Rousseau’s attitude to women is somewhat surprising given that he is seen as a leader of Enlightenment thought.Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on 28 June 1712. He was a philosopher, writer, and composer and his writing had a profound effect on the development of the Enlightenment in France and across Europe. Rousseau’s novel Emile, or On Education is claimed to be a treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise was of importance to the development of pre-romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau’s autobiographical writings—his Confessions, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his Reveries of a Solitary Walker—exemplified the late 18th-century movement known as the Age of Sensibility. His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought and his writing was popular among members of the Jacobin Club, so much so that his body was re-interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death
However, his attitude to women wasn’t the best and there were certainly philosophers who were his contemporaries such as Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (September 17, 1743–March 28, 1794) whose attitude to women was far more enlightened. Modern scholars of Rousseau have three views on him:The first involves reading Rousseau as being sympathetic to women’s concerns as he is to all issues of human development albeit within the context of traditional social arrangements. This maybe said to be “taking-Rousseau-at-face-value.” In his writings Rousseau viewed women’s options in life as entirely limited to the roles of wife and mother. In his work on education, Emile, he says, “What need would there be to allow her to determine for herself when nature had already physiologically dictated her destiny? …. she will always be in subjection to a man and she will never be free to set her own opinion above his.” For Rousseau the education of men should be one that develops a man’s corporeal powers; and for women one that developed their personal charms, a view that was totally in keeping with the received view of women and their natural inferiority to men in eighteenth century European society.
More recently however a second view on his work and attitudes has developed that says Rousseau compromises his intellectual integrity by relegating women to a segregated domestic sphere where the height of women’s achievement consists of nurturing the future male citizens of the politically authentic State. This second view has prompted a third view which contends that to apply our 2Oth-century criteria of equality to Rousseau’s 18th-century writings is to (deliberately) misconstrue the importance of his work and that is important to point out that Rousseau was not advocating sexual segregation and misogyny when he says that men are dependent on women for the satisfaction of their desires and that women are dependent on men for the satisfaction of their material needs as well as their desires. Perhaps, say scholars like Joel Schwartz, he is describing “sexual interdependence.” Feminist writers largely reject this third approach but that does not mean they dispute the importance of Rousseau’s contribution to the development of political thought and literature.
So, it seems that Rousseau was a man of his time when it came to his attitudes to women and it has to be said that his relationships with women were a little strange; in Confessions we learn that he found being whipped by his governess, Mademoiselle Lambercier, sexually exciting; and in other publications we learn that he had a relationship with a rich woman, Madame de Warens, when he was only sixteen whom he referred to as ‘maman’. Later he had a relationship a twenty-three year old servant girl, Therese Levasseur, whom the philosopher David Hume described as, “so limited that she knows neither the year, the month, nor the day of the week; she is unaware of the value of money and in spite of all that, she has on Jean Jacques the empire of a nurse over her charge.”
So, perhaps the history of philosophy and politics and women’s place in them would have been somewhat different had Jean-Jacques’ been attracted to and had a more equal relationship with a clever and ambitious woman of his age.
Julia Herdman writes historical fiction that puts women to the fore. Her latest book Sinclair, Tales of Tooley Street Vol. 1. is Available on Amazon – Paperback £10.99 Kindle £2.42 Also available on:
Sources:
Illustrations: Madame de Warens, Jean Jacques Rousseau Wikipedia
Rousseau and Criticism edited by Lorraine Clark and Guy Lafrance
http://rousseauassociation.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/publications/PDF/PL5/PL5-Morgenstern.pdf
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