THE DESCENT OF WOMEN TO THE POWER OF DOMESTICITY

Sandrine Bergès

doi:10.21814/eps.4.1.190

Abstract

Is the virtue of domesticity a way for women to access civic power or is it a slippery slope to dependence and female subservience? Here I look at a number of philosophical responses to domesticity and trace a historical path from Aristotle to the 19th century Cult of Domesticity. Central to the Cult was the idea that women’s power was better used in the home, keeping everybody safe, alive, and virtuous. While this attitude seems to us very conservative, I want to argue that it has its roots in the republican thought of eighteenth-century France. I will show how the status of women before the French Revolutions did not allow even for power exercised in the home, and how the advent of republican ideals in France offered women non-negligible power despite their not having a right to vote.

Highlights

In the second half of the twentieth century, domesticity, the work of caring for the home environment, became the target of feminist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, who saw it as a sort of bourgeois fetish, destined to keep middle class women from interfering in public life.Why be so down on domesticity? Women around the world perform domestic duties while holding down full-time jobs
The argument that leaves all domestic work to women is based on a highly dubious form of essentialism drawing on tidbits from evolutionary biology and neuroscience, and patched together in books like Men are from Mars Women are from Venus (1992)
The claim that there is power to be had in domesticity is a marked improvement from an older position, namely that domestic occupations devolved onto women because they are devoid of any real import: citizens must be fed, and those who are least capable of doing real work should take care of it

Summary

A DESCIDA DAS MULHERES AO PODER DA DOMESTICIDADE

Is the virtue of domesticity a way for women to access civic power or is it a slippery slope to dependence and female subservience? Here I look at a number of philosophical responses to domesticity and trace a historical path from Aristotle to the 19th century Cult of Domesticity. Central to the Cult was the idea that women’s power was better used in the home, keeping everybody safe, alive, and virtuous. While this attitude seems to us very conservative, I want to argue that it has its roots in the republican thought of eighteenth-century France. Central para o Culto da Domesticidade foi a ideia de que o poder das mulheres era muito mais bem aproveitado em casa, mantendo todos os membros da família seguros, vivos e virtuosos. Esta é uma atitude que nos parece muito conservadora, mas quero defender a hipótese segundo a qual ela tem as suas raízes no pensamento republicano da França do século XVIII.

Introduction

Feminine Power and Domestic Virtues

The Redistribution of Power

Concluding Remarks