22. 1700-1850 The Enlightenment and Women
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The Enlightenment period is well known for the philosophical and societal changes it brought to our modern day world, however, women also found their place during this time period. There were great female leaders, such as Catherine the Great or Olympe de Gouges, that would go on to inspire women of future suffrage movements and women today. Defying male and societal expectations became a reoccurring pattern during this time.
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Wikimedia Commons
The Enlightenment Period was a time of social upheaval and restructuring of western societies. Nobilities were overthrown in favor of democracies. Men previously bound to live lives similar to their fathers finally found opportunities in government and commerce. And while these changes would catapult the world forward into the modern era, it would be over a century before the same principles would be extended to women. Throughout the west, the hypocrisy of the enlightenment era was abundant. In kingdoms and empires where female monarchs had been relatively routine, women would be barred from the politics of the democracies that replaced them. It’s important that we ask, enlightened for whom?
The Bad: Despite the Protestant Reformation in Europe and the relative progress it brought to women’s education, the general view by men of women’s intellect and need for education was still overwhelmingly negative. Although change did not seem apparent, there was a small social revolution occurring with all the Enlightenment and Revolutionary talk of the period– women were bound to grab hold.
Across the western world, the rise in state-sponsored schools was motivated by the Protestant belief that it was the duty of the family, church, and state to educate every child, male and female, to gain spiritual understanding. Boys were first, but girls followed– but it was painfully slow– almost two centuries from when a public boys school opened in the region.
Male attitudes toward women’s intellectual promise remained steadfast. Even profound thinkers of the time could not fathom the need for women’s education. For example...
The Bad: Despite the Protestant Reformation in Europe and the relative progress it brought to women’s education, the general view by men of women’s intellect and need for education was still overwhelmingly negative. Although change did not seem apparent, there was a small social revolution occurring with all the Enlightenment and Revolutionary talk of the period– women were bound to grab hold.
Across the western world, the rise in state-sponsored schools was motivated by the Protestant belief that it was the duty of the family, church, and state to educate every child, male and female, to gain spiritual understanding. Boys were first, but girls followed– but it was painfully slow– almost two centuries from when a public boys school opened in the region.
Male attitudes toward women’s intellectual promise remained steadfast. Even profound thinkers of the time could not fathom the need for women’s education. For example...
Ideal Role of Women in Enlightenment, Public Domain
Immanuel Kant felt women were like incomplete men, stating, “[M]an should become more perfect as a man, and the woman as a wife.” To belittle women further, he added, “[Women] need to know nothing more of the cosmos than is necessary to make the appearance of the heavens on a beautiful evening a stimulating sight to them.” Unsatisfied with his degradation of women, and perhaps confronted by an intellectual woman, he continued, “Even if a woman excels in arduous learning and painstaking thinking, they will exterminate the merits of her sex.”
Another intellectual, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, wrote, “[A woman’s] dignity requires that she should give herself entirely as she is [to her husband] and . . . utterly lose herself in him. The least consequence is that she should renounce to him all her property and her rights. Henceforth, she has life and activity only under his eyes and in his business. She has ceased to live the life of an individual; her life has become a part of the life of her lover… Woman . . . cannot and shall not go beyond the limits of her feeling.”
Despite all the years separating them from the Romans, these men were stuck in Ancient thinking. It was certainly an evolution from the outright vile spewed at women of previous periods in European history, but it was still a dreadfully low view of women’s potential, like Dead Sea low.
Another intellectual, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, wrote, “[A woman’s] dignity requires that she should give herself entirely as she is [to her husband] and . . . utterly lose herself in him. The least consequence is that she should renounce to him all her property and her rights. Henceforth, she has life and activity only under his eyes and in his business. She has ceased to live the life of an individual; her life has become a part of the life of her lover… Woman . . . cannot and shall not go beyond the limits of her feeling.”
Despite all the years separating them from the Romans, these men were stuck in Ancient thinking. It was certainly an evolution from the outright vile spewed at women of previous periods in European history, but it was still a dreadfully low view of women’s potential, like Dead Sea low.
Salons and Coffeehouses: Women, however, would find their place in intellectualism. In France, the laws barred the gathering of intellectuals and political criticism, and women of the aristocracy became increasingly involved in observing thinkers in “Salons.” Madame Rambouillet’s salon, known as “le Chambre Bleu” opened in 1618 as an escape from the shallow and rigid court life. There, great minds sang, recited poetry, and talked about ideas. Her model was quickly copied by other hostesses around Paris.
Women who managed salons could hold their own with their patrons. They were educated, literate, versed in mediation, and wealthy. They selected their patrons with care, sometimes requiring a letter of recommendation for entrance. These Salonierre’s managed conversations with ease, others with iron fists. Madame de Tencin and Mademoiselle Lespinasse had more liberal approaches to their guests diving into divisive topics like politics. Whereas Madame Geoffrin and Madame de Rambouillet, strictly managed the topics. If conversation waned or became uncomfortably dangerous, Geoffrin would put an end to the discussion with her famous simple phrase “Voilà qui est bien,” or “That’s enough.” Intellectuals from around Europe came to participate. The salons established a haven for French intellectuals to discuss ideas freely and women had a front seat. Nobody puts bébé in a corner!
Even the King’s official mistress was in on it! Jeanne Antionnette Poisson, better known as Madame Pompadour, used her position and wealth to host thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot. She also lobbied for the publication of France's first encyclopedia– a means to get knowledge to anyone who could read. Pompadour has perhaps been mistreated in history for using sex to influence over the King, but in the sheltered court at Versailles, everyone was doing it–syphillis be damned! The King relied on her as an advisor, sometimes de facto prime minister, but she was also patron of the arts and intellectuals.
Women who managed salons could hold their own with their patrons. They were educated, literate, versed in mediation, and wealthy. They selected their patrons with care, sometimes requiring a letter of recommendation for entrance. These Salonierre’s managed conversations with ease, others with iron fists. Madame de Tencin and Mademoiselle Lespinasse had more liberal approaches to their guests diving into divisive topics like politics. Whereas Madame Geoffrin and Madame de Rambouillet, strictly managed the topics. If conversation waned or became uncomfortably dangerous, Geoffrin would put an end to the discussion with her famous simple phrase “Voilà qui est bien,” or “That’s enough.” Intellectuals from around Europe came to participate. The salons established a haven for French intellectuals to discuss ideas freely and women had a front seat. Nobody puts bébé in a corner!
Even the King’s official mistress was in on it! Jeanne Antionnette Poisson, better known as Madame Pompadour, used her position and wealth to host thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot. She also lobbied for the publication of France's first encyclopedia– a means to get knowledge to anyone who could read. Pompadour has perhaps been mistreated in history for using sex to influence over the King, but in the sheltered court at Versailles, everyone was doing it–syphillis be damned! The King relied on her as an advisor, sometimes de facto prime minister, but she was also patron of the arts and intellectuals.
Jeanne Antionnette Poisson, better known as Madame Pompadour, Wikimedia Commons
Not all intellectuals enjoyed the salons. Jean-Jacques Rousseau felt that women’s presence in the salons degraded serious conversation between men. He also resented women micromanaging the conversation. He said, “they talk about everything so everyone will have something to say; they do not explore questions deeply, for fear of becoming tedious, they propose them as if in passing, deal with them rapidly, precision leads to elegance; each states his opinion and supports it in few words; no one vehemently attacks someone else’s, no one tenaciously defends his own; they discuss for enlightenment, stop before the dispute begins; everyone is instructed, everyone is entertained, all go away contented.” While we might read that as a positive thing, he was appalled.
Across the channel, the coffee houses of the Islamic world made it to Oxford in 1652. The coffee houses of England were where thinkers came to discuss ideas, science, and chatter. Each coffee house had a particular clientele, defined by scholarly interests, politics, or occupation. The coffeehouses created a sense of meritocracy and leveled the playing field to allow for the sharing of ideas.
Although the houses expressly barred women entry, it is highly likely women frequently attended as these were places of “sober” discourse. Famous male intellectuals wrote accounts where they described conversing with women at the coffee house– although these may have been describing prostitutes who worked there. In fact, most women at these houses were there to work in some capacity. Women owned, managed, labored and served in coffeehouses across the United Kingdom.
Women in English coffeehouses were relegated to the help, while French women ran the show in the Salon. The presence of women in Salons and absence in coffeehouses led to these two places having very different atmospheres for intellectual discussion. Coffee house debates got a little rowdy, whereas Salons maintained the respectability harshly lamented by Rousseau.
However, women were not merely the hostesses, they also thought and wrote extensively on enlightenment ideas. Their works and theories were widely read by their male peers and became staples of enlightenment thinking. Of course many of those ideas that extended to women were all but ignored.
Across the channel, the coffee houses of the Islamic world made it to Oxford in 1652. The coffee houses of England were where thinkers came to discuss ideas, science, and chatter. Each coffee house had a particular clientele, defined by scholarly interests, politics, or occupation. The coffeehouses created a sense of meritocracy and leveled the playing field to allow for the sharing of ideas.
Although the houses expressly barred women entry, it is highly likely women frequently attended as these were places of “sober” discourse. Famous male intellectuals wrote accounts where they described conversing with women at the coffee house– although these may have been describing prostitutes who worked there. In fact, most women at these houses were there to work in some capacity. Women owned, managed, labored and served in coffeehouses across the United Kingdom.
Women in English coffeehouses were relegated to the help, while French women ran the show in the Salon. The presence of women in Salons and absence in coffeehouses led to these two places having very different atmospheres for intellectual discussion. Coffee house debates got a little rowdy, whereas Salons maintained the respectability harshly lamented by Rousseau.
However, women were not merely the hostesses, they also thought and wrote extensively on enlightenment ideas. Their works and theories were widely read by their male peers and became staples of enlightenment thinking. Of course many of those ideas that extended to women were all but ignored.
Maria Theresa, Wikimedia Commons
Maria Theresa: Some monarchs chose to embrace enlightenment thinking. Maria Theresa, the Habsburg queen considered the grandmother of Europe because so many of her children were married off to be royalty around Europe, ruled in her own right as Empress of the Austria Hungarian Empire, a position she inherited because of a special provision written by her father. Initially her role was challenged from the outside by invading armies when she was just a young pregnant mother. But after successfully winning these military engagements, Theresa sought to stabilize her empire and bring it into a period of growth. She was a vocal opponent of enlightenment thinking, but oddly embraced enlightenment ideas: she expanded access to education, improved meritocracy in government positions, and instigated a number of social reforms to help the poor.
