Women, Gender and Enlightenment

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

   PDF

2. Women, Men, Enlightenment

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Sexual Distinctions and Prescriptions

      1. Introduction

         • Karen O’Brien

         Pages 3-7

      2. Between the Savage and the Civil: Dr John Gregory’s Natural History of Femininity

         • Mary Catherine Moran

         Pages 8-29

      3. Feminists versus Gallants: Manners and Morals in Enlightenment Britain

         • Barbara Taylor

         Pages 30-52

      4. ‘Ambiguous Beings’: Marginality, Melancholy, and the <i>Femme Savante</i>

         • Anne C. Vila

         Pages 53-69

   3. Gender, Race, and The Progress Of Civilization

      1. Introduction

         • Jane Rendall

         Pages 70-74

      2. ‘Race’, Women and Progress in the Scottish Enlightenment

         • Silvia Sebastiani

         Pages 75-96

      3. No Woman Is an Island: The Female Figure in French Enlightenment Anthropology

         • Jenny Mander

         Pages 97-116

      4. Civilization, Patriotism and Enlightened Histories of Woman

         • Sylvana Tomaselli

         Pages 117-135

   4. Sex and Sensibility

      1. Introduction

         • Dror Wahrman

         Pages 136-139

      2. Advice and Enlightenment: Mary Wollstonecraft and Sex Education

         • Vivien Jones

         Pages 140-155

      3. Tears and the Man

         • Philip Carte

         Pages 156-173

      4. Reading Rousseau’s Sexuality

         • Robin Howells

         Pages 174-188

   5. Gender and The Reasoning Mind

      1. Introduction

         • Mónica Bolufer Peruga

         Pages 189-194

      2. <i>L’ortografe des dames</i>: Gender and Language in the Old Regime

         • Dena Goodman

         Pages 195-223

      3. ‘To think, to compare, to combine, to methodise’: Girls’ Education in Enlightenment Britain

         • Michèle Cohen

         Pages 224-242

      4. Discourses of Female Education in the Writings of Eighteenth-Century French Women

         • Jean Bloch

         Pages 243-258

   6. Women Intellectuals in The Enlightene Republic of Letters

      1. Introduction

         • Carla Hesse

         Pages 259-264

      2. Women on the Verge of Science: Aristocratic Women and Knowledge in Early Eighteenth-Century Italy

         • Paula Findlen

         Pages 265-287

Did women have an Enlightenment? This path-breaking volume of interdisciplinary essays by forty leading scholars provides a detailed picture of the controversial, innovative role played by women and gender issues in the age of light.

• biography
• Britain
• empire
• England
• enlightenment
• equality
• Europe
• gender
• history
• liberty
• nation
• revolution
• Rousseau
• Seneca
• women

'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 historicalscholarship.' - 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

• Indiana University, USA

  Sarah Knott

• University of East London, England

  Barbara Taylor

JEAN BLOCH Senior Lecturer in French, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK PHILIP CARTER Publication Editor, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ARIANNE CHERNOCK Assistant Professor of Writing, George Washington University, USA ANNA CLARK Professor of History, University of Minnesota, USA NORMA CLARKE Lecturer in English, Kingston University, UK MICHELE COHEN Professor in Humanities, Richmond, the American International University in London, UK SUZANNE DESAN Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA ELIZABETH EGER Lecturer in English, King's College, London, UK PAULA FINDLEN Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History, Stanford University, UK CAROLINE FRANKLIN Reader in English, University of Wales, UK DENA GOODMAN Professor of History and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, USA FELICIA GORDON Senior Research Associate, Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, UK HARRIET GUEST Professor, Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, USA CARLA HESSE Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley, USA ROBIN HOWELLS Professor of French, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK LYNN HUNT Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, UCLA, UK SARAH HUTTON Professor of Early Modern Studies, Middlesex University, UK VIVIEN JONES Professor of Eighteenth-Century Gender and Culture, School of English, Leeds University, UK PHYLLIS MACK Lecturer in History and Women's Studies, Rutgers University, USA JENNY MANDER Senior Lecturer, Department of French, University of Cambridge, UK MARY CATHERINE MORAN Lecturer, Columbia University, USA KAREN O'BRIEN Professor of English Literature, University of Warwick, UK CLARISSA CAMPBELL ORR Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Polytechnic University, UK RUTH PERRY Professor of Literature, MIT, USA MONICA BOLUFER PERUGA Cultural Historian JANE RENDALL Honorary Fellow, History Department, University of York, UK JOHN ROBERTSON Lecturer in History, Oxford University, UK SILVIA SEBASTIANI Research Fellow, Centro di Studi sul Pensiero Politico, Turin, ITALY KATE SOPER Professor of Philosophy, London Metropolitan University SIEP STUURMAN Professor of European History, Erasmus University, THE NETHERLANDS SYLVANA TOMASELLI Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, UK ANNE C. VILA Lecturer in French, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA DROR WAHRAMN Lecturer in British, European and Cultural History, Indiana University, USA GINA LURIA WALKER Chair, Department of Social Sciences, new School University, New York, USA DANIEL E. WHITE Assistant Professor of English, University of Toronto, CANADA ROSEMARIE ZAGARRI Professor of History, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

Policies and ethics