The Enlightenment brought a time when there was no longer unquestioning religious belief in a God who still controlled the universe. Science and philosophy looked for other answers to the questions of existence. And some began to examine more closely the question of equality between the sexes.
De Jaucourt and the French Encyclopedie
In his essay ‘Woman’, in the French Encyclopedie, Volume V1, 1756, translated by L Walsh in 1765, de Jaucourt reiterates the perceived notion that authority unquestionably belongs to the male. That when a woman enters the home of her own free will she is under the rule of her husband. Being a more enlightened male, however, de Jaucourt makes the startling statement that, “man does not always possess greater physical strength, wisdom, intellect or strength to act than woman.”
De Jaucourt agrees that a relationship usually needs a ruler, or head, and that men are normally more capable of effectively managing private business matters. But he also acknowledges that the authority of a woman over her husband in certain cases such as the monarchy, is compatible with the nature of marital relationships.
French Philosopher Desmahis
In the same Encyclopedie, another philosopher, Desmahis, also appreciates woman’s unique qualities. Nevertheless, he believes their educational needs are different, that the more general a woman’s education is, the worse it is. He is of the opinion that, “We should be surprised that such uncultivated minds are capable of so much virtue and that vice does not germinate in them more frequently.”
There does not seem to be quite such an overriding view among eighteenth century philosophers that woman is merely either a sinner or a saint, although there is still a division between what is expected of either sex.
Mary Wollstonecraft and the Vindications of the Rights of Women
Some women also questioned their role in society and in particular their lack of educational opportunities in comparison to men. Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Vindications of the Rights of Women in 1792, trying to redress some of the balance between men and women. Wollstonecraft discusses eighteenth century notions of the female character, the relations between the sexes and between sexuality, morality and politics.
In answer to the philosophical writings on women in the Encyclopedie and following the success of the French Revolution with its cries for liberty, equality and fraternity, Wollstonecraft tries to destroy some of the prevailing attitude that separated the morality of men and women and that assigned reason to men and sentiment to women.
Wollstonecraft cites Rousseau’s Emile as perpetrating the different moral codes between men and women. She is concerned with replacing the gendered morality with one that is human based, regardless of sex. One of her difficulties is that she agrees the prevailing view of men having reason and women having sentiment is true in contemporary women, but that this is due to the tyranny of men.
In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Chapter II, Wollstonecraft writes that, “The most perfect education... is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart”. She goes on to suggest that only those whose virtue results from their own reason should be called virtuous. It is this opportunity she wishes to see extended to women through education.
Sir Joshua Reynolds and Women in Art
At the same time as such philosophical debates were taking place, artists of the age, such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous portrait artist and first president of the Royal Academy, celebrated the idea of woman as the centrepiece of domesticity. However, it was generally the more aristocratic woman he depicted, as in his painting of The Countess Spencer with her Daughter.
As was often the case, life for better off women was easier in some ways, even in the Enlightenment period. As long as she was willing to conform to the ideal of wife and mother, a woman was rewarded for her saintliness by being provided for in the manner which befitted her husband. Even if it still meant she had very few rights of her own.
Sources:
Simon Eliot and Keith Whitlock (eds.), The Enlightenment, Texts 1, Open University: Milton Keynes, 1992
Andrew Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature (rvsd.), Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1996
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