen.