Did women have an Enlightenment? Historians have long excluded women from the Enlightenment orbit. But images of 'Woman' loomed large in Enlightenment thought, and women themselves - as scientists and salonnières, bluestockings and governesses, polemicists and novelists - contributed much to enlightened intellectual culture. From Edinburgh to Naples, from Paris to Philadelphia, innovative minds of both sexes challenged conventional assumptions about female nature and entitlements, and imagined new modes of relating between the sexes. Viewpoints competed, with feminists utilizing enlightened principles to argue for women's rights while defenders of masculine privilege developed new rationales for male dominance grounded in Enlightenment science. This path-breaking volume of interdisciplinary essays by forty leading scholars provides a detailed picture of the creative, controversial role played by women and gender issues in the age of light.
'Women, Gender, and Enlightenment is one of those rare collections that has it all. Combining searching historiographical essays with scholarly discussions of specific authors, this volume has an exceptionally wide reach, covering questions of sex, gender and politics as they emerged in Enlightenment France, England, Spain, Italy, Scotland and the American Colonies. But thanks to the authoritative introductions to each section and to the two concluding essays that take stock of the entire volume, Women, Gender, and Enlightenment does not feel uneven or miscellaneous but is instead animated by a spirit of collaboration. A marvellous and compelling book.' - Claudia L Johnson, author of Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender and Sentimentality in the 1790s
'The most comprehensive, diverse and stimulating account of women and gender in any era: an astonishing collective achievement'. - John Brewer, author of The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century
'The cumulative effect of this volume is stunning, in part because the repetitions and contradictions do at least highlight the different ways in which events, ideas and personalities can be interpreted, depending on the lens applied. A respect for multiple perspectives, an unwillingness to scorn the past, an interest in the many routes by which one can arrive at a given place - all these things make this volume a true work of collaboration and a landmark contribution to historical scholarship.' - TLS
'This book is a marvellous treasure house of ideas and scholarship: the editors have produced one of the most significant academic works of the past 30 years...The particular significance of Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor's collection is that it makes us think, in the most detailed and precise way, about an issue that in the view of many of us in the social sciences and the humanities is of central importance. The question is that of the relationship of gender to knowledge...This volume, through placing women at the heart of Enlightenment debates about social change, allows us to see again that Kant and Descartes also left the beaten path, and that the true spirit of the Enlightenment was not synonymous with those detailed questions of social organisation with which it became embroiled in the 19th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries, women dared to know long before Kant had thought of the phrase. That daring is now given its voice in this brilliant collection.' - Mary Evans, THES
'The sheer size of Women, Gender and Enlightenment, with its thirty-five essays, several section introductions and biographies indicates not only the variety of the subject matter, but also the variety of approaches to this material.' - Corinna Wagner, History of Political Thought
'An imposing achievement…Barbara Taylor and Sarah Knott have organized and guided to completion an exceptionally timely book. More than any other volume I know, Women, Gender and Enlightenment registers the force of the impact that feminist scholarship has had, and will continue to have, on the study of the Enlightenment and on the historical discipline as a whole. Aside from its huge importance for Enlightenment studies, the volume both marks the accomplishments of the historical study of women and gender and points us in new directions. It may also prove to be a pivotal moment in the development of feminism itself.' - Anthony LaVopa, Journal of Modern History
