Sexual desire, gender equality and radical free-thinking: Theophrastus redivivus (1659) as a proto-feminist text

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper aims to explore the reflections on gender equality expressed in one of the most comprehensive and radical clandestine manuscripts, Theophrastus redivivus, dated 1659. First, I will try to reconstruct the theory of the state of nature and natural law that the anonymous author sets against the civil state, considered to constitute a break with original liberty and equality. Then, I will show that the intellectual protest against the injustice provoked by this break goes as far as to invoke the abolition of laws and the return to natural equality. In this context, the author notes that the institution of legal marriages was unfair to women and that sexual desire that should be free and equal for both sexes was confined within very narrow limits for women. Theophrastus redivivus bases equality on reason alone and on a materialistic conception of the law of nature. Therefore, I will first compare the text to Hobbes and then contrast it with Renaissance and early modern feminist writers, such as Fonte, Tarabotti, Suchon, Gournay, and De la Barre. This clandestine manuscript is shown to be the first to assert the right to sexual satisfaction, free and equal for both genders, as a pillar of an independent personhood.