French Feminism Midterm

Duchesse de Montpensier

-Against Marriage

-wealthiest woman in French society but she would have lost everything if she got married

-marriage takes away a woman’s freedom financially

-marriages are often not something a woman even chose in the first place so agency gone right off the bat

-love is an excuse for abuse, “gallant”

-idealized feminocentric community, still classist

Marie de Gournay

-Apology for the Woman Writing

-defends herself against popular gossip about her poverty and writing career

-practiced alchemy

Poullain de la Barre

-Equality of the Sexes

-intellectual difference between men and women is only because women do not have equal access to education

-also randomly racist/eugenics

-the mind has no sex

Françoise de Graffiny

-Letters of a Peruvian Woman

-Zilia captured by Spanish, critiquing French society

-ethnographic detour: using another culture to examine your own

-Zilia not immune from her own prejudices

-circumlocution used on tools of confinement (house, boat, convent), feminine occupations (sewing, quipos), tools that aid perception (mirrors)

Christine de Pizan

-City of Ladies

-first woman in European tradition to earn living as a writer

-emphasizes level of education

-uses biblical evidence to back up claims that women aren’t actually inherently evil

-told through vision of three ladies (Reason, Rectitude, Justice)

Olympe de Gouges

-Declaration of the Rights of Women

-dedicated to Marie Antoinette because she sees a shared struggle under misogyny

-points out misogyny in current Declaration of Rights

Marquis de Condorcet

-On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship

-argues for equality of women via logic (concept of natural rights)

-makes essentialist statements about men and women (women are more sensitive, follow reason differently, etc) but these should not be reasons to exclude women from natural rights

Mary Wollstonecraft

-A Vindication of the Rights of Women

-women are capable of being productive members of society just like men if they were given the same education

-a good mother is a backbone of society, women inherently suited to be mothers (essentialist)

Sarah Baartman

-the “Black Venus”

-taken from South Africa and put on display across Europe because of her “unnatural” body

-body was autopsied and preserved after death, wasn’t returned to South Africa until much later than it should have been

Jeanne Deroin

-ending exploitation of workers is part of feminism

-right to vote tied to right to work

-womens votes would humanize society and family life

Hubertine Auclert

-feminism should be a part of socialism as women are an exploited lower class

-women were legal citizens in name but not rights

-suffragist

Guy de Maupassant

-Mother of Monsters, The Dowry, A Crisis, Ball of Fat

-his stories criticize the unfair circumstances and standards women are subjected to through irony