Women of the Enlightenment

1. Women and the
Enlightenment

2. Perceptions of Women
•There were other feminists prior to the
Enlightenment, but not many
•Feminism began to gain momentum in
the Age of Enlightenment.
•Why??
1.Notions of rationalism & tolerance
2.Print culture

3. Montesquieu
•Supported equality for women in society
and was sympathetic to the obstacles
they faced (The Persian Letters)
•However, he held traditional beliefs as
to a man’s dominance in marriage and
family

4. Rousseau’s “Emile” (1762)
•Men and women occupy separate
spheres
Worldly
Sphere =
Men
Domestic
Sphere =
Women

5. Rousseau (cont.)
•Women should be
educated to be
subordinate to men –
there is little else for a
woman to do but
make herself pleasing
to men

6. Rousseau (cont.)
•A woman’s purpose was to bear and
raise children
•Weaker/inferior to men EXCEPT in their
capacity for feeling and giving love
•No political rights

7. On the Bright Side…
•Portrayed the role of being a wife and
mother as fulfilling and noble
•This gave the women of the nobility and
middle class a sense of purpose

8. What I Think of Rousseau…
Tomb of JJ Rousseau, Panthéon, Paris

9. Diderot & The Encyclopedia
•Published men almost exclusively
•Articles that dealt with women often
emphasized their physical weakness
and inferiority, usually attributed to
menstruation or childbirth

10. Diderot (cont.)
•Women were reared to be frivolous and
unconcerned with important issues
•Motherhood = most important
occupation
•Double standard on sexual behavior
•Overall, the contributors disagreed on
the social equality of women

11. (Some) Notable Women of the
Enlightenment

12. Mary Wollstonecraft
•Mother of the
feminist movement
•Born in London,
England, Mary
became interested in
becoming educated
at an early age

13. Wollstonecraft (cont.)
•She sought personal liberty and
economic independence
•Her first book, A Vindication of the
Rights of Women (1792) caused much
controversy because she stated that
men and women were created equal,
but women received less education

14. A Vindication of the Rights of
Women
•Celebrates the rationality of women
•Attacks the view of female education
put forward by Rousseau and countless
others who regarded women as weak
and artificial and not capable of
reasoning effectively

15. Vindication (cont.)
•Rejects the education in dependency
that Rousseau advocated for them in
Emile
•A woman must be intelligent in her own
right, as she cannot assume that her
husband will be intelligent!

16. Vindication (cont.)
•Maintained that this did not contradict
the role of the woman as a mother or
the role of the woman in the home
•Said that “…meek wives are, in general,
foolish mothers.”

17. Wollstonecraft (cont.)
•Both men and women criticized her and
her books
•In later writings, she sharply criticizes
the conditions in which women
(especially poor women) lived

18. Controversy
•She caused further controversy when
she chose not to marry the father of her
first daughter
•She did eventually marry William
Godwin, another English philosophe
•Sadly, she died days after giving birth to
their daughter, Mary Shelley (future
author of the book Frankenstein)

19. Salons

20. Salons
•Pleasure was not the objective of the
Enlightenment salons
•The philosophes that had rejected the
academy and the university as their
institutional bases for their work turned
to the Parisian salons to continue their
conversations and practices

21. Salons (cont.)
•The salonnières served to listen
attentively to the philosophes and fill in
during the silences of the conversation,
if needed
•A main purpose of the salons of Paris
for the salonnières during the
Enlightenment was to satisfy the self-
determined educational needs of the
women who started them

22. Salons (cont.)
•For the salonnières, the salon was a
socially acceptable substitute for the
formal education denied them

23. Salon Bleu – Louis XV

24. Salon Jaune

26. Marie -Therese Geoffrin
•To many, her salon was the premier
salon of the day
•At a young age, she was orphaned and
at fourteen was married off to the wealthy
director of the royal glassworks at Saint-
Gobain

27. Geoffrin (cont.)
•In her twenties,
she began
apprenticing at
the salon of her
neighbor,
Madame de
Tencin

28. Geoffrin (cont.)
•Two innovations Geoffrin contributed to
the salon:
1.Switched the traditional late night dinner
to a 1:00 dinner to fallow for an entire
afternoon of conversation
2.Created a regular, weekly salon dinner
schedule, with Monday assigned to the
artists, Wednesday for the men of letters,
and so forth

29. Geoffrin (cont.)
•Mme. Geoffrin was so popular because
she was a wonderful, attentive listener
•She knew how to make other people
talk their best. She knew just when to
say her piece or ask a question

30. Geoffrin (cont.)
•Mme. G was a very generous woman
as she was quite wealthy and willing to
share
•She often helped young authors
struggling to make ends meet and on
Sundays she didn’t open her salon.
Instead she put together large sums of
money in little bags to distribute among
the poor

33. Madame Geoffrin’s Salon

34. Bust of Voltaire

35. Marquise de Pompadour
•Began visiting the court
of King Louis XV at
Versailles
•After their first meeting,
he instantly admired
her beauty and skill
•He enjoyed watching
her perform in plays at
her own theater
(Etoilles Estate)

36. Pompadour (cont.)
•In 1744, she was installed at court as
Louis XV’s “official favorite” under the
title of Marquise de Pompadour
•She had a profound effect over the
private life of the court

37. Pompadour’s Effects
•Organized suppers and brought many
performances to the theater
•Brought back the sense of intimacy and
extravagance that the French court had
lost

38. Pompadour’s Effects (cont.)
•Commissioned artists such as the writer
Voltaire and the painter François
Boucher
•Encouraged the manufacture of
porcelain and decorated the palace of
Versailles in the Rococo manner

39. Pompadour (cont.)
•Pompadour was mistress to the king for
only five (5) years
•On Oct. 12, 1752, the King made her a
duchess; the greatest favor he could
bestow upon her

40. Pompadour (cont.)
•When France was on the verge of a
major war with England she played a
major role in influencing the Diplomatic
Revolution (the treaty that allied France
with her former enemy Austria)

41. Pompadour (cont.)
•She also demonstrated her power and
influence over the King in the way she
was capable of removing her enemies
from office and enabling her friends to
come into government

42. Pompadour (cont.)
•All of these proved to be disastrous to
France, and led to the unpopularity of
the Marquise
•She was hated and blamed for all of the
misfortunes that fell upon France

43. The Pompadour
•Eventually, though, a
really snazzy hair
style would be
named after her
so at least she had
that going for her…