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4: The Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution

Women in the Enlightenment

The nature of humanity was not the only way that the Enlightenment challenged the existing ideas of the day. The Enlightenment enabled the questioning of the idea of “man” itself. The role of women in the Enlightenment is frequently overlooked. Women during this era were not considered of equal status to men, and much of their work and effort was suppressed. Salons, coffeehouses, debating societies, academic competitions and print all became avenues for women to socialize, learn and discuss enlightenment ideas. These avenues furthered their roles in society and created stepping stones for future progress.

As the Enlightenment came to advance ideas of liberty, progress, and tolerance, women's issues were of great importance to the period. For those women who were able to discuss and advance new ideas, discourses on religion, political and social equality, and sexuality became prominent topics in the salons, debating societies, and in print. While women in England and France gained significantly more freedom than their counterparts in other countries, the role of women in the Enlightenment was reserved for those of middle and upper-class families, able to access money to join societies and the education to participate in the debate. Therefore the role of women in the Enlightenment only represented a small class of society and not the entire female sex.

Salons and Coffee houses

Salons were a forum in which elite, well-educated women might continue their learning in a place of civil conversation while governing the political discourse and a place where people of all social orders could interact. In the 18th century, the salon was transformed from a venue of leisure into a place of enlightenment. In the salon, there was no class or education barrier to prevent attendees from participating in open discussion and the salon served as a matrix for Enlightenment ideals as a result. Within the hierarchy of the salons, women assumed the role of governance. Thus, allowing impactful, philosophic discourse to flourish. Consequently, with women at the helm, salons transitioned from an institution of recreation to an active agent within Enlightenment. Suzanne Necker, wife to King Louis XVI of France's finance minister, is an example of how the salon's topics are likely to have had a bearing on official government policy.   While the elite discussed Enlightenment ideas at various salons, coffeehouse served as venues for middle and working class women to participate in the discourse of the period.  People of all levels of knowledge gathered to share and debate information and interests. Coffeehouses where women were involved, like the one run by Moll King, were said to degrade traditional, virtuosic, male-run coffeehouses. King's fashionable coffeehouse operated into late hours of the night and showed that Enlightenment women were not always simply the timid sex, governors of polite conversation, or protectorates of aspiring artists.

Significant Women and Publications

Some women, including Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft, used their educations and the opportunities afforded them by the new ideas of the Enlightenment. Women were more involved in publishing their writings than previously thought. In order to publish work during most of the Enlightenment, a married woman had to have written consent from her husband. As the Old Regime began to fail, women became more prolific in their publications. Publishers were no longer concerned about a husband's consent, and a more commercial attitude was adopted, publishing books that were going to sell. With the new economic outlook of the Enlightenment, female writers were granted more opportunity in the print sphere. As print culture became far more accessible to women in the 18th century, the production of cheap editions and the expanding number of books targeted toward a female readership enabled women to obtain more access to education. Prior to the 18th century, many women gained knowledge from correspondence with males because books were not as accessible to them. Social circles emerged around printed books. While the reading habits of men revolved around silent study, women used reading as a social activity. Reading books in intimate gatherings became a mode that fostered discourse among women. Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) was a French woman who wrote plays and found her voice alongside many others during the years leading up to the French Revolution. She felt that the ideal of égalité  (equality) was unfulfilled, even after the French Revolution began. She penned a scathing rebuke to accompany the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (DROM). The DROM, a document that set out the ideals of the early French Revolution and the French Republic, sets out the principles of liberty, sovereignty, and freedom.  It suggests that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” and that there are rights to “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” It also sets out limits to rights and asserts that “Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights” and that laws aid in determining how these rights are experienced.

Read: "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen"

Olympe de Gouges questioned the basis of these rights and re-wrote the DROM in her “The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” published in 1791.  She inserted the word woman to the original DROM text, suggesting that “woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights” and “Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason.” Further, she asserted that women should also be subject to laws and must be equally represented by them.

Read: "The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen"

The rebellion that her words implied was too much for many in the French Enlightenment community to accept, particularly as the revolution moved into its second phase, The Terror. Olympe de Gouges’ ideas and their threat to the overall welfare of society earned her a place in the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Similarly, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) from England questioned women’s place in society. In 1792, she penned the “Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.” In this, she questioned a fundamental assumption of English society but stopped short of declaring women equal to men on Earth. Bringing religion into the debate, she argues that morally-speaking men and women are equal, therefore they are equal in the eyes of God. For her, Earth was a different matter entirely. She argued for opportunity—the opportunity for an education similar to men’s, the opportunity to discuss issues on equal footing with men. Although her work was revolutionary, it was largely dismissed within England and in the later 19th century, she became a key figure for suffragettes and those who worked for women’s rights.