Women in the Enlightenment

The title page of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

This is the title page of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in 1792. Wollstonecraft was a prolific English writer and powerful advocate for women’s rights, as the title of this book suggests. Chapter XII, titled “On National Education,” is the most pertinent section of this book to this exhibit. This document is incredibly useful for evaluating the state of education—in particular women’s education—at the end of the 18^th In this chapter, Wollstonecraft identifies several vices resulting from purely public and purely private education as well as from educating members of either sex in isolation of the other. Her reasons for this are laid out in a powerful statement: “If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship, nor will women ever fulfill the peculiar duties of their sex, till they become enlightened citizens, till they become free by being enabled to earn their own subsistence, independent of men” (Wollstonecraft, “On National Education”). The language Wollstonecraft uses is clearly directed towards a male audience, as she speaks of women failing to fulfill the “duties of their sex.” These duties have been defined by men, and it would concern primarily men if women were not fulfilling their “wifely duties.” Wollstonecraft argues for women to be educated in the same manner as and together with men, evidence that this was surely not happening at this time. The entire chapter lays out well-structured defenses for equality between men and women in education, proving that while such a thing did not exist, at least the idea of it was circulating.

A 19th century painting of a French salon.

This painting depicts a group of people listening to a reading of Voltaire’s L’Orphelin de la Chine, a play published in 1755. This gathering is a meeting of a salon, a private group of individuals who would meet to read and discuss various works. The topics would be chosen by the salonnière, the woman who hosted the meeting in her own home (Wiesner-Hanks 369-70). The salonnière held the power to select which guests would be invited, but she held no formal position or power in French society. Despite their role in the public sphere of intellectual discourse, “no woman was elected to the Académie Française until 1979” (Wiesner-Hanks 370). As we can see from Wollstonecraft’s work, women and men were not being educated equally, but how exactly were women viewed during the Enlightenment? In her article “Enlightenment and the Uses of Women,” Barbara Taylor identifies several historians whose views on the subject of women in the Enlightenment she opposes. Catherine Belsey’s view seems to be a good summary. She argues that the Enlightenment attempted to “legitimize the subordination of […] women” (Taylor 2). Belsey and historians that share her views cite various works of Enlightenment thinkers that associate women with the vice of luxury, which appears to have been a popular claim at the time. While it is undoubtedly true that there were many sexist sentiments written during the Enlightenment, it is important to recognize that comments of that sort were circulating in various works in times before and after the Enlightenment as well. Taylor does not argue that such claims do not exist, but rather that alongside them emerge during the Enlightenment works that highlight the virtues of women, as their authors saw them. This often included their ability to make men gentler and less barbaric, and several authors argued that giving women more license in society is what separated civilized nations from the barbaric ones (Taylor 5-6). While those views are clearly Eurocentric, and still wholly concerned with how women can benefit men, the sentiment of advocating for women’s rights remains. Women were surely not considered equal to men, even by proponents of women’s rights at the time, but each sex had their own separate virtues and vices. As Wollstonecraft alluded in her text discussed above, each sex needed the other for European society to function as it existed.