Of course, medical discourse on its own was not responsible for a universally accepted redefinition of femininity. For a start, doctors still disagreed among themselves about female sexuality, as was evident from their disputes over ‘maladies des femmes’, those disorders which supposedly derived from women’s sexuality, such as hysteria. At a popular level, too, traditional beliefs about gender difference persisted well into the nineteenth century. The new medical ideas would only become dominant later, in the wake of considerable political, economic and social upheaval.
Nevertheless, it is legitimate to underline the degree to which the Enlightenment transformed the debate on women’s nature, not only raising it to a new level but providing a new language and a new frame of reference within which to discuss what would thereafter be known as the ‘woman question’. Here the contribution of the philosophes was fundamental. Seeking to reshape government and society by the application of reason to human affairs, they addressed themselves to the question of the proper social role for women both explicitly and implicitly.
For some, indeed, the status accorded to women was the measure of how far a given society had evolved. In the Persian Letters (1721) Montesquieu employed the metaphor of the seraglio to denounce despotic rule in general and the exploitation of women in particular. In the Spirit of the Laws (1748), he went on to argue that both men and women should have the right to divorce, though, ominously, he also expressed fears about the pernicious effects of ‘licentious’ behavior on the part of women which, he thought, might be detrimental to the common good (Gilmour 69).
Yet it would be a mistake to exaggerate the degree to which Enlightenment thinkers devoted themselves to the issue of ending women’s subordination. The Enlightenment and the French Revolution invented a new vocabulary of the rights of man, which at the end of the eighteenth century also became the language of feminism (Wahl 102). Yet at the same time this was also the language which enunciated the doctrine of separate spheres, the ideological cornerstone of nineteenth-century antifeminism.
It is important to appreciate that Republicanism, the principal vehicle for the development of French democracy over the course of the nineteenth century, was from the outset committed to a vision of democracy from which women had been excluded. The French Revolution was not a turning point in the history of Enlightenment women in any positive sense but rather a defining moment where, in attempting to delineate the boundaries of both public and private life, the revolutionaries embarked upon a project in which women’s contribution to society could be made only through the private sphere of the home.
Far from making women into citizens, the Revolution gave a powerful boost to the ideology of domesticity which was soon to become the dominant discourse on women’s place in the post-Revolutionary social order. The work acknowledges that the women who are the subjects of this study were privileged speakers in many ways, despite the fact that they were constrained by boundaries and stereotypes of women. Therefore, this paper points to future studies which can examine the perspectives of women who did not have access to good educational opportunities, relative wealth, and traditional power.
Letter writing and newsletters, gardening, quilting, shopping, and other ritual communication activities in the Enlightenment women’s lives deserve attention and study. This work demonstrates the utility of the framework it has created, for examining the rhetorical choices contemporary women are making in political discourse. There is a hope that this initial effort will stimulate additional research culminating in an accurate, fair, and balanced history of eighteenth-century women.
Conclusion In the Age of Enlightenment, both the image and reality of women were undergoing profound changes. These changes extended forward into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explain the modern concept of womanhood. This examination of eighteenth century views on women concludes by highlighting the connections that link the experience of eighteenth-century women to women’s future experiences. Throughout the eighteenth century, there was great interest in women’s issues.
Because change is continuous and recognizes no special moment at the turn into a new century, characteristics of the lives of women in the nineteenth century – and even into the twentieth century – are evident already in the eighteenth century.
References Clive, Geoffrey. (1960). The Romantic Enlightenment. Meridian Books: New York. Fitzpatrick, Martin. (2004). The Enlightenment World. Routledge: New York. Gilmour, Peter. (1989). Philosophers of the Enlightenment. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. Spencer, Samia I. (1984). French Women and the Age of Enlightenment. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IN.