Sustainability and Gender in Rousseau's Model Families

Abstract

In the face of the social and environmental changes of his time, Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité (1755), Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761), and Émile et Sophie ou les Solitaires (1780) propose model sustainable lifestyles that aim to stop the progressive alienation of humans from nature. Bringing together two prominent areas of Rousseau studies, environmentalism and feminism, this article explores how these three texts promote the patriarchal family as an example of an ecological and social ideal to be imitated, but they ultimately reveal patriarchy to be unsustainable. Within these model families, the desire to maintain power over women is connected to the desire to preserve natural spaces against the threat of transformation by urbanization and technological progress. However, in each case, controlling nature and women proves impossible, and the patriarchal idylls collapse. In this analysis, I attend to the dynamism of environments and female protagonists in the Discours, Julie, and Émile et Sophie to show how Rousseau's texts refute essentialized definitions of nature or women's nature. This reading contributes to the work of ecocritics studying Rousseau's proto-environmentalism as well as to the work of feminist critics who have highlighted how Rousseau uses nature to justify gender inequality.