She promoted schools and in particular women’s education, a rather Enlightened idea. Her stated goal was, “to make both sexes good Christians, and industrious, intelligent, and obedient subjects in the different orders of society.”
She promoted schools and in particular women’s education, a rather Enlightened idea. Her stated goal was, “to make both sexes good Christians, and industrious, intelligent, and obedient subjects in the different orders of society.”
Catherine the Great, Wikimedia Commons
Catherine the Great: In Russia, another monarch dodged political revolution by adopting enlightenment ideas. Following the westernization reforms of Peter the Great, in the 1760s, Catherine the Great further shifted the cultural and intellectual Russian world.
Catherine was born in 1729, the well educated, eldest daughter of an impoverished Prussian prince. She was sought by the Russian Empress Elizabeth to marry Elizabeth’s nephew, Peter, a descendant of Peter the Great.
A product of the Enlightenment, Catherine was disappointed at the ineptitude of her spouse. Catherine and the younger Peter were married for eight years in what was, by all accounts, a rocky and childless marriage. They both had extra-marital affairs at court, her with Sergei Saltykov, a Russian military officer whom the Empress Elizabeth supported over her own nephew.
Soon after, Catherine became pregnant. This led to wild scandal that perhaps Peter was either sterile or incapable of consummating their marriage. Her son Paul was deemed a legitimate heir, but there was no question that her subsequent three children were fathered by other men.
When Elizabeth died in 1762, Peter's inability to lead was quickly evident. Catherine plotted a bloodless coup to arrest and overthrow her own husband! In custody for only eight days, having ruled for less than six months, Peter died, possibly at the hands of Catherine’s new lover, though there is no evidence that she knew of the plans for his murder
Catherine’s reign was marked by vast territorial expansion and attempts at governmental reforms. Catherine considered herself to be one of Europe’s most enlightened rulers, and historians agree! She wrote numerous books, pamphlets and educational materials aimed at improving Russia’s education system. She was a champion of the arts, keeping up a lifelong correspondence with Voltaire and other prominent minds of the era. She was also one of those rare elite women who used their position to help other women, establishing the first higher education institution for women in Russia.
Historians and contemporaries loved to gossip about Catherine’s love life, which included a lot of lovers whom she was incredibly loyal to throughout and after their love affairs. Had she been male, these love affairs probably would have hardly been mentioned in chronicles. She bestowed upon her lovers indentured servants, land, and titles. When Catherine died, her unconventional and apparently “lustful life” was an open secret.
Catherine was born in 1729, the well educated, eldest daughter of an impoverished Prussian prince. She was sought by the Russian Empress Elizabeth to marry Elizabeth’s nephew, Peter, a descendant of Peter the Great.
A product of the Enlightenment, Catherine was disappointed at the ineptitude of her spouse. Catherine and the younger Peter were married for eight years in what was, by all accounts, a rocky and childless marriage. They both had extra-marital affairs at court, her with Sergei Saltykov, a Russian military officer whom the Empress Elizabeth supported over her own nephew.
Soon after, Catherine became pregnant. This led to wild scandal that perhaps Peter was either sterile or incapable of consummating their marriage. Her son Paul was deemed a legitimate heir, but there was no question that her subsequent three children were fathered by other men.
When Elizabeth died in 1762, Peter's inability to lead was quickly evident. Catherine plotted a bloodless coup to arrest and overthrow her own husband! In custody for only eight days, having ruled for less than six months, Peter died, possibly at the hands of Catherine’s new lover, though there is no evidence that she knew of the plans for his murder
Catherine’s reign was marked by vast territorial expansion and attempts at governmental reforms. Catherine considered herself to be one of Europe’s most enlightened rulers, and historians agree! She wrote numerous books, pamphlets and educational materials aimed at improving Russia’s education system. She was a champion of the arts, keeping up a lifelong correspondence with Voltaire and other prominent minds of the era. She was also one of those rare elite women who used their position to help other women, establishing the first higher education institution for women in Russia.
Historians and contemporaries loved to gossip about Catherine’s love life, which included a lot of lovers whom she was incredibly loyal to throughout and after their love affairs. Had she been male, these love affairs probably would have hardly been mentioned in chronicles. She bestowed upon her lovers indentured servants, land, and titles. When Catherine died, her unconventional and apparently “lustful life” was an open secret.
Theroigne de Mericourt, Wikimedia Commons
American Revolution: But not all monarchs embraced Enlightenment thinking, and they paid dearly for it. The American Revolution was the first political revolution as a result of enlightenment thought. Women were foundational in rallying support for the war and imagining the government that would replace the English rule they found increasingly taxing. Learn more about the integral role women played in the Revolution in our chapter in the US series.
French Revolution: Across the ocean, inspired by the American Revolution, French revolutionaries saw an opportunity to overthrow the corrupt King Louis and his unscrupulous wife, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Teresa. France was divided into three estates: the first was the nobility who represented about 1% of the population, the second was the church which again represented 1% of the population, and the other 98% of the population was the commoners who lived in abject poverty. Marie Antoinette lived at the palace of Versailles, a hugely expensive and elaborate estate built by previous Kings. Here she hosted elaborate parties and bought gowns to the envy of the world although the people were starving for basic necessities, like bread.
For years the commoners tried to negotiate. They asked for greater representation in the legislature. When the nobility refused, they broke off forming their own legislature. In May 1789 the commoners declared themselves a National Assembly, which would operate outside the monarchy’s supervision. In response, King Louis XVI shut down the spaces where they were meeting, so the men gathered in an indoor tennis court and pledged their unity until France had a new constitution. Women were excluded from these events. They routinely asked for a seat at the table and were routinely denied.
All out rebellion in France began on July 14, 1789 when a Paris mob stormed the Bastille fortress prison in search of arms and ammunition. At the time, over 30,000 pounds of gunpowder was stored. The Bastille, to them, was also a symbol of the monarchy's tyranny. And of course women were there. In fact, women were at the front. A woman, dressed like an Amazon, led the attack. She was a 26-year-old Belgian named Theroigne de Mericourt. She had only recently moved to Paris to escape a painful past as a prostitute. In full rebellion already, she had dressed in men’s clothes and embraced the revolutionary spirit of France full on. Royalists called her the “patriots’ whore“ and the hideous “war chief“ of the revolution. Her background as a prostitute didn’t help when they accused her of having sex with all 576 members of the National Assembly.
French Revolution: Across the ocean, inspired by the American Revolution, French revolutionaries saw an opportunity to overthrow the corrupt King Louis and his unscrupulous wife, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Maria Teresa. France was divided into three estates: the first was the nobility who represented about 1% of the population, the second was the church which again represented 1% of the population, and the other 98% of the population was the commoners who lived in abject poverty. Marie Antoinette lived at the palace of Versailles, a hugely expensive and elaborate estate built by previous Kings. Here she hosted elaborate parties and bought gowns to the envy of the world although the people were starving for basic necessities, like bread.
For years the commoners tried to negotiate. They asked for greater representation in the legislature. When the nobility refused, they broke off forming their own legislature. In May 1789 the commoners declared themselves a National Assembly, which would operate outside the monarchy’s supervision. In response, King Louis XVI shut down the spaces where they were meeting, so the men gathered in an indoor tennis court and pledged their unity until France had a new constitution. Women were excluded from these events. They routinely asked for a seat at the table and were routinely denied.
All out rebellion in France began on July 14, 1789 when a Paris mob stormed the Bastille fortress prison in search of arms and ammunition. At the time, over 30,000 pounds of gunpowder was stored. The Bastille, to them, was also a symbol of the monarchy's tyranny. And of course women were there. In fact, women were at the front. A woman, dressed like an Amazon, led the attack. She was a 26-year-old Belgian named Theroigne de Mericourt. She had only recently moved to Paris to escape a painful past as a prostitute. In full rebellion already, she had dressed in men’s clothes and embraced the revolutionary spirit of France full on. Royalists called her the “patriots’ whore“ and the hideous “war chief“ of the revolution. Her background as a prostitute didn’t help when they accused her of having sex with all 576 members of the National Assembly.
Women's March on Versailles, Wikimedia Commons
Women’s March on Versaille: Three months later women again led the charge again in the Women’s March on Versailles. Why were women leading the charge? Because women were suffering more. As caregivers they often fed their families before they fed themselves-- a sexist expectation in a patriarchal society. They were hungrier and angrier as they watched their own children deteriorate due to the lack of bread, while women in the aristocracy thrived in elegant gowns and at extravagant dinner parties.
On October 5, 1789, a young woman marched through the streets of Paris beating a drum. She was joined by around seven thousand of her fellow countrywomen, some wielding makeshift weapons. They seized a church and began ringing the bells to wake their countrymen, all the while chanting “When will we have bread?” A group of fishwives, who were perhaps the rowdiest of the marchers and famously vulgar, began shouting, “The old order? We don’t give a f*** for your order!”
The mob was only dissuaded from all out lynching when officials steered their anger toward the Man in charge: King Louis. The mob marched six hours to the Palace of Versailles where they were greeted with refreshments. Women shouted proclamations of outrage and that they had come to overthrow those who were not serving the will of the people. Women began chanting anti-clerical slogans. One woman slapped a priest who offered his hand in greeting, stating, "I am not made to kiss the paw of a dog.”
On October 5, 1789, a young woman marched through the streets of Paris beating a drum. She was joined by around seven thousand of her fellow countrywomen, some wielding makeshift weapons. They seized a church and began ringing the bells to wake their countrymen, all the while chanting “When will we have bread?” A group of fishwives, who were perhaps the rowdiest of the marchers and famously vulgar, began shouting, “The old order? We don’t give a f*** for your order!”
The mob was only dissuaded from all out lynching when officials steered their anger toward the Man in charge: King Louis. The mob marched six hours to the Palace of Versailles where they were greeted with refreshments. Women shouted proclamations of outrage and that they had come to overthrow those who were not serving the will of the people. Women began chanting anti-clerical slogans. One woman slapped a priest who offered his hand in greeting, stating, "I am not made to kiss the paw of a dog.”
