Women During The Age Of The Enlightenment

The Age of the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, radically altered the political, philosophical, artistic, and academic standards of the Western world. Themes of rational thought, scientific reasoning, progress, liberty and equality infiltrated many domains of the public sphere. However, in retrospect, the movement is in many ways a paradox, for it primarily advocated and benefited traditional male-dominated spaces. Although a few “exceptional” women were granted access and participated in the public sphere in the Academy of Painting and Sculpture and other domains, by the end of the French Revolution women were eradicated from public involvement and forced to submit to domesticity. Through a
Landes and Sheriff reasons this phenomenon to previous assumptions of gender differences along with the influential philosophy and various writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and popular pseudo-science. In fact, Sheriff notes that “Rousseau’s influence before, during, and after the revolution can hardly be overestimated, and there was scarcely a medical tract, advice manual, or treatise on the nature of women published between 1770 and 1810 that did not cite his authority.” Dedicating an entire chapter exclusively to Rousseau and his commentary—or better guidelines—on women’s behaviors, Landes focuses several aspects of his theories. Detaching society from the debauchery of the Old Regime, Rousseau sought and encouraged women to remain in the domestic sphere. To be virtuous and moral are among the chief requirements of a submissive republican woman. However, Landes argues that Rousseau did not believe he was stifling women’s purpose in society. She writes “he anticipated that they would continue to be active an in their own sphere, powerful. Indeed, he offered them the opportunity to perform a crucial cultural role on which depended on the moral health of the entire polity.” Landes continues to contextualize Rousseau’s ideology in collaboration with in depth and dense analysis of his thoughts of love, sexuality, bourgeois society, and the promiscuity of women.
Although it was difficult for women in the Old Regime to enter the public sphere—in this case the Academy of Painting and Sculpture—it was possible under unique exceptions . Despite only fifteen of the four hundred and fifty artists admitted into the Academy during its history, Academician leaders ensured a limit of four female artists at a given time. Questioning the rationalization of the Academy’s standards and limitations of women participation, Sheriff concludes that “given the general cultural of women as outside the political body, it is not surprising they found it problematic to incorporate women into the academic one.” Throughout the chapter The Law, The Academy, and the Exceptional Woman, Sheriff grapples with the legal and political proceedings of Vigée-Lebrun’s acceptance and how it had the “possibility” to suppress men’s creative and judicial status within the Academy. The next chapter, The Im/Modesty of Their Sex brings to mind the research of feminist scholar, Linda Nochlin . Sheriff navigates Rousseau’s ideology of women and modesty regarding Vigée-Lebrun’s status and reception at the Academy and the salons. In addition, she demonstrates how, despite institutional segregation, Madame Lebrun was able to transcend the classification of portrait and history