Lecture 3/term - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Lecture 3/term 2:

A

ll Men are Equal! Women and Slaves are NOT! Slide2

Elisabeth of Russia, 1709-1761

Maria

Theresia

of Austria, 17170-1780Slide3

Angelica Kaufmann, 1741- 1897

Louise

E

lisabeth

Vigée

Le

Brun

,

1755 – 1842 Slide4

Catharine Macaulay,

1731 – 1791

Famous English historianSlide5

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759 – 1797

A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

(1792)

Importance:

1

st

book that confronted the inherent

i

nconsistencies of Enlightenment ideas

concerning women.

She claims that w

omen are described ‘as a

kind of

subordinate

beings, and not as a

part

of

human

species’

Slide6

Methodological Excursion: Gender

Gender:

range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity.In today’s discuss these

may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles).

History of term:

Term ‘gender’ is coined in the 1950s to indicate difference between ‘biological sex (then considered as ‘fixed’) and sex-based social roles.

Postmodern historians of science/medicine since 1980 (such as

Laqueur

!) began to question this distinction and argued that biology too is gendered. It is not ‘fixed’ but a construction of scientists whose ideas about the human body are shaped and influenced by societal norms and values about

feminityy

and masculinity. (Slide7

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759 – 1797

A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

Attack against Edmund Burke’s.

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

(1792)

Importance of VRW:

1

st

book that confronted the inherent

i

nconsistencies of Enlightenment ideas

concerning women.

She claims that w

omen are described ‘as a

kind of

subordinate

beings, and not as a

part

of

human

species’

Slide8

‘I may be accused of ignorance, still I must declare what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners from Rousseau to Dr Gregory, have contributed to …degrade one half of the human species, and render women pleasing at the expense of every solid virtue’.

Mary Wollstonecraft,

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

(1792), chapter 2.Slide9

Jean-Jacques Rousseau , 1712-1787

Émile

, or On Educati

on (1762)

Rousseau was a believer in the

moral– because he believed ‘natural’ --superiority

of the patriarchal family based on the antique Roman

model

1. Rousseau’s view on women’s natureSlide10

Elisabeth

Vigée

Le

Brun

and daughter

Campaigns against wet-nursing away from home

Women as ‘natural’ mothers were propagated all over Europe Slide11

Dr

John Gregory, 1724-1773

A father’s legacy to His

Daughter

(1774)

Comparative Views of the State and Faculties of Man with Those of the Animal World

(1765

)

‘…your

natural character and place and

society there

arises a certain propriety of conduct peculiar to your sex

’

‘

I do not want to make you anything: I want to know what Nature has made you, and to perfect you on her plan’

2.

Dr

John Gregory Slide12

‘

a study not merely fitted to amuse and gratify curiosity, but a study subservient to the noblest views, to the cultivation and improvement of the Human

Species.’ By drawing comparisons to the animal kingdom and other more virtuous

civilisations then his own, he argues that women are generally closer to ‘nature’.

‘

They posses, in a degree greatly beyond us, sensibility of heart, sweetness of temper, and gentleness of manners. They are more cheerful and joyous. They have a quicker discernment of characters. They have a more lively fancy, and a greater delicacy of taste and sentiment; they are better judges of grace, elegance and propriety and therefore our superiors in such works of taste as depend on these.’

depiction women as the embodiment of the natural and the repository of civilization (like Rousseau)Slide13

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759 – 1797

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

(1792)

She argues that the ‘fabricate’ a nature

of womenSlide14

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759 – 1797

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

(1792)

‘Speak

to them the language of truth and soberness, and way with the lullaby strains of condescending endearment

!’

Critique of gallantry and sexual politesse:

Gallentry

enslaves women but they do it to themselves:Slide15

Wollestonecraft

antagonises many women by accusing them of being complicit:

‘Exalted by their inferiority (this sounds like a contradiction), they constantly demand homage as women, though experience should teach them that the men who

pride themselves upon paying this arbitrary insolent respect to the sex with the most scrupulous exactness, are most inclined to tryannise over the

despise

, the very

weakness

they cherish.’

‘I wish that elegance is inferior to virtue, (and) that the first object of laudable ambition is to

obtain

a character as a human being, regardless of the distinctions of

sex.’ Slide16

The construction of physical difference shaped by

Socio-cultural discussion on womenSlide17

Earlier views: Men and women are the same but differ in their

humoral

set-up; men are the more perfect humans because of their more balanced

humoral set-upVisible difference is not really important!Slide18

Women’s body are becoming ‘different’ from that of men during 18

th

century; cases

f

emale inferiority start to be based on their ‘different’ physicality and its classificationSlide19

‘

It cannot, I think, be truly asserted, that the intellectual powers know

no difference of sex. Nature certainly intended a distinction…In general, and almost universally, the feminine intellect has less strength and more acuteness. Consequently, in our experience of it, we show less perseverance more vivacity.(

Laetitia Hawkins, Letters on the Female Mind, 1792)‘The male is male only at certain moments; the female is female her whole life…everything constantly recalls her

sex

to her…and to fulfil its functions, and appropriate physical constitution is necessary to her…she needs a soft sedentary life to suckle her babies. How much care and

tendernesss

does she need to hold her family together.

’

(Rousseau, Emile)

Women as makers of their own enslavement?

increasingly science/medicine is used to support the claims of inferiority and women use them tooSlide20

A Valuation of Estate Slaves, Antigua, 1782

This financial document illustrates the extent to which slaves were regarded as marketable property.Slide21

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

(1707 – 1788

)

Histoire naturelle,

générale

et

particulière

(1749–1788: in 36 volumes

; plus additional

volume

of his notes in 1789

)

Human race was a unity

determining factors

for difference is climate and geography

No support for ideas of radical difference or

Inferiority of racesSlide22

Carl Linnaeus, 1707

–

1778

Systema

Naturae

(many editions since 1835) proposed:

Man divided into four different classificatory groups (white

europeans

; red American

I

ndians; black Africans; brown Asians; each

had specific physiognomic characteristics

"varying by culture and

place)

Monstrosus

Homo

feralis

(

Feral man

); the Patagonian

giant; pygmies; and mythological beasts Slide23

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1752-1834

New:

The notion of a natural hierarchy of races based NOT on external characteristics such as skin

colour

but on internal structures of the body

De generis

humani

varietate

nativa

(

On the Natural Variety

of Mankind)

(1775)

RaceSlide24

He divided the human species into five races:

the Caucasian or white race

the Mongolian or yellow race, including all East Asians and some Central Asians.

the Malayan or brown race, including Southeast Asian and Pacific Islanders. the Ethiopian or black race, including sub-Saharan Africans. the American or red race, including American Indians.