Queen Marie Antoinette, Wikimedia Commons
It took a while to calm the crowd and elect a delegation of six women to see the King. One of the selected, Pierrette Chabry, was only seventeen, and fainted when she saw the King. Louis promised them that food would be sent to Paris to feed the hungry.
Early the next morning, an armed group of people broke into the royal apartments screaming that they intended to "tear out [the Queen Marie Antoinette’s] heart…cut off her head, fricassee her liver.” Two guards were murdered in the process. Marie Antoinette ran barefoot from her room shouting for someone to save her children. The intruders were stopped by National Guardsmen who whisked the Queen and her children away.
Just hours later, the Queen would appear on a balcony in front of this wild crowd of 60 thousand or more people to perform a show of faith. Their home surrounded, the family had no choice but to go to Paris. The King announced, "My friends, I shall go to Paris with my wife and my children…it is to the love of my good and faithful subjects that I entrust all that is most precious to me!"
The crowd followed the royal family and wagons full of flour and bread to Paris. Women reveled in their victory singing that they were bringing "the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's lad to Paris!"
Early the next morning, an armed group of people broke into the royal apartments screaming that they intended to "tear out [the Queen Marie Antoinette’s] heart…cut off her head, fricassee her liver.” Two guards were murdered in the process. Marie Antoinette ran barefoot from her room shouting for someone to save her children. The intruders were stopped by National Guardsmen who whisked the Queen and her children away.
Just hours later, the Queen would appear on a balcony in front of this wild crowd of 60 thousand or more people to perform a show of faith. Their home surrounded, the family had no choice but to go to Paris. The King announced, "My friends, I shall go to Paris with my wife and my children…it is to the love of my good and faithful subjects that I entrust all that is most precious to me!"
The crowd followed the royal family and wagons full of flour and bread to Paris. Women reveled in their victory singing that they were bringing "the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's lad to Paris!"
Pauline Leon, Library of Congress
Political Involvement: By 1790, many of the political clubs formed to discuss political ideas in envisioning a post revolution world were barred to women. The Fraternal Society of Patriots of Both Sexes allowed women to take active roles, hold offices, and mix with male intellectuals. Women also founded their own political clubs: the patriotic and charitable society of the women friends of truth, the society of revolutionary Republican women, the Republican revolutionary women citizens club, and many more. These clubs provided a safe haven where women could challenge not only the monarchy, but the patriarchy, which these women grew to see as intertwined.
Almost every one of the women who had thrown herself into the revolutionary spirit was struggling with a challenging past, a failed love affair, abandonment, and the general failures of the patriarchy to do what it, in theory, intended to do, “protect women.“ The women of France matched or out matched their male partners in the uprisings. Women saw the fall of the male monarch as the fall of the patriarchy and took up the revolutionary spirit with fervor.
Pauline Leon hoped women could become equal in every aspect of society, including involvement in the Armed Forces. She advocated for an all-female national guard to defend Paris and themselves from possible invasion by Austria or Prussia. Her initiative was struck down repeatedly by the men in the movement.
Almost every one of the women who had thrown herself into the revolutionary spirit was struggling with a challenging past, a failed love affair, abandonment, and the general failures of the patriarchy to do what it, in theory, intended to do, “protect women.“ The women of France matched or out matched their male partners in the uprisings. Women saw the fall of the male monarch as the fall of the patriarchy and took up the revolutionary spirit with fervor.
Pauline Leon hoped women could become equal in every aspect of society, including involvement in the Armed Forces. She advocated for an all-female national guard to defend Paris and themselves from possible invasion by Austria or Prussia. Her initiative was struck down repeatedly by the men in the movement.
Olympe de Gouge, Wikimedia Commons
Olympe de Gouges: Women were not just anonymous members of a crowd or members in political clubs. Women were also powerful leaders and voices of Enlightenment thinking. Olympe de Gouges took it further than most. She copied the Declaration of the Rights of Citizen and Man and added, “and woman.” In there she advocated both for the emancipation of women and the enslaved people throughout the French empire. She pointed out, by copying the language used by men, the hypocrisy of not extending these same privileges and rights to government and property to women.
De Gouges lived an unconventional life. At just 17, Olympe was forced into marriage with an older man she despised. She gave birth to a son named Pierre, and shortly after, her husband died. And the next year she fell in love with a rich man, whose family wouldn’t let her marry him; so, she and her son moved into an apartment nearby him in Paris, where he paid for her lodgings and provided for her welfare for the rest of her life-la belle vie indeed! Pretty well hooked up, and living an unprecedented, independent life for a woman in her time, Olympe was free to pursue her passions. She joined the salon of Sophie to Condorcet where she met “the father of economics“ Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.
Of the revolutionary era women, Olympe was impressive. With a little formal education, she pointedly saw that female inferiority was not necessarily inherent, but planned and structural. It was the systems of government and society that degraded women’s lives. She noticed that everyday power, the decision over finances, and many more, were in the hands of men and men alone. Her writings were a direct attack on the principles of male supremacy.
She wrote, “Women, wake up… recognize your rights! Oh women, women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gathered in the revolution? A scorn more marked at a stain more conspicuous… Whatever the barrier set up against you, it is in your power to overcome them; you only have to want it!”
De Gouges lived an unconventional life. At just 17, Olympe was forced into marriage with an older man she despised. She gave birth to a son named Pierre, and shortly after, her husband died. And the next year she fell in love with a rich man, whose family wouldn’t let her marry him; so, she and her son moved into an apartment nearby him in Paris, where he paid for her lodgings and provided for her welfare for the rest of her life-la belle vie indeed! Pretty well hooked up, and living an unprecedented, independent life for a woman in her time, Olympe was free to pursue her passions. She joined the salon of Sophie to Condorcet where she met “the father of economics“ Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.
Of the revolutionary era women, Olympe was impressive. With a little formal education, she pointedly saw that female inferiority was not necessarily inherent, but planned and structural. It was the systems of government and society that degraded women’s lives. She noticed that everyday power, the decision over finances, and many more, were in the hands of men and men alone. Her writings were a direct attack on the principles of male supremacy.
She wrote, “Women, wake up… recognize your rights! Oh women, women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gathered in the revolution? A scorn more marked at a stain more conspicuous… Whatever the barrier set up against you, it is in your power to overcome them; you only have to want it!”
Execution of Olympe de Gouges, Wikimedia Commons
She dedicated the piece to Queen Marie Antoinette hoping that she could bring these hypocrisies to the queen's attention and gain support from the most well-known woman in the empire. Dedication would prove to be her undoing. Although incredibly radical, tying the peace to the monarchy led many of the male radicals to accuse her of being a monarchist. She was far from a monarchist! She was taking what the men were saying and extending it to the other 50% of the population! She wanted democracy, and she wanted it for everybody!
As tensions in Paris mounted, she left the city to be with her son who was wounded in battle. It appears she planned to leave the dangerous life of Paris and be closer to her family, but she was arrested in July 1793. In October, Marie Antoinnette was dragged out onto the scaffold in a public spectacle and executed by the guillotine, as the French revolutionaries sought to show the public that the power was truly back in the people’s hand. On October 30, the National Convention issued the decree excluding women from all political activity. All of the women’s political clubs were closed, their leaders were arrested, and the engagement that women had had in the Revolution trickled to a halt. The president of the Paris Revolutionary Council, Pierre Chalmette, wrote, “impudent women who want to turn themselves into men, don’t you have enough already?”
As the reign of terror began in Paris (which saw the purging of anyone considered loyal to the monarchy, tried in a trumped up trial where her verdict was all but predetermined, and she was convicted), Olympe was in prison for treason, her life daily threatened, and yet she did not back down! She wrote bold statements from her prison cell and even denied herself the chance to be free when she was sent to an open prison.
In her trial she was ironically named, “the widow Aubrey,” after her old and long dead husband. They stripped her of her chosen name and gave her the chattel name the patriarchy demanded. In a desperate attempt to save her life, she claimed to be pregnant. She was subsequently inspected by a physician who found that she was not pregnant. She was beheaded by the guillotine unceremoniously. On the platform she cried out, “Children of the mother country, you will avenge my death!” Five days later, another woman was executed for engaging in politics while being female, in violation of the decree.
Did the Enlightenment include women? Not in France. Women’s enlightenment and enfranchisement were stopped dead literally by a sharp blade. The French Revolution would move the scale forward a little bit for men, white men, but like most periods of history, women would remain domesticated.
As tensions in Paris mounted, she left the city to be with her son who was wounded in battle. It appears she planned to leave the dangerous life of Paris and be closer to her family, but she was arrested in July 1793. In October, Marie Antoinnette was dragged out onto the scaffold in a public spectacle and executed by the guillotine, as the French revolutionaries sought to show the public that the power was truly back in the people’s hand. On October 30, the National Convention issued the decree excluding women from all political activity. All of the women’s political clubs were closed, their leaders were arrested, and the engagement that women had had in the Revolution trickled to a halt. The president of the Paris Revolutionary Council, Pierre Chalmette, wrote, “impudent women who want to turn themselves into men, don’t you have enough already?”
As the reign of terror began in Paris (which saw the purging of anyone considered loyal to the monarchy, tried in a trumped up trial where her verdict was all but predetermined, and she was convicted), Olympe was in prison for treason, her life daily threatened, and yet she did not back down! She wrote bold statements from her prison cell and even denied herself the chance to be free when she was sent to an open prison.
In her trial she was ironically named, “the widow Aubrey,” after her old and long dead husband. They stripped her of her chosen name and gave her the chattel name the patriarchy demanded. In a desperate attempt to save her life, she claimed to be pregnant. She was subsequently inspected by a physician who found that she was not pregnant. She was beheaded by the guillotine unceremoniously. On the platform she cried out, “Children of the mother country, you will avenge my death!” Five days later, another woman was executed for engaging in politics while being female, in violation of the decree.
Did the Enlightenment include women? Not in France. Women’s enlightenment and enfranchisement were stopped dead literally by a sharp blade. The French Revolution would move the scale forward a little bit for men, white men, but like most periods of history, women would remain domesticated.
"Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen" by Olympe de Gouge, Wikimedia Commons
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"Vindication of the Rights of Woman" by Mary Wollstonecraft, Library of Congress
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Mary Wollstonecraft, Wikimedia Commons
Mary Wollstonecraft: In Paris at the time was an English Enlightenment thinker and writer, Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft had been inspired by the French revolutionary ideals and had long been corresponding with other Enlightenment thinkers around Europe. She was a well-known and respected writer inspired by de Gouges and horrified when de Gouges was executed. She promptly fled France and began an exploration of her own ideas around the rights of women in society. Her piece, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, would eventually be revived and become one of the most well-known pieces of feminist literature in world history.
Her writing was in direct response to a drafted plan for a robust public education system produced by male Revolutionaries in France. The system only barely included women, who as they saw it, only needed a “domestic education” for service in the paternal home. It is in direct response to this plan that Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her vindication of the rights of woman. Mary was furious and tired of girls being raised solely for domestic servitude and the whims of men. She believed, like Olympe, that women deserved to be involved in every aspect of society but could not if they did not receive an education. She noted that women were intentionally and systematically held back by men and then ridiculed by men for then having limitations! She advocated that women deserved an education.
Wolstoncraft also led an unconventional life. Perhaps that’s a prerequisite of forward thinking women? Her father had been an abuser, and she spent her childhood protecting her mother and younger sisters. But in her thirties she fell madly in love with a 51-year-old Swiss artist who was, unfortunately, married. He rejected her and returned to his wife. She moved to Paris where she again fell head over heels in love with an American schemer and philanderer, and with him she had a daughter. Only months after her birth he left to go to England. Following him there, Mary found he had taken up with another woman, was in the pits of despair, and even attempted to commit suicide twice, once throwing herself into the Thames river. But soon after she met a writer and philosopher William Goodwin who gave her the love and partnership she had long desired. Together they had a daughter named Mary, but just days later adult Mary died from a ruptured placenta.
After her death, her lover published her biography, unintentionally exposing some of the more scandalous aspects of her life. Those who had previously been supportive of her ideas now rejected her fully. It’s one thing to envision women voting, it’s another to envision women being “sexually promiscuous,” as they saw it.
Her writing was in direct response to a drafted plan for a robust public education system produced by male Revolutionaries in France. The system only barely included women, who as they saw it, only needed a “domestic education” for service in the paternal home. It is in direct response to this plan that Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her vindication of the rights of woman. Mary was furious and tired of girls being raised solely for domestic servitude and the whims of men. She believed, like Olympe, that women deserved to be involved in every aspect of society but could not if they did not receive an education. She noted that women were intentionally and systematically held back by men and then ridiculed by men for then having limitations! She advocated that women deserved an education.
Wolstoncraft also led an unconventional life. Perhaps that’s a prerequisite of forward thinking women? Her father had been an abuser, and she spent her childhood protecting her mother and younger sisters. But in her thirties she fell madly in love with a 51-year-old Swiss artist who was, unfortunately, married. He rejected her and returned to his wife. She moved to Paris where she again fell head over heels in love with an American schemer and philanderer, and with him she had a daughter. Only months after her birth he left to go to England. Following him there, Mary found he had taken up with another woman, was in the pits of despair, and even attempted to commit suicide twice, once throwing herself into the Thames river. But soon after she met a writer and philosopher William Goodwin who gave her the love and partnership she had long desired. Together they had a daughter named Mary, but just days later adult Mary died from a ruptured placenta.
After her death, her lover published her biography, unintentionally exposing some of the more scandalous aspects of her life. Those who had previously been supportive of her ideas now rejected her fully. It’s one thing to envision women voting, it’s another to envision women being “sexually promiscuous,” as they saw it.
Code de Napoleon, Boston University
Napoleon: The French Revolution failed to establish a lasting democracy in France. Soon after the Reign of Terror, Napoleon rose to power and imposed himself as an Emperor. Although his rule involved the conquering of most of Europe, it was short lived. He was eventually exiled. But his lasting legacy on the world was his code for women no less.
While still in power, Napoleon introduced “The Code of Napoleon,'' which included a list of the husband’s rights as the head of household and officially extended their power over women. It itemized the financial, political, and social ways women had to defer to their husbands' express permission. This long held law made feminist visions almost impossible to manifest for French women for generations to come. Ironically, freedoms women had under the monarchy went away. Napoleon's code of law spread across Europe and became the model in the colonies and territories held by those countries.
While still in power, Napoleon introduced “The Code of Napoleon,'' which included a list of the husband’s rights as the head of household and officially extended their power over women. It itemized the financial, political, and social ways women had to defer to their husbands' express permission. This long held law made feminist visions almost impossible to manifest for French women for generations to come. Ironically, freedoms women had under the monarchy went away. Napoleon's code of law spread across Europe and became the model in the colonies and territories held by those countries.
Liberty Leads Revolutionaries, Public Domain
Conclusion: One has to remember the ironic slogan of the male French revolutionaries: “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” or brotherhood. Although the male gendering in French is common for mixed crowds, in the case of the French Revolution it was not intended to be inclusive–this was a broligarchy only. Despite women playing a central role, the men of the revolutionary era maintained an abysmally low view of women. The Marquis de Sade, for example, wrote, “Our so-called chivalry, derives from the fear of witches that once plagued our endurant ancestors. Their terror was transmuted… into respect but… such respect is fundamentally unnatural since nature nowhere gives a single instance of it. The natural inferiority of women to men is universally evident, and nothing intrinsic to the female sex naturally inspires respect.”
Historian Rosalind Miles asked, whose revolution was it anyway? Her answer? “So what if the women of France had marched with them and even ahead of them, had fought and died with them from the start? The revolution was men’s business, and always would be.” Despite all of the political clubs, freethinking, and enlightened minds, The male vision of equality stopped short of sexual equality. Instead, real women were passed over for the ideal woman.
Ironically, the most famous painting of the French Revolution depicts the woman symbol of liberty leading a ragtag group of men in charge of the Revolution.
But the ideas of women and their rights were out there! They were able to be read around the world. American suffragists led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton would take the model of de Gouges and Wollstonecraft in crafting their own document, the Declaration of Sentiments, whose template was copied from the Declaration of Independence, a nod to de Gouges. Learn more about the American suffrage movement in our US series.
By the year of 1900, almost every country in the Americas and Oceania had been liberated from their European colonizer using the justification of enlightenment thinking and self representation. But not one of these countries ensured female suffrage. And most of these countries have yet to see a female head of state or government.
To their credit, western nations were some of the first to, eventually and reluctantly, extend the right to vote to women. Why didn’t the Enlightenment occur elsewhere? One of the biggest reasons was the enlightenment emphasis on critical thinking. Confucian countries, in the same time period saw a resurgence of Confucian thinking, putting emphasis on teaching ancient texts rather than new ideas. Similarly, in Muslim countries emphasis on Quranic studies limited the spawning of new ideas, as well as women’s opportunities.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. When would male views of women change substantially? Could they be changed? Would women remain in a constant cycle of revolutions that relied on female leadership and ultimately denied them liberty?
Historian Rosalind Miles asked, whose revolution was it anyway? Her answer? “So what if the women of France had marched with them and even ahead of them, had fought and died with them from the start? The revolution was men’s business, and always would be.” Despite all of the political clubs, freethinking, and enlightened minds, The male vision of equality stopped short of sexual equality. Instead, real women were passed over for the ideal woman.
Ironically, the most famous painting of the French Revolution depicts the woman symbol of liberty leading a ragtag group of men in charge of the Revolution.
But the ideas of women and their rights were out there! They were able to be read around the world. American suffragists led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton would take the model of de Gouges and Wollstonecraft in crafting their own document, the Declaration of Sentiments, whose template was copied from the Declaration of Independence, a nod to de Gouges. Learn more about the American suffrage movement in our US series.
By the year of 1900, almost every country in the Americas and Oceania had been liberated from their European colonizer using the justification of enlightenment thinking and self representation. But not one of these countries ensured female suffrage. And most of these countries have yet to see a female head of state or government.
To their credit, western nations were some of the first to, eventually and reluctantly, extend the right to vote to women. Why didn’t the Enlightenment occur elsewhere? One of the biggest reasons was the enlightenment emphasis on critical thinking. Confucian countries, in the same time period saw a resurgence of Confucian thinking, putting emphasis on teaching ancient texts rather than new ideas. Similarly, in Muslim countries emphasis on Quranic studies limited the spawning of new ideas, as well as women’s opportunities.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. When would male views of women change substantially? Could they be changed? Would women remain in a constant cycle of revolutions that relied on female leadership and ultimately denied them liberty?
Draw your own conclusions
March on Versailles, Wikimedia Commons
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How were women Enlightenment thinkers received in their time? What are the western woman's "Founding Documents"? What issues remain problems for women?
In this lesson, students examine writings from Olympe de Gouge, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as well as primary source responses and secondary source explanations of how these documents were received to draw conclusions about Enlightenment perspectives on women's rights. 
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Elizabeth I, Wikimedia Commons
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Was _____ an Absolute Ruler?
This period of history saw the rise of absolute rulers, many of which were female. In this research project, students will get a chance to research one of these women with depth and learn from their peers about some others. The overarching question, were they truly an absolute ruler?
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Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- This website, Women in World History has primary source based lesson plans on women's history in a whole range of topics. Some are free while others have a cost.
- The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced recommendations for teaching women's history with primary sources and provided a collection of sources for world history. Check them out!
- The Stanford History Education Group has a number of lesson plans about women in World History.
olympe de gouges: excerpt from "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen"
Mothers, daughters, sisters, female representatives of the nation ask to be constituted [established] as a national assembly. Considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt for the rights of woman are the sole causes of public misfortunes and governmental corruption, they have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration [a serious statement that] the natural, inalienable [absolute], and sacred rights of woman: so that by being constantly present to all the members of the social body this declaration [announcement] may always remind them of their rights and duties; so that by being liable [responsible] at every moment to comparison with the aim of any and all political institutions the acts of women’s and men’s powers may be the more fully respected; and so that by being founded henceforward [going forward] on simple and incontestable [undeniable] principles the demands of the citizenesses may always tend toward maintaining the constitution, good morals, and the general welfare. In consequence, the sex that is superior in beauty as in courage, needed in maternal sufferings, recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices [with the support] of the Supreme Being, the following rights of woman and the citizeness.
1. Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.
2. The purpose of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible [unable to be taken away] rights of woman and man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty [power] rests essentially in the nation, which is but the reuniting of woman and man. No body and no individual may exercise authority which does not emanate [come] expressly from the nation.
