Women smokers – A female revolutionary from 1848 with straw hat and cigar

Women smokers did not conform to the nineteenth-century bourgeois ideal of their sex. They were considered to be dubious or even dangerous. To quote from a fashion journal from the year 1843: ‘For sure there will soon be no more women. They want to transfer themselves to the male sex by force ... , make male rights their own and cheerfully smoke their cigars while doing so.’ Some women smoked precisely because they wanted to rebel against their unequal social status and to break out of their traditional roles.