For all those who are attached to the freedom of the press, its pluralism and the quality of information, the release of the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) on August 6, 2023 is an event. Its reading, for the author of these lines, was rather a matter of distracted anthropological curiosity, until an article, page 23, particularly attracted our attention. Under the banner “Opinions and controversies” of polemicist Eric Naulleau, this title: “Less Barbie, more Marie Curie!”.
The editorialist intended to show on the occasion of the release of the blockbuster “Barbie” an opposition between the flagship figurine of Mattel companies and the most famous scientist in the world, Marie Curie, iconic figure of science. The only woman to have received two Nobel Prizes, the second to enter the Pantheon, and to whom no less than 65 biographies are devoted, if only in French. According to the pamphleteer, this opposition would be legitimized by the “contrary destinies” of Barbie and Curie with regard to “neo feminism (which) conceals a formidable enterprise of regression under the appearance of progressivism”. And to quote Sandrine Rousseau, whose 2021 sentence – “I prefer women who cast spells rather than men who build EPRs” – would have led, according to him, the immense scientist to betray “both the deep nature of his sex, than the interests of humanity”!
Let’s bring the debate back to a simple question: what is Marie Curie doing here? And which Marie Curie is he referring to? The “poor Polish migrant” fleeing Russian domination? The mother who co-discovered radium, polonium and radioactivity? Or the scientist who will change the place of women in science?
When the far-right press raged against Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867-1934) was certainly not openly feminist. The double Nobélisée has never held a speech in favor of any gender equality. On women’s rights, she will speak only twice. In 1921 in a petition against the imprisonment of suffragettes, then in 1932 in a letter to the Senate published by The weather where she writes: “I have, it is true, the habit of abstaining from all public discussion, both on this question and on others which are not in the scientific field. However, without me pronounce on the modalities of the attribution of political rights to women, I think that the principle is essentially right and that it should be recognized.” In reality, it is her entire career that speaks for her genre, as summarized by Nathalie Pigeard-Micault, historian of science and deputy director of the Curie museum: “Feminism is defined as activism. Marie Curie cannot therefore be defined as feminist. It is her individual life that can serve the discourse of feminists through the freedom she has given herself both professionally and privately.”
Appealing to Marie Curie in the midst of a debate on press pluralism and in the political context of the editorial development of the JDD proves to be just as paradoxical. Marie and Pierre Curie had a relationship of mistrust with the media. A certain far-right press also raged against her when her romantic relationship – she had been widowed for four years – with Paul Langevin, a renowned physicist and former collaborator of Pierre Curie, who was already married, was revealed. The researcher is treated as “Polish woman coming to break up a good French household”, “adulterous widow” and “Polish Jewess” – she was born a Catholic – who sullies “the honor of the University”. The case, where sexist and xenophobic attacks mingle, is tinged with the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair. Léon Daudet then wrote in the newspaper l’Action Française that “the foreigner is in the process of destroying a French home. She is the fruit of the moral corruption of these students of the Sorbonne contaminated by the ideas of Ibsen and Nietzsche. Marie Curie and all her allies are moreover Dreyfusards. They are therefore to be put in the same bag as the Jews”. The scandal will become international, up to the Nobel Academy which will ask her that “in such circumstances” she “desists from coming to Stockholm to take the prize”. But Marie Curie will resist.
Certainly Marie Curie is a national treasure, and her story belongs to everyone. Provided, however, that you use it wisely…
* Pr Gilles Pialoux, infectiologist, Sorbonne-University (formerly Pierre and Marie Curie University), Vice-President of the French Society for the Fight against AIDS (SFLS) and member of the French Society for the History of Medicine (SFHM).