4. Liberty and justice consist in restoring all that belongs to another; hence the exercise of the natural rights of woman has no other limits than those that the perpetual tyranny [complete authority] of man opposes to them; these limits must be reformed according to the laws of nature and reason.
5. The laws of nature and reason prohibit [forbid] all actions which are injurious [harmful] to society. No hindrance [barrier] should be put in the way of anything not prohibited by these wise and divine laws, nor may anyone be forced to do what they do not require.
6. The law should be the expression of the general will. All citizenesses and citizens should take part, in person or by their representatives, in its formation. It must be the same for everyone. All citizenesses and citizens, being equal in its eyes, should be equally admissible to all public dignities, offices and employments, according to their ability, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.
7. No woman is exempted; she is indicted, arrested, and detained in the cases determined by the law. Women like men obey this rigorous law.
8. Only strictly and obviously necessary punishments should be established by the law, and no one may be punished except by virtue of a law established and promulgated [made public] before the time of the offense, and legally applied to women.
9. Any woman being declared guilty, all rigor [strictness] is exercised by the law.
10. No one should be disturbed for his fundamental opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold, so she should have the right equally to mount the rostrum [platform], provided that these manifestations [actions] do not trouble public order as established by law.
11. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of woman, since this liberty [freedom] assures the recognition of children by their fathers. Every citizeness may therefore say freely, I am the mother of your child; a barbarous prejudice [against unmarried women having children] should not force her to hide the truth, so long as responsibility is accepted for any abuse of this liberty in cases determined by the law [women are not allowed to lie about the paternity of their children].
12. The safeguard of the rights of woman and the citizeness requires public powers. These powers are instituted for the advantage of all and not for the private benefit of those to whom they are entrusted.
13. For maintenance of public authority and for expenses of administration, taxation of women and men is equal; she takes part in all forced labor service, in all painful tasks; she must therefore have the same proportion in the distribution of places, employments, offices, dignities, and in industry.
14. The citizenesses and citizens have the right, by themselves or through their representatives, to have demonstrated to them the necessity of public taxes. The citizenesses can only agree to them upon admission of an equal division, not only in wealth, but also in the public administration, and to determine the means of apportionment, assessment, and collection, and the duration of the taxes.
15. The mass of women, joining with men in paying taxes, have the right to hold accountable every public agent of the administration.
16. Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured or the separation of powers not settled has no constitution. The constitution is null and void if the majority of individuals composing the nation has not cooperated in its drafting.
17. Property belongs to both sexes whether united or separated; it is for each of them an inviolable and sacred right, and no one may be deprived of it as a true patrimony of nature, except when public necessity, certified by law, obviously requires it, and then on condition of a just compensation in advance.
Women, wake up; the tocsin [signal] of reason sounds throughout the universe; recognize your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice [prejudgement], fanaticism [extremeness/madness]], superstition, and lies. The torch of truth has dispersed [scattered] all the clouds of folly and usurpation [wrongful possession of authority]. Enslaved man has multiplied his force and needs yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust toward his companion. Oh women! Women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gathered in the Revolution? A scorn more marked, a disdain more conspicuous [clear]. During the centuries of corruption you only reigned over the weakness of men. Your empire is destroyed; what is left to you then? Firm belief in the injustices of men. The reclaiming of your patrimony [father’s inheritance] founded on the wise decrees of nature; why should you fear such a beautiful enterprise? … Whatever the barriers set up against you, it is in your power to overcome them; you only have to want it. Let us pass now to the appalling [horrifying] account of what you have been in society; and since national education is an issue at this moment, let us see if our wise legislators will think sanely about the education of women….
Hunt, Lynn. The French Revolution and human rights: a brief documentary history. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.
Questions:
1. What are three rights she demands that stand out to you?
2. Is there any language in the text that would rally women?
3. Is there any language in the text that appears anti-men?
4. Why might someone deem this as unpatriotic?
1. Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.
2. The purpose of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible [unable to be taken away] rights of woman and man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty [power] rests essentially in the nation, which is but the reuniting of woman and man. No body and no individual may exercise authority which does not emanate [come] expressly from the nation.
4. Liberty and justice consist in restoring all that belongs to another; hence the exercise of the natural rights of woman has no other limits than those that the perpetual tyranny [complete authority] of man opposes to them; these limits must be reformed according to the laws of nature and reason.
5. The laws of nature and reason prohibit [forbid] all actions which are injurious [harmful] to society. No hindrance [barrier] should be put in the way of anything not prohibited by these wise and divine laws, nor may anyone be forced to do what they do not require.
6. The law should be the expression of the general will. All citizenesses and citizens should take part, in person or by their representatives, in its formation. It must be the same for everyone. All citizenesses and citizens, being equal in its eyes, should be equally admissible to all public dignities, offices and employments, according to their ability, and with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.
7. No woman is exempted; she is indicted, arrested, and detained in the cases determined by the law. Women like men obey this rigorous law.
8. Only strictly and obviously necessary punishments should be established by the law, and no one may be punished except by virtue of a law established and promulgated [made public] before the time of the offense, and legally applied to women.
9. Any woman being declared guilty, all rigor [strictness] is exercised by the law.
10. No one should be disturbed for his fundamental opinions; woman has the right to mount the scaffold, so she should have the right equally to mount the rostrum [platform], provided that these manifestations [actions] do not trouble public order as established by law.
11. The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of woman, since this liberty [freedom] assures the recognition of children by their fathers. Every citizeness may therefore say freely, I am the mother of your child; a barbarous prejudice [against unmarried women having children] should not force her to hide the truth, so long as responsibility is accepted for any abuse of this liberty in cases determined by the law [women are not allowed to lie about the paternity of their children].
12. The safeguard of the rights of woman and the citizeness requires public powers. These powers are instituted for the advantage of all and not for the private benefit of those to whom they are entrusted.
13. For maintenance of public authority and for expenses of administration, taxation of women and men is equal; she takes part in all forced labor service, in all painful tasks; she must therefore have the same proportion in the distribution of places, employments, offices, dignities, and in industry.
14. The citizenesses and citizens have the right, by themselves or through their representatives, to have demonstrated to them the necessity of public taxes. The citizenesses can only agree to them upon admission of an equal division, not only in wealth, but also in the public administration, and to determine the means of apportionment, assessment, and collection, and the duration of the taxes.
15. The mass of women, joining with men in paying taxes, have the right to hold accountable every public agent of the administration.
16. Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured or the separation of powers not settled has no constitution. The constitution is null and void if the majority of individuals composing the nation has not cooperated in its drafting.
17. Property belongs to both sexes whether united or separated; it is for each of them an inviolable and sacred right, and no one may be deprived of it as a true patrimony of nature, except when public necessity, certified by law, obviously requires it, and then on condition of a just compensation in advance.
Women, wake up; the tocsin [signal] of reason sounds throughout the universe; recognize your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice [prejudgement], fanaticism [extremeness/madness]], superstition, and lies. The torch of truth has dispersed [scattered] all the clouds of folly and usurpation [wrongful possession of authority]. Enslaved man has multiplied his force and needs yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust toward his companion. Oh women! Women, when will you cease to be blind? What advantages have you gathered in the Revolution? A scorn more marked, a disdain more conspicuous [clear]. During the centuries of corruption you only reigned over the weakness of men. Your empire is destroyed; what is left to you then? Firm belief in the injustices of men. The reclaiming of your patrimony [father’s inheritance] founded on the wise decrees of nature; why should you fear such a beautiful enterprise? … Whatever the barriers set up against you, it is in your power to overcome them; you only have to want it. Let us pass now to the appalling [horrifying] account of what you have been in society; and since national education is an issue at this moment, let us see if our wise legislators will think sanely about the education of women….
Hunt, Lynn. The French Revolution and human rights: a brief documentary history. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.
Questions:
1. What are three rights she demands that stand out to you?
2. Is there any language in the text that would rally women?
3. Is there any language in the text that appears anti-men?
4. Why might someone deem this as unpatriotic?
olympe de gouges: transcript from her trial
The clerk read the act of accusation... “Antoine-Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, public prosecutor before the Revolutionary Tribunal, etc.
States that, by an order of the administrators of police, dated last July 25th, signed Louvet and Baudrais, it was ordered that Marie Olympe de Gouges, widow of Aubry, charged with having composed [written] a work contrary [differing] to the expressed desire of the entire nation, and directed against whoever might propose a form of government other than that of a republic, one and indivisible, be brought to the prison…
From the examination of the documents deposited [put], together with the interrogation of the accused, it follows that… Olympe de Gouges composed [written] and had printed works which can only be considered as an attack on the sovereignty [supreme power] of the people… . . .
The public prosecutor stated next that it is with the most violent indignation [offense] that one hears the de Gouges woman say to men who for the past four years have not stopped making the greatest sacrifices for liberty [freedom]…
There can be no mistaking the perfidious [untrustworthy] intentions of this criminal woman, and her hidden motives, when one observes her in all the works to which, at the very least, she lends her name, calumniating [falsifying/defaming] and spewing out bile [nastiness] in large doses…
When the accused was questioned sharply about when she composed this writing, she replied that it was some time last May, adding that what motivated her was that seeing the storms arising in a large number of départements, and notably in Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, etc., she had the idea of bringing all parties together by leaving them all free in the choice of the kind of government which would be most suitable for them; that furthermore, her intentions had proven that she had in view only the happiness of her country.
Questioned about how it was that she, the accused, who believed herself to be such a good patriot, had been able to develop, in the month of June, means which she called conciliatory [peacebuilding] concerning a fact which could no longer be in question because the people, at that period, had formally pronounced for republican government, one and indivisible, she replied that this was also the [form of government] she had voted for as the preferable one; that for a long while she had professed [declared] only republican sentiments {point of view], as the jurors would be able to convince themselves from her work entitled De l'ésclavage des noirs.
Asked to speak concerning various phrases in the placard [public notice]… she responded… in saying that she was and always had been a good citoyenne [citizen]…
During the resume of the charge brought by the public prosecutor, the accused, with respect to the facts she was hearing articulated against her, never stopped her smirking. Sometimes she shrugged her shoulders; then she clasped her hands and raised her eyes towards the ceiling of the room; then, suddenly, she moved on to an expressive gesture, showing astonishment; then gazing next at the court, she smiled at the spectators, etc.
