🎥
Carla Hesse, The Other
Enlightenment: How French
Women Became Modern
This stimulating study of French women and publishing between 1789 and
1800 contributes significantly to both the cultural history of the French
Revolution and current debate about the Revolution's impact on women.
Hesse explicitly challenges the interpretation of scholars such as Joan Landes
and Joan Scott, who see the Revolution setting women back by diminishing
the societal role in the sphere of public discussion enjoyed by prominent
eighteenth-century salonnieres and not awarding them the new political
rights of citizens (citoyens) who were, by definition, male.
(1) Hesse, however, finds progress indicated by women authors' publication
record during the revolutionary decade. Her focus is thus not on the pre-
revolutionary Enlightenment but rather on what women's absorption of the
Enlightenment's "critical reason" enabled them to do during the Revolution .
Yet placing women in the "other" Enlightenment also indicates that they, like
servants, non-Europeans, or children, were often understood to be e xcluded
from the Enlightenment's "universal laws" (p. xi).
Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern 1
, More than 200 women writers active in France in years of Enlightenment and
Revolution. Although the Old Regime's censorship did vary in efficacy, the
Revolution clearly eased controls on printed materials and thus opened the
competitive market for published works to more authors. Revolutionary
legislatures' enactments also enlarged the literary marketplace by
heightening readers' interest in current developments. A comparison of men
and women authors' relative representation as publishing outlets expanded
reveals that although women were never more than a small minority of
published French authors before and after 1789, their place among authors rose
from 2 percent in 1784 to 4 percent by 1820
Women's publishing record is central to Hesse's convincing challenge to the
argument that the Revolution imposed a greater exclusion of women from
the public sphere of discussion and action. In addition, she analyzes the
women writers' identity, subject matter, and engagement with changing
political realities. Fully one-third of the 329 women in print between 1789 and
1800 were aristocratic by birth or marriage (p. 45).
Most of the others had bourgeois backgrounds, their families frequently
positioned among the upper professional echelons. Such social origins were
anything but marginal and seem unsurprising because of the importance of
family support for young women's access to education, and hence writing
ability, during this period.
They also dovetail with data on continuities among elites across the
revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras. Certainly legislators and opinion
brokers after 1789 or 1800 increasingly contended that women belonged in the
private sphere of the home rather than in any public arena, but women could
write at home and did not necessarily create scandal if they did. Indeed, the
majority of the women in print between 1789 and 1800 (198 of 329) were
married (p.45).
What led to some famous instances of repression, such as the execution of
Olympe de Gouges in 1793 or Napoleons exiling of Mine Germaine de Stael,
Hesse contends, was not the act of writing but, rather, controversial content.
Nonetheless, writing inevitably heightened women's awareness of
themselves as "self-creating" individuals and so made them more modern
(p. xii).
Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern 2
Carla Hesse, The Other
Enlightenment: How French
Women Became Modern
This stimulating study of French women and publishing between 1789 and
1800 contributes significantly to both the cultural history of the French
Revolution and current debate about the Revolution's impact on women.
Hesse explicitly challenges the interpretation of scholars such as Joan Landes
and Joan Scott, who see the Revolution setting women back by diminishing
the societal role in the sphere of public discussion enjoyed by prominent
eighteenth-century salonnieres and not awarding them the new political
rights of citizens (citoyens) who were, by definition, male.
(1) Hesse, however, finds progress indicated by women authors' publication
record during the revolutionary decade. Her focus is thus not on the pre-
revolutionary Enlightenment but rather on what women's absorption of the
Enlightenment's "critical reason" enabled them to do during the Revolution .
Yet placing women in the "other" Enlightenment also indicates that they, like
servants, non-Europeans, or children, were often understood to be e xcluded
from the Enlightenment's "universal laws" (p. xi).
Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern 1
, More than 200 women writers active in France in years of Enlightenment and
Revolution. Although the Old Regime's censorship did vary in efficacy, the
Revolution clearly eased controls on printed materials and thus opened the
competitive market for published works to more authors. Revolutionary
legislatures' enactments also enlarged the literary marketplace by
heightening readers' interest in current developments. A comparison of men
and women authors' relative representation as publishing outlets expanded
reveals that although women were never more than a small minority of
published French authors before and after 1789, their place among authors rose
from 2 percent in 1784 to 4 percent by 1820
Women's publishing record is central to Hesse's convincing challenge to the
argument that the Revolution imposed a greater exclusion of women from
the public sphere of discussion and action. In addition, she analyzes the
women writers' identity, subject matter, and engagement with changing
political realities. Fully one-third of the 329 women in print between 1789 and
1800 were aristocratic by birth or marriage (p. 45).
Most of the others had bourgeois backgrounds, their families frequently
positioned among the upper professional echelons. Such social origins were
anything but marginal and seem unsurprising because of the importance of
family support for young women's access to education, and hence writing
ability, during this period.
They also dovetail with data on continuities among elites across the
revolutionary and post-revolutionary eras. Certainly legislators and opinion
brokers after 1789 or 1800 increasingly contended that women belonged in the
private sphere of the home rather than in any public arena, but women could
write at home and did not necessarily create scandal if they did. Indeed, the
majority of the women in print between 1789 and 1800 (198 of 329) were
married (p.45).
What led to some famous instances of repression, such as the execution of
Olympe de Gouges in 1793 or Napoleons exiling of Mine Germaine de Stael,
Hesse contends, was not the act of writing but, rather, controversial content.
Nonetheless, writing inevitably heightened women's awareness of
themselves as "self-creating" individuals and so made them more modern
(p. xii).
Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern 2