'While dozens of books have anticipated pieces of the arguments made in this volume, never has so extensive an attempt been made to pull them together into a cohesive whole. The volume can be seen not only as a step towards a new synthesis but as the culmination of several decades of work in both Enlightenment studies and women's studies.' - Ruth H. Bloch, Modern Intellectual History
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
General Introduction
PART I: WOMEN, MEN, ENLIGHTENMENT
SEXUAL DISTINCTIONS AND PRESCRIPTIONS
Introduction; K.O'Brien
Between the Savage and the Civil: Dr John Gregory's Natural History of Femininity; M.C.Moran
Feminists versus Gallants: Sexual Manners and Morals in Enlightenment Britain; B.Taylor
"Ambiguous Beings": Marginality, Melancholy, and the Femme Savante; A.Vila
GENDER, RACE AND THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION
Introduction; J.Rendall
Race, Women, and Progress in the Late Scottish Enlightenment; S.Sebastiani
No Woman is an Island: the Female Figure in French Enlightenment Anthropology; J.Mander
Civilisation, Patriotism, and Enlightened Histories of Woman; S.Tomaselli
SEX AND SENSIBILITY
Introduction; D.Wahrman
Advice and Enlightenment: Mary Wollstonecraft and Sex Education; V.Jones
Tears and the Man; P.Carter
Reading Rousseau's Sexuality; R.Howells
GENDER AND THE REASONING MIND
Introduction; M.B.Peruga
L'Ortografe des Dames: Gender and Language in the Old Regime; D.Goodman
"To think, to compare, to combine, to methodise": Girls' Education in Enlightenment Britain; M.Cohen
Discourses of Female Education in the Writings of Eighteenth-Century French Women; J.Bloch
WOMEN INTELLECTUALS IN THE ENLIGHTENED REPUBLIC OF LETTERS
Introduction; C.Hesse
Women on the Verge of Science: Aristocratic Women and Knowledge in Early Eighteenth-Century Italy; P.Findlen
'The noblest commerce of mankind': Conversation and Community in the Bluestocking Circle; E.Eger
Aristocratic Feminism, the Learned Governess, and the Republic of Letters; C.C.Orr
"Women that would plague me with rational conversation": Aspiring Women and Scottish Whigs, c. 1790-1830; J.Rendall
PART II: FEMINISM, ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION
CHAMPIONING WOMEN: EARLY ENLIGHTENMENT FEMINISMS
Introduction; C.C.Orr
Mary Astell and Enlightenment; R.Perry
The Deconstruction of Gender: Seventeenth-century Feminism and Modern Equality; S.Stuurman
"Neither Male nor Female": Rational Equality in the Early Spanish Enlightenment; M.B.Peruga
FEMINISM AND ENLIGHTENED RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES
Introduction; B.Taylor
The Soul has No Sex: Feminism and Catholicism in Early Modern Europe; S.Stuurman
Religion, Feminism and the Problem of Agency: Reflections on Eighteenth-Century Quakerism; P.Mack
Bluestocking Fictions: Devotional Writings, Didactic Literature and the Imperative of Female Improvement; N.Clarke
"With Mrs Barbauld it is different": Dissenting Heritage and the Devotional Taste; D.White
Mary Hays (1759-1843): An Enlightened Quest; G.L.Walker
WOMEN, LIBERTY AND THE NATION
Introduction; H.Guest
Catharine Macaulay's Histories of England: A Female Perspective on the History of Liberty; K.O'Brien
Liberty, Equality and God: the Religious Roots of Catherine Macaulay's Feminism; S.Hutton
Romantic Patriotism as Feminist Critique of Empire: Helen Maria Williams, Sydney Owenson and Germaine de Staël; C.Franklin
WOMEN AND REVOLUTIONARY CITIZENSHIP: ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACIES?
Introduction; L.Hunt
Women in 18th Century British Politics; A.Clark
Extending the "Right of Election": Men's Arguments for Women's Political Representation in Late Enlightenment Britain; A.Chernock
Filles Publiques or Public Women: the Actress as Citizen; F.Gordon
The Politics of Intimacy: Marriage and Citizenship in the French Revolution; S.Desan
Benjamin Rush's Ferment: Enlightenment Medicine and Female Citizenship in Revolutionary America; S.Knott
Women's Rights in the Era before Seneca Falls; R.Zagarri
CONCLUSIONS
Women and Enlightenment: A Historiographical Conclusion; J.Robertson
Feminism and Enlightenment Legacies; K.Soper
Enlightenment Biographies
Index
BARBARA TAYLOR is Reader in History at the University of East London, UK, and author of Eve and the New Jerusalem (1983) and Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (2003). She was Director of the 'Feminism and Enlightenment' research project (1998-2001).
SARAH KNOTT is Assistant Professor in History at Indiana University, USA, and at work on a history of sensibility in revolutionary America. She was research fellow on the 'Feminism and Enlightenment' project.