Here is the judgment rendered against her.
The Tribunal, based on the unanimous declaration of the jury, stating that:
(1) it is a fact that there exist in the case writings tending towards the reestablishment of a power attacking the sovereignty of the people; [and]
(2) that Marie Olympe de Gouges… is proven guilty… condemn[ed] to the punishment of death… and declares the goods of the aforementioned Marie Olympe de Gouges seized for the benefit of the republic. . . .
[G]iven the public declaration made by the aforementioned Marie Olympe de Gouges that she was pregnant, the Tribunal, following the indictment of the public prosecutor, orders that the aforementioned Marie Olympe de Gouges will be seen and visited by the sworn surgeons… to determine the sincerity of her declaration.
[S]he replied: "My enemies will not have the glory of seeing my blood flow. I am pregnant and will bear a citizen or citoyenne for the Republic."
The same day… the health officer, having visited the condemned, recognized that her declaration was false. . . .
The execution took place the next day [13 Brumaire] towards 4 P.M.; while mounting the scaffold [platform], the condemned, looking at the people, cried out: "Children of the Fatherland, you will avenge my death." Universal cries of "Vive la République" were heard among the spectators waving hats in the air.
Levy, Darlene Gay, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson, Ed and Trans. Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795, Chicago: University of Illinois, 1979. p.254- 259.
Questions:
1. What crimes did Olympe de Gouges commit?
2. Does it surprise you that her feminism in a time of democratic revolution resulted in her death? Why or why not?
States that, by an order of the administrators of police, dated last July 25th, signed Louvet and Baudrais, it was ordered that Marie Olympe de Gouges, widow of Aubry, charged with having composed [written] a work contrary [differing] to the expressed desire of the entire nation, and directed against whoever might propose a form of government other than that of a republic, one and indivisible, be brought to the prison…
From the examination of the documents deposited [put], together with the interrogation of the accused, it follows that… Olympe de Gouges composed [written] and had printed works which can only be considered as an attack on the sovereignty [supreme power] of the people… . . .
The public prosecutor stated next that it is with the most violent indignation [offense] that one hears the de Gouges woman say to men who for the past four years have not stopped making the greatest sacrifices for liberty [freedom]…
There can be no mistaking the perfidious [untrustworthy] intentions of this criminal woman, and her hidden motives, when one observes her in all the works to which, at the very least, she lends her name, calumniating [falsifying/defaming] and spewing out bile [nastiness] in large doses…
When the accused was questioned sharply about when she composed this writing, she replied that it was some time last May, adding that what motivated her was that seeing the storms arising in a large number of départements, and notably in Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, etc., she had the idea of bringing all parties together by leaving them all free in the choice of the kind of government which would be most suitable for them; that furthermore, her intentions had proven that she had in view only the happiness of her country.
Questioned about how it was that she, the accused, who believed herself to be such a good patriot, had been able to develop, in the month of June, means which she called conciliatory [peacebuilding] concerning a fact which could no longer be in question because the people, at that period, had formally pronounced for republican government, one and indivisible, she replied that this was also the [form of government] she had voted for as the preferable one; that for a long while she had professed [declared] only republican sentiments {point of view], as the jurors would be able to convince themselves from her work entitled De l'ésclavage des noirs.
Asked to speak concerning various phrases in the placard [public notice]… she responded… in saying that she was and always had been a good citoyenne [citizen]…
During the resume of the charge brought by the public prosecutor, the accused, with respect to the facts she was hearing articulated against her, never stopped her smirking. Sometimes she shrugged her shoulders; then she clasped her hands and raised her eyes towards the ceiling of the room; then, suddenly, she moved on to an expressive gesture, showing astonishment; then gazing next at the court, she smiled at the spectators, etc.
Here is the judgment rendered against her.
The Tribunal, based on the unanimous declaration of the jury, stating that:
(1) it is a fact that there exist in the case writings tending towards the reestablishment of a power attacking the sovereignty of the people; [and]
(2) that Marie Olympe de Gouges… is proven guilty… condemn[ed] to the punishment of death… and declares the goods of the aforementioned Marie Olympe de Gouges seized for the benefit of the republic. . . .
[G]iven the public declaration made by the aforementioned Marie Olympe de Gouges that she was pregnant, the Tribunal, following the indictment of the public prosecutor, orders that the aforementioned Marie Olympe de Gouges will be seen and visited by the sworn surgeons… to determine the sincerity of her declaration.
[S]he replied: "My enemies will not have the glory of seeing my blood flow. I am pregnant and will bear a citizen or citoyenne for the Republic."
The same day… the health officer, having visited the condemned, recognized that her declaration was false. . . .
The execution took place the next day [13 Brumaire] towards 4 P.M.; while mounting the scaffold [platform], the condemned, looking at the people, cried out: "Children of the Fatherland, you will avenge my death." Universal cries of "Vive la République" were heard among the spectators waving hats in the air.
Levy, Darlene Gay, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson, Ed and Trans. Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795, Chicago: University of Illinois, 1979. p.254- 259.
Questions:
1. What crimes did Olympe de Gouges commit?
2. Does it surprise you that her feminism in a time of democratic revolution resulted in her death? Why or why not?
Mary Wollstonecraft: Vindication of the Rights of Women
If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of woman ... will not shrink from the same test…
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures…
It is of great importance to observe that the character of every man is, in some degree, formed by his profession…Women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue…
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger…
I very much doubt whether any knowledge can be attained without labor and sorrow. Society is not properly organized which does not compel men and women to discharge their respective duties…
Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily [randomly] governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations [discussions] of government. How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty…
The irregular exercise of parental authority ... injures the mind, and to these irregularities girls are more subject than boys…
If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model...
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives, and mothers…
From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe, the greater number of female follies [foolishness] proceed. When the mind is not sufficiently opened to take pleasure in reflection, the body will be adorned [enhanced] with sedulous [thorough] care…
Allow her the privileges of ignorance, to whom ye deny the rights of reason…
Course Hero. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Study Guide." November 29, 2017. Accessed June 10, 2021. https://www.coursehero.com/lit/A-Vindication-of-the-Rights-ofWoman/.
Questions:
1. What are three rights she demands that stand out to you?
2. Is there any language in the text that would rally women?
3. Is there any language in the text that appears anti-men?
4. Why might many see her logic as in line with Enlightenment thinking?
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures…
It is of great importance to observe that the character of every man is, in some degree, formed by his profession…Women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue…
The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger…
I very much doubt whether any knowledge can be attained without labor and sorrow. Society is not properly organized which does not compel men and women to discharge their respective duties…
Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily [randomly] governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations [discussions] of government. How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty…
The irregular exercise of parental authority ... injures the mind, and to these irregularities girls are more subject than boys…
If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model...
Make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives, and mothers…
From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe, the greater number of female follies [foolishness] proceed. When the mind is not sufficiently opened to take pleasure in reflection, the body will be adorned [enhanced] with sedulous [thorough] care…
Allow her the privileges of ignorance, to whom ye deny the rights of reason…
Course Hero. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Study Guide." November 29, 2017. Accessed June 10, 2021. https://www.coursehero.com/lit/A-Vindication-of-the-Rights-ofWoman/.
Questions:
1. What are three rights she demands that stand out to you?
2. Is there any language in the text that would rally women?
3. Is there any language in the text that appears anti-men?
4. Why might many see her logic as in line with Enlightenment thinking?
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON: Declaration of Sentiments
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto [previously] occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel [force] them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed [supplied] by their Creator with certain inalienable [absolute] rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted [beginning], deriving [taking] their just [fair] powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence [wisdom], indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient [momentary] causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing [putting an end to] the forms to which they are accustomed [used to]. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations [to seize authority wrongfully], pursuing invariably the same object, evinces [reveal] a design to reduce them under absolute despotism [dictatorship], it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [to seize authority wrongfully] on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable [absolute] right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity [excluded from punishment], provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement [punishment].
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration [small payment].
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate [lower ranking] position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
He has created a false public sentiment [sadness], by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies [wrongdoing] which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
He has usurped the prerogative [right] of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently [dishonestly] deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception [incorrect opinion], misrepresentation [misleading], and ridicule [scorn/taunts]; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.
Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.
Lucretia Mott Harriet Cady Eaton Margaret Pryor Elizabeth Cady Stanton Eunice Newton Foote Mary Ann M'Clintock Margaret Schooley Martha C. Wright Jane C. Hunt Amy Post Catharine F. Stebbins Mary Ann Frink Lydia Mount Delia Mathews Catharine C. Paine Elizabeth W. M'Clintock Malvina Seymour Phebe Mosher Catharine Shaw Deborah Scott Sarah Hallowell Mary M'Clintock Mary Gilbert Sophrone Taylor Cynthia Davis Hannah Plant Lucy Jones Sarah Whitney Mary H. Hallowell Elizabeth Conklin Sally Pitcher Mary Conklin Susan Quinn Mary S. Mirror Phebe King Julia Ann Drake Charlotte Woodward Martha Underhill Dorothy Mathews Eunice Barker Sarah R. Woods Lydia Gild Sarah Hoffman Elizabeth Leslie Martha Ridley Rachel D. Bonnel Betsey Tewksbury Rhoda Palmer Margaret Jenkins Cynthia Fuller Mary Martin P. A. Culvert Susan R. Doty Rebecca Race Sarah A. Mosher Mary E. Vail Lucy Spalding Lavinia Latham Sarah Smith Eliza Martin Maria E. Wilbur Elizabeth D. Smith Caroline Barker Ann Porter Experience Gibbs Antoinette E. Segur Hannah J. Latham Sarah Sisson
The following are the names of the gentlemen present in favor of the movement:
Richard P. Hunt Samuel D. Tillman Justin Williams Elisha Foote Frederick Douglass Henry Seymour Henry W. Seymour David Spalding William G. Barker Elias J. Doty John Jones William S. Dell James Mott William Burroughs Robert Smallbridge Jacob Mathews Charles L. Hoskins Thomas M'Clintock Saron Phillips Jacob P. Chamberlain Jonathan Metcalf Nathan J. Milliken S.E. Woodworth Edward F. Underhill George W. Pryor Joel D. Bunker Isaac Van Tassel Thomas Dell E. W. Capron Stephen Shear Henry Hatley Azaliah Schooley
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Declaration of Sentiments.” Seneca Falls Conference. Last modified 1848. Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-ofsentiments.htm.
