Women in the French Enlightenment

From Femme Savante to Mother of the Family
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-032-11067-7
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 154 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 387 g

Reihe: Routledge Research in Gender and History

This volume deals with philosophical, scientific, and ideological images of women during the French Enlightenment, examining their emergence in the reflections of the philosophes, in Catholic morality, in biological and medical knowledge, in novels, in periodicals, and in the law.

Alongside the appeals for social and intellectual emancipation advanced by the femmes savantes, typical of the eighteenth-century salons, a new conception pertaining to women’s social role related to the affirmation of the bourgeoisie and of its model of the family took place. Codified in a more complex and organized way within the Rousseauian philosophy, this new conception spread in various cultural debates, gaining a real hegemony: women were meant to be excluded from any "public" space, devoid of cultural aspirations, and only devoted to satisfying the needs of the family.

The book adopts a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and synthetic approach and at the same time highlights the "roots" of some fundamental ways of considering women that are still active in present-day society. It also addresses researchers in the history of philosophy, sociology, literature, and gender studies, and readers with an interest in women’s issues.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Marchini, Anna Maria

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. The family structure and the spaces of the woman, 2. Images of the feminine and the philosophes, 3. The problem of women’s education, 4. The centrality of the moral aspects, 5. The new "feminine" between biology and anatomy and the images of the philosophes, 6. Woman and medicine, 7. The feminine destiny in the novel, 8. Periodicals aimed at a female audience, 9. Legal inferiority, Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Anna Maria Marchini obtained a degree and a specialization diploma in philosophy, with honors, from the University of Pavia. An experienced teacher of literary subjects in secondary schools, she works on the problem of women’s emancipation from historical and theoretical perspectives.