Three Late Eighteenth-Century Women's Journals: Their Role in Shaping Women's Lives

Abstract

The eighteenth-century discussion concerning role of women grounded its assumptions in nature. Since Graeco-Roman period, women had been perceived as inferior to males in social hierarchy; en lightened supposition, however, that no man has right to dominate another propounded by poli tical theorists beginning with Hobbs (1588-1679),1 saw emergence of arguments extending implications of these new democratic ideas to women. The advocates of natural law argued that there is law which antedates all human and divine and is valid independently of such power (Cassirer 239). In practical terms it meant that women should have equal rights to education (and subsequent participation in public sphere),2 an idea suggested as early as 1505 by philosopher Agrippa von Nettesheim3 but not really becoming a serious issue until late seventeenth and particularly eight eenth century.4 To contest these claims a sustained and successful enterprise, whose primary objective was establishment of scientific evidence attesting to wo men1 s inferiority, took place. For example, in France and Germany, anatomists1 depiction of a smaller female skull was used to prove that women1s intellectual capabilities were inferior to men1s5 thus justifying their social inequality. Similarly, the larger female pelvis was used ... to prove that women were naturally destined for motherhood, confined sphere of hearth and home (Schiebinger 43). These efforts were success ful, for German women remained excluded from participa tion in public sphere, arena of discourse con cerned with politics, throughout eighteenth century and well into twentieth century.6