Questions:
1. Why did the women at Seneca Falls choose to copy the Declaration of Independence?
2. What were three grievances that stood out to you?
3. Are you surprised by any of the grievances?
We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed [supplied] by their Creator with certain inalienable [absolute] rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted [beginning], deriving [taking] their just [fair] powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence [wisdom], indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient [momentary] causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing [putting an end to] the forms to which they are accustomed [used to]. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations [to seize authority wrongfully], pursuing invariably the same object, evinces [reveal] a design to reduce them under absolute despotism [dictatorship], it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations [to seize authority wrongfully] on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable [absolute] right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men - both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity [excluded from punishment], provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master - the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement [punishment].
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration [small payment].
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate [lower ranking] position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
He has created a false public sentiment [sadness], by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies [wrongdoing] which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.
He has usurped the prerogative [right] of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently [dishonestly] deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception [incorrect opinion], misrepresentation [misleading], and ridicule [scorn/taunts]; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.
Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration.
Lucretia Mott Harriet Cady Eaton Margaret Pryor Elizabeth Cady Stanton Eunice Newton Foote Mary Ann M'Clintock Margaret Schooley Martha C. Wright Jane C. Hunt Amy Post Catharine F. Stebbins Mary Ann Frink Lydia Mount Delia Mathews Catharine C. Paine Elizabeth W. M'Clintock Malvina Seymour Phebe Mosher Catharine Shaw Deborah Scott Sarah Hallowell Mary M'Clintock Mary Gilbert Sophrone Taylor Cynthia Davis Hannah Plant Lucy Jones Sarah Whitney Mary H. Hallowell Elizabeth Conklin Sally Pitcher Mary Conklin Susan Quinn Mary S. Mirror Phebe King Julia Ann Drake Charlotte Woodward Martha Underhill Dorothy Mathews Eunice Barker Sarah R. Woods Lydia Gild Sarah Hoffman Elizabeth Leslie Martha Ridley Rachel D. Bonnel Betsey Tewksbury Rhoda Palmer Margaret Jenkins Cynthia Fuller Mary Martin P. A. Culvert Susan R. Doty Rebecca Race Sarah A. Mosher Mary E. Vail Lucy Spalding Lavinia Latham Sarah Smith Eliza Martin Maria E. Wilbur Elizabeth D. Smith Caroline Barker Ann Porter Experience Gibbs Antoinette E. Segur Hannah J. Latham Sarah Sisson
The following are the names of the gentlemen present in favor of the movement:
Richard P. Hunt Samuel D. Tillman Justin Williams Elisha Foote Frederick Douglass Henry Seymour Henry W. Seymour David Spalding William G. Barker Elias J. Doty John Jones William S. Dell James Mott William Burroughs Robert Smallbridge Jacob Mathews Charles L. Hoskins Thomas M'Clintock Saron Phillips Jacob P. Chamberlain Jonathan Metcalf Nathan J. Milliken S.E. Woodworth Edward F. Underhill George W. Pryor Joel D. Bunker Isaac Van Tassel Thomas Dell E. W. Capron Stephen Shear Henry Hatley Azaliah Schooley
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. “Declaration of Sentiments.” Seneca Falls Conference. Last modified 1848. Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/declaration-ofsentiments.htm.
Questions:
1. Why did the women at Seneca Falls choose to copy the Declaration of Independence?
2. What were three grievances that stood out to you?
3. Are you surprised by any of the grievances?
Remedial Herstory Editors. "22. 1700-1850 THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND WOMEN." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.
Primary AUTHOR: |
Kelsie Brook Eckert
|
Primary Reviewer: |
Jacqui Nelson
|
Consulting Team |
Editors |
|
Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant Professor of History at Maryville College. Chloe Gardner, Consultant PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University Jacqui Nelson, Consultant Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University |
Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy ReviewersAncient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman Professor of History at Colorado State University Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon Professor of History at Wilson College Sarah Stone PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Medieval: Dr. Katherine Koh Professor of History at La Sierra University Dr. Jonathan Couser Professor of History at Plymouth State University Dr. Shahla Haeri Professor of History at Boston University Lauren Cole PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University |
Survey's on womens World History
In this landmark study, Shahla Haeri offers the extraordinary biographies of several Muslim women rulers and leaders who reached the apex of political systems of their times.
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The history of the world is the history of great women, their names should be shouted from the rooftops and that is exactly what Jenni Murray is here to do.
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Recording the important milestones in the birth of the modern feminist movement and the rise of women into greater social, economic, and political power, Miles takes us through through a colorful pageant of astonishing women
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Jenni Murray presents the history of Britain as you’ve never seen it before, through the lives of twenty-one women who refused to succumb to the established laws of society, whose lives embodied hope and change, and who still have the power to inspire us today..
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Meet the unsung sheroes of history: the diverse, defiant and daring (wo)men who changed the rules, and their identities, to get sh*t done.
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Beginning in seventh-century Mecca and Medina, A History of Islam in 21 Women takes us around the globe, through eleventh-century Yemen and Khorasan, and into sixteenth-century Spain, Istanbul and India. From there to nineteenth-century Persia and the African savannah, to twentieth-century Russia, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq, before reaching present day London.
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A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women’s health—from the earliest medical ideas about women’s illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases—brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative.
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Pre-History (3,300,000-3000 BCE)
According to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, men and women lived together peacefully before recorded history. Society was centered around women, with their mysterious life-giving powers, and they were honored as incarnations and priestesses of the Great Goddess. Then a transformation occurred, and men thereafter dominated society.
Among surviving Greek tragedies only Euripides' Trojan Women shows us the extinction of a whole city, an entire people. Despite its grim theme, or more likely because of the centrality of that theme to the deepest fears of our own age, this is one of the relatively few Greek tragedies that regularly finds its way to the stage. The theme is really a double one: the suffering of the victims of war, exemplified by the woman who survive the fall of Troy, and the degradation of the victors, shown by the Greeks' reckless and ultimately self-destructive behavior.
Women in Prehistory challenges and undertakes an examination of the archaeological record informed by insights into the cultural construction of gender that have emerged from scholarship in history, anthropology, biology, and related disciplines.
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Lucy is a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton who has become the spokeswoman for human evolution. She is perhaps the best known and most studied fossil hominid of the twentieth century, the benchmark by which other discoveries of human ancestors are judged.”–From Lucy’s Legacy
Women, Gender and Identity in Third Intermediate Period Egypt clarifies the role of women in Egyptian society during the first millennium BCE, allowing for more nuanced discussions of women in the Third Intermediate Period. It is an intensive study of a corpus that is both geographically and temporally localized around the city of Thebes, which was the cultural and religious centre of Egypt during this period and home to a major national necropolis.
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The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past.
Women of Babylon is a much-needed historical/art historical study that investigates the concepts of femininity which prevailed in Assyro-Babylonian society. Zainab Bahrani's detailed analysis of how the culture of ancient Mesopotamia defined sexuality and gender roles both in, and through, representation is enhanced by a rich selection of visual material extending from 6500 BC - 1891 AD. Professor Bahrani also investigates the ways in which women of the ancient Near East have been perceived in classical scholarship up to the nineteenth century.
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Ancient History (3000 BC-500 AD)
Historians Helen Bond and Joan Taylor explore the way in which Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary, Martha and a whole host of other women - named and unnamed - have been remembered by posterity, noting how many were silenced, tamed or slurred by innuendo - though occasionally they get to slay dragons.
Hatshepsut successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt's most prolific building periods. Scholars have long speculated as to why her monuments were destroyed within a few decades of her death, all but erasing evidence of her unprecedented rule. Constructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power - and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.
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Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities.
This first comprehensive work on women in pre-Columbian American cultures describes gender roles and relationships in North, Central, and South America from 12,000 B.C. to the A.D. 1500s. Utilizing many key archaeological works, Karen Olsen Bruhns and Karen E. Stothert redress some of the long-standing male bias in writing about ancient Native American lifeways.
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This riveting narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra--women who ruled with real power--and shines a piercing light on our own perceptions of women in power today.
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middle ages (500-1500 AD)
A history of peasants in the Middle Ages, the story takes the listener into the life of Marion, the carpenter's wife, and her extended family as they struggle to survive through hardship, featuring a year in their lives at the mercy of the weather and the Lord of the Manor.
This important study provides the only comprehensive survey of Chinese women during the early medieval period of disunion, which lasted from the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty in 220 AD to the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in 581 AD, also known as the Six Dynasties. Bret Hinsch offers rich descriptions of the most important aspects of female life in this era, including family and marriage, motherhood, political power, work, inheritance, education, and religious roles.
This critical anthology presents the poems of more than 200 Arabic women poets active from the 600s through the 1400s CE. It marks the first appearance in English translation for many of these poems. The volume includes biographical information about the poets, as well as an analysis of the development of women’s poetry in classical Arabic literature that places the women and the poems within their cultural context.
This book presents a synthetic history of the family--the most basic building block of medieval Jewish communities--in Germany and northern France during the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children, it also advances recent efforts to write a comparative Jewish-Christian social history.
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Medieval history is often written as a series of battles and territorial shifts. But the essential contributions of women during this period have been too often relegated to the dustbin of history. In Women in the Middle Ages, Frances and Joseph Gies reclaim this lost history, in a lively historical survey that charts the evolution of women’s roles throughout the period and profiles eight individual women in depth.
These pages capture a thousand years of medieval women's visionary writing, from late antiquity to the 15th century. Written by hermits, recluses, wives, mothers, wandering teachers, founders of religious communities, and reformers, the selections reveal how medieval women felt about their lives, the kind of education they received, how they perceived the religion of their time, and why ascetic life attracted them.
Berenice II (c. 264-221 BCE), daughter of King Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes, came to embody all the key religious, political, and artistic ideals of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Though she arrived there nearly friendless, with the taint of murder around her, she became one of the most accomplished and powerful of the Macedonian queens descended from the successors of Alexander the Great.
For history and biography lovers, the 15th-century life and travels of the extraordinary Margery Kempe, who left her family to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
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The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but.