Description
Did women have an Enlightenment? Historians have long excluded women from the Enlightenment orbit. But images of 'Woman' loomed large in Enlightenment thought, and women themselves - as scientists and salonnières, bluestockings and governesses, polemicists and novelists - contributed much to enlightened intellectual culture. From Edinburgh to Naples, from Paris to Philadelphia, innovative minds of both sexes challenged conventional assumptions about female nature and entitlements, and imagined new modes of relating between the sexes. Viewpoints competed, with feminists utilizing enlightened principles to argue for women's rights while defenders of masculine privilege developed new rationales for male dominance grounded in Enlightenment science. This path-breaking volume of interdisciplinary essays by forty leading scholars provides a detailed picture of the creative, controversial role played by women and gender issues in the age of light.
Reviews
'Women, Gender, and Enlightenment is one of those rare collections that has it all. Combining searching historiographical essays with scholarly discussions of specific authors, this volume has an exceptionally wide reach, covering questions of sex, gender and politics as they emerged in Enlightenment France, England, Spain, Italy, Scotland and the American Colonies. But thanks to the authoritative introductions to each section and to the two concluding essays that take stock of the entire volume, Women, Gender, and Enlightenment does not feel uneven or miscellaneous but is instead animated by a spirit of collaboration. A marvellous and compelling book.' - Claudia L Johnson, author of Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender and Sentimentality in the 1790s
'The most comprehensive, diverse and stimulating account of women and gender in any era: an astonishing collective achievement'. - John Brewer, author of The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century
'The cumulative effect of this volume is stunning, in part because the repetitions and contradictions do at least highlight the different ways in which events, ideas and personalities can be interpreted, depending on the lens applied. A respect for multiple perspectives, an unwillingness to scorn the past, an interest in the many routes by which one can arrive at a given place - all these things make this volume a true work of collaboration and a landmark contribution to historical scholarship.' - TLS
'This book is a marvellous treasure house of ideas and scholarship: the editors have produced one of the most significant academic works of the past 30 years...The particular significance of Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor's collection is that it makes us think, in the most detailed and precise way, about an issue that in the view of many of us in the social sciences and the humanities is of central importance. The question is that of the relationship of gender to knowledge...This volume, through placing women at the heart of Enlightenment debates about social change, allows us to see again that Kant and Descartes also left the beaten path, and that the true spirit of the Enlightenment was not synonymous with those detailed questions of social organisation with which it became embroiled in the 19th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries, women dared to know long before Kant had thought of the phrase. That daring is now given its voice in this brilliant collection.' - Mary Evans, THES
'The sheer size of Women, Gender and Enlightenment, with its thirty-five essays, several section introductions and biographies indicates not only the variety of the subject matter, but also the variety of approaches to this material.' - Corinna Wagner, History of Political Thought
'An imposing achievement…Barbara Taylor and Sarah Knott have organized and guided to completion an exceptionally timely book. More than any other volume I know, Women, Gender and Enlightenment registers the force of the impact that feminist scholarship has had, and will continue to have, on the study of the Enlightenment and on the historical discipline as a whole. Aside from its huge importance for Enlightenment studies, the volume both marks the accomplishments of the historical study of women and gender and points us in new directions. It may also prove to be a pivotal moment in the development of feminism itself.' - Anthony LaVopa, Journal of Modern History