A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from deep in the countryside of eastern Japan to the capital. Forty years later, with the long account of that journey as a foundation, the mature woman skillfully created an autobiography that incorporates many moments of heightened awareness from her long life. Married at age thirty-three, she identified herself as a reader and writer more than as a wife and mother; enthralled by fiction, she bore witness to the dangers of romantic fantasy as well as the enduring consolation of self-expression.
In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives and the cases of these so-called witches, placing them in the historical context of 15th-century England, a setting rife with political upheaval and war. In a time when the line between science and magic was blurred, these trials offer tantalizing insight into how malicious magic would be used and would later cause such mass hysteria in centuries to come.
Today, the name of Marie, who became countess of Champagne, is associated with the medieval courts of love, and she is recognized as one of the greatest literary patrons of her day. As the crusades tore her life apart, she ruled over one of the largest domains in France for almost two decades. During that time, and well aware of the disadvantage of being a woman, she was compelled to defend her rights and those of her children--even to the point of going to war against her half-brother, Philip Augustus.
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early modern (1500-1800 ad)
An important selection from the largely unknown writings of women philosophers of the early modern period. Each selection is prefaced by a headnote giving a biographical account of its author and setting the piece in historical context. Atherton’s Introduction provides a solid framework for assessing these works and their place in modern philosophy.
Women and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia draws on recent research to underscore the various ways Iberian women influenced and contributed to their communities, engaging with a broader academic discussion of women’s agency and cultural impact in the Iberian Peninsula. By focusing on women from across the socioeconomic and religious spectrum—elite, bourgeois, and peasant Christian women, Jewish, Muslim, converso, and Morisco women, and married, widowed, and single women—this volume highlights the diversity of women’s experiences, examining women’s social, economic, political, and religious ties to their families and communities in both urban and rural environments.
In Engendering Islands Ashley M. Williard argues that early Caribbean reconstructions of masculinity and femininity sustained occupation, slavery, and nascent ideas of race. In the face of historical silences, Williard’s close readings of archival and narrative texts reveals the words, images, and perspectives that reflected and produced new ideas of human difference. Juridical, religious, and medical discourses expose the interdependence of multiple conditions—male and female, enslaved and free, Black and white, Indigenous and displaced, normative and disabled—in the islands claimed for the French Crown.
Exploring the works of key women writers within their cultural, artistic and socio-political contexts, this book considers changes in the perception of women in early modern China. The sixteenth century brought rapid developments in technology, commerce and the publishing industry that saw women emerging in new roles as both consumers and producers of culture.
An innovative and valuable resource for understanding women's roles in changing societies, this book brings together the history of Africa, the Atlantic and gender before the 20th century. It explores trade, slavery and migrationin the context of the Euro-African encounter.
In June 1846 Susan Shelby Magoffin, eighteen years old and a bride of less than eight months, set out with her husband, a veteran Santa Fe trader, on a trek from Independence, Missouri, through New Mexico and south to Chihuahua. Her travel journal was written at a crucial time, when the Mexican War was beginning and New Mexico was occupied by Stephen Watts Kearny and the Army of the West.
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enlightenment
This book presents the stories of six intrepid Frenchwomen of science in the Enlightenment whose accomplishments—though celebrated in their lifetimes--have been generally omitted from subsequent studies of their period: mathematician and philosopher Elisabeth Ferrand, astronomer Nicole Reine Lepaute, field naturalist Jeanne Barret, garden botanist and illustrator Madeleine Françoise Basseporte, anatomist and inventor Marie-Marguerite Biheron, and chemist Geneviève d’Arconville. By adjusting our lens, we can find them.
In this book, musicologist and historical keyboardist Rebecca Cypess offers a broad overview of musical salons between 1760 and 1800, placing the figure of the salonnière at its center. Cypess then presents a series of in-depth case studies that meet the salonnière on her own terms. Women such as Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy in Paris, Marianna Martines in Vienna, Sara Levy in Berlin, Angelica Kauffman in Rome, and Elizabeth Graeme in Philadelphia come to life in multidimensional ways. Crucially, Cypess uses performance as a tool for research, and her interpretations draw on her experience with the instruments and performance practices used in eighteenth-century salons. In this accessible, interdisciplinary book, Cypess explores women’s agency and authorship, reason and sentiment, and the roles of performing, collecting, listening, and conversing in the formation of eighteenth-century musical life.
During the long eighteenth century, ideas of society and of social progress were first fully investigated. These investigations took place in the contexts of economic, theological, historical and literary writings which paid unprecedented attention to the place of women. Combining intellectual history with literary criticism, Karen O'Brien examines the central importance to the British Enlightenment both of women writers and of women as a subject of enquiry.
Through the Reading Glass explores the practices and protocols that surrounded women’s reading in eighteenth-century France. Looking at texts as various as fairy tales, memoirs, historical romances, short stories, love letters, novels, and the pages of the new female periodical press, Suellen Diaconoff shows how a reading culture, one in which books, sex, and acts of reading were richly and evocatively intertwined, was constructed for and by women.
This recovery of British women’s performative and written roles as speakers, spectators, authors, and readers in diverse venues counters the traditional masculine model of European Enlightenment rhetoric. Davis broadens women’s Enlightenment rhetorics to include highly public venues such as theaters, clubs, salons, and debating societies, as well as the mediated sites of the periodical essay, the treatise on rhetorical theory, and women’s written proposals, plans, defenses and arguments for education. Through these sites, women’s rhetorical postures diverged from patriarchal prescriptions rather to deliver protofeminist persuasive performances of wit, virtue, and emotion.
The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men.
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Prehistory (3,300,000-3000 BC)
They live in caves and huddle around fires, but they are fully human, though they belong to our most ancient history. Risa the Arbiter has now spent years in her role and is known and respected throughout the area. Her children are half-grown and exhibiting traits of independence, both of thought and action. Her tribe has grown along with her and now needs more than one Arbiter can provide alone. Risa struggles with how best to organize her duties and establishes acolytes in each village to screen petitioners.
Ancient HISTORY (3000 BC - 500 AD)
The men of Athens gather to determine the truth. Meanwhile, the women of the city, who have no vote, are gathering in the shadows. The women know truth is a slippery thing in the hands of men. There are two sides to every story, and theirs has gone unheard. Until now.
Timely, unflinching, and transportive, Laura Shepperson’s Phaedra carves open long-accepted wounds to give voice to one of the most maligned figures of mythology and offers a stunning story of how truth bends under the weight of patriarchy but can be broken open by the force of one woman’s bravery. |
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Middle ages (500-1500 ad)
The earl of Trent's Norman widow, Blanche, and her English steward, Miles Edwulfson, take possession of Blanche's estates, hoping to live a life of peace and quiet. However, they run afoul of a baron named Aimerie, who is building an illegal castle and taxing the surrounding manors--including Blanche's--to pay for it. Aimerie has ambitions that go far beyond this castle, to the heart of the English throne, and he won't let anyone stand in his way. What's more, Aimerie's hot-headed son, Ernoul, lusts after Blanche and wants to make her his wife. When Blanche and Miles refuse to pay Aimerie's taxes, Aimerie vows to crush them.
Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan -- or may destroy it. She is torn from her home and what is left of her family, but finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems
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For all fifteen years of her life, Pauline de Pamiers has witnessed an attack on her family, friends, and faith. It’s the early thirteenth century and the Pope and King of France are conducting a Crusade against the Cathars; the only crusade on European soil and against another Christian sect. As a member of this sect in France that sits outside the dominant Roman Church, Pauline is an outsider: young, but independent and bold.
11th century North Africa. In an attempt to change her destiny, love-struck Zaynab makes a false prophecy: that she is destined to marry a man who will create an empire. Although her plan backfires, Zaynab’s intelligence, beauty and ambition leads to four marriages, each lifting her status higher.
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Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in Europe, is crowned queen of England beside her young husband Henry II. While Henry battles their enemies and lays his plans, Eleanor is an adept acting ruler and mother to their growing brood of children. But she yearns for more than this - if only Henry would listen.
England, 1364: When married off at aged twelve to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it won’t matter what she says or does, God is not on her side—or any poor woman’s for that matter. But then again, Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars, making her both a lover and a fighter.
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Early modern (1500-1800 ad)
Runner-up for the National Book Award for Children's Literature in 1969, Constance is a classic of historical young adult fiction, recounting the daily life, hardships, romances, and marriage of a young girl during the early years of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth.
Sirma used to be happy. She had a home, loving parents, and wonderful friends. But her quiet mountain village changed forever when she lost her two best friends to a gang of outlaws. The village elders did nothing, fearing the wrath of Hamza Bei – the head outlaw in the area. Not long after, the same outlaws returned and devastated her village. Sirma has had enough. On St. George’s day, she disguised herself as a man and lead her own mountain gang dedicated to protecting the mountain villages and searching for Hamza Bei to put a stop to his tyranny. But the path she has chosen is harsh and merciless. Clashing with gangs of outlaws, surviving the elements in the mountain wilderness, and keeping her men from becoming the scoundrels they’ve sworn to fight are just a few of the challenges. But the biggest issue was the fact that her comrades had no idea they were led by a woman.
The author of The Soong Dynasty gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.
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Enlightenment
Having easily mastered multiple languages and advanced calculus as a child, there is one problem Maria can’t crack. No doubt her talents are God-given, but could God also be calling her to abandon her gifts for a humble, but perhaps more noble, cause? Raised to be an obedient 18th-century woman—albeit the first woman to write a mathematics textbook—Maria questions her responsibility to her ever-growing family versus her need to follow her own passion and inner voice.
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bibliography
Mark, Harrison W. "Women's March on Versailles." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified June 28, 2022. https://www.worldhistory.org/Women's_March_on_Versailles/.
McDonald, Hollie, "Social Politics of Seventeenth Century London Coffee Houses: An Exploration of Class and Gender" (2013). Honors Projects. 208. http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects/208.
Miles, Rosalind. Women’s History of the Modern World: how radicals, rebels, and every woman revolutionized the last 200 years (New York : William Morrow, 2021).
Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
McDonald, Hollie, "Social Politics of Seventeenth Century London Coffee Houses: An Exploration of Class and Gender" (2013). Honors Projects. 208. http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/honorsprojects/208.
Miles, Rosalind. Women’s History of the Modern World: how radicals, rebels, and every woman revolutionized the last 200 years (New York : William Morrow, 2021).
Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