'While dozens of books have anticipated pieces of the arguments made in this volume, never has so extensive an attempt been made to pull them together into a cohesive whole. The volume can be seen not only as a step towards a new synthesis but as the culmination of several decades of work in both Enlightenment studies and women's studies.' - Ruth H. Bloch, Modern Intellectual History
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
General Introduction
PART I: WOMEN, MEN, ENLIGHTENMENT
SEXUAL DISTINCTIONS AND PRESCRIPTIONS
Introduction; K.O'Brien
Between the Savage and the Civil: Dr John Gregory's Natural History of Femininity; M.C.Moran
Feminists versus Gallants: Sexual Manners and Morals in Enlightenment Britain; B.Taylor
"Ambiguous Beings": Marginality, Melancholy, and the Femme Savante; A.Vila
GENDER, RACE AND THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION
Introduction; J.Rendall
Race, Women, and Progress in the Late Scottish Enlightenment; S.Sebastiani
No Woman is an Island: the Female Figure in French Enlightenment Anthropology; J.Mander
Civilisation, Patriotism, and Enlightened Histories of Woman; S.Tomaselli
SEX AND SENSIBILITY
Introduction; D.Wahrman
Advice and Enlightenment: Mary Wollstonecraft and Sex Education; V.Jones
Tears and the Man; P.Carter
Reading Rousseau's Sexuality; R.Howells
GENDER AND THE REASONING MIND
Introduction; M.B.Peruga
L'Ortografe des Dames: Gender and Language in the Old Regime; D.Goodman
"To think, to compare, to combine, to methodise": Girls' Education in Enlightenment Britain; M.Cohen
Discourses of Female Education in the Writings of Eighteenth-Century French Women; J.Bloch
WOMEN INTELLECTUALS IN THE ENLIGHTENED REPUBLIC OF LETTERS
Introduction; C.Hesse
Women on the Verge of Science: Aristocratic Women and Knowledge in Early Eighteenth-Century Italy; P.Findlen
'The noblest commerce of mankind': Conversation and Community in the Bluestocking Circle; E.Eger
Aristocratic Feminism, the Learned Governess, and the Republic of Letters; C.C.Orr
"Women that would plague me with rational conversation": Aspiring Women and Scottish Whigs, c. 1790-1830; J.Rendall
PART II: FEMINISM, ENLIGHTENMENT AND REVOLUTION
CHAMPIONING WOMEN: EARLY ENLIGHTENMENT FEMINISMS
Introduction; C.C.Orr
Mary Astell and Enlightenment; R.Perry
The Deconstruction of Gender: Seventeenth-century Feminism and Modern Equality; S.Stuurman
"Neither Male nor Female": Rational Equality in the Early Spanish Enlightenment; M.B.Peruga
FEMINISM AND ENLIGHTENED RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES
Introduction; B.Taylor
The Soul has No Sex: Feminism and Catholicism in Early Modern Europe; S.Stuurman
Religion, Feminism and the Problem of Agency: Reflections on Eighteenth-Century Quakerism; P.Mack
Bluestocking Fictions: Devotional Writings, Didactic Literature and the Imperative of Female Improvement; N.Clarke
"With Mrs Barbauld it is different": Dissenting Heritage and the Devotional Taste; D.White
Mary Hays (1759-1843): An Enlightened Quest; G.L.Walker
WOMEN, LIBERTY AND THE NATION
Introduction; H.Guest
Catharine Macaulay's Histories of England: A Female Perspective on the History of Liberty; K.O'Brien
Liberty, Equality and God: the Religious Roots of Catherine Macaulay's Feminism; S.Hutton
Romantic Patriotism as Feminist Critique of Empire: Helen Maria Williams, Sydney Owenson and Germaine de Staël; C.Franklin
WOMEN AND REVOLUTIONARY CITIZENSHIP: ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACIES?
Introduction; L.Hunt
Women in 18th Century British Politics; A.Clark
Extending the "Right of Election": Men's Arguments for Women's Political Representation in Late Enlightenment Britain; A.Chernock
Filles Publiques or Public Women: the Actress as Citizen; F.Gordon
The Politics of Intimacy: Marriage and Citizenship in the French Revolution; S.Desan
Benjamin Rush's Ferment: Enlightenment Medicine and Female Citizenship in Revolutionary America; S.Knott
Women's Rights in the Era before Seneca Falls; R.Zagarri
CONCLUSIONS
Women and Enlightenment: A Historiographical Conclusion; J.Robertson
Feminism and Enlightenment Legacies; K.Soper
Enlightenment Biographies
Index
Authors
BARBARA TAYLOR is Reader in History at the University of East London, UK, and author of Eve and the New Jerusalem (1983) and Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (2003). She was Director of the 'Feminism and Enlightenment' research project (1998-2001).
SARAH KNOTT is Assistant Professor in History at Indiana University, USA, and at work on a history of sensibility in revolutionary America. She was research fellow on the 'Feminism and Enlightenment' project.
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